First, a moment of silence for the
Late, Great Leonard Nimoy. We’ll miss you, Mr. Spock… Now, on with the show.
In case you’ve been living under a
rock the last couple of weeks, Spider-man is going to be introduced into the
main Marvel Movie Universe. With that, odds are we’re going to have to see another
reboot of the franchise. Oh joy. The legal and continuity difficulties that
Marvel has made for itself. I want to stress that I do like the Spider-man
films, both the original trilogy and the new… diology? Dualogy? Did I just make
up words? Whatever, I like four of the five movies. Spider-man 3 can suck an egg. A rotten one. Filled with the most
unpleasant things imaginable. Ugh, I hate you Spider-man 3. That being said, there were a few major missteps in
the making of the good movies. Which leads me into the next topic, six things I
hope we’ve learned from the other Spider-man films.
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| A decent start. Shame how it all ended. |
First and foremost, you can’t
please everybody. It’s impossible, and a stupid thing to try. Let me explain.
My brothers and I love superheroes, and by and large we agree on a fair number
of topics. We all like Marvel over DC, and specific groups and characters like the
X-men, Captain America, and so on. Admittedly this is most likely because my
older brother, Scott, shaped the opinions of myself and our younger brother,
Matt. Nature verses Nurture argument for another day. Now, if I were to sit us
down and write down five things that we want to see in the new main Marvel
Spider-man, we’d probably have at the very least ten different answer. I can
already see Matt’s, 1. Include Punisher, 2. Make Punisher have equal screen
time to Spider-man, 3. Make it a Punisher movie. And this comes from three guys
with similar tastes. Imagine the differences in opinion with fifty or a hundred
people as the test sample. A freak out from Adventure
Time comes to mind. “Everyone wants different things! And some of them want
stuff that’s exactly the thing the others don’t want.” Which is precisely my
point. You’ll have guys like me that love Venom, and guys who hate him like Sam
Raimi reportedly does. Some will want to see Harry Osborn do the villain thing,
others don’t even want to see the rich boy. At all. Some will even be happy to
see a Peter, Gwen, and Mary Jane love triangle. In case you don’t immediately
guess my feelings on the matter, sharp objects in my eyes sounds more
appealing. In summation, don’t try something that is literally impossible. What
we need is for the creative team to shoot for pleasing as many people as
possible, and make it as amazing as possible. If you give me a great film with
Scorpion as the villain when I wanted Venom, granted I’ll be a little bummed,
but I won’t be upset. And the next one kind of feeds into this.
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| Such wasted potential... |
Number Two, Two villains, MAX. If
you want to do like Amazing Spider-man
2 started to do and introduce the civilian ID of another villain, that’s fine.
I’m talking the dudes that get into costume and attack the hero on relatively
equal footing. Just don’t screw it up with a ten minute glorified cameo. If you
have any more than two villains, the movie gets cluttered and no one gets
enough screen time. Think Spider-man 3,
where we had Sandman, Harry Goblin, Black Suit Spider-man, and Venom. That was
WWWWWAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY too many. Venom had like twenty minutes, in a nearly
three hour film. That is beyond insulting. We don’t want to just see a costume,
a name and/or veiled reference to a character. We want to see a well-adapted
version of a character we know. We didn’t get that with Venom in Spider-man 3, and we didn’t get that
with Rhino in The Amazing Spider-man 2.
Heck, we didn’t even get a satisfactory closing fight scene with Rhino. This is
especially true if you fall back to the old movie standard of killing off the
villain at the end. If we’re getting one movie, just ONE movie with these guys,
please do us the courtesy of making it the best darn representation of the
villain you can muster. Which means plenty of screen time, and development.
Which means we need to FOCUS on one or two characters. And again, this point
leads into the next.
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| Words cannot describe my level of hatred for this refuse. |
Don’t make changes just for the
sake of change. I’m thinking specifically of Doc Ock in Spider-man 2. They take the cold, narcissistic, vain, pig headed
Otto Octavius, gave him a wife, feelings, and made his tentacles the real
villain. Any other Doctor Octopus wouldn’t need convincing to rebuild his
machine. He wouldn’t mourn anyone killed in by his actions. He’d just do it to
prove he’s the superior intellectual. Same goes for Peter Parker in the Amazing Spider-man. They took the nerdy,
socially awkward Peter and turned him into a “Totally awesome dude” that
skateboards and stuff, who is only socially outcast because…. I have no idea
why. He just is. That is STUPID. Don’t get me wrong, I understand it is an
adaptation, and as an adaptation obviously things will be cut, warped or
otherwise changed to fit the medium, time allotment, and so on. Still, fans of
Spider-man want to see at least something that is recognizable to the source
material. The ultimate foe of Spider-man is Norman Osborn the original Green
Goblin, Doc Ock is an antisocial sociopath not a poetry spouting romantic,
Eddie Brock does have some redeeming characteristics and so on. These things
are slightly more set in stone than character ages, precisely how they met, and
what exactly the villain’s evil plan is. So again, change what you need to tell
a good story, but don’t just make massive alterations to make your movie
separate from the source material or previous movies.
