Spider-Man: Homecoming

They'll be glossing over the origin story, that was actually one of the first things confirmed about the reboot.

By putting him into Civil War, they can establish that he's out there ahead of his solo movie, and then his solo movie can just give the 1-minute version of his origin at the beginning of the movie. That way his solo movie can skip straight to him dealing with his first one-on-one confrontation with a genuine super-villain rather then spending the first 3rd of the movie without seeing Spider-Man in costume.

edited 25th Jun '15 2:54:11 PM by Falrinn

Could the MCU pull off creating their own super hero? Or, at least, their own identity of a super hero?

There have been multiple people to take on the persona of the various heroes through the comics; Sam Wilson has recently taken on the identity of Captain America and I believe the current identity of Thor is female.

Could they do their own identity for a super hero unique entirely to the films?

Arguably Deathlok would count. Mike Peterson is an original character who has aspects of the multiple people using the Deathlok moniker.

Your inquiry reminded me of something though. So, in the comics, both Captain Marvel and Flash Thompson!Venom have hung out with the Guardians of the Galaxy crew (the same crew who are in the MCU team), and I'd go so far as to say they'd count as a Sixth Ranger.

Well, I wonder if Carol will intersect with the team in the MCU, but I've also thought about Flash in light of a teen Spider-Man. I know the MCU animated shows did Agent Venom with a teen Flash, which is one approach. However, I wonder if there would be some way of having an adult Flash separate from Spider-Man (although not sure how that would make sense).

edited 25th Jun '15 5:56:07 PM by Hodor2

Depending on your definition of super-hero, Phil Coulson is a original Marvel character who fights evil who has endured in the public conscience, at least so far.

So they might have.

Not entirely what I meant.

Say... Oh, who hasn't Marvel added into their line up? I might have to look one up.

Uhhh... Nova. Excuse me if I make a mistake here since I'm not very knowledgeable of the character. Say they were making a movie based off of Nova. But, instead of Richard Rider or Sam Alexandra in the identity, it was a completely new character putting on the name of Nova with a personality, backstory, and etc that were only apart of the movie universe.

Could they pull it off?

I'd rather not have Flash in the Gotg because his time there in the comics was pretty much all retconning the symbiotes and him getting a ugly new suit. Carol's time there also sucked.

I'm conflicted on the new suit issue. It's very different from the really cool Agent Venom suit, but I sort of like it (reminds me a bit of Baymax). The retcon with the symbiotes doesn't make much sense since in every previous host/symbiote relationship, the symbiote was a negative influence on the host. However, part of me could see a GOTG film where Flash appears as this wounded veteran who is chosen by the Green Lantern Corps symbiotes to wear a suit and defend the galaxy.

Have they actually confirmed that Spider-Man will be starring in his own movie, rather than just being a supporting character in the big crossover films?

'Cause, now that visual effects technology has advanced enough to make it feasible, I think Spider-Man would work much better adapted as a television show rather than a feature film.

One of the defining features of Spider-Man is that he rarely, if ever, gets a big climactic resolution to his problems. He'll beat the bad guy, but he'll still be broke afterwards, the media will still hate him, and his personal relationships will suffer because he was too busy fighting supervillains. And the next day he's gonna have to put the Spider-Man costume back on and start the whole thing over again. Any progress he makes in improving his life happens only incrementally, and is plagued by misfires, false starts and steps backwards.

That sort of struggle against the status quo, where the protagonist suffers more from the day-to-day grind of their life than from any one event, works well in episodic/serialized stories like comics or television. Not so much in movies. Film structure generally demands that, by the time the end credits roll, all the issues the hero has dealt with throughout the movie have been, if not fully resolved, then at least fundamentally changed. Films are also generally supposed to revolve around a single major conflict, rather than trying to fit lots of episodic conflicts into their running time.

