'Spider-Man' Sequel Filming Start Date Revealed; Jon Watts Confirmed To Return

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Peter was not created to be an "archetype."

One Spider-Man became the success he did, the only hero in the post-war era to achieve in a very short time the popularity, esteem and fame of Batman and Superman...he became an archetype. Just like Superman and Batman did. That archetype isn't everything about his character and story and mythos but it does define a good part of his appeal.

If anything, he was created to demystify the heroic archetype of the costumed hero. The point was to turn the old, conventional notions of superheroes on their head.

And replace them with new conventional notions of superheroism. Spider-Man was definitely intended as a superhero and a new kind of one, but as per Stan Lee, the fact that Peter did what he did without any of the resources and abilities and advantages that Superman and Batman had, made him more of a hero than them. Read AF#15, and Lee's jibe in the opening caption about how Spider-Man is better than other "long-underwear characters" (i.e. Batman and Superman).

Making a living isn't what defined Peter.

A good part of the drama in his life across his run and adaptations is Peter supporting Aunt May, working a job he hates and that makes his life more complicated, and living in bad apartments and missing rent...so I have to say you are completely wrong on this. Heck take the Raimi movies, the entire subplot of Peter's relationship with his landlord and that line in Spider-Man 3 people like, "You'll get your rent when you fix this damn door." The Spider-Man PS4 game has a major sequence of Peter being evicted from his house and crashing in the couch in his Aunt's office.

It's how he grappled with his responsibilities to both his civilian life and his superhero life and the nuts and bolts of that
can easily change to suit the times.

I doubt that very much. Spider-Man Homecoming borrows the lifting machinery moment from the Master Planner Saga, but instead of a Peter in college and an experienced Spider-Man you now have a teenage Spider-Man, instead of Aunt May needing the isotope that could cure her or the memory of Uncle Ben, you have Tony Stark's craptastic "nothing without the suit" (which again he has Spider-Powers, he was always and will always be something without any suit). The emotional center of those stories can't be easily substituted.

Peter as a loner is still sympathetic. There's nothing to tag him as a creep.

I agree with that but many people read the Lee-Ditko era and see him as a future school-shooter or potential supervillain, Dan Slott himself said that number of times. Peter's first instinct was to become a celebrity and hack. He wanted to be the Justin Bieber of his time, not go out and get revenge.

Bendis, of course, also showed us in Ultimate Spider-Man what Peter would be like in the new millennium.

Yeah, and Bendis did that by ditching most of the melodrama. He said that for him, Peter always lived a charmed life and he never bought the "hard luck" concept one bit. So what he did was blend the Romita-Conway and other eras and put that in high school. Peter is now the cool kid and a boy band look-alike who as time passes and h stays in high school actually becomes the BMOC. He also wrote Peter as a teenager who is more mature than others at his age and smarter than the adults (easy to do in Ultimate Marvel). But the MCU Spider-Man splits the difference and has none of the advantages of either the classic or Ultimate one.

[WebLurker]

In the case of Ultimate Marvel...if you look at the Ultimate X-Men and compare that to Grant Morrison's New X-Men and the X-Men Evolution cartoon, Millar's Ultimate X-Men is less diverse than the other versions. Think of a character like X-23, Wolverine's POC female legacy character. It feels like she should have been introduce in Ultimate Marvel, but actually she came in the Cartoon, in Season 3.

The Evolution writers who created X-23 (and wrote a lot of early comic book stories) actually invented her because their bosses wanted the Logan Wolverine changed from the adult he already was to a teenager (so the kids in the audience would relate to him better, they thought). Not wanting to do that for obvious reasons but needing to give their bosses what they wanted somehow, the brainstorming about the problem lead to the idea of creating a second teen Wolverine character and the rest is history. Incidentally, X-23 was made female as way to make her a mirror image of Wolverine (older man vs. young girl, haunted by amnesia vs. haunted by remembering everything, etc.). Did work out in the end though as a way to add diversity, so props for that.

