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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
There's a funny thing that as bad as Peter's life gets, others have it even worse.
Again at least he's not homeless unlike his brothers in arms Eddie and Flash.
And the less said about what his clones have to deal with the better.
Edited by slimcoder on Jul 31st 2022 at 10:04:23 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."It's too bad Peter never got the second Spider-Man movie's aesop from Peter 2... responsibility is great and all, but maintaining your own happiness and mental wellbeing is ALSO part of that. Ignoring your own needs to be a hero at all times is ultimately self-dstructive, which is no good for anyone.
Edited by FGHIK on Jul 31st 2022 at 12:09:41 PM
Imo, the best way to reintroduce Ned and Michelle is to have them embroiled in whatever the big evil scheme Spidey is investigating is, forcing him to have to interact with them despite his aversion to them in order to save the day.
Like, yadda yadda mad scientist / evil corporate dude / etc, yadda yadda has interns Ned and Michelle, yadda yadda the interns don't know their boss is evil, yadda yadda Peter has to figure out how to stop evil guy and protect them without putting them deeper into the line of fire. Maybe they even believe the villain / JJ that Spidey is the bad guy between the two of them.
Then halfway through the story something happens to make them remember the truth., and they're pissed at him but want to help - indeed becoming integral - and Spidey has to confront his guilt complex because they're not going to let him stop them from getting involved.
Plus, I feel like "has a whole corporation / firm with interns who don't know he's evil" would be a good set up for Roderick Kingsley, and would tie in with Ned famously being the guy who Hobgoblin uses as a patsy.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 31st 2022 at 10:10:09 AM
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What's the deal with Flash Thompson? Is there a comic book storyline in which he gets superpowers too? I don't think that the MCU's version is likely to go down that route, at least not the "homeless" part since he's managed to parlay knowing Spider-Man into fame and fortune. I guess Strange's spell wipes that out, too, although given its nature he wouldn't have any idea why his life suddenly crashed.
This of course goes back into the mechanics of the spell: does it destroy all the physical evidence as well: books, newspapers, photographs, computer records? It would have to, right? So is Flash's book retroactively erased from existence or are there now a bunch of blank pages with blank covers sitting on people's bookshelves?
Also, I can't help but thinking of DC's Flash whenever I hear that name by itself, which is why I prefer to use his full name.
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This is why a good through-line for the next movie could be Peter coping (badly) with being completely on his own and going down an anti-hero path before finding a reason to come back.
I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand I'm a sucker for stories where one character forgets another due to magic or time travel or whatever but carries still carries the memories buried inside in such a way they can be brought back.
On the other hand, I detest the narrative cop-out that this gives writers to tug at our heartstrings on the one hand and then tug them back in the opposite direction later, never mind the consequences to continuity or verisimilitude. Why do MJ and Ned get unique exceptions to Strange's spell, or is this the kind of wishy-washy plot device spell that lets Peter revive people's memories of him if he works really hard at it?
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 31st 2022 at 1:21:33 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"[Flash becomes becomes a soldier, patching things up with Peter, and becoming a nice guy.
But after a campaign he loses both of his legs winding up in a wheelchair where he later signs up for a military program to weaponoze the Venom symbiote, becoming the new Venom known as Agent Venom.
Next to Eddie he's the most popular incarnation of Venom especially since compared to the various hosts, he is the most heroic one even next to Eddie who is largely an anti-hero at best usually.
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Flash's fortune in the MCU comes from being part of a well off family, not through his knowledge of Spider-Man.
Edited by slimcoder on Jul 31st 2022 at 10:24:04 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Well, that shows me for not reading every single Marvel comic. I agree that MCU Flash Thompson would never join the army (and thanks for reminding me that he's a trust fund baby and doesn't need to work). He could still get the Venom Symbiote, of course, if that's how the writers want to take things, but that would have bugger-all to do with Spider-Man in this particular universe.
More to the point, I don't see what this says about Peter Parker being a hard-luck hero, because all of his problems come from the writers making him the Chew Toy of the universe, not an alien lifeform snuggling up with him and making him eat people.
Sure, other characters have it worse, but that's small comfort to Pete... or more to the point, it's small comfort to audiences hoping that he'll catch a break once in a while.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 31st 2022 at 1:35:27 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Prone to making terrible choices and having bad luck just like Peter.
Like his relationship with Betty disintegrates cause he keeps falling on her because his Venom missions are a secret or choosing to go AWOL and become a fugitive because he won’t tell his bosses he had to make a deal with Crime Master to save Betty’s life.
That combined with his alcoholism means he doesn’t have a good life either.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."To be clear, are you talking about Flash Thompson's comic book story or a hypothetical MCU or Sony film adapting that story?
While the Venom Symbiote is now canonically in 616 MCU thanks to that end-credits scene, that doesn't give us any clues about how Marvel may or may not use it.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 31st 2022 at 1:43:49 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Flash could totally become a symbiote host here if his life falls apart and the symbiote finds him and latches onto his own desperate desire for attention of any sort, positive or negative. He would use it to try and become a hero, but the symbiote would pervert this as he grew more violent and unhinged.
(sigh) Sure, I get all of that. But is the character as established in the MCU interesting enough for Marvel to do a whole spin-off series (or film) about him alone? I doubt it. If we're hypothesizing about future Spider-Man stories, it's certainly possible that Flash could become a Symbiote host and turn into an enemy for Peter, I guess.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"It was argued before that becoming Agent Venom could actually be the form of character development he needs since he largely has not grown at all during the course of the trilogy.
