Silver and Black

And yet, people are still complaining about the lack of Spider-Man in these films. To this day.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 25th 2019 at 2:08:25 AM

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People complain about everything. In other news: water is wet. What's your point? The people are finicky in nature and like to complain about things? I think we already knew that.

Edited by alliterator on Jun 25th 2019 at 1:09:35 AM

My point is that Spider-Man's absence from these films does not, by itself, make them guaranteed to fail.

What's yours?

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We already know that. Nobody here is arguing differently. The comment you are referring to was posted in August 2018. Before the film actually came out.

Do you want us to intervene with every person who complains about the lack of Spider-Man in Venom on the internet now? Because if so, that's going to take a long time and be kind of pointless. Much like this conversation.

Edited by alliterator on Jun 25th 2019 at 1:14:18 AM

...

So it was. I honestly thought it was a recent post. I read up through the conversation to see if I'd missed anything when this thread popped up on my list, since I didn't recall paying the thread much attention recently.

Errors have been made. My bad.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 25th 2019 at 2:18:46 AM

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How far along must a cinematic universe be to have people hooked on movies about more obscure characters by brand recognition alone? Just to give it some thought.

Wake me up at your own risk.

I mean, Iron Man was pretty obscure to non-comics readers. So...the first movie.

Thor, Incredible Hulk, and The First Avenger were pretty modest in terms of box office gross, but after The Avengers was when the movies started to reach “cannot fail” territory.

That.

When brand recognition isn't a factor, strength of marketing can still go a long way. In fact, a lot of older successful comic book films were able to make it big without having a brand at all. Did you know that Blade is a Marvel Comics property?

You might have, if you're versed in the comics.

Did you know that Men in Black is a Marvel Comics property? Seriously! It used to belong to Malibu Comics and ran for about a year before being licensed to Columbia Pictures to create the film. Marvel later purchased Malibu while the film was still in production. Marvel even printed some tie-in comics based on the film that was based on the Malibu comics.

Check out the opening credits next time you're watching the first film. There is an actual credit to Marvel while the little dragonfly is buzzing around.

Thor and Valkyrie joining the MIB is even funnier when you know that.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 25th 2019 at 2:56:10 AM

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Sony won't appear in this year's San Diego Comic-Con.

So we can forget about hearing anything regarding Silver & Black or Morbius on July.

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Jun 27th 2019 at 7:40:15 AM

The abandoned "Silver & Black" script has leaked online.

“Her hair goes white immediately from the trauma of watching her father die.”

I think that's actually from the comics. I had this Spider-Man history book from when I was a kid that explained this as part of Sable's origin.

Makes sense, it just came so fast, like ten seconds after revealing that dude even was her father.

I'm reading through it. So far it's a by-the-numbers spy movie, but it seems to be less In Name Only than Venom, with prominent appearances by Scorpion, Tarantula, Chameleon, and Tombstone so far.

Shout out to this line.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Feb 17th 2020 at 9:09:30 AM

Okay, so I finished reading that script.

My verdict? It's honestly just okay. There's really not that many moments that I think stand out, neither are there that many moments that are outright stupid. It feels like a generic spy movie a lot of the time.

Overall, I don't think we really missed out on much, but it's not like we dodged a major bullet. That is assuming this leak is accurate.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Feb 17th 2020 at 1:45:35 PM

Finished reading the script.

So the plot of it is pretty generic. Silver Sable is a bounty hunter going after Evil Eastern European Scientist Man because he killed her father during one of their missions. Evil Science Man wants to "evolve humanity" and all that jazz, so he's created a bunch of cyborg villains. Sable gets hired by the US to go with a team to South America to capture Felicia Hardy, initially under the claim that she stole valuable data. However, it turns out that Hardy is one of Science Villain's experiments: she has an AI implanted in her that takes over her body in extreme danger and makes her fight with super mobility. (She choose to be experimented on to use it to break her father out of prison.) The US wants her AI, and Sable wants to find Science Dude, so she goes rogue and captures Hardy herself so Hardy can lead her to Bad Man Science. Then they fight villains while traveling through South America.

