My Spider-wallet's™ tingling

[Seriously]

I've had a chance to actually see it now.

Upon hearing the mixed opinions, I went ahead and spoiled myself so I'd be less disappointed when I actually saw it.

It worked, I guess: I loved the movie.

Of course, I go into every movie looking to get my money's worth, and having grown up on Star Trek I've a well excercised suspension of disbelief.


But I am honestly not sure whether or not I liked this or 2 better.

Probably 2, because I think that was one of the best superhero movies there is.


I don't mind the silliness. That's partly because of my conception of Spider-Man.

i.e. He's a goof. He's lame as hell.


Spider-Man isn't cool, he does cool things but he's an awkward ass science nerd.

Looks wise, Tobey Maguire was perfect, because he's funny-looking.

To me, Peter Parker should be funny-looking.

Although I think now that Topher Grace would have been a better choice for Peter, because Tobey fails at wittiness. Ah well.


All of this is to say that when newly Spidevil-Man looks in the mirror and realizes that now that he's "badass" he needs to muss up his hair it works for me. I laughed so hard, because it works for me.

Even though he's capable of doing atrocious things, that doesn't make him badass: he's still Peter Parker, and still lame.

He suddenly has real ultimate power and what does he do? He just wants to go down the street dancing and being all night at the Roxberry to the ladies.

That totally works for me.


There's plenty of Pevil Parker being straight up vicious in the movie.


Sandman was sort of ridiculous, powers-wise. I think they could have done without him.


I did like the costumeless fights. I wondered when they'd get around to that.


But my absolute favorite thing?



How's the pie?

[efilflah]

But my absolute favorite thing?

How's the pie?

LOL!

I'd forgotten about that part. I admittedly cracked up when I saw it, but I can't remember if it's because James Franco is such a dire actor, or because the line actually suited the scene.

I get what you're saying about Parker not being cool enough himself to act cool even when doped up on symbiogoodness, but the translation of the story still didn't work at all for me, mainly for the reasons I said before, but addititionally because it just wasn't made with a clear objective in mind.

There was no real reason for this movie, there was nothing to tie up other than the GG storyline (despite Raimi excusing the additional content this way with his bullshit PR statements), and the rest was a waste of source material as extra padding.

[eamon angelface]

Shit that is my fav new animated gif.

I feel I must steal it and use it as my own.

btw: all good points made.

[Umgawa]

... They could've just focused on that one storyline and made a real "Dark" effort, but they didn't want to, because that just wouldn't be appealing to everyone. The liberties they took were stupid, like implying that the suit heightened Peter's emotions...which wasn't the case in the comics. Peter would go to sleep and the suit would encompass him and take his body out for a swing, and feed off the energy. The reason he was irritable and tired was because he hadn't rested at all, and was completely fatigued.

See, this is exactly why I haven't gone to see the movie. Well, other than my deep-seated loathing of all things alien-symbiote. When it all breaks down, the symbiote appeared in exactly seven issues of Amazing Spider-Man, from #252 to #258, and (trust me, I just read them) they weren't even that good. And then you had Web of Spider-Man #1, which was the church-bell issue, and that's the one everyone remembers, because it didn't involve Reed Richards whipping out his conveniently placed sonic rifle.

I mean, if you were going to rank bad guys in Spider-Man comics prior to issue 300, you'd find that the symbiote would rank somewhere down there with Hydro-Man, Mirage, and Hammerhead. But, you bring Venom into the mix in #300, and all of a sudden, you've got this anti-Spider-Man, which works because Spidey's always been a fantastically good guy, as opposed to being the sort of Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson-type anti-hero that you get from guys like Punisher or Wolverine. So, when you take the general idea of Spider-Man and turn it on its head to create Venom, you've got this great opportunity to create the Khan to Spider-Man's Captain Kirk.

What strikes me as odd is the fact that Spider-Man hung on to the black suit for as long as he did in the comics. Seriously, it was four fucking years, and then Venom shows up, Spidey goes back to the red and blue, and you know what? People fucking rioted. They didn't give a shit about Venom, they wanted Spidey back in black! Venom comes back again in 1989, and this time half of the readers care, but the other half just want to see Todd McFarlane draw more Black Cat! ... God's honest truth, I'm reading it right out of the letters pages in Amazing.

This is what you miss when you buy the anthology books.

It was a pathetic effort, as was their idea for getting the symbiote on the planet in the first place.

"Well...it's alien right? How about a random meteor crash right next to the protagonist?"