Those facts make movies something of bad fit for Spider-Man. There's a reason both Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man made heavy use of montage when establishing his superhero career: the fact that Spider-Man fights crime on a more-or-less daily basis, not just when his girlfriend and/or the city is in danger, is an essential part of his character, but those movies couldn't actually devote much time to his daily superheroics, 'cause they had to set up that city-in-peril crisis and move the romance from acquaintances to friends to dating to madly in love, all in the span of roughly two hours. Television, with its capacity for longer form storytelling, wouldn't have that issue.

Besides, doing a television reboot instead of a film reboot would make distancing themselves from previous Spider-Man films a whole lot easier.

I think he'd be a perfect fit for the Defenders. He's more street-level than the Avengers, and his friendship with Daredevil has plenty of precedent in the comics (as well as the Kingpin and the Punisher both starting life as Spidey villains).

It's the fundamental struggle with movies vs. monthly comic series. Movies, by their nature, have one primary story to it. If it was a vignette of a bunch of unrelated stories then people would complain about how episodic it is. Almost all comic book characters are about the daily/weekly grind, and something is lost in these "End of the World" event movies.

Spider-Man will be an ensemble/cameo character in at least one, most likely several films, and will have at least one, most likely several solo movies as well - it seems like the universe appearances might take a bit of precedent right now, but Marvel is still making a solo Spidey film and - as far as we know - the ideas from the Garfield series (like the possible Sinister Six movie) are still on the table, or at least not tossed aside yet.

edited 25th Jun '15 11:59:03 PM by KnownUnknown

I thought it was Sony is still making the film, but will be working with Marvel to do so?

It's the inverse, Sony owns the rights but Marvel will produce the film. Basically profits from the box office and merchandising will be shared, costs in making the movie will also be split.

Sony was bleeding money doing it on their own, even a popular franchise movie is a risk/reward gamble that can sink an entire studio if it doesn't pan out. The risk is mitigated by sharing costs.

edited 26th Jun '15 1:19:36 AM by KJMackley

Debatable.

The main point of contention is Spider-Man's rejection of the Venom symbiote - originally rooted in the fact that it was a) a living organism, which squicked him out, and b) prone to taking his body out when he was sleeping to fight crime.

Writers have gone back and forth, using canon as their weapon, on whether Spider-Man's rejection was a good thing - "The symbiote feeds on HUMAN BRAINS!" - versus mitigating those developments - "...and CHOCOLATE! The brains are unnecessary." One writer might assert that Peter dodged a bullet because the symbiote is the worst thing, while another will have Peter assuming responsibility for his choices and considering Venom a very personal villain because, "I created him."

For the most part, the way symbiotes have been portrayed has been as a sort of blank slate. They build their personality off the things they learn from their host. Venom is an asshole because the Venom symbiote was spurned and bitter while Eddie Brock is an utter shithead. Carnage is a murderous psychopath because Cletus Kasady is a murderous psychopath and his symbiote imitates him. Toxin is a good guy because the symbiote's first and only host^HEY Prior to Character Derailment, anyway was an upstanding police officer and it learned good things from him. Etc.

The concept of the symbiote itself being pure, liquid evil that turns everyone it touches into murderous assholes is Adaptation Decay introduced to the films and cartoons as a quick way of justifying Spider-Man's rejection. The comics have also used this to some extent back in the 90's with the utterly reviled Planet of the Symbiotes storyline - which GOTG did retcon - which asserted that all symbiotes are actually parasitic conquerors except Venom and his progeny, who mutated away from that life. Few people remember or care about that story, however, because it was terrible. So it's not much of a loss.

This was an important part of Agent Venom. The Venom symbiote was dangerous, but not because "symbiotes enhance negative emotions" but because the Venom symbiote has a strong pre-established identity comprised of about 90% the worst parts of Eddie Brock and 10% Spider-Man. But, as it always has throughout its history, despite all its terrible ideas and opinions, the symbiote ultimately just wanted to belong with someone, and we see it and Flash bond over time.

Having Flash for a host was effectively Symbiote Rehabilitation for Venom, reinstilling it with values other than, "Hurt the people who've hurt me." That's my biggest problem with the way GOTG handled it: establishing that symbiotes aren't inherently evil incarnate is just reasserting what's always been true, but treating it like a Symbiote Repair Shop and "purging" the negative influences from Venom is a quick shortcut to finish off what had been, to this point, a fascinating journey for the characters. Yet again, Bendis demonstrates a complete failure to understand symbiotes and what makes them interesting.

