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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Goddammit, Joey Q.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Isn't Tom Holland under contract (or at least optioned) for three more Spider-Man films under the Sony umbrella? Aside from being the most continuous appearances by a single actor in that role, I wonder what sort of scripts they're going to write for him. They can't directly adapt the comics that everyone's familiar with because in all of those Peter has Aunt May, MJ, and/or Gwen to watch out for.
There have got to be plenty of unmined stories in the Marvel archives, of course, but will Sony take the cheap and easy route to remake the ones everyone already knows about or will they dig deeper?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"They could give Felicia Hardy a try. Or even Carlie Cooper, although I think she's a Base-Breaking Character among comic fans.
Not that I WANT them to jump into a replacement love interest. It just wouldn't surprise me if they do.
Edited by diddyknux on Jul 31st 2022 at 8:09:29 AM
The obvious one is to revisit Mac Gargan. I feel like Martin Li is probably also being built up to, and if the Osborns in Freshman Year wind up appearing here, their slide into villainy could be used to raise the question of whether some people are just always destined to be villains regardless of the universe.
Edited by HasturHasturHastur on Jul 31st 2022 at 9:17:06 AM
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If we're talking about love interests for Peter that general audiences can recognize, I think Betty Brant is still available in the MCU. My main concern is that Peter has this thing where his aura of bad luck radiates out to every non-superpowered person in his first two degrees of separation. He's like Typhoid Mary except that his disease is to get people he likes murdered by supervillains.
What Peter needs, therefore, is to team up with other supers. Of course, his whole thing is that he's a solo character, so by Marvel Law none of those team-ups can ever be lasting and he'll always be forced to fall back on his own resources with no support network.
This is why I get frustrated with him. It's not that I don't like watching him struggle against impossible odds and manifest his inner strength to win; what I hate is that he's never allowed to keep any of his victories. Thus, I start to feel a form of Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy.
Edited to add: There's also the running gag of the press (specifically JJJ) hating Spider-Man while all the other superheroes get a pass, which makes sense in a solo adventure but is completely bonkers in the context of the MCU.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 31st 2022 at 10:27:16 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The context is that Sony is possessive of any of the characters they have, and refuse to let Marvel use any of them to interact with any character that isn't Spider-Man. It sucks, because I'd like there to see JJJ bash people like Daredevil and She-Hulk too, but Sony's stinginess isn't going to allow that.
Edited by MatthewWayne on Jul 31st 2022 at 7:31:18 AM
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."![]()
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I have no idea why they would just throw MJ out after spending multiple movies clearly building her up as Peters love interest. I might understand that if she was a particular disliked character with audiences, but I've seen nothing of the sort.
My main concern is more that they are gonna just retread the same stuff the previous movies already did to get them together again.
She literally forgot that Peter exists. No Way Home shows that she's happily going to MIT with Ned. I'm not sure how that can be turned around, narratively, unless Peter gets another wizard to give him a do-over or MJ has some sort of Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory like Amy Pond in Doctor Who.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"What might work, although it could easily create a Spider-Man 3 problem, is to have Peter take a dark moral turn because he doesn't have a support network. We don't even need a Symbiote for that to happen, although it's certainly being set up that way. (I'd prefer it if the writers can avoid having him dance around in the streets like a bad boy from Grease.)
The question is why MJ and Ned would decide, out of nowhere, to be friends with this wacky spider dude whom they have never heard of.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 31st 2022 at 11:03:20 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"If I were in control, I'd make it so that Ned becomes the Hobgoblin through a situation that's completely beyond Peter's control, and he ends up being forced to fight him. Given Ned doesn't know who Spider-Man is, but Peter knows who the Hobgoblin is, it could lead to a very interesting confrontation.
If they do the symbiote thing, I'd like two things. First, I'd like Peter to keep the suit for a few movies/episodes of a TV series to make it seem like he Took a Level in Badass, only to gradually slip into becoming a monster later on (and not the cool kind like you said). Two, we get a homage of how Peter-2 got his symbiote suit off by having it take place at Matt Murdock's church, but with the twist being that Peter wants to keep the suit (or perhaps the symbiote has just taken over his body to the point where he can't fight back), and that Daredevil and maybe Johnny Storm are doing a "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight to emphasize how important it is that Peter has allies.
