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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
A lot of Spider-Man adaptations utilize college as a pseudo high school setting to certain degrees. Credit where it's due, Homecoming used the high school setting and Peter as a teenager as an actual part of the story and character arc, it would be functionally impossible to transplant that story to an adult Peter. ASM used high school to superficially show that Peter was uncool before getting superhuman abilities, one major issue with ASM 2 was that after graduating Peter didn't seem to have anything planned for himself besides be Spider-Man and stalk/mope over Gwen (they switch from trying to make it work to breaking up every 15 minutes), which is kind of a post-high school issue but nothing we haven't seen in the Raimi movies or even other superhero-with-a-girlfriend movies.
edited 11th Feb '18 8:23:51 PM by KJMackley
The complaint is having him start out in high school, rather than starting out years later as a more veteran hero. It's not that the high school stories are inherently terrible or anything, but rather the issue is that each time we start in high school, it means we're years away from adapting those latter-day stories.
edited 11th Feb '18 8:40:30 PM by Unsung
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That just makes it seem like it's ultimately coming down to genre preference, rather than criticism.
I mean, I do get it to an extent. I really want an actual Tim Drake adaptation, but it's not going to happen because it's a character that only works if previous things have built up to it, unless a series starts In Medias Res. I'm well aware that there are certain event in comic book universes that, thanks to the comics' long runs, that won't happen in most adaptations.
But going so far as to claim Spidey is throwing away one period of his existence because some recent adaptations have been using another period, especially when the rest of the brand is no less invested in his regular concept, feels like going too far. Homecoming is probably the characters' best shot to have a stable, running narrative for Peter from kid to adult just as the comics did, and I think that's something we should embrace.
edited 11th Feb '18 8:39:23 PM by KnownUnknown
No matter which stories are more "iconic", what makes Spider-Man special is that he is in "side-kick" age and yet a hero in his own right instead of a tag along. And honestly, I felt that it was a great idea to make the first movie about him rejecting being the tag along for Iron Man in order to be a hero in his own right.
We have time for him in college. We have time for him working. We have time for him being married.
I have to agree with this.
If we were talking about another movie series, I'd be more concerned. But the MCU has shown itself to be capable of some form of longevity as well as the desire to have its characters grow and develop as heroes and as people.
The reason they started off with Peter so young is the same reason that they had origins + trilogies for the main heroes: to show us how much they've grown as time passed. It incredibly unlikely that we're going to have Spider-man cancelled partway through again (and even if they choose not to make more SM solo movies, he can still grow in the larger group/smaller team up stories.
"Yo, those kids are straight up liars, man. All I told them to do was run product. And by product, I mean chewing gum."Just want to comment on a statement given on a previous page, Raimi's Spiderman does give up on Spiderman but only because he thinks it makes it impossible for him to keep his life together. We are given a very long series of events showing how it effected every aspect of his life, from his work to his school to his relationships, and a strong sense that this has been carrying on for a long time. So he snaps, and stops being Spiderman for a short while.
The "amazing" Spiderman, on the other hand, only has the fact that he doesn't think he can date Gwen as Spidey to make being Spidey suck, despite the fact that the first movie basically had him date her anyway and it's only in the second movie that he decides he can't - presumably in a response to the critical reaction to the dumb dumb ending of the first film. Being Spiderman is otherwise pretty okay for Peter, so he takes Gwen dying - something he can really only blame himself for - as a reason to stop being Spiderman for months is pretty stupid in my book.
Like, it was irresponsible for both people, but for Raimi's Spiderman it makes much more sense in my book while for the "Amazing" Spiderman he comes across as just someone who feels sorry for himself. Yes, I understand the grieving process. But he's stopped heroism for way too long. Also, unlike Tobey's Spiderman, Garfield's Spiderman is basically an asshole to a lot of people anyway, so I just don't have a lot of pity for him after all of this.