In the case of Ultimate Marvel, they finally gave us Wolverine's...blonde white son who's introduced as a '50s James Dean throwback anachronism.

I know very little about post-Ultimatum Ultimate X-Men, but I always got the impression that Jimmy Hudson was meant to be a replacement Wolverine, and so was was written as that first and as his own character second. In any event, the scales seem to have balanced, given that Jimmy never really caught on, while X-23 has become something of a breakout character.

[Frontier]

Yeah, and Bendis did that by ditching most of the melodrama. He said that for him, Peter always lived a charmed life and he never bought the "hard luck" concept one bit. So what he did was blend the Romita-Conway and other eras and put that in high school. Peter is now the cool kid and a boy band look-alike who as time passes and h stays in high school actually becomes the BMOC. He also wrote Peter as a teenager who is more mature than others at his age and smarter than the adults (easy to do in Ultimate Marvel). But the MCU Spider-Man splits the difference and has none of the advantages of either the classic or Ultimate one.

I...don't think that ever happened? He never really seemed all that popular at school and Flash was still around to mess with him.

On-top of that he could barely manage his life as Spider-Man with his work, personal life, school life, and being Spider-Man. He cut class tons of time and got in trouble for it.

[Prof. Warren]

One Spider-Man became the success he did, the only hero in the post-war era to achieve in a very short time the popularity, esteem and fame of Batman and Superman...he became an archetype. Just like Superman and Batman did. That archetype isn't everything about his character and story and mythos but it does define a good part of his appeal.

But he wasn't created to be an archetype. And I don't think that status that the character gained has anything to do with his core appeal.

His appeal remains pretty simple to explain - he's the most human of all superheroes, the one most prone to make mistakes.

And replace them with new conventional notions of superheroism. Spider-Man was definitely intended as a superhero and a new kind of one, but as per Stan Lee, the fact that Peter did what he did without any of the resources and abilities and advantages that Superman and Batman had, made him more of a hero than them. Read AF#15, and Lee's jibe in the opening caption about how Spider-Man is better than other "long-underwear characters" (i.e. Batman and Superman).

Of course, Stan, the master of hyperbole, would introduce his character with a dig at others.

It doesn't make Peter a better hero than Batman or Superman, it just means that Stan was out to sell his guy in his own shameless style.

A good part of the drama in his life across his run and adaptations is Peter supporting Aunt May, working a job he hates and that makes his life more complicated, and living in bad apartments and missing rent...so I have to say you are completely wrong on this. Heck take the Raimi movies, the entire subplot of Peter's relationship with his landlord and that line in Spider-Man 3 people like, "You'll get your rent when you fix this damn door." The Spider-Man PS4 game has a major sequence of Peter being evicted from his house and crashing in the couch in his Aunt's office.

Peter traditionally has personal problems with money, yes. But the point would be that he doesn't have to do any one particular job in order to be true to the character's roots. He can work for a newspaper, he can deliver pizzas, he can work in a lab. It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that when he gained his powers, he used them selfishly and Uncle Ben died because of it. Everything past that can change and you've still got classic Peter Parker. That original sin and the guilt that followed is the one thing that makes Peter who he is. And that's not anything that's dependent on placing Peter in any one era or in any one occupation.

I doubt that very much. Spider-Man Homecoming borrows the lifting machinery moment from the Master Planner Saga, but instead of a Peter in college and an experienced Spider-Man you now have a teenage Spider-Man, instead of Aunt May needing the isotope that could cure her or the memory of Uncle Ben, you have Tony Stark's craptastic "nothing without the suit" (which again he has Spider-Powers, he was always and will always be something without any suit). The emotional center of those stories can't be easily substituted.

Homecoming references the Master Planner moment but it doesn't have to replicate everything around that story to work on its own terms.

Having Peter be motivated by a need to believe in and prove himself is as valid a motivation as what he endured in the MP saga.

The MP saga was the culmination of several years of storytelling. Obviously it's going to be hitting some different beats than we get at the climax of a feature film.

