Spider-Man 3: No Way Home

[Revolutionary_Jack]

i mean the movies are based on the comics. Comic retcon all the time shouldnt be surprised at the movies doing this especially since the MCU keeps getting bigger and bigger. Probably stuff that the audience wouldnt understand then will understand now. But then again that argument is kinda stupid cause if the movie just actually explain whats going on the audience will be ok.

Retconning stuff in movies is a bit harder to do than in the comics, because in comics it's words and texts and images.

When you introduce organic webbing in the first film, how can the sequels introduce mechanical webbing all of a sudden?

Spider-Man 3 introduced a version of Gwen Stacy over Sam Raimi's objections (he didn't like the character) to present her as a potential rival for MJ but the entire Peter-MJ story of the first two movies was based on the idea that Peter only ever had eyes for her. So short of melodramatic contrivances and so on, you can't make her work. Then they conflate Gwen with Ann Weying and tie her to Brock.

Let's look at the one thing Spider-Man 3 retconned...they made it so that the Burglar who Peter let go was actually Flint Marko. So that meant that Peter wasn't responsible for Uncle Ben's death and his entire motivation and basis of characterization of the first two films is misplaced. It's baffling that this idea (which was Sam Raimi's contribution by the way) wasn't vetoed by somebody because it's completely dumb and it's an example of a retcon that's just not accepted. Nobody looks back to the first films and rewatch it thinking how Peter's confused and mistaken about his guilt because the movies were made with, and work with, the idea that his guilt over his Uncle's death is deserved and real. When you cast James Franco as Harry and develop an arc suited to Franco's strengths it's going to be hard to make Harry on-paper more like the character in comics.

Par 1 decisionmaking can be undone but it's not easy and it tends to create messes. It worked with MCU Thor and with WandaVision mostly because their first two parts weren't very good to start with and in the case of Wanda she had never been a protagonist so her backstory could be threaded through to introduce new stuff fairly easily.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Same goes for Ganke. How are you going to ever do MCU Miles Morales when Ganke is now Peter's friend?

Yeah. They made Holland a Whiteboy Miles and had a white kid appropriate Miles' "as the actual 21st Century working-class teenage hero" so now when Miles comes in he'll be "he's Black and Latino I guess".

Also, another thing that bugs me about MCU Flash... Far From Home changes the inside joke between Peter and the fans. The inside joke surrounding Flash has always been that he thinks he can kick Peter's ass, but Peter and the audiences watching/reading Spider-Man know that's not true. In Far From Home, the inside joke between us and the film is that Flash thinks he is richer than Peter, but Peter secretly has all these resources from Mr. Stark. And that only reinforces the notion that this Peter is a trust-fund kid. I mean, putting aside the fact this Peter more-or-less functions like one... What conclusion am I supposed to draw as a viewer when the film makes inside jokes like that to me?

Good point.

Tying Peter to RDJ is the epitome of Part 1 stupidity...they did that to help RDJ but it made a huge problem with Spider-Man. They made Happy Hogan a bigger deal to Peter than Aunt May in the movies, and Marisa Tomei despite being a fine actor is only there to satisfy Jon Favreau's woe-is-me ambitions of never getting to be a romantic male lead.

[Agent Z]

That's one thing that baffles me, because if and when you send Holland Peter to college and introduce Harry at ESU how are you going to distinguish him from Revolori's Flash.

Not making him a bully to Peter sounds like an easy way. I don't think its that complicated. Comic Harry isn't even that similar to MCU Flash, if at all.

The MCU in some of their recent stuff had to backtrack from "Part 1 decisionmaking" like the first 2 Thor went with "The Norse Gods were really aliens and are all super-science and so on" and then Thor Ragnarok ties them explicitly to magic and myths because they went in on the first thinking Space Vikings was a hard sell and then after making that sell they are left with a version that doesn't serialize well so you had to retool it.

The Asgardians being aliens instead of gods was more from the fans than the writers.

WandaVision is likewise them making Scarlet Witch far more like her comics counterpart, retconning her backstory and even leaving an obvious backdoor to make her a mutant down the line because slavic teen girl getting powers from Infinity Stone just isn't the foundation for serialized storytelling.

