Spider-Man 3: No Way Home

[Lukmendes]

Well you do have anti-corporate stories with good and bad corporations. Like It's A Wonderful Life has an evil banker as the bad guy, but the good guy is also a banker. The Iron Man solo movies always pit Tony against a worse kind of capitalist than he is (Stane in IM-1, Justin Hammer in IM-2, Killian in IM-3).

Even in those cases, Stark is still in the right, Homecoming wouldn't make an anti-corporate message if it meant that Stark was in the wrong.

The problem is shoehorning Tony Stark into the role of a clear heel, a role that the comics painted as the real heel, and still have him end the movie without condemnation. And any time you bring this issue about Iron Man being left off the hook or raise it anywhere you have a bunch of MCU-fans like clockwork frothing in the mouth about how Toomes was inherently evil and had to be put down and how Tony's this paragon who's untouchable.

It's a defining case of how fan culture trumps ethics. I mean sure Toomes/Vulture is a bad guy but one can accept that and still agree that he's a victim of a system like Roger Stern did in the original comic, like Kurosawa in High and Low, or you know Batman TAS where Mr. Freeze's origin story had Batman condemn Ferris Boyle and had him brought in for what he did to Victor Fries (which is an example of being critical of a corporation while still having the hero be a capitalist).

Well, fans have their favorites and may defend them, even when bullshit is done.

Hell, the silliest example of this I can think of right now are Breaking Bad fans defending Walter, y'know, the guy who started a meth empire because he was feeling greedy, and his fans talk **** about his wife for not liking that he's a dangerous criminal... Once one guy said I was an idiot who doesn't get Breaking Bad and that Walter is the story's hero, yeah lol.

I prefer to go for more or less the opposite route, and give **** to my favorites for screwing up, like when Spidey was feeling sad once and decided to join Jackal in killing the planet .

Yep it's JRJR, during his first run on ASM with Roger Stern (he came back with JMS). JRJR and Stern worked on their run for nearly all the stories and issues except for "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man" which was done by Ron Frenz).

Nice, thanks.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Even in those cases, Stark is still in the right, Homecoming wouldn't make an anti-corporate message if it meant that Stark was in the wrong.

There's an interesting argument to be made about how good guys being capitalists or having wealth is never framed as inherently problematic or subject to deconstruction.

Like for instance Iron Man/Tony Stark made the decision in IM-1 to pull out weapons business and since then he's been into "Green Energy" based on his Arc Reactor. But he's also possessive about his technology to make sure the military and competitors don't get it and reverse engineer it. In theory, that should mean his company falls apart at a minimum. But somehow Stark continues to be this major corporation even after essentially committing suicide.

Well, fans have their favorites and may defend them, even when bullshit is done.

I mean ideally, I don't think Tony should have filled that role to start with. Have Gregory Bestman there. There's not a real necessity or need for Tony Stark to play that kind of outsize role in that film, not from a story perspective or character perspective. I refuse to accept that this was the best and only way to have done it.

It's even worse in the sequel where in FFH it becomes company propaganda, with Tony Stark allegorically representing Stan Lee and being shown to be right for screwing over Kirby and Ditko (represented by Beck) because they turn out to be evil anyway. So many people bend over backwards to claim that Tony didn't steal credit when that's literally what we see the movie showing.

Hell, the silliest example of this I can think of right now are Breaking Bad fans defending Walter, y'know, the guy who started a meth empire because he was feeling greedy, and his fans talk **** about his wife for not liking that he's a dangerous criminal... Once one guy said I was an idiot who doesn't get Breaking Bad and that Walter is the story's hero, yeah lol.

Well you know in a MCU movie, Walter White would never be humanized or made sympathetic that way. So there's a flipside to that.

It's one of the weird things about the superhero genre fiction. In a realistic genre, like the crime genre, we have sympathetic criminals and gangsters - the Corleones, Omar Little, Walter White, Tony Soprano -- but the superhero genre exists on the premise that these are scum who need to be put down, that they are somehow lower or lesser than the heroes.

