Spider-Man No More

[theultimateend]

While everyone is arguing how Venom stands as a character,

could someone tell me what's supposed to be so good about Sandman? So he's a crook...

that's all I got.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandman_%28Marvel_Comics%29

There you go. I'd tell you all that but then I'd not be working smarter instead of harder.

That's the first(/last) place I looked and it told me nothing interesting. And that's why I'm wondering how Raimi thought he could base a movie on him.

'ell, he had to stick him to Ben's murder to give him any story relevance.

I thought the mind in the astral plane bit would be cool to touch on since it could lead to any of various marvel villains from the astral plane that are/were pretty badass.

As for the sticking him to the murder thing I agree it was odd. It felt like the film was forced but I didn't mind it since the first two were good to me.

Basically if I have sex 3 times, the first two times blew my mind, and the last time I just have a run of the mill orgasm. I'm still going to look positively on the experience.

 

[The Big Eye]

There's not a whole lot to say about this... except I sorely hope Sony pays dearly for its crimes.
Like, the new Spider-Man only breaks two or three box office records. I suppose that's all I can reasonably hope for.

 

[Lazarus Long]

I, for one, am praying to Crom that we end up with a kind of backwards Interplay/Fallout situation where the rights revert back to Marvel in time for Spidey to show up in Avengers.

And if you do not listen... to hell wit you.

 

[rayman 101]

Honestly I thought the franchise died much earlier than 3. Spider-man 2 was a cheesy melodramatic, cartoonish mess, and everyone who I've told this too when I first watched it agreed, and the third one was just as equally bad. I love Riami's style, but I don't think he's doing much justice to the character, and I while I have nothing against Toby Macguire, I think he completely misses the whole point of the character, when he mumbles through out the entire franchise of the films. It completely destroyed what was interesting and fun about spider-man. Anyway, nobody really supported the batman reboot and look how that turned out. I for once would like to see more depth and realism brought into the characters, especially by somebody like Fincher. I know there's no news of taking the story and the universe in that direction, but I much preffer a reboot than what Riami has done for the franchise.

 

[Mysnomer]

Anyway, glad to see someone else doesn't like the Ultimate series. They're hit and miss, but for me, they miss far too often. And any series where canon is thrown out the window because the new author felt it wasn't interesting, yeah...

You'd rather have a universe with 60+ years of canon, endless contradictions, endless deaths, rebirths, etc. over trying to start from scratch and make things good? I think your fanboy is showing.

No, I'm fine with reboots (I liked the 90's animated series, which is technically a reboot of the universe). What I expect the writers of said reboots to do is faithfully recreate the good parts, while filling in the cracks that are plot holes, and updating things to be in line with the modern times (terrorists instead of communist spies and such). However, if you read the author's bit at the end of the Ultimate Spiderman volume with Venom, he basically says, "Yeah, so, I always thought Venom was kind of lame, I never really understood what he was about, so yeah, I guess I shafted him in the story." He flat out admitted that he never put much thought into the character, and only included him out of obligation. Spider-man is more than one man's work, it is a legacy of many writers and artists, and some people tripped up in the past, but moving forward, the goal should be to add to the legacy, not to outright spit on what some people have invested so much effort into. (Remember, he ADMITTED he didn't put any effort into. It isn't like he tried his best and fell short, he's just a lazy asshole.)

Couldn't agree more.

"Why is Venom such a lame villain? Because most writers don't use the guy to his full potential."

I am always amazed how most fans who constantly criticize Venom's lack of depth, don't consider the fact that it's the writers lack of imagination, or the fact that a better writer could give him depth. He is Far from my favorite villian, but his potential is great.

You can't add too much to a character before he becomes something entirely different. The one attempt Marvel had at making him deeper flopped too.

Venom has just as much (or just as little) potential as any other comic book characters who's central axis is 'You punched me, so I'm gonna punch you back!'.

