Spider-Man General Discussion

Jon Watts is not much of a director and the MCU Spider-Man movies don't work on rewatch. They aren't among the strongest MCU movies leave alone Spider-man movies.

The real problem with the MCU is that Tom Holland's Peter is a fairly one-dimensional version of that character. His motivations and drives don't have too much complexity unlike Tobey or Miles from ITSV. He's the least complex version of Peter Parker I've ever come across.

Homecoming is a painfully average movie and it's why I kind of lost all my luster for the MCU.

They couldn't even do a danged Spider-Man movie right.

Far From Home is also just a bit above average at the end of the day.

I completely and utterly disagree. And if you think Watts is "not much of a director," I would direct your attention to Cop Car, the movie he directed prior to Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Edited by alliterator on Aug 12th 2019 at 8:31:20 AM

While there are things about MCU Spiderman I don't care for (he's too close to Tony and we don't need Teenage Spiderman, and this is speaking as someone who liked seeing Teenage Spiderman), I still enjoy both Homecoming and Far From Home.

I think MCU Peter is about to truly come into his own with Tony dead and the MCU about to enter a new era.

Though I think that if this shit with Sony wasn't going on, maybe Disney and Marvel wouldn't be trying so hard to do a different Peter Parker from what came before.

One Strip! One Strip!

Far from Home is worth a rewatch, even if just for the first stinger alone...

Ultimate Secret Wars

It brings me no end of amusement that JJJ's hatred of Spider-Man is apparently powerful enough to allow him to jump universes, just so he can have it out for the webslinger.

Edited by megaeliz on Aug 12th 2019 at 4:42:15 AM

Now that I think about, the Spider-Man movies are the only MCU movie I didn't saw more than once on theaters. It's pretty much tradition to go the midnight premiere of MCU movies, and one or two weeks later go with my family or friends. Both HC and FFH I only saw on premiere, and never really got around to watch beyond that.

This applies to every movie since Thor at least, which was the first one I remember I got to watch on it's first screening (I remember that neither Thor nor TFA got midnight releases here since they weren't big names. The only other movie that didn't had a midnight premiere here since then was Dr. Strange).

Edited by Akirakan on Aug 12th 2019 at 1:37:00 AM

I kind of think that the MCU Spider-Man really didn't do enough with what it was given to it. IF you put Spider-Man in the MCU, we should be getting Marvel Team-Up the movie. Instead we get to see Spider-man transformed into an Iron Man sub-franchise. This will never stop being disgusting...Iron Man isn't fit to touch Spider-Man's shoes. There's basically three or four stories as good as any in Spider-Man's Top 50 or 100. Just because Iron Man's played by a big time actor, and Spider-Man's played by a character actor who appeared in some indie films, that doesn't mean Spider-Man should be second banana to Tony.

Even in the context of the MCU...why would Peter respect Tony so much? A guy who until the age of 40 sold weapons for a living, who after becoming an Avenger, still acts like a d—khead giving his home address to a terrorist nearly getting Pepper killed in Iron Man 3, who created Ultron and so on.

Peter's character doesn't make sense in the movies. Take Far From Home. In the first half as far as Peter knows, the Elementals are a world-ending threat. Why does he still put that as second fiddle to asking MJ out? How moronic do you have to be to grok that saving the world also includes her, since she lives in it and all. And this after Infinity War did the whole "You can't be a friendly neighborhood spider-man without a neighborhood?" It's like the director and writers didn't see Infinity War, and didn't think audiences did either. The character just seems to exist for plot contrivance and not out of its own sense of agency. That's why I call it one-dimensional and so on.

That's an example of Depending on the Writer

The MCU Spider-Man movies do it bluntly and arrogantly. At the end of the day Civil War made more money than Homecoming, and Infinity War and Endgame individually and together made more than Far From Home did. So it's stupid to ask the audience not to keep those events and Peter's reaction in them out of their minds. In the comics, the regular readership won't be up to pace with happenings in other titles and so on...so you could, and in the old days at least, count on ignorance as part of Willing Suspension of Disbelief, but not in the movies. On the whole I think the Russos did more with the Tom Holland Spider-Man than Watts did, and I wish they directed the movies.

Within the context of the MCU, he grew up in New York City, in a world where the avengers are basically celebrities, and who every kid wishes they can be. The Tony Stark he's familiar with is the engineering genius and superhero, who did all this awesome stuff and saving the world, etc.

