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  1. #121
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    Keaton - Gyllenhall - DaFoe

    Everyone else, except ...

    DeHaan's Goblin down at the very bottom.
    Every day is a gift, not a given right.

  2. #122
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    Having watched it recently i will say itīs a cool Spider-Man movie for sure.
    A Spider-Man movie that works really well in the MCU movies as the follow up of the last Avengers movie.
    The main plot of Spider-Man vs Mysterio was very well writen,(all though i was never fooled that Mysterio would not be the villain of this story untill the revelation of Mysterio goal mid movie)
    The Spider Sense being a major way Spider-Man defeats Mysterio is taken from many Spider-Man comic books stories with Mysterio.
    Ever since the first Spider-Man MCU movie i always wondered who could be John Jonah Jameson after J.K.Simmons did such a terrific job in the Sam Raimi trilogy of Spider-Man movies,so itīs cool that they just had him be in the MCU movies for the same role.Briliant.
    And the revelation of Spider-Man secret identity in the end of the movie is not something that bothers me.Thatīs something that i am guessing Peter Parker will be able to sort out without the world knowing he is Spider-Man.In that scene,the fottage does not even show Peter Parker in the Spider-Man costume,it just shows Spider-Man and a unrelated photo of Peter Parker.And would be a cool way to have Peter Parker working for J.J.J. in the next movies.

  3. #123
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    Quote Originally Posted by WebSlingWonder View Post
    WHAT? Gyllenhaal is at the bottom? Nah, man.
    It's not his fault, I just don't think Mysterio being a drone-operating weapons guy rather than a VFX artist is an accurate or interesting take on the character. Connecting him to Stark's corner is the definitive example of a subtractive change rather than an additive change. Quentin Beck in Far From Home in the second half is basically just a one-dimensional villain, so it's not even like this gives him depth or tragedy.

    In general, the writing/casting/acting has to come together to create a whole. That happened with Dafoe and Norman Osborn, and it happened with Keaton and Vulture. But that didn't happen with Molina as Dr. Octopus. Molina was wonderfully cast, did his best, but he's basically playing a romantic happy scientist dude, and then a meat-puppet who affects 30s gangster sensibilities (robbing banks and lighting a cigar while doing so) for zero reason. That's not a character he's playing just a bunch of poses. Same with Quentin Beck's Mysterio. Gyllenhall is a good choice (would have been better if he had Quentin Beck's bowl-cut hairstyle) but again the role doesn't give him a lot to do.

  4. #124
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    It's not his fault, I just don't think Mysterio being a drone-operating weapons guy rather than a VFX artist is an accurate or interesting take on the character. Connecting him to Stark's corner is the definitive example of a subtractive change rather than an additive change. Quentin Beck in Far From Home in the second half is basically just a one-dimensional villain, so it's not even like this gives him depth or tragedy.

    In general, the writing/casting/acting has to come together to create a whole. That happened with Dafoe and Norman Osborn, and it happened with Keaton and Vulture. But that didn't happen with Molina as Dr. Octopus. Molina was wonderfully cast, did his best, but he's basically playing a romantic happy scientist dude, and then a meat-puppet who affects 30s gangster sensibilities (robbing banks and lighting a cigar while doing so) for zero reason. That's not a character he's playing just a bunch of poses. Same with Quentin Beck's Mysterio. Gyllenhall is a good choice (would have been better if he had Quentin Beck's bowl-cut hairstyle) but again the role doesn't give him a lot to do.
    I don't know, man. Mysterio and Ock both had a well rounded story attached to them. Even the whole Stark thing for Mysterio allowed him to be updated and modernized without being corny (and trust me: I love Mysterio)

  5. #125
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    Quote Originally Posted by WebSlingWonder View Post
    Even the whole Stark thing for Mysterio allowed him to be updated and modernized without being corny (and trust me: I love Mysterio)
    In the case of Mysterio.

    -- His whole deal is that Tony stole credit for his work and renamed his product. Is this motivation supposed to get us to sympathize with Beck and see him as tragic/empathetic? Does it lead to other characters coming to terms and passing judgment on Stark's legacy in a manner that's different? Does it lead anywhere? No. It would have worked just as well to make Mysterio a guy who wants to rob banks than what we have now, and much better, and more satisfying. Fans of Tony Stark can feel better without a posthumous character assassination, while others can be happy with Spider-Man dealing with a random, independent threat.