Tim Burton talked about this with Batman. He said that his problem was that he related to the villains as outsiders and freaks who are fundamentally relatable to the audience in the same way German Expressionist films made its monsters and mad scientists relatable, but for him the problem was that the movie still pivoted on Batman somehow putting them down and the audience cheering him on, and he couldn't quite square that circle and make the audience see things his way. In Batman Returns he manages to express that with Batman as this hypocrite rich guy who's naive and condescending, being rich without having to do all the unethical and dodgy things people actually do in the real world to get rich (represented by Max Schreck), who's backstory and looks won him sympathy denied to Oswald Cobblepot (where his funeral mourned by penguins is genuinely sad and ridiculous at the same time), and where Catwoman has lower resources to enact on her (far more justified) sense of revenge. It's the only time a mainstream superhero movie genuinely deconstructed its character on-screen for realsies, and that movie wasn't liked or respected by fans or critics, and it didn't earn as much money as the first one, and Burton basically stepped down from that.

It's an example of how the superhero genre is kind of aristocratic, where you are invited to somehow pass judgment on the poor and lower orders, where basically wealthy superheroes like Tony Stark and his issues are gazed upon as the actions of great men and so treated as tragic and sympathetic, while those of lower class characters are essentially the subject of jokes and low comedy.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Breaking Bad as a show is never apologetic for Walter White's actions. The show is self-aware of the fact that Walt doesn't have the best intentions.

Homecoming and Far From Home are both apologetic and dismissive of Tony's actions. They're more apologetic than your average MCU film with Iron Man. Heck, the Iron Man films give off less Randian vibes than freakin' MCU Spider-Man.

I don't think I can ever forgive this Spider-Man for the political toxicity it has bred among fans. I've never seen liberal Millennials make this many right-wing arguments. This beats the time Disney acquired Fox and no one cared cuz yay superheroes.

It's also not fun anymore. Debates over MCU Spider-Man are just political debates reskinned as Spider-Man. I miss the days when we argued over organic webbing.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Homecoming and Far From Home are both apologetic and dismissive of Tony's actions. They're more apologetic than your average MCU film with Iron Man. Heck, the Iron Man films give off less Randian vibes than freakin' MCU Spider-Man.

Right. I think honestly it wasn't really intentional but a result of incompetence and wires being crossed. They wanted to have Tony involved in the story and plot, and were given a Point A (Tony takes Spider-Man under a wing), and a Point B (Tony and Spider-Man are on good terms by the movie's end) and in-between they came up with a story that made that journey jarring as f--k and hard to accept. The elements were there to make it work but in a way that the people behind it clearly didn't understand or think was worth patching over.

I don't think I can ever forgive this Spider-Man for the political toxicity it has bred among fans. I've never seen liberal Millennials make this many right-wing arguments. This beats the time Disney acquired Fox and no one cared cuz yay superheroes.

Let's not forget how they shouted down the Ditko Estate for the copyright termination issue they dropped which led Disney/Marvel to sue.

If you are a fan of Tony Stark you should object to the character being shown this way or being made use of in a way that makes Spider-Man fans hate the IP's guts. I mean I feel towards Tony the way I feel towards Batman being made to be in the right over Superman.

I miss the days when we argued over organic webbing.

Nah you don't.

The problem is that the MCU has virtually destroyed room for honest criticism. Anyone who actually engages with what these movies do or say and raises issues get dismissed to be A]Haters, B]DCEU fans, C]Snobs, D]Take things too seriously, E]Doesn't fully account for the detailed backstory and explanations (which don't excuse what we see and hear in the given movie).

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Right. I think honestly it wasn't really intentional but a result of incompetence and wires being crossed. They wanted to have Tony involved in the story and plot, and were given a Point A (Tony takes Spider-Man under a wing), and a Point B (Tony and Spider-Man are on good terms by the movie's end) and in-between they came up with a story that made that journey jarring as f--k and hard to accept. The elements were there to make it work but in a way that the people behind it clearly didn't understand or think was worth patching over.

Definitely this. The two things that Spider-Man and Downey's Iron Man actually have in common were ironically not even brought up or explored. Those would be their tendency to use humor to cope with hardship, and the fact they both became heroes after coming to an epiphany. There was zero attention drawn to those similarities.

Instead their whole bond boils down to "Science!!". Which isn't even accurate. Tony is more of an engineer than a scientist and has interests in a completely different field from Peter. Still, these films treat "science" as that one-dimensional, and apparently their mutual love of science is enough for them to not care about whatever other differences they might have. Like literally all of them.

It's actually a very childish view of both Spider-Man and Iron Man.

[Frontier]

Definitely this. The two things that Spider-Man and Downey's Iron Man actually have in common were ironically not even brought up or explored. Those would be their tendency to use humor to cope with hardship, and the fact they both became heroes after coming to an epiphany. There was zero attention drawn to those similarities.