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"
Eh...no. Those two movie work like a duology. The lesson learned in the first movie is that Peter has to use his gifts - ALL of his gifts - responsible. If he had been more careful Doctor Connors would have never been able to do what he did in the first place.
But the lesson learned in the second movie is even harder: It is that even if Peter does everything right, there is no guarantee that there will be a happy end either. Heroics acts don't necessarily get rewarded. And that is true for both Peter and Gwen. Gwen rescued the whole city, and yet she died, and not even in the heroic act, but because of petty revenge.
Granted, the message is kind of buried under all the stuff which had to be chucked in an attempt to please the fans. But there is true development in it. And above all: It is not a rehash of the first movie.
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Pretty much. I have little doubt that we will reach at least college age Peter.
edited 12th Feb '18 3:03:16 AM by Swanpride
x5 Nice.
No, it's not, because he hasn't been sidekick-aged in the comics for many years now, which is the point. Years of adaptations where he's always that young have reinforced the idea to wide audiences that he's a teenaged, college-aged character, but he doesn't have to be. It's fine if you prefer that version of the character, but it's the presumptiveness of it that's frustrating.
I like Peter Holland, and I'm sure this will be a good take on high school-aged Spider-Man. I'm not worried it's going to fall apart anytime soon, but even if all goes perfectly well, it's still going to take years to get to the veteran hero Spider-Man if we get there at all.
edited 12th Feb '18 3:34:39 AM by Unsung
Peter's shtick is that he's nerdy and witty and youthful. Having those three traits is what makes him so iconic and relateable. Removing any of them feels like it's not true to the character. Peter at his most youthful is when he's in high school, and he frequently acts like a high schooler even when he should logically be much older. His time spent in high school might've been relatively short in the comics, but his time spent in college is written basically the same. Every single Spider-Man adaptation, whether film or tv, includes him in high school because that's when the character is most iconic.
He's more known as a symbol than a person, and that symbol is: "smart teenager who suffers bullying and gets superpowers through science whom you relate to, Marvel fan, because you are a smart teenager/young adult who probably suffered bullying and fantasizes about having superpowers related to your smartness".
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Peter didn't do everything right. He just acts like a prick to about 90% of the people he meets. That "petty revenge" you were talking about came from when he refused to give Harry the blood even though it makes no sense not to (at the time Harry had the resources to analyze the blood and make sure that it would be safe). That's his best friend who he fucked over for zero reason. That's the reason Gwen died, because Peter decided to just condemn Harry to a life of chronic disease.
What's ironic is that from a writing perspective, all you have to do is have Peter give Harry the blood and then have Harry not have the resources to test it because of his company betraying him, or have the coup happen before Harry wants the blood. Either would work. But they went for the stupidest timeline of events and in the process make Peter look like a gigantic tool.
edited 12th Feb '18 4:01:48 AM by Sigilbreaker26
"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"![]()
He doesn't have to lose those things by being aged up— he doesn't even have to be aged up that much. A character who holds onto that youthful openness even after they're out of high school and university holds a certain appeal as well. But like I said, it's not that the high school years are bad, but they're all we ever see. That's limiting.
edited 12th Feb '18 4:01:05 AM by Unsung
I don't want to turn this into an argument about who the 'real fans' are. I just think there's a disconnect between saying that Spider-Man needs to start out as a solo character because that's how the comics do it, but then saying he has to start out as a high schooler even though that's not how the comics do it. It's all down to personal taste, and what I was trying to get across is that I'd like to see an older Spider-Man for the same reason I liked seeing him being mentored by Tony— because it's an aspect of the character we haven't seen adapted before.
in the comics, high school Peter wasn't lovable guy who was low on the totem poll. He had people who wanted to hang out with him. But Peter was just a straight up prick with a stick in his ass and a superiority complex. He isolated himself on his own will
Like, high school Peter should honestly be more of a Kylo Ren or a victim of alt right brainwashing than be Spider-Man
If this were an isolated franchise, I would have no particular preference. But as part of the MCU, yeah, starting with a young Peter makes the most sense. After all, nobody knows for how long the MCU will go on, and they will want to have Spider-Man in it for as long as possible. It also happened to be a type of character which wasn't around in the MCU yet, while a college aged genius Spider-Man could come off as too much like Tony Stark.
