What did you think of Parker Industries?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

You've never seen him with a victim of a crime or someone down on their luck or in some dire straits thinking, "But I have it so much worse!"

Right, it's just that the way some stories and writers emphasize that it's kind of over-the-top you know.

That's not his nature. At worse, he might ruefully wonder why someone like Johnny Storm gets all the glory while he's public enemy #1. But he would never think of himself as more of a victim than people living through worse situations.

Which reminds me of what to me is the best argument against Parker Luck provided by Dan Slott himself.

Johnny Storm: I don't believe it. How is it possible?
Peter Parker: Well there was this radioactive spider, and—-
Johnny Storm: Not that. I mean, how can just one guy have it all? To grow up and have someone like your Aunt May there...to be this big hotshot photographer...to have a brain the size of Mr. Fantastic's...and the babes! Man, the girls I've seen you with! God, how I envied you. You always had everything going for you!
Peter Parker: What?!
Johnny Storm: Over the years, I even came up with a term for it. I called it 'the Parker luck'.
-->--Spider-Man/Human Torch, Issue #5 "I'm With Stupid", written by Dan Slott. (2005)

But they could have been. Whereas clearly PI, being so removed from classic Spidey scenarios, had an expiration date.

I don't know, I feel PI would have meant more if it was presented as something that could have lasted and worked with Spider-Man.

In universe, it's easy to believe that Peter wouldn't dwell on that revelation and instead would focus his memories of Gwen on the happy aspects of their relationship.

Except in some of those happy memories, Gwen Stacy is not exactly truthful or honest to him...which okay he wasn't that with her either. So maybe he'd accept it in a "I thought I was the one tearing myself lying to her when she felt the same with me". But still, it's not the same.

It's also easy to believe that Peter would not hold any ill will towards Gwen.

Realistically, I think he would. There was that George Clooney movie a few years back, The Descendants. Clooney's character just lost his wife and then after her death, he found out she had an affair with another man and that his daughter knew and he didn't. That movie dealt a lot with the character's difficulty to accept that mix of grief/betrayal/rage and the fact that the entire issue of forgiveness has to be one-sided.

To be honest, I am not someone who cares for Sins' past much as I love the rest of JMS' run (until Sins' Past he didn't write a single bad issue and that's the case for his post-Sins' past work, well except for The Other). I think that story is a disaster and doesn't work...and I am okay with it not being referred to and so on.

[Prof. Warren]

Which reminds me of what to me is the best argument against Parker Luck provided by Dan Slott himself.

Johnny Storm: I don't believe it. How is it possible?
Peter Parker: Well there was this radioactive spider, and—-
Johnny Storm: Not that. I mean, how can just one guy have it all? To grow up and have someone like your Aunt May there...to be this big hotshot photographer...to have a brain the size of Mr. Fantastic's...and the babes! Man, the girls I've seen you with! God, how I envied you. You always had everything going for you!
Peter Parker: What?!
Johnny Storm: Over the years, I even came up with a term for it. I called it 'the Parker luck'.
-->--Spider-Man/Human Torch, Issue #5 "I'm With Stupid", written by Dan Slott. (2005)

That's not an argument against Parker Luck, it's a funny example of how, no matter how much of a failure you feel like, someone always thinks that your life looks pretty good.

Except in some of those happy memories, Gwen Stacy is not exactly truthful or honest to him...which okay he wasn't that with her either. So maybe he'd accept it in a "I thought I was the one tearing myself lying to her when she felt the same with me". But still, it's not the same.

Relationships are flawed. People are flawed. Peter is a forgiving person.

After a partner or spouse dies, often times secrets of one kind or another come out. In most cases, I think the good memories prevail.

Realistically, I think he would. There was that George Clooney movie a few years back, The Descendants. Clooney's character just lost his wife and then after her death, he found out she had an affair with another man and that his daughter knew and he didn't. That movie dealt a lot with the character's difficulty to accept that mix of grief/betrayal/rage and the fact that the entire issue of forgiveness has to be one-sided.

Kind of a different situation, right?

One is very much in the real world. The other is involving an affair with a charismatic super villain with a gift for manipulation, an affair that led to the birth of children that aged to maturity at an accelerated rate who became super villains of a sort themselves. When your world is that crazy on a daily basis, I think you learn not to get too hung up on things that a normal person in a normal life would. Also, this is a comic so naturally less time is going to be devoted to dealing with the aftermath of Peter learning about an affair than to having him move on to the next crisis that needs Spider-Man's attention.

[Lukmendes]

The movie is the only time I felt Spider-Verse felt like an actual Spider-Man story. And even then it kind of emphasizes that it's not really a story that serves Peter all that well .

