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  1. #166
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    If you mean Kirsten Dunst, she's long been a respected actress. Appearing in a number of cool and interesting films as a child star (like Small Soldiers by Joe Dante), before breaking out with The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola, a movie that put both of them on the map. After breaking it big as Spider-Man, she appeared in a number of films (working with Sofia Coppola a few times) and won a prize at Cannes for Melancholia.

    So it's ridiculous to claim Ann Margret has won more accolades than Kirsten Dunst. Sure she appeared in Carnal Knowledge, which is a fairly minor film of '70s American cinema (granted, even minor '70s films are probably more interesting than major films made today) but it's certainly not a great film, or among Jack Nicholson's best, nor was she ranked among the defining actresses of '70s Hollywood (Faye Dunaway, Julie Christie, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton to name a few). As for Tommy, it's a cult movie at best, and not among Russell's best (THE DEVILS).


    The Misfits? River of No Return? Bus Stop? Or what about her supporting turns in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve? The real problem with Monroe was actually her desire to be "taken seriously", she fell under the spell of Strasberg (who completely misinterpreted the Method and made things worse) and second guessed her performances and that led to overwork and reliance on sleeping pills, and well y'know. She'd have been better off, and lived longer had she done the comedies and it's a pity nobody valued that. But in either case she certainly proved her talent several times over.
    I



    A bit of both. It's not the worst idea in the world to cast an actor with life experiences similar to the character. That's why Robert Downey Jr. was cast as Iron Man after all. A story about a 40 year old dude in a mid-life crisis who had a notorious media reputation...cast a 40-year old actor in a mid-life crisis who had a notorious media reputation. I am speaking of course platonically, not literally. The fact is that it's extremely difficult to cast a comics character in live-action. In the case of Iron Man, by casting Downey Jr he totally changed the character and updated someone who was originally a Howard Hughes/Errol Flynn mashup. The original choices for Iron Man - Tom Cruise, Jude Law - reflect the Hughes/Flynn lineage better. It's still good casting but it's not the character in the comics.

    Casting any part is hard but for a comics character you have to cast a character who's essentially visualized and realized and dramatized fully in art. If you do the "jackpot" moment in movies to do it right, you need to do a character entrance as immediately iconic and transcendent as say, Han Solo in A NEW HOPE in the Mos Eisley Cantina, or Darth Vader at the start of ANH or Harry Lime in "The Third Man". And you can't recreate the comics in movies and expect that to have the same effect.

    There's basically two perfect castings in the entire history of comic book movies:
    -- Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl in Robert Altman's POPEYE. Altman struck gold when he cast an actress who looked like Olive Oyl (both comics and cartoons), moved like Olive Oyl and who could imitate the voice. It's almost criminally accurate in terms of casting. You literally can't do it better.
    -- J. K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson. The opening scene in the mid-point of Spider-Man 1 where you saw Jameson hold court in the Bugle Editorial was electric because vocally, visually, and performatively, you went "That's the guy". It's uncanny.**

    And it's extremely hard to get that kind of casting for Peter Parker or Mary Jane Watson because those characters evolved over the long run.
    -- In the case of Peter Parker, you would ideally need to cast someone who looks like Ditko Peter but who midway becomes Romita Peter, a bit like how the actor who played Neville Longbottom in the HP movies looked scrawny and scared in the first movie appropriate to how he was introduced but the child actor had a growth spurt and became more charismatic and handsome. The Spider-Movies we have essentially make one or two choices rather than cast with an eye to evolve. So Tobey Maguire is visually Ditko Peter (boxy-headed) but he's cast in a character who's supposed to grow and evolve across the first film (midway he graduates high school). Garfield was cast as Romita!Peter and that makes sense, his face has the angular lines and the longer hair of the college-era except they cast him in high school and situate it there and not pick it up when he's older. So they make the backwards-ass decision. Tom Holland is again Ditko!Peter and this time he's the youngest actor but then you run into the Daniel Radcliffe problem where basically the young kid actor you cast as franchise lead doesn't actually have the charisma and presence to be a real leading man (something that Radcliffe is aware of and has such used his considerable wealth to basically be a character actor as a form of amusing hobby) and Tom Holland's Peter simply can't carry a film the way that both Tobey and Andrew could. You have many scenes in the Raimi and Webb movies where you have Peter by himself and the drama is interesting because the actors are able to engage the audience, but Holland is a chattering box all the time and always in two-handers with someone or some-voice because he's better as a character actor.