Except Venom is more than that. He is the evil twin of Spiderman without being as cliche as an evil twin. His philosophy is the exact opposite of Spiderman's, but at the core, just like Peter, Brock is a normal guy who obtains extraordinary powers. Then he takes in the other direction by using it to pursue revenge and personal gain. Most people are like, "Oh, it's an evil suit, it does bad things." I wonder how different it would be if the symbiote were treated as scorned lover.

Also, in the 90's series, Brock is separated from the alien and begins to reform, and even falls in love. Then his lady is put in danger and he merges with the symbiote to rescue her. Emotions tempered by his development, he is better able to control it. Then he makes his tragic sacrifice (I don't remember if he ever returned, but that scene was enough for me.)
Then in the videogame for PSone, he has fully merged, he is is Venom, but he's also cool with that. He also seems to have a more whimsical outlook on life, wisecracking in the middle of tense situations (gee, who does that remind me of...)
Anyway, my point is, deeper than a villain, if they just put some effort into it.

 

[Badassassin]

you know, i'm just as pissed about this as the next guy, but at least it didn't end like other superhero series.

most of them just have one pathetic delving into fanboy comic-dom that everyone hates so at least it didn't die pathetically.

But the thing with this movie is i thought it could go onto spiderman four and then the fifth would be the suckiest movie ever. so i guess i'm a bit glad the series died with honor, but it went a bit too soon.

 

[PunchClockVillain]

- James Cameron was trying to make a Spider-Man movie for a good deal of the 90s, and he wrote a bunch of scripts. In the most widely-distributed one, Spider-Man and Mary-Jane have a mid-air sex scene during which he "binds her" (it's EXACTLY like you're thinking) with webbing while "sensuously" describing the manner in which various species of spider "do it." I am not making that up. The bad guys in this one, BTW, were Electro and Sandman (later versions had Doc Ock and switched-out MJ for Liz Allen.)

In case anyone else was curious:
http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/s/spider-man-scriptment.html

 

[Deacon Cole]

I know I am very, very alone in this, but I didn't like the Spider-man movies. Sam Raimi's style of directing tends to descend into self-parody and Spider-man was no exception. I won't mourn the passing of this series.

Also, I'm not especially happy with the rash of super hero movies currently in production because, either. I think they're like the Star Trek movies. Some decent, some not, but none of them managing to achieve greatness. None.

I think it might even be impossible to get greatness out of a genre that is so effects-heavy and therefore expensive to produce. Too much interference from the studio. Too much creative talent who really don't understand the material taking the job because it's a fat paycheck that is likely to help fund their personal project about the lesbian cowboys. And way too many fanboys lapping up dog turds like Dark Knight like it was the second coming of Bree Olsen. Thus assuring that mediocrity will be mistaken for quality for years to come.

For me, I think the main problem is the effects and environments look fake. There's no sense of weight so it's hard to accept what I'm seeing on the screen. The only film of the recent crop that avoided this was Iron Man. But that wasn't a super hero movie. It was a movie with a super hero in it. There is a difference. Also, the effects may have had that missing "weight" that other movies lack thanks to the late Stan Winston. He will be missed.

So I really did not care if they made a fourth Spider-man movie. I'm not interested in the younger version reboot they seem to be doing, either. But the main point is that I am still waiting for a good Spider-man movie, because I have not seen one yet.

 

[GodKlown]

The first Spiderman movie was not a bad attempt. It served to set off a good series that unfortunately declined as time went by. Spiderman 2 was good in its own right, it gave the characters more depth and progressed the story further. Spiderman 3... almost seemed to me to be like a Scary Movie approach to the first two. If this was Raimi's revenge on Sony, I feel like he took it out on us. The plot wasn't exactly confusing, just paper-thin. Sandman's evolution in the movie was really good, but the segments when Parker was interacting with the symbiote were just craptacular. Did we really need to see an emo version of Peter Parker? Who even liked Topher Grace in that movie?! Didn't he seem as tacked on as Venom did?