Well, it helps that to work as a Spidey story, it's not using interchangeable Morluns killing everyone, but instead a Spidey villain with the power to make his dream come true in a way with advanced technology, the most unfitting thing is the usage of the multiverse itself, but yeah, works better with Miles since multiverse is becoming more of his thing, plus it gives him two things from comics Miles, becoming Spider-Man because he couldn't save Peter and having Peter as his mentor for a while, in that order, and because of those things, it just works better with him than it would with Peter.

[Frontier]

Well, it helps that to work as a Spidey story, it's not using interchangeable Morluns killing everyone, but instead a Spidey villain with the power to make his dream come true in a way with advanced technology, the most unfitting thing is the usage of the multiverse itself, but yeah, works better with Miles since multiverse is becoming more of his thing, plus it gives him two things from comics Miles, becoming Spider-Man because he couldn't save Peter and having Peter as his mentor for a while, in that order, and because of those things, it just works better with him than it would with Peter.

And even the Multiverse stuff was more window dressing to the more intimate and core story of Miles coming into his own as Spider-Man, something we really didn't get with the other Spider-Verse stories.

[Lukmendes]

And even the Multiverse stuff was more window dressing to the more intimate and core story of Miles coming into his own as Spider-Man, something we really didn't get with the other Spider-Verse stories.

Yep, ultimately the multiverse is only used as a way to develop Miles as a person and a hero, not some "Epic battle across the multiverse", the movie is still 100% on Earth, and while there is a villain to be stopped, it has a very human side with the development of Peter B. and Miles.

[Huntsman Spider]

Yep, ultimately the multiverse is only used as a way to develop Miles as a person and a hero, not some "Epic battle across the multiverse", the movie is still 100% on Earth, and while there is a villain to be stopped, it has a very human side with the development of Peter B. and Miles.

And even the villain has a human side, too; he just wants his family back and doesn't know (or care) that he's going to tear apart all reality to accomplish that.

[AlexCampy89]

ITSV was successful not for the plot, which is serviceable at best, but because it embraced its comic book Origins instead of being ashamed of it (ehm.. Webb movies... Ehm....Ultimate cartoon.... Ahem... MCU version).

[Prof. Warren]

ITSV was successful not for the plot, which is serviceable at best, but because it embraced its comic book Origins instead of being ashamed of it (ehm.. Webb movies... Ehm....Ultimate cartoon.... Ahem... MCU version).

I don't think any of the Spider-Man adaptations in other media have been ashamed of their comic book origins.

Raimi's films introduced organic webbing but it wasn't out of wanting to reject the comic, it's just what adaptations do. Change things.

All of the adaptations have celebrated the comic in their own ways and have incorporated different elements that other adaptations didn't.

[AlexCampy89]

I don't think any of the Spider-Man adaptations in other media have been ashamed of their comic book origins.

Raimi's films introduced organic webbing but it wasn't out of wanting to reject the comic, it's just what adaptations do. Change things.

All of the adaptations have celebrated the comic in their own ways and have incorporated different elements that other adaptations didn't.

Raimi didn't want web shooters because he thought that it was not credible enough for a teen/fifteener to create such an advanced gizmo.

Few years later, in real life, a teenager really created web shooters very similar to the comic book's ones using just spare parts from other devices.

So yeah, Raimi was ashamed of the comic book Origins of the character. That's why Goblin's laughing mask was replaced with that horrible emotionless helmet that forced William Dafoe to remove it during the final scene.
And many other details.


ITVS was a literal comic book put in motion.
Raimi, Webb and Watt are adaptations. Good for what they are, but not comic books in motion.

[Bloxer]

ITSV was successful not for the plot, which is serviceable at best, but because it embraced its comic book Origins instead of being ashamed of it (ehm.. Webb movies... Ehm....Ultimate cartoon.... Ahem... MCU version).

I'm not seeing how changing things to make more sense or fit more easily for the medium they're in, the continuity they're using and the story they want to tell is being ashamed.
Especially when Spiderverse pretty much changed everything about Miles' character and origin because in the comics he's as exciting as stale bread.

[Prof. Warren]

Raimi didn't want web shooters because he thought that it was not credible enough for a teen/fifteener to create such an advanced gizmo.

Few years later, in real life, a teenager really created web shooters very similar to the comic book's ones using just spare parts from other devices.

So yeah, Raimi was ashamed of the comic book Origins of the character. That's why Goblin's laughing mask was replaced with that horrible emotionless helmet that forced William Dafoe to remove it during the final scene.
And many other details.

To say that Raimi - an unabashed fan of Spider-Man - was "ashamed" is asinine. Every live action adaptation changes things because what works on a comic panel does not always work with actual people in live action. Those changes are not made because of "shame" of the source material, it's because accommodations have to be made going from one medium to another.