    -- In the case of Mary Jane, you need to cast a young actress who is essentially making her film debut (i.e. someone without previous movie or media experience to build associations) and then when you see her, she's suddenly the biggest thing ever. You need to discover the next Marilyn Monroe to get that effect. The closest in recent cinema was Margot Robbie in The Wolf of Wall Street, where overnight you had a brand new star. Robbie had appeared in some Australian TV shows but was a total unknown. Then she worked in a major movie with the greatest living American director and the biggest male star and more than held her own. And again that's a very tall ask for basically a single panel-effect. Ultimately if you focus on the character that ultimately developed in the comics -- a girl from a broken home struggling to find her place, you can work with that, and that's how they portrayed Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane. In the case of Zendaya's MJ, you have someone with a more contemporary affect for the weird energy that MJ had in the early comics (where she was Stan Lee's attempt at writing a hippie...i.e badly) into someone interested in activism and trolling people for amusement. Zendaya's MJ gets that the character is supposed to be funny and light-spirited (albeit with dramatic moments as well).

    Generally, I find Zendaya's MJ better casting than Tom Holland as Peter, but on the whole the entire conception of the film just doesn't serve the characters. The MCU Spider-Man is essentially sexless and fixated on male daddy figures. That's a total disservice to Peter aka the most heterosexual man in comics. It doesn't foreground the love story and romance. At heart the story of Spider-Man is the love story of Peter and Mary Jane, that's the throughline that connects the entire continuity and the Raimi films got that. I get that the story being about teenagers in high school might make Disney weird about tackling that but the solution is age up the characters, after all Peter met MJ when they were in college and not high school.

    ** To elaborate on JK Simmons and Jameson. Perfect casting doesn't always lead to a fully rounded and accurate portrayal of the character. As great as Simmons is as Jameson, the Raimi movies generally don't give him much to do after the first film and he's basically there as comic relief after that. Great scenes but the Jameson of the comics is a complex, gray, and deeply fascinating character with a lot of nuance, and ultimately it's a pity that Raimi and the writers didn't allow Simmons' Jameson any avenue to grow. So sometimes perfect casting doesn't lead to perfect characterization.
    Points I agree with 1: Marilyn ( I made the point before). 2: Simmons. 3: Dunaway ( great in Chinatown ( my favorite Nicholson film)). Points I disagree with. 1: Shelley Duvall. Did not like Popeye. Perfect casting of a comic book character? What about KeatonÂ’s Batman? Michael Caine as Alfred? Caine with the exception of Robert Duval and possibly Robert DeNiro has the best film resume of the past half a century. 2: Julie Christie? Try the Redgrave Sisters, Maggie Smith or Diana Rigg as better British Actresses of that era. 4: Dunst over Ann-Margaret? Ann-Margaret can sing, act and dance ( she has headlined in Vegas). Ann-Margaret is also way hotter then Dunst. Who is hotter then Ann-Margaret? Salma Hayak, Hedy Lamar, Marilyn, Maria Conchita Alonso, Fay Wray, Rita Hayworth, Kim Basinger, Elsa Martinelli ( a personal favorite of mine), Jean Harlow and of course, Bardot and of course Sophia Loren. That is about it. I can think of about 100 ( or more) better looking actresses then Dunst ( including Emma Stone). The hotness is important because MJ is supposed to be hot not sweet ( like Dunst was).

  2. #167
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    If you mean Kirsten Dunst, she's long been a respected actress. Appearing in a number of cool and interesting films as a child star (like Small Soldiers by Joe Dante), before breaking out with The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola, a movie that put both of them on the map. After breaking it big as Spider-Man, she appeared in a number of films (working with Sofia Coppola a few times) and won a prize at Cannes for Melancholia.

    So it's ridiculous to claim Ann Margret has won more accolades than Kirsten Dunst. Sure she appeared in Carnal Knowledge, which is a fairly minor film of '70s American cinema (granted, even minor '70s films are probably more interesting than major films made today) but it's certainly not a great film, or among Jack Nicholson's best, nor was she ranked among the defining actresses of '70s Hollywood (Faye Dunaway, Julie Christie, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton to name a few). As for Tommy, it's a cult movie at best, and not among Russell's best (THE DEVILS).
    Ann-Margret has won multiple Golden Globes, an Emmy, and has had two academy award nominations (one of which was for best lead actress mind you.) Kirsten has none. In terms of award nominations Ann has about 34 and Kirsten is at 31. Not to knock Kirsten's talent, but it's asinine to dismiss Anne the way you had.