I've seen better writing in pop-up books. Why didn't they just go with the Cartoon explanation? (since the comics one is kinda outta the question).

Have JJJ's astrounaut son; whom they introduced in the last movie, bring it down on some random space expedition. It's so simple, and yet a gazillion times better than the convenient meteor impact that they went with.

Honestly, this would have been so much better than using Sandman. Sandman is only a good villain if you haven't read a single issue of Spider-Man in thirty-five years. John Jameson comes back to earth toting a rock containing the symbiote and a ruby that conveniently turns him into Man-Wolf/Star-God (whatever the fuck), Spidey beats him down around twelve minutes into the movie, and then we go on a Wrath of Khan-style adventure. It's quick and it works, because we've already established Jameson as an astronaut, and now we've wasted our opportunity to fucking use him.

... But, looking to the future, I just have to say this: If you're going to bring in Carnage, just stab me in the fucking heart again and clone Peter Parker while you're at it. Seriously. Just take one of the worst "we did this just to sell more books" ideas that Salicrup, Michelinie and DeFalco ever came up with. I rank Carnage right down there with variant, die-cut and hologram covers.

I mean, you want a great Spider-Man story that would fit into a two hour movie? "Kraven's Last Hunt," for me, has always been the epic that every other Spider-Man story arc has to live up to, and they never, ever do. Just look at "Maximum Carnage": It's fourteen issues of nothing but shit, almost as if Michelinie, Danny Fingeroth and Tom DeFalco sat down and said, "These symbiotes sell books. If we make more symbiotes... we'll sell more books!" Never mind that the story was garbage. It was like having to sit through "X-Cutioner's Song," "Inferno," and "X-Tinction Agenda" all over again! But "Kraven's Last Hunt" is sheer brilliance, particularly Amazing #294.

Anyway, if I don't stop there, I'm going to get off on a tangent about how Adamantium is the most abundant metal on earth.

[efilflah]

Umgawa fucking gets it man <3

Kraven's last hunt, and Torment as a sequel

[eamon angelface]

I don't think little kids could take Kraven's Last Hunt.

With these sorts of movies story is secondary to marketing potential.

I guess if I were more like you guys and had high hopes going in I'd have been let down. I thought it was going to be terrible so when it turned out to be okay I was pleasantly surprised.

What I don't like is people thinking these movies have to adhere to the confines and stories of the comics. It's not like those are reality; give the writers the same creative freedom you'd afford an actual comic book writer. Nobody seems to mind when they take things out a new door right?

Why not go with an entirely new villain for the next one?

[Umgawa]

Why not go with an entirely new villain for the next one?

For the same reason that they went with Sandman for this one. Sandman first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #4 (1963), and I really don't care to look and see how many times prior to the introduction of Venom, but if I were to go strictly by cover-appearances of Amazing Spider-Man, the answer is six. Seriously, no shit, six cover appearances prior to Amazing Spider-Man #300. Now, I couldn't believe this, either, considering the fact that, when I was in grade school, I knew Sandman as a villain better than anybody short of Green Goblin, Doc Ock or maybe the Chameleon, which isn't bad, considering we're talking about Amazing Spider-Man #14, #3, and #1, respectively.

And you can't do fucking Chameleon, because Sam Raimi already did Darkman. Score one for the real Raimi fans.

But seriously, Sandman appears once on the cover in 1963 (in #4), once in 1964 (in #18 ), and then four times in 1981 (in #214, 215, 217, and 218), albeit in an alternate costume the first two times (and as a member of the Frightful Four) and then with Hydro-Man the latter two times (yes, the amalgam of #218 counts). But that's all! Feel free to audit my work.

Now, I figure I was exposed to Sandman because one of my uncles collected comics off and on in his youth, and he left them at my grandmother's house, so I read them when I was a kid, and Sandman was one of those villains who was kind-of worth a damn; don't ask me why, but he was, across the two cover-appearances he had while my uncle was living with my grandmother. He's a memorable villain, and I can't figure out why, for the life of me. But, I figure that's about where they were going with picking Sandman. Go with one of the old-school guys from Spidey's first dozen or so issues of having his own book:

• Chameleon (#1)
• Vulture (#2, #7)
• Doctor Octopus (#3, #11, #12)
• Sandman (#4)
• Doctor Doom (#5)
• The Lizard (#6)
• Flash Fucking Thompson (#8 )
• Electro (#9)
• The Enforcers (#10)
• Mysterio (#13)
• Green Goblin (#14)
• Kraven the Hunter (#15)

Okay, that's enough. I've eliminated the ones that have been done in one film or another, and have picked the ones that would be my pick for a fourth film. Kraven would, as stated, be my first choice, but I think it would be too high-brow for most moviegoers, not to mention the fact that Spider-Man effectively loses that fight. "Kraven's Last Hunt" is one of those Watchmen kind of things, where you just go, "How the fuck is anyone going to do that?" and then you just sit back and watch them fuck it up.