Ditko's proto-Randian viewpoint
He even had Peter yell at some protestors. An act he feels chagrin for to this day
Forever liveblogging the AvengersRegarding the criticism of high school Spider-Man, here's my thing on it: the reason it comes up so much is because of the repeated reboots. Writers want to show Peter coming into his own, finding his identity, and learning the formative lessons that will define who he is. Due to his nature as the Everyman superhero, that progression from childhood to a grown-ass man a core part of his story, moreso than Batman or Superman or Iron Man or such.
But every time you reboot that story, you gotta go back to childhood because that's where it starts.
The Raimi films tried to circumvent this right out of the starting gate by having Peter get his powers in high school but then shooting the story forward a few years. However, that had an immediate and noticeable detriment on the character. Part of the reason Maguire's Parker gets so much crap is because he doesn't feel like a grown-ass man but he's supposed to be one.
When Brand New Day soft-rebooted Spider-Man, it caught a lot of flack for the same problem: because at the stage of life he's supposed to be at, having Peter suddenly behaving like a foolhardy 19-year-old didn't feel like they'd returned to the spirit of the character; it felt like he'd regressed in maturity so hard that it was difficult to see him with even the slightest bit of dignity anymore.
If your character is going to be a grown-ass man, you have to write him as a grown-ass man. With Spider-Man, that's hard. Married Spidey earned his grown-ass title through decades of storytelling that watched him go through the hurdles that are central to his character and develop gradually into a grown-ass man, but so much of that is dependent on Spider-Man's thick continuity.
Spider-Man is a character who is meant to grow, and a lot of that growth just fits better at the stage of life it's meant to take place in. Try and shunt the character into adulthood without any of the groundwork and you're left with Brand New Day; a 25-year-old having adventures suitable to a 15-year-old.
The other route, as the comics have more recently taken, is to just not write him as Spider-Man at all. The recent arc features him as Iron Man. He flies around the world to check in on the many branches of his Fortune 500 company, franchising out his suits and powers while trying to keep anyone from finding out that his bodyguard, "Spider-Man", is secretly him after all.
I mean, if we're going to talk about what is and is not iconic to Spider-Man, "literally replace his entire dynamic with Tony Stark's" is about as far from iconic as you can get.
Married Spider-Man is a lot like Agent Venom: it's the best stage of Spider-Man, but it also had to be earned through a lot of character and story development. A lot more than the movies could ever reasonably hope to cover without rushing off half-cocked and winding up with shit like Spider-Man 3.
edited 12th Feb '18 7:20:57 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.My problem with post-OMD Peter in the comics is that, despite Marvel itself admitting that he's like 30 years old, they simply REFUSE to let him act like an adult. He still acts like an immature teenager, still screws in the same ways, and still cannot keep his life together. And I'm sorry, but it stops being fun after awhile. He's not some kid making adorable mistakes, he's a pathetic adult who never learns anything no matter how many times he messes up, and keeps messing up. That's not "relatable," that's just sad.
If you don't want him to act like an adult, then don't make him an adult.
Linkara had a nice comment on it in his OMD review awhile back actually.

That's not really accurate.
The Raimi Spider-Man series only featured Peter in high school in regards to showing him getting his powers in the first movie, and thus the bulk of that movie's content after the first twenty minutes or so and subsequently the rest of the trilogy, as well as the animated adaptation based off of it, are specifically set to his college tropes.
Every other adaptation of the character before Spectacular - besides the original cartoon in the 60's and the video game adaptation of the Ultimate comics - has featured Peter in college or older, or if he's not specifically in school than college aged. So it's more like the last ten years or so, if we're deciding not to count video games.
edited 11th Feb '18 8:23:27 PM by KnownUnknown