Neither premise is better than the other for serialized storytelling. There is no such thing as a decision for infinite storytelling. An origin is supposed to be a starting point for a character not the entire story. Getting powers from a magic stone isn't anymore limiting than being born with magic. Rather, the change was more likely done to appease the minority that complained about her not being a mutant.

Furthermore, the MCU, unlike the comics, is not built to last forever. Characters can be killed off or retired so this concern about not enough material for serialization is greatly misplaced. It doesn't matter if Flash isn't Agent Venom or if Wanda is a mutant. You can tell a story with any origin. What matters is whether it is good or not. Your problem is that you're looking at this from the perspective of a comic book fan who expects these stories to go on for infinity as opposed to adaptations that will come to an eventual end.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Furthermore, the MCU, unlike the comics, is not built to last forever. Characters can be killed off or retired so this concern about not enough material for serialization is greatly misplaced. It doesn't matter if Flash isn't Agent Venom or if Wanda is a mutant. You can tell a story with any origin. What matters is whether it is good or not. Your problem is that you're looking at this from the perspective of a comic book fan who expects these stories to go on for infinity as opposed to adaptations that will come to an eventual end.

The problem is that in Spider-Man's case, they rebooted and cast a young actor exactly so that this version will go on for a while. Hemsworth's Thor might soon come to an end, but the current Spider-Man isn't intended to come to an end anytime soon. Feige has said he would ideally like to do Spider-Man like the 616 comics taking him from high school to college and beyond.

In the context of this Spider-Man franchise specifically, I do think Jack has a point about how they shot themselves in the foot and now they have to fix that.

Tying Peter to RDJ is the epitome of Part 1 stupidity...they did that to help RDJ but it made a huge problem with Spider-Man. They made Happy Hogan a bigger deal to Peter than Aunt May in the movies, and Marisa Tomei despite being a fine actor is only there to satisfy Jon Favreau's woe-is-me ambitions of never getting to be a romantic male lead.

Part of why I like the idea of bringing in Maguire and Garfield, at least conceptually. At this point, I think it's likelier that MCU May and Ben have more presence in NWH than they would have had it just been a solo film where Holland's Spidey fights Kraven or Scorpion.

[Agent Z]

The problem is that in Spider-Man's case, they rebooted and cast a young actor exactly so that this version will go on for a while. Hemsworth's Thor might soon come to an end, but the current Spider-Man isn't intended to come to an end anytime soon. Feige has said he would ideally like to do Spider-Man like the 616 comics taking him from high school to college and beyond.

"Ideally" being the key word here. Feige is no fool and I'm sure he expected that there would still be limits to what they could tell with MCU Peter due to the nature of the medium. Holland will eventually want to move on and the MCU will eventually close the chapter on Peter. This is something that should be obvious to anyone with an inkling of how movies work. "A while" could mean two, maybe three more movies and a few other MCU appearances but it would be naive to expect it to be exactly like the comics.

In the context of this Spider-Man franchise specifically, I do think Jack has a point about how they shot themselves in the foot and now they have to fix that.

I don't see anything that needs fixing. With all due respect, I feel Revolutionary Jack's rules for what constitutes good serialization, to say nothing of what makes a good Spider-Man story, are pretty arbitrary.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

"Ideally" being the key word here. Feige is no fool and I'm sure he expected that there would still be limits to what they could tell with MCU Peter due to the nature of the medium. Holland will eventually want to move on and the MCU will eventually close the chapter on Peter. This is something that should be obvious to anyone with an inkling of how movies work. "A while" could mean two, maybe three more movies and a few other MCU appearances but it would be naive to expect it to be exactly like the comics.

If you want me to be more specific, Feige has said that he would like to grow the character in Harry Potter style with each film being one year of Peter's school life. That kinda does imply that at least Marvel is expecting 7-8 Spider-Man films with Peter Parker.

Plus, you cast Holland as a 15-year old Peter with the obvious intent that you want at least this version to be around for a while even if you have to recast. I mean, it's a coming of age story. It doesn't work unless he actually comes of age.

I don't see anything that needs fixing. With all due respect, I feel Revolutionary Jack's rules for what constitutes good serialization, to say nothing of what makes a good Spider-Man story, are pretty arbitrary.