    And Kirsten will likely not be remembered as one of best actresses of the 2000s (nor do I think it's necessary for the casting of MJ) so it's odd to hold Ann to a different standard.


    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    The Misfits? River of No Return? Bus Stop? Or what about her supporting turns in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve? The real problem with Monroe was actually her desire to be "taken seriously", she fell under the spell of Strasberg (who completely misinterpreted the Method and made things worse) and second guessed her performances and that led to overwork and reliance on sleeping pills, and well y'know. She'd have been better off, and lived longer had she done the comedies and it's a pity nobody valued that. But in either case she certainly proved her talent several times over.
    I have not watched The Asphalt Jungle, but her role in All About Eve barely amounted to anything and was again a comedic role. You're also ignoring the fact that Marilyn was notoriously difficult to work with as a result of her mental health issues and had trouble completing projects. I like Marilyn, but I think she's garnered a bit of a cultish following since her death as a result of her very public tragic image. Interestingly enough, Tommy sort of pokes fun at this.
    Last edited by Spider-Tiger; 04-10-2021 at 07:30 AM.

  3. #168
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spider-Tiger View Post
    Ann-Margret has won multiple Golden Globes, an Emmy, and has had two academy award nominations (one of which was for best lead actress mind you.) Kirsten has none.
    She won an award at the Cannes Film Festival, which is certainly worth a lot more than the Golden Globes, lol. Kirsten Dunst has appeared in a notable number of films by major talent (Joe Dante, Neil Jordan, Sam Raimi, Sofia Coppola, Lars von Trier) so cinephiles and critics respect her greatly and they are the ones who ultimately set the standards.

    On the whole Kirsten Dunst along with JK Simmons and Willem Dafoe have the most significant career out of the cast of Spider-Man 1.

    You're also ignoring the fact that Marilyn was notoriously difficult to work with
    So was Brando. Being difficult to work with has nothing to do with assessing what's there on screen. Not that I am saying she's as great as Brando but it's got nothing to do with anything.

    ...as a result of her mental health issues and had trouble completing projects.
    Those issues got exacerbated when she went under Strasberg. Number of biographers, and Arthur Miller himself, admitted this was the case. Strasberg's approach to Method Acting, worked for some, but it didn't work for others. And for those it didn't work for, the results were often disastrous.

    Oh another great supporting turn by Marilyn in an amazing dramatic role, including an amazing close-up scene at the end...Fritz Lang's Clash by Night.

  4. #169
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    ^ I never said that Kirsten didn't win awards or accolades. That's really tangential to the point that I was trying to make.

    You are the one that considered Marilyn's personal life in the casting process...so I did as well. Anyway, I really dont care to get into a debate about the merits of Munroe because that's not what these boards are for.

  5. #170
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spider-Tiger View Post
    Anyway, I really dont care to get into a debate about the merits of Munroe because that's not what these boards are for.
    So you can now respond the to rest of my last big post which mostly talked about the mechanics of casting comic book characters and why it's hard to cast someone accurate to these characters because of medium differences. Only a small part of it got into the debate on the merits of Ann Margret's career.

    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Casting any part is hard but for a comics character you have to cast a character who's essentially visualized and realized and dramatized fully in art. If you do the "jackpot" moment in movies to do it right, you need to do a character entrance as immediately iconic and transcendent as say, Han Solo in A NEW HOPE in the Mos Eisley Cantina, or Darth Vader at the start of ANH or Harry Lime in "The Third Man". And you can't recreate the comics in movies and expect that to have the same effect.