ITSV was a literal comic book put in motion.
Raimi, Webb and Watt are adaptations. Good for what they are, but not comic books in motion.

ITSV is animated. So that does, obviously, make it easier to do many of the same things that comics do. But that doesn't mean that the live action films were ashamed of the source material.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Raimi didn't want web shooters because he thought that it was not credible enough for a teen/fifteener to create such an advanced gizmo.

The idea of replacing Peter's webbing with organic was part of James Cameron's screenplay when he was considering to make Spider-Man and that idea carried over with producers and others well before Raimi came. Raimi probably thought it was fine, but it wasn't something he insisted or innovated. It was something widely agreed on at the time.

So yeah, Raimi was ashamed of the comic book Origins of the character.

His movies quite faithfully and literally recreate comic panels.
-- Like the cover of ASM #39 where Peter is carried off by the Goblin was recreated in the bridge scene where Goblin binds Spider-Man in hard steel cables and then flies him to that greenhouse.
-- Goblin getting impaled by the glider which he tries to backstab Peter with only for him to dodge via spider-sense warning and it then impaling him.
-- Casting J. K. Simmons to give us the most accurate comic-character-casting since Shelley Duvall played Olive Oyl.
-- In Spider-Man 2, he recreated JRSR's "Spider-Man no more" splash image.

So there's no evidence to your claim that Raimi was ashamed of comic books. You must be confusing him with the Fox X-Men franchise (they were ashamed and Bryan Singer banned comics on the set).

And again that's neither here nor there. It's possible for film-makers to not care for comics (like James Mangold) and still do a great movie (like LOGAN) and for people to like the comics and still get it wrong.

That's why Goblin's laughing mask was replaced with that horrible emotionless helmet

I actually like the Goblin costume in the movie. And the mask is actually frozen into a snarly grin, and it's a scary looking mask...quite famously in the scene where Goblin attacks Aunt May and with those yellow lenses looking quite demonic.

...that forced William Dafoe to remove it during the final scene.

Huh. The only time Dafoe removed the mask was in the end of that final battle for the obvious fact that it's the first time Goblin is unmasking himself to Spider-Man. Rest of the time he wears it.

ITVS was a literal comic book put in motion.

Which while faithful to different eras of comics in multiple ways is not a literal and accurate adaptation of the Spider-Verse source comics or even Miles Morales' story (for instance Miles' dad Jefferson isn't a cop in the comics) or the original Spider-Men crossovers where Miles met Peter for the first time.

[Agent Z]

If I had a dollar every time a superhero fan accused a creator of being ashamed of the source material, I'd be rich enough to buy both Marvel and DC.

To answer the OP's question, I guess I would say that I don't hate the idea of Parker Industries (the name could have been a bit more original) but I wasn't so attached to the idea that I'm sad to see it go. I would like to see Peter progress in terms of employment.

Maybe PI could have worked in a What If.

[Huntsman Spider]

If I had a dollar every time a superhero fan accused a creator of being ashamed of the source material, I'd be rich enough to buy both Marvel and DC.

To answer the OP's question, I guess I would say that I don't hate the idea of Parker Industries (the name could have been a bit more original) but I wasn't so attached to the idea that I'm sad to see it go. I would like to see Peter progress in terms of employment.

Maybe PI could have worked in a What If.

Technically, it did originate in a What If? In the three-part crossover between Amazing Spider-Man, Incredible Hulks, and Deadpool called Identity Wars, the Peter Parker that would become the flame-skulled Ghost Spider was the head of his own company called Parker Technologies and also a cosmically powerful and beloved hero in his reality, and he got there by luring other Spider-Men to his reality and draining their life-forces to empower himself, kind of like the villainous Jet Li character in The One. Oh, and his Uncle Ben was still alive and had apparently encouraged and assisted him in this scheme.

[Lukmendes]

Technically, it did originate in a What If? In the three-part crossover between Amazing Spider-Man, Incredible Hulks, and Deadpool called Identity Wars, the Peter Parker that would become the flame-skulled Ghost Spider was the head of his own company called Parker Technologies and also a cosmically powerful and beloved hero in his reality, and he got there by luring other Spider-Men to his reality and draining their life-forces to empower himself, kind of like the villainous Jet Li character in The One. Oh, and his Uncle Ben was still alive and had apparently encouraged and assisted him in this scheme.

What the ****?

I know there are plenty of universes out there with Peter remaining a douche if Uncle Ben didn't die, but him being basically a Morlum in this one with Uncle Ben's approval... **** man, **** like this is why I don't take what ifs seriously...

Do you know where that happened? I'm really curious about this one now lol.