I'm just saying that when you start your Peter Parker so young and compare him to Harry Potter and even take Miles Morales ideas from him (implying you also don't want Miles to replace Peter anytime soon), and furthermore you're the one who approached Sony to have Spider-Man in the MCU in the first place (which we now know Feige did), it does suggest you want Peter Parker in the MCU for a good 10+ years. I do think it's fair to say they were thinking too short-term with Homecoming and Far From Home and it lead to some problems going forward.

Also I don't feel I can speak for Jack or anyone else. Hopefully he has his own response to this.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Alsk I don't feel I can speak for Jack or anyone else. Hopefully he has his own response to this.

Well I don't really have a response as far as rules for serialization are concerned, lol.

The truth is that serialized narrative, across all mediums, hasn't been studied much. People have always looked at "text" as a unit and so on. So when we talk of Raimi's trilogy and so on, we do so presuming that all three films tell a coherent internal story. I do that myself some times. Most of film and literary studies has centered on the single solitary film, as it should, the stuff that was never meant for franchise. But the fact is serialization is a different ballgame fundamentally. As such it's quite hard to tell and decide what's the right way of doing things, and I think that's why Hollywood has generally struggled with it in the Post-MCU era because most Hollywood is used to telling complete stories.

I wrote about this when I looked at the early Lee-ditko stories. The truth is that Amazing Fantasy #15 is an entirely different comic from Amazing Spider-Man #1. There was a full gap of 7-8 months between the two and you can clearly tell that the creative team had ideas on how to change the character from AF#15 (where there's no comedy, Peter's entirely a serious-dramatic character, it's mostly realistic even with horror elements) to ASM#1 (where you have comic elements with Jameson, and Peter's issues become a little more funny and comic and slowly it becomes more humorous, and an adventure comic). So even in comics within the same team you have a total sea-change between them when they are doing the one story with an idea for a concept that might or might not go anywhere, and after they get the greenlight for an ongoing. (A lot of people have noted that Raimi's Spider-Man 1 is generally speaking lacking in humor, I think part of that is down to them stretching AF#15 into the full first half of the film, with the second half intended to be the ASM#1-122 era of Spider-Man at least allegorically, AF#15 is definitely not a humorous Spider-Man).

At the same time, "Part 1 decisonmaking" is certainly an observed phenomenon. George RR Martin during the production of Season 1 of Game of Thrones called attention to a "butterfly effect" where some of the decisions made by the producers to cut corners and trim fat for their Season 1 (owing to budget and logistics) would affect decisions later on if and when it got a greenlight for later seasons, and those were certainly among the major reasons for the disappointment of the final seasons. And you certainly see it discussed often by many people when they talk about doing sequels and continuation of stuff that was essentially complete and final. James Cameron made Terminator 1 without any franchise ideas, when he did Terminator 2 he provided a total conclusion, and since then there's an unending parade of failures to make a continuation to something that was never built to be serialized beyond a point. And honestly I don't know what the solution is, because it's not like I think Spider-Man 1 should be different, or that Cameron should have made T1 to keep in mind for franchising because franchising and redoing the same stuff rather than developing something new is the real problem there. We've seen that making a first film by dropping sequel teases can be pretty bad and annoying (a long trailer for a sequel that might or might not happen). It's just that you need producers to be aware that making a sequel or third part would need different resources.

Like you take the Spider-Man PS4 game, it's a wonderful game and I wouldn't change things but at the same time, you can see Part 1 Decisionmaking. Like the Norman of that game simply isn't believable as a future Green Goblin, making Harry into the Symbiote-Venom is also maybe not the best idea going forward (depending on which Venom you want -- B-movie lovable moron like the movies, Donny Cates' heavymetal epic, Ultimate Venom...*shudder*). They work fine for the first part but you can obviously see problems for them in doing Green Goblin and Venom anywhere like their most familiar and entertaining versions.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

I do think that something like Terminator is less built for a serialized story than Spider-Man generally is, even as far back as AF # 15. Yeah, AF #15 a self contained story and Lee/Ditko didn't really plan The Amazing Spider-Man comic in advance, but it's still an origin story plus it's a superhero (which are built for serialization) in the comics medium (which is built for serialization).