I agree with that but many people read the Lee-Ditko era and see him as a future school-shooter or potential supervillain, Dan Slott himself said that number of times. Peter's first instinct was to become a celebrity and hack. He wanted to be the Justin Bieber of his time, not go out and get revenge.

The fact that Peter was not especially altruistic is what made him interesting as a character.

This is someone who fantasized about knocking out Flash Thompson or robbing banks to gain money.

That he had those very human thoughts about abusing his powers but still ultimately always made the right choices is part of his heroic nature.

Yeah, and Bendis did that by ditching most of the melodrama. He said that for him, Peter always lived a charmed life and he never bought the "hard luck" concept one bit. So what he did was blend the Romita-Conway and other eras and put that in high school. Peter is now the cool kid and a boy band look-alike who as time passes and h stays in high school actually becomes the BMOC. He also wrote Peter as a teenager who is more mature than others at his age and smarter than the adults (easy to do in Ultimate Marvel). But the MCU Spider-Man splits the difference and has none of the advantages of either the classic or Ultimate one.

According to who, you? Others can argue that MCU Peter is an effective amalgam of the best aspects of the character through several eras.

[Prof. Warren]

I...don't think that ever happened? He never really seemed all that popular at school and Flash was still around to mess with him.

No, I don't remember that being the case either.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I...don't think that ever happened? He never really seemed all that popular at school and Flash was still around to mess with him.

I am thinking of the later parts of the run, around the Amazing Friends arc, when Gwen, Kitty, Johnny, Iceman are all his friends, and Peter was more or less the leader of that clique. Even then by the time Gwen came on, Peter had a circle of friends and a clique around him and so on. He was definitely a more settled and sorted character by the middle of the run and later.

Ultimate Peter was definitely a more well-adjusted, capable, and intelligent figure than the MCU version. And who in the course of his story came to become the moral center of the entire Ulitmate world.

But he wasn't created to be an archetype.

I think you need to explain clearly what you understand by the word "archetype" and why that choice of word offends you so much. A character becomes an archetype out of fame and public favor, what the creators intend has little or nothing to do with that. I mean do creators intend their characters and creations to sell and do well. I would think yes, otherwise why publish.

[Alan2099]

Bendis created Miles Morales as basically an update of Peter's original archetype to the 21st Century. As Bendis pointed out if you are doing a kid from a poor background who is getting ahead on scholarship and so on, there's a solid chance that kid won't be white anymore. Miles Morales is here to stay. He is the teenage Spider-Man of the current generation in a way the original Peter Parker can never really be again. So I don't think people are wrong to insist that Miles take Peter's place.

Any movie they make of Spider-man would be an update of Peter's archetype. There's no need to bring a new character to be the updated Spider-man when we're going to update Spider-man anyway.

As for being the new character for the new generation, those type of characters come and go. None of them ever have the lasting power of the original.

Besides there are loads of ways to bring Raimi-Peter or an Adult Peter and his story into the MCU. You have Spider-Verse, you have the Quantum Realm, you have Infinity Stones, in the words of the Beyonder, Nothing we dream of is impossible to achieve.

So basically you want to make the classic real Spider-man into "that other Spider-man from a different world"?

[Prof. Warren]

I am thinking of the later parts of the run, around the Amazing Friends arc, when Gwen, Kitty, Johnny, Iceman are all his friends, and Peter was more or less the leader of that clique. Even then by the time Gwen came on, Peter had a circle of friends and a clique around him and so on. He was definitely a more settled and sorted character by the middle of the run and later.

Ultimate Peter was definitely a more well-adjusted, capable, and intelligent figure than the MCU version. And who in the course of his story came to become the moral center of the entire Ulitmate world.

Having a clique of friends is not at all the same as being a BMOC. Especially when that clique is composed largely of outsiders.

And trying to compare the development of a character who had I forget how many issues to evolve and change to one who hasn't even had their second solo movie released yet is not a valid one to one comparison. We have no idea where MCU Peter will end up whereas Ultimate Peter's story has long been completed.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

There's no need to bring a new character to be the updated Spider-man when we're going to update Spider-man anyway.