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| I liked it. |
The fourth thing, an active heroine
is better than a passive heroine. Most people I know preferred Emma Stone’s
Gwen Stacey over Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson. This is for a number of
reasons, though chief among them for me is that Gwen was actually helpful, and
wasn’t kidnapped in every film to just be bait for Spider-man. Gwen was in
danger in Amazing Spider-man one, not
because the Lizard knew she was important to Spidey, she was in danger because
she slipped into Oscorp to make the Lizard Cure. Still in danger, still could
die, but she’s not the bait and prize for the Web Slinger. Same goes in AS2,
she was initially put in danger, and later killed, because she ran in to help
Spider-man beat the baddies. Unlike MJ, who was kidnapped a minimum of three
times, simply because of her connection to Spider-man and/or Peter Parker.
That’s just silly. Guys, I get it, the whole save the girl fantasy is well
ingrained into the male psyche, but we need to evolve with the times. Any love
interest to a Superhero, powered or non-powered, is in constant danger. And to
just have her/him kidnapped is just lazy writing. I feel this way regardless of
which Spider-man leading lady they choose to go with, be it Gwen, Mary Jane, or
the obscure of the obscure Liz Allen. Give me a woman that’ll at least try to
punch a baddy in the teeth over one that gets tied to the railroad tracks and
lays there until the situation changes. What can I say, I have a thing for the
Spitfire type. More interesting ladies, more interesting stories, more
interesting movies.
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| I like parts of it. |
Fifth on the list, We. Don’t. Need.
The. Origin. Story. Or more accurately we don’t need the entire origin story
retold, again. I think just about everyone knows the whole dorky kid bitten by radioactive
spider, gets superpowers, tries to make something of himself, has a selfish but ultimately
justifiable dick moment that causes a crook to get away, who later kills Uncle
Ben. You don’t need to go over it every single time we start over. We can
totally start with a Year One scenario, he’s been Spidey for a while and is now
just getting to fight a big time supervillain. Don’t get me wrong, we need to
see Uncle Ben die, but it can be a quick little summary in the opening credits,
Spider-man mentions how it’s still messing with him. That sort of thing. The
death of Uncle Ben is a pivotal moment in young Peter Parker’s life, but let’s
face it, the dorky teen phase isn’t 100% necessary. It’s perhaps the one thing
that the main Spider-man shows, Spider-man:
The Animated Series, The Spectacular Spider-man and Ultimate Spider-man, got right is that we don’t need the beginning
beginning stuff. We can jump right to Peter figuring it out, and still develop
an emotional connection to the character. In
medias res is your friend writers. And let’s face it, Peter is largely a
generic nerd before getting his powers. Cut and paste him with just about any
other dorky teenager. It’s after he gets his powers, loses Uncle Ben and starts
the whole dual identity thing that he gets interesting. Feel free to disagree
with me.
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| Really optimistic and excited. Yes, you read that right. |
Finally, don’t be afraid to start
small. At his core, Spider-man is a street level Superhero. Sure, he gets
wrapped up in fate of the world type plots, but most of the time he just gets
on the bad side of a lowlife that later gained superpowers. We don’t need a
Lizard with “make Lizard World” plot, or Electro “darken New York City” plot.
We can start off with a lesser villain, a Shocker, a Hammerhead, a Tombstone, a
Chameleon, a Craven the Hunter, a Hobgoblin, a Hydroman, a Mysterio or
Boomerang. On second thought, not the last one. He sucks. What I’m getting at
is the first baddie can just be a lowlife thug that Spider-man helps arrest,
who later gets superpowers and starts a revenge plot. We can build to Doc Ock
with his evil destroy the world plot, or Green Goblin with his own take over
the world plot. Heck, we could start off with one of those two arming
Spider-man’s main foe of the movie. I could totally see Otto or Norman
outfitting small time thug Herman Schultz with his Shocker gauntlets, or giving
Quentin Beck the more dangerous toys that turned a special effects expert into
the fishbowl headed villain Mysterio. After besting these smaller time, but
still formidable foes, do the big boys step up and try to squash the Spider. We
could even see the obsessive hatred grow in the Avengers 3 when Thanos rears his big purple mug. In a larger
cinematic universe, we have the time to take things slow and build to something
great. Granted, this one might be a bit more difficult if Spider-man is
introduced in Captain America 3, if
they try to stick to the source material. Kind of hard to start small when in
the previous movie he was in, Spider-man was a major lynch pin in the Pro and Anti
registration groups plans/propaganda.It might not be doable, but something to consider.
So that’s it, six things that I
hope we learned from the previous Spider-man films. A new reboot in the main
universe has the potential to be the greatest hero thing that Marvel keeps
spouting on about. If we actually learn from previous missteps, Spider-man can
get back up there to the same level of popularity as Iron Man, Captain America
and the Guardians of the Galaxy. At least, I hope he can. Next time, let’s do
another editorial. You, me, and the Multi-verse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_%282002_film%29
http://spiderman-films.wikia.com/wiki/File:Dock_Ock_Poster.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Spider-Man_%282012_film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Spider-Man_2
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BOjPkQCrBIY/T92BIXsJxlI/AAAAAAAACVg/VQKR8gsrTM0/s1600/Avenger%2BMovie%2BWallpaper.jpg
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