I will say that while I don't like a lot of creative decisions with MCU Spider-Man, I do think it manages to tell a serialized story better than the Raimi and Webb films did. And the parts I do like about MCU Spider-Man feel natural to me. For example, I buy where Peter and MJ's relationship is in the NWH trailer even though Peter had a different love interest in Homecoming and only got together with MJ at the end of Far From Home.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I do think that something like Terminator is less built for a serialized story than Spider-Man generally is, even as far back as AF # 15. Yeah, AF #15 a self contained story and Lee/Ditko didn't really plan The Amazing Spider-Man comic in advance, but it's still an origin story plus it's a superhero (which are built for serialization) in the comics medium (which is built for serialization).

I will say that while I don't like a lot of creative decisions with MCU Spider-Man, I do think it manages to tell a serialized story better than the Raimi and Webb films did. And the parts I do like about MCU Spider-Man feel natural to me. For example, I buy where Peter and MJ's relationship is in the NWH trailer even though Peter had a different love interest in Homecoming and only got together with MJ at the end of Far From Home.

Good point. It helps that in Homecoming, Peter and Liz never actually date or form a relationship to start with, or even exchange a kiss.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

This is random, but I think it's about time we get monologues in the Spider-Man films.

I know the Raimi films used them briefly but I think they can work just like in the comics and the cartoons. I'm currently watching You on Netflix and the monologues make the show so much better. One of Joe's monologues in Season 3 even brings up the Spidey-sense in a joking way.

Admittedly I too am guilty of assuming there's just no way they could work in live-action. I'm hoping the success of You gets Sony and Marvel to reconsider.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

This is random, but I think it's about time we get monologues in the Spider-Man films.

I know the Raimi films used them briefly but I think they can work just like in the comics and the cartoons. I'm currently watching You on Netflix and the monologues make the show so much better. One of Joe's monologues in Season 3 even brings up the Spidey-sense in a joking way.

Admittedly I too am guilty of assuming there's just no way they could work in live-action. I'm hoping the success of You gets Sony and Marvel to reconsider.

I think you mean narrative voice-over. Monologue is similar but in technical terms it refers to a person on stage giving a long speech, sometimes directed to the audience (used by Shakespeare quite often) and it's equivalent is when characters address and talk to the camera which happens less frequently (most recent notable instance was in Wolf of Wall Street where Dicaprio's character often addressed the camera and talked to the audience).

I definitely agree that they should use narrative voiceover with Spider-Man and its weird it hasn't been done. The problem is that mainstream Hollywood follows the guidelines of screenwriting "Experts" like Syd Field or William Goldman both of them have said that using a voiceover is a "crutch" and we don't see it used often in mainstream films as opposed to film-makers like Martin Scorsese, or Wes Anderson, or Paul Schrader among others who use voiceover extensively. Sam Raimi's films sort of gesture to it but the voiceover appears only at the start or end of the first film and then used slightly in the following films and the later films don't use it at all.

Voiceover nowadays signifies "arty" and that means you can't do it in a mainstream superhero film.

Jon Watts said in interviews that the reason he had the AI like Karen in HOMECOMING is that he wanted to do Peter's internal monologue but get it across "naturally" (!?) by having him in dialogues with an AI because you know we all do that in nature, engage in actual conversations with an AI that apparently has passed the Turing Test (which is all about whether a computer can hold a natural conversation...which no AI has managed to achieve). Apparently the concept of a voiceover is new to them when in fact to some extent we all do make comments and jokes in our own minds in response to stimuli around us. I guess they wanted to keep Tom Holland in aw-shucks whiny mode all the time so that's why they keep him in "two-handers" right throughout. Two-handers is production slang for scenes where two characters talk and communicate via dialogue, and you see MCU Spider-Man, he's always in that kind of scene most times and never really by himself.

Using a voiceover is fine if you want to convey a lot of details since you can use it as an anchor to cut together a lot of discontinuous scenes that would otherwise be hard to follow, like Goodfellas does that perfectly where so much historical, personal, and social detail is covered in the first 10-12 mins. You see that done in ITSV where they use voiceover ("Let's do this one last time") to introduce a large cast of characters and individualize each of them and cover a lot of details in rapid-fire. So if you have that kind of visual-detail approach, then it works but mainstream superhero movies are meant to be flatly realistic and have a rigid sense of place and details so they're not allowed to be cool.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

You can be a potential game changer, though. I don't know if I would call it artsy since it's a pretty mainstream Netflix show. It also doesn't use the voiceovers for discontinuous scenes but more-or-less like how the Spider-Man cartoons use them.