    -- How is Mysterio siccing an entire swarm of drones on Spider-Man in the climax something unique to him alone? Didn't Ultron send a bunch of drones to fight the heroes. Recently, HUNTED had Kraven and Arcade send in a much of attack drones, and people said that this could be done by anyone, well I think that applies even more so here since in the case of Hunted with the dome, "it's not hard to see the theme there".

    In the case of Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man 2,
    --I think the entire story is undermined fatally by taking any agency and accountability from Otto's actions and presenting him as a tragic figure without him actually earning the right to be tragic. The PS4 game did that better and never once let Otto off the hook unlike Raimi's film, where it's entirely the fault of the Tentacles for him becoming Dr. Octopus and he would otherwise be this decent man without it. I mean Defalco's retconned-in backstories and so on, identified that the Otto before the accident wasn't incapable of sin. Because of this Otto doesn't become a fully realized character there.
    -- Spider-Man 2 is also unsatisfying because Spider-Man doesn't beat up and defeat Ock in the finale which he does to Norman in SM-1 and FWIW, Mysterio in FFH. The big battle that Spider-Man has with Otto in the train sequence becomes this self-contained mini-9/11 allegory that has nothing to do with the rest of the film. Otto is this terrorist who attacks a moving vehicle and Spider-Man risks himself and life and limb to save everyone on board, and in gratitude the people try and vainly defend him against Otto. I am sorry after seeing that, I feel cheated if the finale of the movie ends with us crying tears for Otto as he sinks in the ocean. And also, consider the fight in The Owl/Octopus War where Spider-Man and Otto fight crawling across walls and across the city and so on and Milgrom and Mantlo chart out a fight that works with just the two of them.

    Compare that to Norman in Spider-Man 1
    -- Norman is tragic but he has agency for his actions. The Norman before the transformation wasn't entirely a good guy. And we can sense that he's repressing a lot of issues. Likewise, even when Norman knows that he has an alternate personality that's a murderer, he doesn't confess or turn himself in when he does have control in his "real" personality.
    -- The movie ends with Spider-Man beating the Goblin up. Likewise, the fights between Spider-Man and Goblin only work between them. You need Goblin to fly around and so on for the bridge scene and other scenes between them to work. So it's visually dynamic and satisfying.

  6. #126
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    In the case of Mysterio.

    -- His whole deal is that Tony stole credit for his work and renamed his product. Is this motivation supposed to get us to sympathize with Beck and see him as tragic/empathetic? Does it lead to other characters coming to terms and passing judgment on Stark's legacy in a manner that's different? Does it lead anywhere? No. It would have worked just as well to make Mysterio a guy who wants to rob banks than what we have now, and much better, and more satisfying. Fans of Tony Stark can feel better without a posthumous character assassination, while others can be happy with Spider-Man dealing with a random, independent threat.
    It’s only a character assassination if you take Beck at his word after he’s revealed as a liar. Beck is slandering a man who isn’t alive to defend himself while Beck pretty much proves himself to be as unstable as Stark allegedly accused him of being.


    In the case of Dr. Octopus in Spider-Man 2,
    --I think the entire story is undermined fatally by taking any agency and accountability from Otto's actions and presenting him as a tragic figure without him actually earning the right to be tragic. The PS4 game did that better and never once let Otto off the hook unlike Raimi's film, where it's entirely the fault of the Tentacles for him becoming Dr. Octopus and he would otherwise be this decent man without it. I mean Defalco's retconned-in backstories and so on, identified that the Otto before the accident wasn't incapable of sin. Because of this Otto doesn't become a fully realized character there.
    This is a rather narrow-minded view of what counts as a fully realized character here. Just because Otto wasn’t an utter scum bag before the accident (which happened because of his own ignoring of safety protocols mind you) doesn’t mean he wasn’t well developed and well written.


    -- Spider-Man 2 is also unsatisfying because Spider-Man doesn't beat up and defeat Ock in the finale which he does to Norman in SM-1 and FWIW, Mysterio in FFH.
    That doesn’t make it unsatisfying. It just makes it different from those other movies.


    The big battle that Spider-Man has with Otto in the train sequence becomes this self-contained mini-9/11 allegory that has nothing to do with the rest of the film. Otto is this terrorist who attacks a moving vehicle and Spider-Man risks himself and life and limb to save everyone on board, and in gratitude the people try and vainly defend him against Otto. I am sorry after seeing that, I feel cheated if the finale of the movie ends with us crying tears for Otto as he sinks in the ocean. And also, consider the fight in The Owl/Octopus War where Spider-Man and Otto fight crawling across walls and across the city and so on and Milgrom and Mantlo chart out a fight that works with just the two of them.
    Now you’re just very clearly projecting.