Even in No Way Home Peter at most tolerated Flash because he was still the same old same old jerk.
Compared to other instances like in the Spectacular cartoon where Flash received some measure of character development and became a better guy.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Flash Thompson only becomes of interest to us because he is an adjunct to Peter Parker. In the comics-verse, he's not part of a universe-wide mind-wipe spell that causes everyone to forget that Peter Parker ever existed, so he can anchor off of Peter to branch out into his own story arc. But the MCU no longer has that anchor. In-universe, Ned, MJ, and Flash are just people, of no more note than Extra #45 in Scene 33. (Maybe. Does Happy remember the three of them? If so, how does he reconcile that?)
So if the MCU or the Sonyverse wants to bring back the old crew, it has to deal with that minor problem first of how they get reconnected to Peter after explicitly being disconnected. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it will require a bit of narrative chicanery.
There are a few ways to do this, some better than others.
- Peter could still feel a responsibility to watch over his old friends, and so when the next crisis decides to target them (for no better reason than why not), he has to help them and this causes their old relationships to rekindle.
- Peter could fail to learn his lesson and seek out a shaman to try to selectively reverse the memory-wipe spell out of sheer desperation, thus causing all of the misfortune to pile on again.
- The Venom Symbiote could remember an alternate version of Spider-Man and seek out his friends for some revenge, not knowing that they don't remember anything.
Edited by Fighteer on Jul 31st 2022 at 2:00:53 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'm frustrated with where No Way Home left MJ because there's basically two options and both suck.
- Will They or Won't They? drama dragged out about whether Peter and MJ will get back together. At least one movie dedicated to trying to bring these characters back around to a status quo that they already had and that was fucking fine before the filmmakers decided to break it up for no reason.
- Or. Not doing that, and instead MJ fucks off and the best romance in the MCU is just over for good.
Ditto all of that for Ned, but to a lesser extent than MJ. Either they spend hours agonizing over whether Ned and Peter will be BFF again and it sucks, or they don't and Ned fucks off and it sucks. Either way, No Way Home took an axe to a really good set of character dynamics and I'm mad about it. I don't want an entire movie that's just about trying to re-establish the pre-existing status quo, but I also don't want them to just leave all of Peter's best relationships destroyed.
I know a lot of people are in "Wait and See" mode about what the next movie will do with them, but I can't possibly imagine this going in any direction that I would actually want to see.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 31st 2022 at 11:08:16 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I don't think MCU Flash works for Agent Venom.
The reason comics Flash worked as Agent Venom is that Flash had at that point had decades of character development to turn him from a insecure blowhard to a noble, heroic and kind of melancholy man with a heart of gold: the kind of person who could turn a chaotic force like the symbiote into a force for good. It was the satisfying capper of the character's arc towards becoming a better person.
MCU Flash isn't like that. MCU Flash has his sympathetic parts, but they've doubled down on him being a superficial asshole and a dedicated bit character over the course of trilogy. And yeah, they could spend the whole story of the Agent Venom movie trying to fix Flash and centering the story on his redemption, but at this point why bother focusing on him vs giving it to a character we've come to care about in the same way the comics made us care about Flash?
Hell, give it to Michelle. That would be fun.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 31st 2022 at 11:08:32 AM
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Agreed. I was invested in the relationship between Peter and MJ because it was sweet and happy and felt very real. This is why it couldn't last, of course. Can't allow anything permanently good to happen to Peter.
Yea, if Peter just gets an entirely new supporting cast in the next movies it will make all the time spend building his old one seem completely pointless.
MJ just getting her memories back might seem like a cop out, but the more I think about it I'm not sure if the alternatives really would be that much more compelling.
As said it be interesting to adapt a hero who generally has a really tough personal life.
The mention of Flash isn’t really an intent that he should be adapted especially with all the differences here, more just to use him as an example as to how bad things can get for some heroes and Flash has a pretty raw deal from being disabled and a recovering alcoholic.
I’m reminded in the recent Ghost Rider run Johnny wakes up in the bathrooms of rest stops cause he either can’t find or afford an inn which says everything about the state of his personal life. It’s pretty brutal.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Flash had started to improve as a person and the fact that he was still an obnoxious, clout-chasing attention whore by No Way Home can be blamed on the fact that he was erased from existence for five years and then suddenly found himself reappearing in a world that had moved on without him. He did become less of a douche over the course of the films and they did a decent amount to explain the pathology behind his behavior, namely that no one in his family actually gives a fuck about him and just throws money at him, and he's so desperate to feel noticed that he'll settle for any kind of attention.
I thought that basically everyone hated how big Peter's supporting cast was, and that they really wished he was on his own again like before? Isn't that how we got here?
Also, where's all the love for Zendaya's MJ coming for all of a sudden? I've never hated her by any means, but before NWH, it seemed that people were complaining that her and Peter's romance was very forced in FFH after basically zero chemistry in Homecoming.
Edited by MatthewWayne on Jul 31st 2022 at 11:28:14 AM
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."![]()
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Considering how nutered the MCU adaptation of Demon in a bottle in Iron Man 2 was, Im rather doubtfull that alcoholism will ever really get tackled by any Marvel movies.
Really? Everything I've seen about MJ has been pretty positive, with many people quite happy that she figured out quite quickly that Peter was Spider-Man. Most of the hate I've seen was just some whining about "Redhead Erasure".
Edited by uncertanSearcher on Jul 31st 2022 at 8:32:11 PM

Honestly I'll lose any faith to the writers if they decide to apply a "Grogu".
Edited by DarthNoxIsCool on Jul 31st 2022 at 9:58:45 AM