An overall reboot of this series, put in the right hands, doesn't really sound like a "bad" idea. I think their timing is just horrible for this attempt. To me when I heard about this Ultimate Spiderman approach, I got a flash of George Lucas' prequels. Why do movie studios keep doing this?! The Spiderman series is about a decade old, so it's not like we couldn't have already done this in the beginning. I am at a loss as to why years down the road that studios want to tell the start of a story after we've already been introduced into a story line. Reverting back to the past after we're dealing with the present is just a lousy idea in this situation, if only as an excuse to dump off Tobey in the role of the main character.

I'm with the majority, this idea is going to suck. If Raimi leaves, I can't really think of a suitable director to fill his shoes. My guess is they will pick some kid fresh out of college and tell him to go for it. As long as they cover the cost of making it, you can bet there will be sequels to that, too. Ultimate Spiderman Twilight is nigh!

 

[Silva]

While it is true that the Spiderman movies were well-made, inspirational and profitable in their time, keep in mind that a change was sorely needed in the films at this point.

The fact is that three movies in any one franchise is enough in any successive, similar fashion. A live-action TV series would probably be a better choice for a comic book with a rich history like Spiderman, purely for the reason of length. This opinion might disregard the much better funding a blockbuster film generally gets, which you do need with superhero themed entertainment, but honestly, the moment a sequel has the Roman IV after its name, you know the franchise is going to lose it.

Think about it: the fourth movie would have felt very filler and cash-in indeed had Raimi continued to produce Spidey flicks. The people who watched it would say so increasingly with more sequels even if it somehow weren't an almost fundamental rule of cinema. Eventually, the profit would be lower than a total reset might be, which is probably the reasoning behind the executives' choice.

That's not to say that these studio accountants were justified in taking apart this franchise and putting it back together again (probably very poorly). They weren't; it was a foolish and audience-alienating move, and the new "teen" angle they are aiming for will probably blow up in their faces. To canned applause, and with great irony.

In fact, the Hollywood audience has had a truckload of anti-heroic, teenage, immature and superficially "dark" films and television series lately, and the audience is getting very sick of that, too. You watch: sooner or later the executives will catch up and we'll see a return to 1950's-60's optimism and idealism in film (or even, gasp, something new and different), even if on occasion it appears that these executives might actually be closer to a variety of chimpanzee than a group of human beings.

 

[Ian S]

For me, this was always one of those "storytelling devices that don't translate" - like Daredevil describing what his non-sight senses are doing to himself. The thing is, "joking-while-fighting" Spidey works on the page because you're "only" reading it, so there's no issue of volume or lip-sync. In a movie, I don' even know how you'd do it without making a mess of the action scenes - you'd have to dial down the sound effects, which are a huge part of making hits "feel" real, just to hear him speak... to say nothing of all the extra close-ups and reaction-shots you'd need to communicate the idea that a character with no visible mouth is speaking out loud so that it doesn't seem like Peter Parker is doing a DVD commentary of his day's workout.

Actually, Bob, it is possible to do it if you've got a director who knows how to pace action scenes. Buffy fought and wisecracked on a weekly basis. And all the animated Spider-Man shows did it all the time, without having to tweak the sound mix or make the action incomprehensible. Pacing is everything. But Raimi as a director was never about that. He prefers to let everything come full-on at you, just like he did in the Evil Dead movies. That's fine if you're doing Horror because you don't want to give your audience time to think about what's happening. But super hero stories require a bit more methodology, as a lot of key dialogue often happens during major action scenes. Raimi apparently didn't know how to apporach that.

I don't know who else Sony could get to fill Raimi's shoes. It'd be a tall order. But I'm hoping whoever we get will be a more accomplished action director who knows how to incorporate dialogue into an action scene, because that's what Spider-Man needs. (Zack Snyder maybe?)