Which isn't surprising, as Bendis also perpetuated the "Symbiotes as pure, liquid evil" interpretation in Ultimate Spider-Man, where they're caustic science experiments gone wrong that devour humans to sustain themselves.

EDIT: Amusingly, the "Symbiotes are pure, liquid evil" interpretation was actually assigned in-universe to Eddie Brock in Agent Venom's solo title as his villainous motivation, creating conflict between Flash, who is bonding with his symbiote, and Eddie, who believes that symbiotes are inherently evil and must all be destroyed.

edited 26th Jun '15 7:40:33 AM by TobiasDrake

& : Sony is producing the film, but has to defer to Marvel's grander plans. Marvel, and by extension Disney, is distributing the movie.

It's basically the opposite of what's going on with the Hulk.

With 3 movie versions of Spider-man now, is it too much to hope that they make a Spider-verse movie? Bring out Spider-Gwen, have Alfred Molina be Superior Spiderman, Gackt as Supaidaman, complete with movie-budget henshin sequence...

It's probably too much to hope.

Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Men did appear in Spider-Verse, for what it's worth.

They couldn't appear on-panel because of rights issues, but they were mentioned.

As I've said before, my dream Spider-Man reboot movie is about the new guy going up against the Sinister Six, who are Dafoe's Goblin, Molina's Ock, Giamatti's Rhino, Foxx's Electro, Hayden-Church's Sandman and Grace's Venom. And the movie just treats it as if those guys were alive the whole time in the same continuity, no attempts to justify it given other than handwaves.

Grace's Venom

noooooooooope.

Well, at this point I ran out of already available villains, other than the Lizard, who really doesn't fit in because he's either a good guy or a reptilian supremacist who wants to turn everyone into lizards, and why would you team up with a guy like that? At least with Sandman, you can strongarm him using his family, but this Curt Connors doesn't even have that. And Movie!Venom at least looks cool and has nifty powers, the dramatic weight has to fall on the Goblin and Ock anyway.

edited 1st Jul '15 11:00:48 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

Random idea: if they're really focusing on a story that calls back to Spidey's earliest days, with a more personal story with focus on high school, his supporting cast, him being a teenager learning to juggle social life and his powers, etc... - why not a villain from those earliest days as well, like The Big Man (Foswell)?

Big Man's a nice mix between a supervillain and a mobster, and is a very good match for Spidey's "plucky hero" routine. Plus, he practically screams Starter Villain - he's powerful and influential, but because of his role defeating him could be the doorway to other opportunities for villains: he stands out, but also works well without needing to be lasting. Plus, if they start out with Peter already working for the Bugle, then that gives them an open line to Foswell without having to focus on the Bugle as a whole necessarily.

Or Crimemaster, especially if they used the Bennett Brant Crimemaster - though I otherwise thought that was a bad idea.

Even better, the Enforcers having a cameo as a group of minions that Spider-Man has already taken down before at the time of the movie (similar in a sense to Marko and O'Hirn's first appearances in Spectacular) - kind of a Quirky Miniboss Squad that quickly becomes supplanted by supervillain mercenaries but still manage to make it out of the movie alive.

edited 2nd Jul '15 11:24:19 PM by KnownUnknown

The Big Man might be too close to the Kingpin, however.

I still say the Vulture and Kraven would work. The Vulture would be the starter villain and Spider-Man would fight him until the middle of the movie, when Kraven would show up hunting the Vulture and after killing him, turn his attention to Spidey.

edited 3rd Jul '15 9:04:01 AM by alliterator

I haven't seen Daredevil (2015) yet, but how well do you guys think the Kingpin would fit in the movie? I mean he did start as a Spider-Man villain and he was practically the Big Bad of the 90's cartoon.

As things stand at the end of the first season, Kingpin probably wouldn't work very well.

I think the Big Man can work as a result of the Kingpin.