    There's basically two perfect castings in the entire history of comic book movies:
    -- Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl in Robert Altman's POPEYE. Altman struck gold when he cast an actress who looked like Olive Oyl (both comics and cartoons), moved like Olive Oyl and who could imitate the voice. It's almost criminally accurate in terms of casting. You literally can't do it better.
    -- J. K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson. The opening scene in the mid-point of Spider-Man 1 where you saw Jameson hold court in the Bugle Editorial was electric because vocally, visually, and performatively, you went "That's the guy". It's uncanny.**

    And it's extremely hard to get that kind of casting for Peter Parker or Mary Jane Watson because those characters evolved over the long run.
    -- In the case of Peter Parker, you would ideally need to cast someone who looks like Ditko Peter but who midway becomes Romita Peter, a bit like how the actor who played Neville Longbottom in the HP movies looked scrawny and scared in the first movie appropriate to how he was introduced but the child actor had a growth spurt and became more charismatic and handsome. The Spider-Movies we have essentially make one or two choices rather than cast with an eye to evolve. So Tobey Maguire is visually Ditko Peter (boxy-headed) but he's cast in a character who's supposed to grow and evolve across the first film (midway he graduates high school). Garfield was cast as Romita!Peter and that makes sense, his face has the angular lines and the longer hair of the college-era except they cast him in high school and situate it there and not pick it up when he's older. So they make the backwards-ass decision. Tom Holland is again Ditko!Peter and this time he's the youngest actor but then you run into the Daniel Radcliffe problem where basically the young kid actor you cast as franchise lead doesn't actually have the charisma and presence to be a real leading man (something that Radcliffe is aware of and has such used his considerable wealth to basically be a character actor as a form of amusing hobby) and Tom Holland's Peter simply can't carry a film the way that both Tobey and Andrew could. You have many scenes in the Raimi and Webb movies where you have Peter by himself and the drama is interesting because the actors are able to engage the audience, but Holland is a chattering box all the time and always in two-handers with someone or some-voice because he's better as a character actor.

    -- In the case of Mary Jane, you need to cast a young actress who is essentially making her film debut (i.e. someone without previous movie or media experience to build associations) and then when you see her, she's suddenly the biggest thing ever. You need to discover the next Marilyn Monroe to get that effect. The closest in recent cinema was Margot Robbie in The Wolf of Wall Street, where overnight you had a brand new star. Robbie had appeared in some Australian TV shows but was a total unknown. Then she worked in a major movie with the greatest living American director and the biggest male star and more than held her own. And again that's a very tall ask for basically a single panel-effect. Ultimately if you focus on the character that ultimately developed in the comics -- a girl from a broken home struggling to find her place, you can work with that, and that's how they portrayed Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane. In the case of Zendaya's MJ, you have someone with a more contemporary affect for the weird energy that MJ had in the early comics (where she was Stan Lee's attempt at writing a hippie...i.e badly) into someone interested in activism and trolling people for amusement. Zendaya's MJ gets that the character is supposed to be funny and light-spirited (albeit with dramatic moments as well).

    Generally, I find Zendaya's MJ better casting than Tom Holland as Peter, but on the whole the entire conception of the film just doesn't serve the characters. The MCU Spider-Man is essentially sexless and fixated on male daddy figures. That's a total disservice to Peter aka the most heterosexual man in comics. It doesn't foreground the love story and romance. At heart the story of Spider-Man is the love story of Peter and Mary Jane, that's the throughline that connects the entire continuity and the Raimi films got that. I get that the story being about teenagers in high school might make Disney weird about tackling that but the solution is age up the characters, after all Peter met MJ when they were in college and not high school.

    ** To elaborate on JK Simmons and Jameson. Perfect casting doesn't always lead to a fully rounded and accurate portrayal of the character. As great as Simmons is as Jameson, the Raimi movies generally don't give him much to do after the first film and he's basically there as comic relief after that. Great scenes but the Jameson of the comics is a complex, gray, and deeply fascinating character with a lot of nuance, and ultimately it's a pity that Raimi and the writers didn't allow Simmons' Jameson any avenue to grow. So sometimes perfect casting doesn't lead to perfect characterization.

  6. #171
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    She won an award at the Cannes Film Festival, which is certainly worth a lot more than the Golden Globes, lol. Kirsten Dunst has appeared in a notable number of films by major talent (Joe Dante, Neil Jordan, Sam Raimi, Sofia Coppola, Lars von Trier) so cinephiles and critics respect her greatly and they are the ones who ultimately set the standards.

    On the whole Kirsten Dunst along with JK Simmons and Willem Dafoe have the most significant career out of the cast of Spider-Man 1.



    So was Brando. Being difficult to work with has nothing to do with assessing what's there on screen. Not that I am saying she's as great as Brando but it's got nothing to do with anything.




    Those issues got exacerbated when she went under Strasberg. Number of biographers, and Arthur Miller himself, admitted this was the case. Strasberg's approach to Method Acting, worked for some, but it didn't work for others. And for those it didn't work for, the results were often disastrous.