In theory yes. In practice, not necessarily so.

As for being the new character for the new generation, those type of characters come and go. None of them ever have the lasting power of the original.

That's what I thought of Miles to be honest. But...look how far he has come, not even ten years old and he's gone from Alternate Universe character to being imported to the Prime universe, appearances in cartoon series, video game, and of course headline star of the Oscar winning movie. That's further than any legacy character of Spider-Man, further than any legacy character for any hero.

Miles Morales is here to stay and if MCU Peter Parker is going to borrow stuff from him, then I don't see the point of doing the white teenage Peter anymore. That story feels played out at this point. Peter Parker can still be Spider-Man of course but he needs to be older and more grown-up. High school or teenager was never seen by either of its co-creators as a default state (read the L-D era and you'll find that most of it is set in the Daily Bugle and little in high school), and there's more teenage Spider-Man content since the 90s then in the original thirty years of its publication history.

So basically you want to make the classic real Spider-man into "that other Spider-man from a different world"?

MCU is just an alternate universe in relation to 616. That's how Marvel's Multiverse works. None of its characters are the "classic real anything" as far as Marvel is concerned. All I am saying is if people are saying that they should have brought Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield or whoever as Spider-Man there are ways to make it work.

[Prof. Warren]

I think you need to explain clearly what you understand by the word "archetype" and why that choice of word offends you so much. A character becomes an archetype out of fame and public favor, what the creators intend has little or nothing to do with that. I mean do creators intend their characters and creations to sell and do well. I would think yes, otherwise why publish.

I think you need to understand what "offend" means.

The word 'archetype' doesn't offend me. You brought it up, claiming that that Peter was created to embody a particular archetype and I noted that was he wasn't created with that goal in mind. If anything, he was a deconstruction of a heroic archetype. That his popularity eventually turned him into an archetype of his own is a by-product of his success, not a delbriate act on the part of his creators.

And while every creator wants their characters to do well, Spider-Man only saw publication because Amazing Fantasy was tanking anyway and there was nothing to lose in publishing this unconventional, oddball story.

It's not as though anyone connected with that first story had any reason to believe that anything more would come of it.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That his popularity eventually turned him into an archetype of his own is a by-product of his success, not a delbriate act on the part of his creators.

Most archetypes are created that way. Nobody can predict or intend that from the start. Sherlock Holmes is the archetypal detective but Arthur Conan Doyle wrote him because he saw him as a source of cash for other stuff and tried many times to get rid off him including killing him off. Doesn't change the fact that Holmes is an archetypal character.

It's not as though anyone connected with that first story had any reason to believe that anything more would come of it.

Neither did Siegel and Shuster when they pitched Superman. They couldn't expect or intend Superman to have the impact he did. Are you going to say Superman is not an archetype because his creators didn't intend him to be?

Obviously, when Bendis went about creating Miles Morales he had to factor in that Spider-Man is this pop-culture institution and he had to think carefully about what made Peter special and why his earlier legacy characters -- whether it's corporate whistle-blower Miguel O'Hara, blonde clone Ben O'Reilly, the middle-class dutiful daughter Mayday Parker -- never went past cult success.

[Prof. Warren]

Most archetypes are created that way. Nobody can predict or intend that from the start. Sherlock Holmes is the archetypal detective but Arthur Conan Doyle wrote him because he saw him as a source of cash for other stuff and tried many times to get rid off him including killing him off. Doesn't change the fact that Holmes is an archetypal character.



Neither did Siegel and Shuster when they pitched Superman. They couldn't expect or intend Superman to have the impact he did. Are you going to say Superman is not an archetype because his creators didn't intend him to be?

No, I'm saying they didn't purposely create him as an archetype. That status came to the character after scores of imitators followed and the character's influence was felt.