Regardless, I think Sandman was put there to appease the people who hadn't read comic books in thirty-plus years. Like I said, Sandman made two cover appearances in Amazing the issues I would've read as a kid, and yet I knew who he was. I'd have to check into my other comic books to see if he made any other appearances (damn you, Marvel, for never printing up the proper Marvel Universe appendix!!!), but I knew him. As such, he's a guy that the critics, not to mention Sam Raimi (all being fifty-ish, more or less), would probably know, too, thus bringing out some happy memories of their youth. So, that's why, I think, they used Sandman in this movie.

Regardless, getting back to point, Sandman's an easy guy to describe to a kid, too: "Dude, he's fuckin' sand!!!" So, short of Hydro-Man, it's kind of hard to get establish a bad guy more easily, in terms of a power-set, than Sandman, because it's easy to say, "Dude. Gamma rays and shit on a beach," and there you go!

Finally, when it comes to the creative freedom you afford a comic book writer, you'd be really surprised how many villains just crash and fucking burn, my personal favorite being Amazing Spider-Man #22: "New Thrills! New Villains! New Surprises! Spidey Battles 'The Clown and His Masters of Menace!'" I mean, these guys are standing in the unemployment line right now next to philosophy majors and fucking Cardiac.

All right, that's my obscurity quota for the evening! Good night!

[smash]

With the exception of Venom/Carnage Spidey's villians have always been lame. They are usually small time villians with noble goals. The frightful four was when I remember feeling sympathy for all four villians.

All were trying to save themselves or loved ones. Even Kraven had a more noble purpose at first, didn't he?

They went to Venom because he's not so corny as a villian. He's downright creepy.

Mysterio is... too incomprehensible as a villian for children.

Are there other villians they can go to? If not, Kraven is the next best choice...and I actually like the Final Hunt idea.

I'm not really with you guys about keeping comic lore 'accurate'. Making a film is way different...comics can drag things over time, cross issues, reference back stories with an asterik+a comic number.

Tho I did think they did a shit job on the symbiote...as I said before.

[UncleMao]

Spider-Man is overrated, "made for TV" bullshit.

3 was probably the most watchable of the series. If that fucking really meant anything since the whole fucking series is a droll fucking snore fest.

Cue the lemmings and the happy meals and the fucking mindless children who get fucking dumber with each generation.

Yeah it may be harsh since Spider-Man really doesn't have any fucking story arc anyway...

Okay credit where credit is due. Evil Tobey made me laugh. Exploiting your stupid infatuated neighbour for food is mint. That stupid spastic walk made me snort my drink.

But till now, I prefer that short-lived Spidey TV series and that Electric Company skit with Spidey to the Tobey Spideys.

Maybe Spidey is for the kids for all I fucking know.

Shrug.

Maybe as far as the big screen shivers go, I didn't feel it for any part of Spider-Man as say, for Transformers, and that's just the trailers.

(yeah yeah, Michael Bay haters. Blah Blah commercial fare blah blah. Whatever. Fuck you go watch Bollywood if it makes you feel better.)

[efilflah]

Oh come on Mao, you don't really think Transformers is gonna be anywhere near entertaining do you?

I think seeing the CG Optimus and Megatron might be cool for all of 10 minutes, but as soon as that 100th slow motion pan shot of Bay's kicks in, it's just gonna be back to the same old "how many explosions can I fit into this one?"

He lives for slo mo and splosions.

The only thing that can save Transformers is if they bring back Stan Bush for the soundtrack.

You've been gone too long Stan.

[UncleMao]

You had to jinx it by calling out the [should not be mentioned] pull focus slow pan hero pose[/should not be mentioned] thing didn't you?

Now it's gonna happen.

What can I say? Big robots go crazy in city shit happens?

It's almost an Ultraman film.


yum....Ultraman.

They should make that...




Slow pan or not.

[AngelBaby]

I suppose it's not news to anyone here that the Wachowskis (can't really call them brothers anymore) are making Speed Racer.

I'm quite curious to see how that translates into live-action. Is there gonna be a Chim Chim?