Edited by megaeliz on Aug 12th 2019 at 8:18:05 AM

That kind of stuff needs to be in the movie. That big moment between Peter and Happy Hogan in Far From Home where Happy says that even Tony wasn't all that, feels bizarre because publicly Tony was always a Hero with Bad Publicity. Like in Civil War, that lady who lost a kid in Sokovia accosts him and so on. For Peter to have no opinion on that at all, breaks that.

That's why I say the MCU Spider-Man is one-dimensional. There's no depth to him, no edge to him, no real opinions. Just to make this fair, I also feel this way about the MCU Aunt May. It's like her characterization is that she's Peter "Hot Aunt" who everyone has a crush on...and it feels like MCU congratulating themselves for casting Aunt May that young...well what is her character. Because if you reduce Aunt May to a joke then you are wasting the talents of Marisa Tomei.

By contrast Jacob Batalon's Ned and Zendaya's MJ come off as more fully realized. As does Angourie Rice and Tony Revolori. Like I think Zendaya's MJ is successful as an example of "MJ but if she were a teenager today". Jacob Batalon is part Ganke and that's sad because "White character hits the locker of his Affirmative-Action Legacy for a supporting character" looks bad, and the people who do it should feel bad. But outside of that, Batalon's great, and in Far From Home, he's hilarious consistently. That bit where he says at the airport, "Those were the words of a boy, but now I am a man in love with a woman" is a terrific line delivery. Whenever Mysterio, MJ and Ned were on-screen Far From Home is fine, but less so with any other character and especially Peter by himself.

Edited by megaeliz on Aug 13th 2019 at 7:28:14 AM

So we're just tearing up MCU Peter now huh?

Anyone got some dissenting opinions on this? I have no issues, but I don't want this to turn into us just ripping on him.

As for Tony's rep....I'm not 100% sure if he was really a Hero with Bad Publicity. He had his....detractors...and with the exception of Sokovia lady, all of them were much worse than him in that they were willing to murder buttloads of people to show him up, but I suspect a lot of people thought he was a cool dude...because they didn't know him. Most who do know him knows there's a mess under that hero, and and hero under all that mess.

I do agree, and I always will that playing Peter as Tony's protege was detrimental to his character, and I wish they hadn't done that. As it stands, Tony feels like the real Uncle Ben and that's not cool.

One Strip! One Strip!

Nope, I hate him too. Tom Holland is great but the actual character is a butter sandwich.

Tom Holland needs a better agent, someone who goes through the script carefully and sees how the part makes him look on screen. An agent would point out that his client needs to be show as his own agent and hero, and the agent would also advise Tom to put some edge in his on-screen interactions with RDJ otherwise all people will see is Tony's fanboy. Basically someone like Al Pacino's character in that new Tarantino movie.

Right now, Holland in the movies comes across as a character actor who's not allowed to be a lead in his movies. He's a good character actor in films like The Lost City of Z (where he sports a cool mustache for the part) but he's not able to command a movie. Most of the time Holland in the MCU is paired off against established character actors or otherwise interacting with youthful cast members and that doesn't allow him room and space to be his own character.

Remember that bit in ITSV where we see Miles in his room at the start, in his space and listening to music and we got a sense of him as a character. We got a lot of moments like that with Tobey in the Raimi movies. We get nothing with Holland in the movies. In Homecoming, he's chatting with the AI all the time and so on.

Eh Homecoming is pretty average but Far From Home was dope.

Peter actually comes into his own, some good banter with him & Mj, & a good villain that he actually takes out in a climactic action sequence that makes full use of his skills.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

People like Maguire better than Holland? I found Maguire a self-flagellating weenie myself.

I've seen it described as Tobey being the best Peter, Garfield as the best Spidey, and Holland as the best of both worlds.

I don't know if I agree with that.

He just needs to start quipping & better vocalize & he'd be perfect really.

Edited by slimcoder on Aug 12th 2019 at 6:47:46 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

For me, the biggest weak point in the otherwise spectacular Spider-Man 2 is Maguire!Pete's characterization, specifically the fact that he's supposed to simultaneously be a broke loser who can't hold down a food service job and a guy an actress/model would dump an astronaut for. The Hell?

Presumably the superhero thing helps.

I found the sequence in Homecoming where Peter is doing the friendly neighborhood thing and gets a churro a good way to illustrate the character

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

Personally, I’d say the best non-comic interpretation of both Spider-Man and Peter Parker we’ve had, has to be Yuri Lowenthal‘s from the PS 4 game.