    Compare that to Norman in Spider-Man 1
    -- Norman is tragic but he has agency for his actions. The Norman before the transformation wasn't entirely a good guy.
    And you’re basing this on what? That he’s not able to spend as much time as he wants with his son because of how busy he is?

  7. #127
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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
    It’s only a character assassination if you take Beck at his word after he’s revealed as a liar.
    Then why does the movie spend so much time at it, and why does it not give definitive evidence that Beck is wrong. The movie clearly wants you to believe that what Beck is saying there is true. Besides, Beck is surrounded by at least 10-15 former Stark employees including box-with-scraps guy. That's a lot of people to back him up and support his view of Tony in the eyes of audiences, and nothing to contradict him.

    This is a rather narrow-minded view of what counts as a fully realized character here.
    Well, what counts as a fully realized character in your view? In my view, a fully realized character is one where the on-screen action and overall theme and subtext are entirely unified. Like the action scene works to communicate something about the character and the way it ties to the story and so on.

    Just because Otto wasn’t an utter scum bag before the accident (which happened because of his own ignoring of safety protocols mind you) doesn’t mean he wasn’t well developed and well written.
    Dafoe's Goblin wasn't utter scum either. He just had some essential character flaws that was consistent with what we saw with Goblin. In the case of Molina's Dr. Octopus, he is essentially another character under control by the tentacles. Mental trauma and radiation can only account for so much. In such science-fiction stories, the usual rule is that the altered state reflects something about the character, but we don't get that with Dr. Octopus there.

    And you’re basing this on what? That he’s not able to spend as much time as he wants with his son because of how busy he is?
    Maybe it's understandable to some extent why parents neglect their children, but under no scenario is neglecting your child (especially a kid whose mother doesn't play a big role in his life) make you a good person by any definition of the term.

  8. #128
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Then why does the movie spend so much time at it, and why does it not give definitive evidence that Beck is wrong.
    The fact he’s revealed as a fraud is more than enough evidence that what he’s saying about Tony isn’t entirely true. Especially when, again, Tony was never shown taking credit for the BARF technology.



    The movie clearly wants you to believe that what Beck is saying there is true. Besides, Beck is surrounded by at least 10-15 former Stark employees including box-with-scraps guy. That's a lot of people to back him up and support his view of Tony in the eyes of audiences, and nothing to contradict him.
    It appears William Ginter Riva’s beef isn’t based on anything Stark actually did to him but rather the fact that Stane yelled at him for not being as smart as Stark. His and Beck’s grudges are the only ones really elaborated on. So we have one guy who was accused of being unstable which he then goes to prove is true and another guy who hates Stark for basically having existed not because of something Stark actually did to him. Hell, even if Stark did fire the guy it would likely be due to him working for Stane. Either way, I fail to see how the presence of these two guys means the band of angry ex-Stark employees are righteously enraged victims and nothing more than petty thieves and murderers. There is only so much that can be excused by “Tony Stark allegedly ruined my life”.


    Well, what counts as a fully realized character in your view? In my view, a fully realized character is one where the on-screen action and overall theme and subtext are entirely unified. Like the action scene works to communicate something about the character and the way it ties to the story and so on.
    My idea of a fully realized character is one whose personality is established from the beginning and whose story I find appropriately compelling regardless of whatever arbitrary rules it supposedly breaks. Molina’s Octavius won me over with his line about intelligence being a gift not a privilege, his grief over his wife’s death and his sacrifice to undo his mistake. That for me is enough.





    Dafoe's Goblin wasn't utter scum either. He just had some essential character flaws that was consistent with what we saw with Goblin. In the case of Molina's Dr. Octopus, he is essentially another character under control by the tentacles. Mental trauma and radiation can only account for so much. In such science-fiction stories, the usual rule is that the altered state reflects something about the character, but we don't get that with Dr. Octopus there.
    That’s a common trope in such stories but not a hard and fast rule.


    Maybe it's understandable to some extent why parents neglect their children, but under no scenario is neglecting your child (especially a kid whose mother doesn't play a big role in his life) make you a good person by any definition of the term.
    I feel neglect gets tossed around to casually these days in regards to balancing career and family.

