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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Yeah, but that's cancer. While a few diseases can strike at any time of life, most do have a window of sorts. A disease that randomly kills you at any point within a fifty-year window— aren't Peter and Harry still in their teens? —other than cancer, what does that? And even with cancer, certain kinds of cancer are much more likely to present in youth versus old age. It just seems like Plot Convenience Theatre, which is what I think we're saying about it feeling sloppy.
It would seem more likely if it was a progressive disease that could present at any time and killed slowly, but if it's not, that just makes it even more WSOD-breaking.
edited 19th Mar '17 3:44:03 PM by Unsung
A disease that can kill you at any point in your life? You mean, all of them? Lou Gherigs disease, Alzheimers (yes, Alzheimers does affect people of all ages), Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, Fatal Familial Insomnia, Muscular Dystrophy, Huntingtons disease - hell, basically any inherited genetic disorder and/or disease, as long as they aren't always present like Downs syndrome, can strike at nearly any time after puberty, even if it usually only occurs much later in life.
Fatal Familial Insomnia works precisely the same way that Retroviral Hypodysplasia does in this movie, only replace the inability to sleep with looking like a goblin. When that first symptom appears, you have months to live, and there is no cure.
Is this just another case of Reality Is Unrealistic, and I got past it because I know about this stuff?
edited 19th Mar '17 3:58:01 PM by PincerMove
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Again, unless the disease is going to kill him in like 48 hours or something, the plot hole is still there. Even then they never stop to say that the disease is going to kill him within a few days. The only reason he's begging Peter and acting like he needs the blood right this second and that there's absolutely no time whatsoever to screen or perform tests on it is because the writing is lazy and needed to contrive a conflict between Peter and Harry.
It's a ticking clock but the actual time on said clock is never properly specified in any way that lends to the urgency the audience is supposed to sympathize with him over.
edited 19th Mar '17 3:52:24 PM by comicwriter
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Eh. He goes from perfectly fine to looking like a meth addict in what seems like a matter of days in the movie. The diseases you're talking about are all neurodegenerative diseases, not terminal goblinization— they can go undetected more easily than turning green, and they still don't kill you in a matter of days or weeks like this thing seems to. It still strikes me as a Soap Opera Disease, but if you're okay with it, I guess that's up to you.
edited 19th Mar '17 4:12:10 PM by Unsung
It's more a case of the concept being inconsistent in the story. That other diseases in real life can kill at any time in life doesn't change the the fact that the movie doesn't adequately set it up that way.
As Mark Twain said, the difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to make sense. If Harry is going to be mortally threatened by something we're introduced to as taking a long time to be life threatening, it's going to need to be less sketchily plotted. Otherwise it comes off as " Norman's took a long time to work because we wanted that 'old man on his deathbed' scene, while Harry's inexplicably takes no time to work because it's more dramatic that way."
Even if they were trying to depict real illnesses it needs some sort of defined parameters so that we understand both what is at stake and how it will progress. Some forms of cancer can be deadly within weeks or months depending on severity. With the goblin disease we don't get any description of symptoms, what it actually does to his body or what kind of timeline we are looking at. All we got was describing his fear, but without the rest we don't understand his actions. Hell, I can't recall them saying Norman died because of the goblin disease, he could have died of other causes and the goblin disease was purely superficial deformations.
The biggest problem with the Goblin disease is the fact that Harry's entire conflict stems from it being hereditary. His dad has it, so now he has it, so NOW HIS LIFE IS IN IMMINENT DANGER!