Joe Goldberg also shares a lot of surface similarities with Peter Parker. They're both orphans from a working-class background, are bookworms and everyman-looking on the surface, lead a double-life as a superhero/serial killer, and have some quippy voiceovers. One of Joe's voiceovers even mentions that he has spider-sense (in a joking way). And Peter sometimes sneaks around and follows people too if we count the spider-tracers.

I have a hard time imagining Feige and Pascal watching the show and not thinking "Hmm maybe this can work for Peter Parker."

[Revolutionary_Jack]

You can be a potential game changer, though. I don't know if I would call it artsy since it's a pretty mainstream Netflix show. It also doesn't use the voiceovers for discontinuous scenes but more-or-less like how the Spider-Man cartoons use them.

Joe Goldberg also shares a lot of surface similarities with Peter Parker. They're both orphans from a working-class background, are bookworms and everyman-looking on the surface, lead a double-life as a superhero/serial killer, and have some quippy voiceovers. As I said, one of Joe's voiceovers mentions the spider-sense. And Peter sometimes sneaks around and follows people too if we count the spider-tracers.

I have a hard time imagining Feige and Pascal watching the show and not thinking "Hmm maybe this can work for Peter Parker."

Netflix these days is a dumping ground for Hollywood auteur rejects, lol. The kind who could have maybe made it indie in the 90s but who starting out today go to Netflix or to videogames or YouTube and so on. (Yes, that's my sound of the bitterness about the state of the film industry and the death of cinema).

Feige might see that and recruit them to work on Disney Plus shows where you can have weird styles (like WandaVision) but not in the four-quadrant stuff.

With Spider-Man, there's always going to be a divide between Spider-Man the Character and Spider-Man the Thanksgiving Parade Float. The movies are made to represent both at the same time and that's true for basically every Spider-Man movie without exception. There are always elements in those films which don't make sense in character terms but it's basically there to cater to the Parade Float crowd.

Go back to Spider-Man 1, that scene where the crowd of New Yorkers throw stuff at Goblin at the Brooklyn Bridge and say if you mess with Spidey you mess with us. I mean a lot of people get sentimental over that scene even if it doesn't really make sense internally (Jameson's campaign had smeared Spider-Man's reputation quite thoroughly at that point and that's a mainstream paper and not a fringe figure). Then the the finale of the train scene in Spider-Man 2 where the crowd decides to hide Peter after he's unmasked and that scene literally makes no sense nor does it mean anything in the context of the rest of the film. These scenes exist for the Parade Float crowd, they don't make sense in terms of character, story, verisimilitude however much they appeal to a lot of people for sentimental reasons. The comics themselves resisted the Parade Float sentiments but then BND happened and then it got infected too.

[Agent Z]

Like you take the Spider-Man PS4 game, it's a wonderful game and I wouldn't change things but at the same time, you can see Part 1 Decisionmaking. Like the Norman of that game simply isn't believable as a future Green Goblin, making Harry into the Symbiote-Venom is also maybe not the best idea going forward (depending on which Venom you want -- B-movie lovable moron like the movies, Donny Cates' heavymetal epic, Ultimate Venom...*shudder*). They work fine for the first part but you can obviously see problems for them in doing Green Goblin and Venom anywhere like their most familiar and entertaining versions.

This is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Adaptations have been taking various liberties with the Osborns and the paths they take. Why is this game a deal breaker? Even if they aren't like the most familiar interpretations of the characters, so what? That doesn't mean they can't still be good versions of the characters in their own right. Especially when you consider that the most familiar takes on the Osborns are still significantly different from the original versions. There is a huge middle ground between being in name only and a beat for beat remake of the source material.

[Hypestyle]

it's november. time for a new trailer. help us out, Sony.

Long-term, it's going to take removing Avi Arad and his partners (Matt Tolmach, etc.) if Marvel wants to marginalize the more goofy spinoff ideas. Arad and Columbia execs insisted on Venom for the Raimi part 3.
I don't think that The Big Wheel and Slyde are viable villains for a spinoff. But you know what, I think Arad and his cohort would actually go there.