  9. #129
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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
    My idea of a fully realized character is one whose personality is established from the beginning and whose story I find appropriately compelling regardless of whatever arbitrary rules it supposedly breaks. Molina’s Octavius won me over with his line about intelligence being a gift not a privilege, his grief over his wife’s death and his sacrifice to undo his mistake. That for me is enough.
    That is basically the hook or set-up, and not the throughline. The initial establishing of the character. That is sufficient for supporting characters and minor characters (like JK Simmons' Jameson is basically the character established in that introduction scene in Spider-Man 1 and stays that way across the trilogy) but not a character who is expected to change and develop over the course of a movie. For that you need to develop an arc. When you develop an arc, you write with an end-goal in mind and steps along the way to show how the character went from point A to point B and then point C. The overall goal at the arc, is that the end-state and overall picture stay consistent. That even if it's sad or tragic that a guy went from decent to scumbag, you have to do the hard work in making it so that it fits.

    Otherwise you get stuff like the Game of Thrones finale and its mess. Spider-Man 2 isn't that bad, thank goodness.

    In the case of Otto Octavius, he's a decent kind scientist, then he has this accident and then gets the arms grafted on to him, and the first thing he does is...mass murder an entire hospital full of people like some horror movie, then he decides to complete "the experiment", and starts robbing banks and not reluctantly or robotically, but actually wearing sunglasses and then smoking a cigar like he's some Dick Tracy gangster. Then he commits a terrorist attack that if it had not been for Spider-Man would surely have become a 9/11 type incident. Then the finale has us...forgive him. No that doesn't work. You can say it wasn't his fault, he didn't mean it, but the story doesn't do a good job of making that work.

    Take Hulk. Yeah his actions cause rampage and collateral damage, and he isn't in his right mind, but the stories make it clear that hulk wants to be left alone and he does his best to do that, and its the US military who go out and antagonize him and so on. That's the main reason why the Hulk was this anti-establishment figure among counter-culture types and others.

    I feel neglect gets tossed around to casually these days in regards to balancing career and family.
    There are people with double-income households who work late who still make the best of their time with the kids, and so on. So that's no excuse. A lot of working single parents (such as Aunt May in ultimate spider-Man) put in effort for their kids. And Norman is rich. He can create a set-up where he works at home to be closer to Harry growing up. Norman didn't even try to be there for Harry in the movies, and for that matter, the comics too.

  10. #130
    Mighty Member Chubistian's Avatar
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    Doc Ock has a great narrative arc. His transition from kind to evil, though abrupt thanks to the accident, speaks about his character.

    The accident took away his empathy, but the qualities he shows later are extreme takings of qualities he had from before the accident. His arrogance and stubbornness were what caused the death of his wife and the explosion in the first place, and those same qualities are what moves him to complete his experiment even if he destroys half of NY.

    His redemption is a great closure to his previous flaws, where he admits how wrong he was and becomes aware of what he has turn into.

    The murder at the hospital was done while he was still recovering from the explosion and we are left to wonder if it was done by the tentacles who count with some AI and thoughts of their own or if the personality and influence the tentacles have over Doc Ock are just projections of his subconscient.

    About the cigar stuff, Raimi loves tropes (though Doctor Octopus has had smoke cigars in comics)

    Mysterio in Far From Home, once revealed as a villain, was one of my favorite aspects of the movie. I think FFH has the same flaws that Homecoming did, though with both movies I had a lot of fun, I have a lot of reservations about them. But that whole sequence of Mysterio directing a combat against an Eternal or the fight scene where Spider-Man loses were a great translation of his comic counterpart. As much as I don't like that both MCU Spider-Man movies's villains are actually there because they blame Iron Man for something, the reason of how Mysterio managed his deceptions are plausible with the MCU and I didn't feel the need of him having an Special Effects background because he had an approach to cinema anyways through his actions and they maintained his role as a master of delusion
    Last edited by Chubistian; 07-28-2019 at 01:32 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chubistian View Post
    Doc Ock has a great narrative arc. His transition from kind to evil, though abrupt thanks to the accident, speaks about his character.