[Lee]

Remember that Spider-Man only really became a major sales success when he went to college

You're going to have to back up this claim that Amazing Spider-Man wasn't a major sales success for Marvel during its first 30 issues.

In this 1964 fanzine interview, Spider-Man is the second title Stan Lee name-checks as a big hit.

High school or teenager was never seen by either of its co-creators as a default state (read the L-D era and you'll find that most of it is set in the Daily Bugle and little in high school)

Ditko felt Peter's life as a teenager was important.

http://www.twomorrows.com/media/ACBC1960-64Preview.pdf

“He believed,” Ditko later wrote, “the point of a superhero [story] was to show the costumed hero in action” (Ditko, “A Mini-History 4” 8).
Lee’s collaborator didn’t entirely disagree but later asked, “What is the point of doing a teenage hero if his regular teenage personality, his home life, school environment, etc., is to be just a brief (few panels) interruption between the hero and villain battles?” Ultimately, Ditko concluded, “it is important to show how a costumed hero acts in a non-costumed (non-villain) situation. It reveals the consistency or the contradiction in his values in striving to do what is right. Is it the costume that makes the hero or the personality inside?” (Ditko, “A Mini-History 4” 8).

[Frontier]

I am thinking of the later parts of the run, around the Amazing Friends arc, when Gwen, Kitty, Johnny, Iceman are all his friends, and Peter was more or less the leader of that clique. Even then by the time Gwen came on, Peter had a circle of friends and a clique around him and so on. He was definitely a more settled and sorted character by the middle of the run and later.

I was thinking most of the original run, where aside from MJ, Gwen, and maybe Liz and Kong Peter really didn't have much in the way of friends or a social circle. He certainly wasn't "popular."

Ultimate Peter was definitely a more well-adjusted, capable, and intelligent figure than the MCU version. And who in the course of his story came to become the moral center of the entire Ulitmate world.

I think MCU Peter is a lot more well-adjusted then Ultimate Pete was, if only because he has less to angst about and doesn't seem as neurotic. Ultimate Peter in his early days sometimes seemed close to a nervous breakdown with all the problems he had in his life, but MCU Peter is more "happy-go-lucky."

Capable...well, even early on in his career I think Ultimate Pete had a better track record against Supervillains even if he couldn't keep his mask on half the time, so I'll give him that.

[gregpersons]

I was thinking most of the original run, where aside from MJ, Gwen, and maybe Liz and Kong Peter really didn't have much in the way of friends or a social circle. He certainly wasn't "popular."

I think MCU Peter is a lot more well-adjusted then Ultimate Pete was, if only because he has less to angst about and doesn't seem as neurotic. Ultimate Peter in his early days sometimes seemed close to a nervous breakdown with all the problems he had in his life, but MCU Peter is more "happy-go-lucky."

Capable...well, even early on in his career I think Ultimate Pete had a better track record against Supervillains even if he couldn't keep his mask on half the time, so I'll give him that.

Ultimate Peter was more emotional than MCU Peter, more of an angsty hot head -- which tracks well with the original Ditko version. He was never "popular" but he did have friends both in the beginning and later parts of the run. Peter developing a little clique is also true of the Romita era onward.

One of my issues with MCU Peter is how he's too polite, deferential... a little too cutesy. (If there's a "boy band" version of Pete, it's the MCU one.) I also think we don't have a clear understanding of his motivations or his moral code. MCU Spider-Man is a legacy character for Iron Man at this point, but maybe Far From Home will change that.



I think the best version of Peter Parker to be represented on-screen, frankly, is the Jake Johnson version from Into The Spider Verse.

--He makes a bad first impression but learns and demonstrates the value of adult responsibility. That's a pretty cool arc to do with Peter without doing the origin story!

--He's the right mix of emotional sadsack and sardonic chatty quipster

--We have a very clear sense of his moral code

--He's progressed to a point where his story is new and interesting... and in doing so, allows enough space for Miles to be the "high school Spidey"

--He actually moves with the kind of agility you imagine Spidey having when reading the comics!