Edited by MatthewWayne on Jul 31st 2022 at 8:07:10 AM
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."I don't know if I want Ned to become the Hobgoblin, or for this universe's Norman Osborn to take on some Hobgoblin-y traits, i.e. coming up with a perfected version of the serum that maybe isn't quite as powerful as the Raimi-verse serum, but doesn't have the side effects. A twist could be that Norman appears to have had his personality substantially altered by the serum, but he didn't actually go insane - he was a bad man to begin with and the serum triggered a subconscious release of the last of his inhibitions and he's just The Unfettered.
Freshmen year is produced by Marvel studios, I really have my doubts that Sony will want to majorly tie into it when they cant really control what happens there. Yes they say it is a alt timeline of the MCU but so far that just seems to be a marketing gimmick.
Edited by uncertanSearcher on Jul 31st 2022 at 5:43:10 PM
I am 90% certain that Freshman Year is an alternate timeline, even if Marvel says it isn't. There's far too many continuity discrepancies for it to make any sense canon-wise. Namely how Peter doesn't recognize Osborn and Octavius in NWH even if he supposedly fought them in Freshman Year.
Also, what would re-introducing Norman even do at this point? Rami-verse Norman kind of already hit all the beats in his Role Reprise, so it would just be treading ground we already know.
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."![]()
Having a different Norman who ultimately goes down the same path could pose a major multiversal question: are some people destined to be evil or fall into villainy regardless of circumstance, no matter the universe? It's similar to how Mobius seemed to think all Lokis were selfish, destructive assholes who left chaos in their wake and were frustratingly good at failing to take responsibility for their actions - perhaps all Normans are seething balls of repressed rage, hatred, and cruelty who just need a big push to let it all out and answer the call of the Goblin.
My suspicion why the ended NWH the way they did was they had no idea if/who they could sign on for more spidy movies.
Like if Zendaya wants to come back it's easy to write her back in. Either Spidey goes to Boston for some reason or he runs into her again when she's back from MIT on holidays/after graduation depending on the time gap. Boom, their fates collide super villians attack her memories get jogged.
Same with Ned. If they want to use them again they can, if not. Pete never talks to them again and goes on with his life, makes new friends / Love Interests etc
Reuniting would be more satisfying imo but they've left it so wide open with that soft reboot they could do antything.
Yeah, this is likely the core reason behind the ending of No Way Home: it gives the writers a blank slate that they can fill with anything depending on which IP they can get hold of.

Speaking from an organic storytelling perspective, someone with superpowers should always be able to find something gainful to do in society and so should never be completely without resources... unless their power is something useless like sweating profusely. Of course, being accepted by society is a different matter, and having powers doesn't help if a person has a mental disability or psychological trauma that prevents them from integrating.
Really, it depends on what kind of story the writer wants to tell. The X-Men comics love to show mutants being feared by society and in that case you would indeed find many of them in those situations: traumatized, homeless, destitute. Some would turn to evil just to find an escape. Others might form "gangs" that behave in antisocial ways.
Coming back to the MCU, the status quo in which Peter Parker has been left after No Way Home should logically free him up to be Spider-Man in a big way. One of the character's biggest weaknesses has always been his loved ones: family and friends who will be vulnerable if he reveals his identity. But that's no longer the case now.
Frankly, there's no reason why he shouldn't be able to go to, say, Dr. Strange or some other group of heroes and tell them, "Hey guys, I'm the spider-dude who helped you with all of this stuff. Strange wiped everyone's memory of me, but that actually helps because now I can do this full time." Of course, they won't do that because it's written in laws that Spidey has to be a hard-luck hero who never gets any permanent wins.
The underbelly of the MCU, in which emerging supers are mistrusted and mistreated by society, is hopefully going to be explored more in She-Hulk.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 31st 2022 at 8:43:30 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"