Instead their whole bond boils down to "Science!!". Which isn't even accurate. Tony is more of an engineer than a scientist and has interests in a completely different field from Peter. Still, these films treat "science" as that one-dimensional, and apparently their mutual love of science is enough for them to not care about whatever other differences they might have. Like literally all of them.

It's actually a very childish view of both Spider-Man and Iron Man.

If only MCU Spider-Man got to quip as much as Tony does.

To be fair comics have the same exact problem with how all-encompassing they treat science and peoples' science specialties.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

If only MCU Spider-Man got to quip as much as Tony does.

That's another thing that's kinda jarring. In a world like the MCU where everyone quips at least a little bit, they made Spider-Man the straight man to everyone (like Gail Simone said).

It has to do with the ageist undertone that kids shouldn't talk back to adults (which Tony explicitly states in these films at least on two occasions). He can't quip to Stark and Fury because this version has to be in a submissive role to them.

To be fair comics have the same exact problem with how all-encompassing they treat science and peoples' science specialties.

They do, but I think it's worse in the MCU. Tony has absorbed the fields Reed and Hank used to specialize in. But that is a topic of discussion for another thread.

Even by MCU standards, there are not a lot of similarities between webshooters (which is more chemical engineering), and robotics/nanotech/time travel. If anything Peter would be more intrigued by the Pym Particles or research on gamma radiation (I mean, a radioactive spider gave him his powers), but those wouldn't have the same marketability as Iron Man.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Even by MCU standards, there are not a lot of similarities between webshooters (which is more chemical engineering), and robotics/nanotech/time travel. If anything Peter would be more intrigued by the Pym Particles or research on gamma radiation (I mean, a radioactive spider gave him his powers), but those wouldn't have the same marketability as Iron Man.

The other issue is how in the MCU everything is absorbed into the Military-Industrial Complex, like Mysterio in the comics is a VFX artist who uses his talents for crime...in the movie they make him into a drone-bomber and so on. That sucks. You turned an artist into a weapons designer and in doing so expressed contempt for the fields of humanities and behind-the-line craftsmanship.

You are right about Banner being someone Peter would gravitate towards. The big disappointment with MCU Spider-Man that he spent so much time with IM at the exclusion of everyone else. NWH gives us Dr. Strange but it's too late at this point.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Serious question, and I don't ask this with any joy, but how common are people who weren't that interested in this film until Tobey and Andrew being in it became a possibility? I'm surprisingly hearing that more and more. I've been questioning if that's just my confirmation bias.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Serious question, and I don't ask this with any joy, but how common are people who weren't that interested in this film until Tobey and Andrew being in it became a possibility? I'm surprisingly hearing that more and more. I've been questioning if that's just my confirmation bias.

I've certainly seen people talking of Tobey and Andrew as being a factor for their interest in the next Spider-Man movie.

At the same time, I'd say people are interested in Spider-Man NWH because it's the first big MCU movie since Pre-Pandemic.
-- Black Widow was a loose-end prequel/sequel farewell party for a character who was simultaneously owed a film and yet never had enough to support a solo at the same time.
-- Shang-Chi and Eternals are new IP(s) and I think the lukewarm response to Eternals was because they launched essentially two Ant-Man type movies back to back rather than space it with proper big IP movies. (Guardians came out the same year as Winter Soldier, Ant-Man followed Ultron).

So I think people are jazzed about seeing a Spider-Man movie, any Spider-Man movie after nearly 2 years under COVID, and no sign of any of the big characters they knew in the MCU from the "before times". So I think it's a mix of all of that. I think NWH is poised to do well.

[PizzaTime2099]

Serious question, and I don't ask this with any joy, but how common are people who weren't that interested in this film until Tobey and Andrew being in it became a possibility? I'm surprisingly hearing that more and more. I've been questioning if that's just my confirmation bias.

The number of people who weren't interested at all is probably quite small. As for the number of people who are now legitimately excited for the film when they weren't before, that's a different story. Even then, those numbers are greatly skewed on sites like this that are made up of long time Spider-Man fans. For how divisive the opinions on MCU Spider-Man movies are on sites like Reddit and Twitter, the average movie-goer seems to love them.

[Lukmendes]

There's an interesting argument to be made about how good guys being capitalists or having wealth is never framed as inherently problematic or subject to deconstruction.