    Oh another great supporting turn by Marilyn in an amazing dramatic role, including an amazing close-up scene at the end...Fritz Lang's Clash by Night.
    One excellent Marilyn movie was DonÂ’t Bother To Knock with Richard Widmark. Lots of actors are difficult to work with. Errol Flynn, John Barrymore, Miriam Hopkins, Richard Burton, Joan Crawford and Oliver Reed to name a few not just Marilyn. Marilyn at least was not a miserable human being like Hopkins, Reed or Brando. On the movie The Freshman: “I hate to admit it but I enjoyed making that movie.” ( Marlon Brando). “ They try and put Joel McCrea in my movies, because he is the only person who can get along with me.” ( Miriam Hopkins). Hopkins and McCrea once did a film called Barbary Coast with Edward G. Robinson. Robinson once hit her exceptional hard, and the entire cast and crew applauded. That is how unprofessional she was.
    Last edited by NC_Yankee; 04-10-2021 at 09:28 AM.

  7. #172
    Extraordinary Member Gaastra's Avatar
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    Doc ock actor just confirmed he is playing doc ock in no way home!

    https://variety.com/2021/film/news/a...234953527/amp/

  8. #173
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gaastra View Post
    Doc ock actor just confirmed he is playing doc ock in no way home!

    https://variety.com/2021/film/news/a...234953527/amp/
    Apparently it's the same version of Ock as in Spider-Man 2...I guess they are going to make the Tritium Sun thing a portal to a parallel universe or some shenanigans like that. Molina's interview makes it sound like his Ock will be totally CGI and arm heavy.

  9. #174
    Extraordinary Member Gaastra's Avatar
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    People who leaked falcon cameo also leaked this. Take it with salt but also be warned of spoilers if it's true. If true this is huge chunk of the plot leaked with nasty spoilers but take it as a rumor for now.

    https://www.comicbookmovie.com/spide...ention-a184045

  10. #175
    Extraordinary Member Jman27's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gaastra View Post
    People who leaked falcon cameo also leaked this. Take it with salt but also be warned of spoilers if it's true. If true this is huge chunk of the plot leaked with nasty spoilers but take it as a rumor for now.

    https://www.comicbookmovie.com/spide...ention-a184045
    yeah i read that earlier today looks like a little bit of truth and lies are mixed in this one
    "He's pure power and doesn't even know it. He's the best of us."-Matt Murdock

    "I need a reason to take the mask off."-Peter Parker

    "My heart half-breaks at how easy it is to lie to him. It breaks all the way when he believes me without question." Felicia Hardy

  11. #176
    Moderator Frontier's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Apparently it's the same version of Ock as in Spider-Man 2...I guess they are going to make the Tritium Sun thing a portal to a parallel universe or some shenanigans like that. Molina's interview makes it sound like his Ock will be totally CGI and arm heavy.
    That's a bummer for me because I was hoping he would get to play an entirely different version of Ock.

    But I guess at least his motivation will have nothing to do with Tony Stark.

  12. #177
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    Quote Originally Posted by Frontier View Post
    But I guess at least his motivation will have nothing to do with Tony Stark.
    Famous last words

  13. #178
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    Molina not giving a crap about NDAs is amazing, lol.

    I've grown so tired of MCU Spider-Man, but I'm so amused by how open Molina has been.

  14. #179
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kevinroc View Post
    Molina not giving a crap about NDAs is amazing, lol.

    I've grown so tired of MCU Spider-Man, but I'm so amused by how open Molina has been.
    He's already Doc Ock, and it was already out there so what can they do lol? Jamie Foxx did the same thing even posting fan art of his Electro facing off against the three Spidey's but he had to delete it when trades first started reporting he was in the movie. It's just nice to basically have it confirmed that this for sure will be what it's been rumored to be so we can stop speculating about that at least.

  15. #180
    Fantastic Member cam18's Avatar
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    Sometimes I wish Sony had there own Spiderman for there universe and the MCU could keep Ironboy Jr for those that like him and let the fans decide which one they feel actually feels more like Spiderman because for me at least MCU Spiderman thus far is not doing it for me at all.........the foundation he is built on is flawed and it affects my enjoyment of this version of the character.....making his lore and mythos so beholden to dare I say it a lesser character like Ironman is a joke....Happy Hogan is given more importance then quite a few classic Spiderman supporting characters in a Spiderman movie.

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