    The accident took away his empathy, but the qualities he shows later are extreme takings of qualities he had from before the accident. His arrogance and stubbornness were what caused the death of his wife and the explosion in the first place, and those same qualities are what moves him to complete his experiment even if he destroys half of NY.
    We don't see Otto being arrogant and stubborn before the accident. He's a nice and kind man. Unlike Norman where his obsession with work and finding this government contract drives him to desperately experiment on himself despite warnings about the dangers of the drug, there wasn't a hint before that the experiment would be dangerous and so on. Otto says the opposite, he tells Peter that he shouldn't let his commitment to science drive people away from him. I guess Raimi wanted to contrast Otto with Norman and show that even a guy well-kept together could go postal as opposed to Norman who isn't. That makes sense on paper and it more or less is Dr. Connors' story, only given to Otto.

    His redemption is a great closure to his previous flaws, where he admits how wrong he was and becomes aware of what he has turn into.
    I don't think a guy who commits a terrorist attack should be forgiven or capable of being so. The PS4 game accepted that and admits Otto isn't worth it at the end.

    Dr. Octopus killed way more people in Spider-Man 2 than Vulture (just 1 for those keeping count, that Shocker fool who Adrian zapped with that Chitauri gun) or Mysterio did (at least no civilian casualties are listed anywhere in his shtick), and yet people condemn Vulture and insist that Ock redeemed himself.

  12. #132
    Mighty Member Chubistian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    We don't see Otto being arrogant and stubborn before the accident. He's a nice and kind man. Unlike Norman where his obsession with work and finding this government contract drives him to desperately experiment on himself despite warnings about the dangers of the drug, there wasn't a hint before that the experiment would be dangerous and so on. Otto says the opposite, he tells Peter that he shouldn't let his commitment to science drive people away from him. I guess Raimi wanted to contrast Otto with Norman and show that even a guy well-kept together could go postal as opposed to Norman who isn't. That makes sense on paper and it more or less is Dr. Connors' story, only given to Otto.



    I don't think a guy who commits a terrorist attack should be forgiven or capable of being so. The PS4 game accepted that and admits Otto isn't worth it at the end.

    Dr. Octopus killed way more people in Spider-Man 2 than Vulture (just 1 for those keeping count, that Shocker fool who Adrian zapped with that Chitauri gun) or Mysterio did (at least no civilian casualties are listed anywhere in his shtick), and yet people condemn Vulture and insist that Ock redeemed himself.
    I don't forgive Otto either, even when his brain was affected by the accident. But at the end he did regret what he had done and sacrificed himself, while Norman never did so, same with his Ps4 counterpart, which shows that there was still some of old Otto left.

    His stubbornness is shown when he refuses to stop the experiment, which led to the accident. Before that we had only seen one part of Otto. When he choses not to stop, consumed by the feel of power, ignoring the fear on his wife's face and even attacking Spider-Man, it shows a part we didn't know about him which contributes to give him more depth, and that also paves the way to his transformation into Doctor Octopus. In movies, when characters react to something, and depending which actions they take, is when we see their true personality
    Last edited by Chubistian; 07-28-2019 at 02:16 PM.
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  13. #133
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    We don't see Otto being arrogant and stubborn before the accident. He's a nice and kind man. Unlike Norman where his obsession with work and finding this government contract drives him to desperately experiment on himself despite warnings about the dangers of the drug, there wasn't a hint before that the experiment would be dangerous and so on. Otto says the opposite, he tells Peter that he shouldn't let his commitment to science drive people away from him. I guess Raimi wanted to contrast Otto with Norman and show that even a guy well-kept together could go postal as opposed to Norman who isn't. That makes sense on paper and it more or less is Dr. Connors' story, only given to Otto.



    I don't think a guy who commits a terrorist attack should be forgiven or capable of being so. The PS4 game accepted that and admits Otto isn't worth it at the end.

    Dr. Octopus killed way more people in Spider-Man 2 than Vulture (just 1 for those keeping count, that Shocker fool who Adrian zapped with that Chitauri gun) or Mysterio did (at least no civilian casualties are listed anywhere in his shtick), and yet people condemn Vulture and insist that Ock redeemed himself.
    Do you even know what a terrorist attack actually is?

    Otto was under the control of a corrupt A.I. What was Vulture's excuse? That he was mad at Tony Stark. Also, if you consider the damage people do with those weapons, then Vulture has more blood on his hands than Otto.

  14. #134
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Some interesting details about how Mysterio was manipulating Spidey.

    https://comicbook.com/marvel/2019/10...-peter-parker/
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    Some interesting details about how Mysterio was manipulating Spidey.

    https://comicbook.com/marvel/2019/10...-peter-parker/
    He obviously understands the usefulness of visual imprinting...

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