Like for instance Iron Man/Tony Stark made the decision in IM-1 to pull out weapons business and since then he's been into "Green Energy" based on his Arc Reactor. But he's also possessive about his technology to make sure the military and competitors don't get it and reverse engineer it. In theory, that should mean his company falls apart at a minimum. But somehow Stark continues to be this major corporation even after essentially committing suicide.

We're not getting proper business lessons from a comic book super-hero, the likes of Stark, Batman and Luthor will have as much money they need even if they should get bankrupt pretty fast lol.

I mean ideally, I don't think Tony should have filled that role to start with. Have Gregory Bestman there. There's not a real necessity or need for Tony Stark to play that kind of outsize role in that film, not from a story perspective or character perspective. I refuse to accept that this was the best and only way to have done it.

It's not the only way, but they wanted to tie Spidey with Stark and didn't want for an actual problem in the reationship to be there, so he's not on the wrong.

Well you know in a MCU movie, Walter White would never be humanized or made sympathetic that way. So there's a flipside to that.

It's one of the weird things about the superhero genre fiction. In a realistic genre, like the crime genre, we have sympathetic criminals and gangsters - the Corleones, Omar Little, Walter White, Tony Soprano -- but the superhero genre exists on the premise that these are scum who need to be put down, that they are somehow lower or lesser than the heroes.

Tim Burton talked about this with Batman. He said that his problem was that he related to the villains as outsiders and freaks who are fundamentally relatable to the audience in the same way German Expressionist films made its monsters and mad scientists relatable, but for him the problem was that the movie still pivoted on Batman somehow putting them down and the audience cheering him on, and he couldn't quite square that circle and make the audience see things his way. In Batman Returns he manages to express that with Batman as this hypocrite rich guy who's naive and condescending, being rich without having to do all the unethical and dodgy things people actually do in the real world to get rich (represented by Max Schreck), who's backstory and looks won him sympathy denied to Oswald Cobblepot (where his funeral mourned by penguins is genuinely sad and ridiculous at the same time), and where Catwoman has lower resources to enact on her (far more justified) sense of revenge. It's the only time a mainstream superhero movie genuinely deconstructed its character on-screen for realsies, and that movie wasn't liked or respected by fans or critics, and it didn't earn as much money as the first one, and Burton basically stepped down from that.

Super heroes are inherently a childish fantasy, we have characters dressed in ridiculous costumes, being vigilantes, authorities are mostly useless, or outright evil... And those guys in silly costumes deal with almost every threat by punching them in the face, even "nicer" heroes like Spidey are no exception and solve situations with a lot of violence, you don't need to think about it too much to realize that it's a dystopian nightmare, and I'm not even considering the constant world ending threats that, because of slowy time advances at Marvel, means they happens once per months at best, but either way, at their core, super heroes existing in the rule of cool, and silly decontructions like what Alan Moore did with Watchmen miss the damn point, even if the story is good.

It's an example of how the superhero genre is kind of aristocratic, where you are invited to somehow pass judgment on the poor and lower orders, where basically wealthy superheroes like Tony Stark and his issues are gazed upon as the actions of great men and so treated as tragic and sympathetic, while those of lower class characters are essentially the subject of jokes and low comedy.

That depends on the character and story being told, 'cause rich heroes like Stark aren't that common.

Breaking Bad as a show is never apologetic for Walter White's actions. The show is self-aware of the fact that Walt doesn't have the best intentions.

Yes, which's why it's hilarious to see fans kissing Walter's ass lol.

I don't think I can ever forgive this Spider-Man for the political toxicity it has bred among fans. I've never seen liberal Millennials make this many right-wing arguments. This beats the time Disney acquired Fox and no one cared cuz yay superheroes.

It's also not fun anymore. Debates over MCU Spider-Man are just political debates reskinned as Spider-Man. I miss the days when we argued over organic webbing.

Might be just my impression, but something's up with Americans those last years, seeing a lot of butthurt political arguments, and Spidey is just another part of it, might be a divide and conque tactic higher ups are using again to keep people distracted, or just people being stupid, but eh, whatever.

It has to do with the ageist undertone that kids shouldn't talk back to adults (which Tony explicitly states in these films at least on two occasions). He can't quip to Stark and Fury because this version has to be in a submissive role to them.

Huh, guess that means the times I've called MCU Peter "Stark's boytoy" wasn't that wrong after all .

Serious question, and I don't ask this with any joy, but how common are people who weren't that interested in this film until Tobey and Andrew being in it became a possibility? I'm surprisingly hearing that more and more. I've been questioning if that's just my confirmation bias.