The biggest difference between this and Venom (and possible Morbius) is that there are a lot more characters from the comics. Sable's bounty partner and pursuer when she goes rogue is Dominic Fortune. Science Baddie's Co-Dragons are Scorpion and Tarantula. At a Bad Guy Bar, Sable and Hardy get info from Chameleon and have a poker game and brawl with Tombstone. And though Murder Science Man is the Big Bad, there is a cameo from Norman Osborn himself, though the script points out it's only from the back via a flickering hologram. Charles Standish also makes a minor appearance as Oscorp's representative. The only major character that doesn't seem to be directly from the comics is Mwahaha Science Bloke, though he appears to be a Captain Ersatz of Mendel Stromm (his name in the script is Ernst Stromm.) Finally, at the end Sable declares that she's going to put together a team to hunt down any more of Science Meanie's experiments, and she pulls up a screen listing Black Cat, Spider-Woman (directly named to be Jessica Drew), Stunner (named as Charlotte Witter), Jackpot (the Sara Ehret version), and Dusk (as Cassie St. Commons.) It's certainly ambitious, though it doesn't feel overwhelmingly crowded the way Amazing Spider-Man 2's villain cast did, since most of these character don't occupy long arcs or roles beyond cameos. But I certainly expect Marvel Studios had concerns about these characters appearing, particularly ones that had already appeared in their MCU films like Mac Gargan (who seemingly explodes in the climax.)

The fights are described engagingly enough, and one that amused me was Sable fighting Dominic during a public dance and seemingly passing it off for a while as still just a dance. Since it takes place in South America (specifically the Triple Frontier) there's the usual tourism snapshots of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, where everyone living there's just scenery and dancers. Of the characters, Sable is pretty grim and dour, though she has occasional moments of The Comically Serious, like when she fakes a hitchhike to steal a car but then immediately backs up to give them a phone number to be reimbursed. The bigger standout is Felicia Hardy, who's an amusing snarker and cheery hacker with a penchant for bad singing. I also found Chameleon interesting; his schtick is that he's an informant constantly changing appearance, even mid-conversation. It might've helped if they hadn't used his real name Dmitri or referred to him as "the Russian" to further the illusion that we have no clue what his race or gender or any other background is.

The script was written by Christopher Yost. While it never goes into leery description, the first depiction of Sable is that she's "beautiful", in an eye-twitching Ross Puttman moment. Both Sable and Hardy are motivated by fathers, and there are scenes of Hardy being tortured that veer on the exploitative. There is, however, an all woman super team assembled at the end, possibly beating out Marvel if they keep dragging their feet on A-Force, so there's that.

Overall, it's serviceable, the main interest is in seeing all the comic characters who turn up, and it could've been interesting to see what Gina Prince-Bythewood would've made of it.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Feb 19th 2020 at 4:23:23 AM

That sounds like a mess. They literally hit every point about how not build up a cinematic universe. Forced characters and the ending with the profiles of the rest of the team members? They didn't learned anything from their previous attempt for a Cinematic universe and Bv S.

(Also, Jackpot, Charlitte Witter, and Dusk before Anya? I'll never get that Araña movie unless I make it myself.)

Edited by Akirakan on Feb 18th 2020 at 10:19:00 AM

Yeah. On the one hand, this could be fine. On the other hand, it also sounds strangely like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which had a ton of cameos in it from other characters that didn't get any arcs. The difference is that they don't butcher a character like they did with Deadpool, but...Felicia doesn't really have any luck powers in this one, does she? So why is she called the Black Cat?

Also, why Ernst Stromm? Why not just go right ahead and call him Mendell Stromm? There are so many bizarre decisions in the script that it just feels weird, like they are throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.

But I can definitely see why they didn't want to go through with this version.

Edited by alliterator on Feb 18th 2020 at 7:21:07 AM

Felicia didn't always have bad luck powers and most adaptations leave that part out.

I mean, when she very first appeared, she had no powers. And then she got powers pretty quickly. As for why adaptations don't use them — it's like Deadpool says, luck powers aren't very cinematic. (Also, there have hardly been any adaptations of Black Cat.)

Either way, there's precedent for her not having bad luck powers. Between the time she lost them and Brand New Day, she's probably spent most of her publication history without bad luck powers and she didn't get them that quickly from what I recall.

The reason why Felicia's called the Black Cat in this story is because it's her hacker name and she got a reputation for bringing bad luck to those who crossed her path.

Yeah, aside from a few references to her moving like a cat during some fights, her Black Cat moniker isn't really that indicative of this version of the character.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Feb 18th 2020 at 11:02:24 AM

I just remembered that the script keeps referring to Sable using her father's Chi Blade and every time I read that I kept thinking of the χ-blade from Kingdom Hearts.

(Pronounced the same, for those not in the know.)

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Feb 18th 2020 at 10:58:34 AM

It sounds like they based Felicia off of her Spider-Man The Animated Series incarnation: experimented on by a mad scientist, and given Captain America-style powers.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Felicia being a hacker is probably the best way to modernize her (what kind of thief risks leaving DNA evidence and getting caught on camera?)