But his dad lived a reasonably long life before succumbing to it, so it undermines Harry's entire panic. OH NO! He might only have thirty years or so to find a cure! Clearly, this calls for desperate measures!
edited 19th Mar '17 5:16:09 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Yeah, the way Harry's fine right up until his father dies and then he's immediately in desperate mortal peril—that's a curse, not a disease. Which, y'know, could've worked. Curses have a venerable place in pulp and comic book history. Kinda kidding, kinda not.
edited 19th Mar '17 5:29:38 PM by Unsung
It could even worked if Harry freaking out over something he had time to rationally deal with was actually the point - doing sort of a
"the fear of the curse destroys him before the curse can" bit - but the movie never treats him as being anything other than totally right that he really needs that cure right now or else he's die, nor really makes a tragedy of his obsession on its own.
edited 19th Mar '17 5:42:27 PM by KnownUnknown
I don't think 'wanted to be more popular than spider-man' is a fair summation of Mary Jane in Spider-Man 3 but also Mary Jane was badly served in the Raimi movies.
Dunst wasn't much happier and asked not to be damseled to give Peter someone to save in the third movie which I guess is why they introduced Gwen but then went back to suspending MJ in a taxi in a web anyway.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersIt was more the fact that her acting career had completely imploded, and seeing her husband being beloved by everyone while she was struggling just rubbed it in and made the situation 10 times worse.
Which happens in real life. One of the things that led to the tragic muder-suicide incident that took Phil Hartman's life was that his wife was growing increasingly bitter and resentful over the fact that her acting career had never taken off in the way she'd hoped it would, while her husband had become a beloved star with a hit TV show and memorable roles in things like The Simpsons and Pee-Wee Herman.
I don't think it was necessarily a good arc for MJ by any means, but it wasn't quite as simple as her being an idiot who somehow thought starring in a play would make her more famous than Spider-Man.
A thing to consider is that Mary Jane essentially went into a Sophomore Slump after her first acting break, and Peter lacks empathy with his girlfriend because he was riding his own popularity high. So she gets more frustrated and he is oblivious.
MJ in the films adapted some of Gwen's more demure personality, but she showed signs of the original party girl exterior from the way she got excited over Flash's car.
edited 19th Mar '17 6:48:43 PM by KJMackley
After having watched Iron Fist, I have a much better feeling about Inhumans. To me, Finn Jones was the weakest part of IF, but the ensemble cast around him was amazing. The fact that Inhumans doesn't have a single main character, but rather is a complete ensemble means that it will probably work much better than IF, too.
edited 20th Mar '17 2:51:26 AM by alliterator
Alright, I've been starting my binge of the Marvel Netflix shows, and I just got done with episode four of Daredevil. I had already watched about eleven episodes of it a while back but I'm going ahead and watching it again to refresh myself. Gonna take a brief pause before episode five but, in short, it's a really good start to the show. Nice action scenes, nice acting, etc. Kind of pissed in retrospect that Wesley gets killed off because he's probably one of the best Marvel villains I've seen. Don't get me wrong, Vincent D'Onofrio sells the hell out of Wilson Fisk, but Wesley is the kind of entertaining sociopath I love to watch.
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?@Marvel TV characters appearing in films: I think the best way to do that would be to have a scene in Infinity War that shows Thanos's army attacking all over the world. While the Avengers are fighting Thanos the movie could cut to the Defenders, Agents, Inhumans, etc fighting his troops in different places.
Spider-Man's inclusion actually makes more sense this time since we know the plot is bigger than just having everyone attack Thanos in space. They've already said there will be multiple fights in multiple locations and it's been teased that Thanos will have the Black Order with him instead of just fighting the Avengers solo.
That actually gives an in-story reason to have people around even when an actual fist fight with Thanos would be out of the question.
Daniel Kaluuya compares Black Panther to Game of Thrones
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edited 20th Mar '17 5:28:30 PM by comicwriter

Not really. A disease does not have a timer and always affects people at this precise age. If my family has a genetic problem with cancer, my father could develop it when he's 80, and I could develop it when I'm 20. Or I could never develop cancer at all. But once I have cancer, short of Chemotherapy, my days are limited. Same thing here. As soon as he develops the symptoms, he has a ticking clock before his time is up, and he cannot wait around for decades or even years - he needs a cure now, and will do anything, risk anything, to get it.