One of my friends watches MCU once in a while, and he said he's specifically interested in this movie 'cause it's gonna have returning actors.

Either way, funny a few pages ago we were whining about a bad joke, now we whining about Stark, and since I only started to check out this thread recently, I wonder if the Stark whining is part of a cycle .

[Kaitou D. Kid]

I've certainly seen people talking of Tobey and Andrew as being a factor for their interest in the next Spider-Man movie.

At the same time, I'd say people are interested in Spider-Man NWH because it's the first big MCU movie since Pre-Pandemic.
-- Black Widow was a loose-end prequel/sequel farewell party for a character who was simultaneously owed a film and yet never had enough to support a solo at the same time.
-- Shang-Chi and Eternals are new IP(s) and I think the lukewarm response to Eternals was because they launched essentially two Ant-Man type movies back to back rather than space it with proper big IP movies. (Guardians came out the same year as Winter Soldier, Ant-Man followed Ultron).

So I think people are jazzed about seeing a Spider-Man movie, any Spider-Man movie after nearly 2 years under COVID, and no sign of any of the big characters they knew in the MCU from the "before times". So I think it's a mix of all of that. I think NWH is poised to do well.

The number of people who weren't interested at all is probably quite small. As for the number of people who are now legitimately excited for the film when they weren't before, that's a different story. Even then, those numbers are greatly skewed on sites like this that are made up of long time Spider-Man fans. For how divisive the opinions on MCU Spider-Man are on sites like Reddit and Twitter, the average movie-goer seems to love them.

Right. I agree with both of these.

[Vic Vega]

Definitely this. The two things that Spider-Man and Downey's Iron Man actually have in common were ironically not even brought up or explored. Those would be their tendency to use humor to cope with hardship, and the fact they both became heroes after coming to an epiphany. There was zero attention drawn to those similarities.

Instead their whole bond boils down to "Science!!". Which isn't even accurate. Tony is more of an engineer than a scientist and has interests in a completely different field from Peter. Still, these films treat "science" as that one-dimensional, and apparently their mutual love of science is enough for them to not care about whatever other differences they might have. Like literally all of them.

It's actually a very childish view of both Spider-Man and Iron Man.

All Marvel comics do this and have done it from the beginning. What Stan Lee knew about Science you could pass thru the eye of a needle. Contrast this to the Silver Age DC writers who were always trying to cram Science Factoids into books like Flash and Green Lantern.

The amount of writers who actually give a rats ass about what Peter Parker's Science Discipline actually is in the modern era at this point is probably just Roger Stern.

It didn't matter at all during the Superior Spider Man run, or even after it when Pete was running his own Stark Industry copycat business.

Also, the idea that Spider Man is intrinsically anti corporate is a new one on me given how many fans were cheering on Peter Parker "leveling up" to be a Stark like genius with company and secret underground lair full of Spider Gear no matter how little sense it made.

If was up to the most vocal parts of Spider Fandom, Peter Parker would be designing Star Drives and would have designed himself a ZeroG Spider Suit, canon be damned.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

We're not getting proper business lessons from a comic book super-hero, the likes of Stark, Batman and Luthor will have as much money they need even if they should get bankrupt pretty fast lol.

To be specific, we're not getting proper business regulation lessons, yeah.

Super heroes are inherently a childish fantasy, we have characters dressed in ridiculous costumes, being vigilantes, authorities are mostly useless, or outright evil...

That's true but the problem is superheroes and these childish fantasies went from marginal and children's entertainment and pure fun to basically whole careers and only game in town. They could be excused when they were just for kids but not when it's for everyone. They have greater power now and you know what comes with great power.

That depends on the character and story being told, 'cause rich heroes like Stark aren't that common.

Rich heroes do tend to dominate and suck out the oxygen, like Batman has essentially destroyed the DC Universe and rebuilt in his image. His bad guys like Joker and Harley Quinn are bigger than Superman is these days.

The amount of writers who actually give a rats ass about what Peter Parker's Science Discipline actually is in the modern era at this point is probably just Roger Stern.

Also JMS.

Also, the idea that Spider Man is intrinsically anti corporate is a new one on me given how many fans were cheering on Peter Parker "leveling up" to be a Stark like genius with company and secret underground lair full of Spider Gear no matter how little sense it made.

Huh...which fans are these, because the entire Parker Industries era is the one part of Slott's run even Slott's defenders don't like and which his detractors cite as proof "see we were right that he never got the character all along"?