 

[Truehare]

Maybe it's the comic book snob in me, but everytime I see someone say Venom is their favorite spider-man villain I can't help but roll my eyes ;p... he's not even one of his interesting bad guys.

I don't get why a lot of people seem to dislike Venom. Is it backlash over the child-like impulse to think he's cool, and you want to distance yourself from that? Whatever, Venom isn't really my favorite villain, he's my favorite character, because after combining with Venom, Brock moved from cardboard cut-out to someone with depth (speaking of the animated series, here).

Anyway, glad to see someone else doesn't like the Ultimate series. They're hit and miss, but for me, they miss far too often. And any series where canon is thrown out the window because the new author felt it wasn't interesting, yeah...

: /

You'd rather have a universe with 60+ years of canon, endless contradictions, endless deaths, rebirths, etc. over trying to start from scratch and make things good? I think your fanboy is showing.

DC and Marvel should scrap both of their current universes and start over. DC does the same story line every ten years. Marvel is a little bit better, but not by much.

I'm referring to the part in bold letters here:

I'm no fanboy, but I prefer to keep the original story as much as possible, for one very simple reason: If you want to start from scratch and create something good, then really do it; create your own world, your own characters, your own story. It's very easy to take someone else's work, get the "good" parts from it and just discard the rest, and receive the praise for "saving" the story. This "reboot" trend just shows me that we live in very "dry" times, as far as creativity goes.

As a writer myself, I think this is very worrying. So I'm going to burn my muffin creating a whole universe just for someone to come later and twist it to their own vision? That is definitely NOT what I expected when I wrote my first shor story, and I hope none of my future works gets so popular as to deserve that kind of treatment...

OT: I don't really see why everyone is so worried about the new movie being based on Ultimate Spiderman... I felt the first one was already very Ultimate-ish, what with Gwen being totally absent and MJ replacing her on the classic bridge scene. And yeah, I really missed Spidey's endless chatting during fights.

And just to reiterate: yes, Spiderman 3 was as terrible as everyone says. Sandman's origin alone was a huge mood-killer (come on, they were conducting a particle-acceleration experiment in the middle of NY, protected only by a chainlink fence and completely unguarded?), and Venom was the most useless villain I have ever seen in a movie.

 

[RooksEye]

It made me sad when I heard the news. The first 2 films were awesome and the 3rd was still good. On a side note, guess who's rumored to replace Toby as Spidey? That's right! It's everyones favorite sparkly vampire, Robert Patterson!!!
.......I hate Hollywood....

I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that.

I mean, if he plays Spider-man you wouldn't be able to see his dreamy constipated face because of him wearing a mask.
And isn't that what all the girls pay to see when they go to the movies?

Very true. Like I said, just a rumor I saw.

 

[ilion]

I say spider man 2099.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

How long have Sony got the rights for Spidey films?

It'd be good for Marvel/Disney to get them back.
If Spidey was to be rebooted, I'd love the thought, planning and fore site that has gone into the Road to Avengers. Five great films, all leading to a sixth film Sinister Six film.

Too much to hope for? Certainly.

 

[Snowman909]

Perfectly cast Tobey Maguire?
Ultimate Spidey makes you ill?

I'm as disgusted at Sony as anyone over this, but honestly Bob. Don't say stupid things.

 

[ImpostorZim]

Well, now I know exactly what I want MovieBob to review as soon as it comes out. Spider-Man: The Beginning Again, or whatever the hell it's gonna be called.

 

[Badassassin]

Well, now I know exactly what I want MovieBob to review as soon as it comes out. Spider-Man: The Beginning Again, or whatever the hell it's gonna be called.

"Spider-Man: The Beginning Again", aka "Oh Not This Bullshit Again"

I'm probably alone here, but the first spiderman movie sucked for me. in fact, the only one i really liked was the second one.

it's really a shame too, in the comic book world its my favorite origin story (first being batman)

the first movie was just kinda cheesy and with that in mind, when osborn died the seriousness just seemed funny.