Controversial Spider-Man Opinions

[Lukmendes]

Sounds about right per most Barrys being Wally under a different name, but my point was that if Wally, a character who had been the "real" Flash for a generation in a franchise where the secret identity is secondary to the mask, what chance does Miles or anyone else have of replacing Peter, a character who just as important as the mask and is one of the primary superstars of the genre?

Yeah, once a character becomes high enough profile, it's harder to replace them.

Barry is ironically a legacy character himself, but he was more popular than Garrick, so yeah, really unlikely for Miles to replace Peter for good, we can have alternate universes like Ultimate and Spider-Verse's movie for that to happen though, just unlikely for Peter to be killed off and Miles be seen as his definite replacement like it happened with Barry and Wally to begin with, much less that decision being permanent.

Suppose they don't need to push him that much, since he's already at the top as is?

Makes sense, though it is kinda funny how Marvel doesn't use him as much to hype up sales from stuff that has him, even when he's just there on the background, not that I'm complaining, him getting too much spotlight would suck, and it's bad enough he may show up in a cover and have little relevance in the story itself.

(Funny, I thought Johns was considered one of the great Lantern writers, but all I hear about lately is how he was too much of a Hal fanboy.)

Well, he brought back Hal, made fun stories, expanded the Green Lantern's world (And while making different colored corps is rather predictable, making it work with interesting characters is another story), so this is where the "Great" comes from, the thing is that he kept pushing Hal to look that aweome, while screwing up other Green Lanterns, which made the fans of those characters get sick of it, and I bet there are even Hal fans who think he does it too much.

WTF?! I get that Hal will always be Lantern numero uno because he was the first and all that, but hijacking other characters' series? (Need to finish the GLs series, but man, was I hoping for something more satisfying then Simon and Jessica getting shafted in their swan song.

Yeah, I don't really remember how it happened exactly, but Henshaw showed up being a threat, and while Hal was around, he didn't take over the plot, then like one issue before the last one we got this focus on Henshaw and Hal's personal story, but it wasn't the major focus and Jessica and Simon were helping to defeat some other enemies (I think Simon found alien guns for that), and then the last issue is basically "Hal and some other random Green Lanterns vs Cyborg Superman", yeah... While it could be okay for a crossover story, to end with that, this was Jessica's and Simon's comic and it was completely ridiculous that Hal took over it, specially since it was the last damn issue, and the last pages were just to explain why Jessica is in that other Justice League (Odissey I think?), so yeah, that was a bad way to end it.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Good point. The important thing to note about MCU Spider-Man is that he was hastily put together. The deal to bring Spider-Man into the MCU was done very quickly and on short notice all so they can put him in CIVIL WAR. So on very short notice they cast the actor, they cast Aunt May, and they featured him in Civil War...so the level of time, thought, consideration which Feige and others gave to other Marvel Characters wasn't extended to Spider-Man. Sam Raimi and others devoted a lot of thought and attention to Spider-Man in the trilogy and that shows, even in the weakest parts there's a coherence there. Whereas the Marc Webb movies were hastily put together, the Tom Holland MCU movies were hastily put together without any real consideration of a long-term idea.

So with the MCU Spider-Man, they cast a guy who is primarily a character actor and a supporting actor who plays off established stars Holland isn't a leading man, he can't command a movie on his own. He's good as a supporting actor but not as a lead (as is apparent in the recent Netflix movie with Robert Pattinson that he appeared in, which is pretty obvious if you see the bulk of Holland's career so far and in the upcoming Uncharted where Mark Wahlberg gets to mentor him). Holland's casting is good for Robert Downey Jr and Iron Man's character arc but it's not at all good for Spider-Man to be established as a leading player.

And I don't know if anyone can be blamed for that really. Sony need Spider-Man to survive as a major studio, lot of jobs are on the line with them holding on to those rights. So they had to make a Spider-Man movie and they had to dig out of the self-inflicted mess with the Garfield movies and those spinoff plans that are never to be. Feige wanted Spider-Man in the MCU. The deal between Disney-Sony is really fragile and can be walked away from anytime, so the producers making this don't really have the luxury to slow-walk and pace the movies and stories. I hope the next Spider-Man movie is the last one with Holland, and after that they James Bond it...they get a new actor as Peter when he goes to college...they don't redo the past and origin (they do the Don Cheadle thing in IM-2) and they continue onwards.

Solid post, and I hope you're right about the part I bolded. As of now I'm skeptic that my gripes with MCU Spider-Man can be fixed. The problems with him arguably run deep to the very core (for the reasons you mentioned). That means it's not so easy to write or cast your way out of, say, the ageist and elitist undertones that inform him, or the Miles Morales elements.

That, to me, is what separates this version from the previous two and what makes MCU Spider-Man uniquely chillsome. Whatever problem someone had with Maguire or Garfield's version, it was always something you could write or cast your way out of in a sequel. I'm not so sure you can do that this time...at least not in one film, and plus it would require the people working on these films to have a bit of an ephipany about how they handled Spider-Man so far.

[Frontier]

Isn't the whole point of Holland's Spider-Man being so young so that he can actually grow into an adult Spider-Man? I'm just not sure what kind of adult Spider-Man he'll get to grow up into, if he does at all.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Just before the Death of Spider-Man story, Spider-Man was signed up for lessons from the Ultimates (complete with a scene with the members discussing the question based on their experiences) -- and the Spider-Men II story did show that he eventually became a member. Even before all that, USM played him up as the new kid on the block who the veterans either saw him as an annoyance or a kid who had a lot to learn before he could call himself a full-fledged superhero (also contrasting him as one of the only superheroes who wasn't corrupt, an a-hole, or both, but that's another topic). Spider-Man working with Nick Fury was invented for USM.

Long story short, yes it was. (Heck, even Spidey looking up to Iron Man in the movies is true to the source material, despite some viewers taking exception to it because "not in the comics" -- and is yet another thing MCU Peter does not share with Miles).

Maybe, but the devil is in the details. Besides, Ultimate Peter didn't make his own suit either.

I mean, things like Peter being friends with Iron Man or someone else making the suit are more symptoms of a problem than the actual problem. In theory there's no problem with Doc Ock making Peter's suit in the PS4 game, or Peter working with Fury, or the way JMS' handled Peter and Tony's friendship*. The context there is different, Peter's attitude is different, and those decisions weren't the by-product of ageist or elitist undertones (two of the core problems with MCU Spider-Man).

*Sidenote: If anything, JMS proved that Peter and Tony aren't very compatible. Think about how many massive favors Tony had to do for Peter before they even got close. Even then, they weren't exactly "close" close like Spider-Man is with other characters. Peter straight-up told Tony he calls him boss because he knows it bugs him (Tony) and for Tony to "not let that get to his head". That was during the peak of their friendship. All of that is a sign that maybe these two guys just don't go well together.

Dunno; Miles never had Peter's eagerness to join the Avengers, never really had a mentor figure a la Iron Man (when his mom died, he just quit instead of carrying on while figuring out where he was going). While trying to find out how to be a hero his way is a parallel, it's handled differently for the characters.

More specifically, I see MCU Peter as about 50% percent Miles Morales and 50% an ageist projection of what Disney/Sony envision young MCU fans to be (and/or how they want them to be). I think the elements you mentioned come from the latter.

A lot of MCU Peter's admiration for Tony is also similar to Miles' admiration to Peter. This is most noticeable in the new video game. I think Miles looking up to Peter like that makes more sense as Peter is a much more responsible person than Tony and his dynamic with Miles is very different.

Dunno; the Spider-Verse movie touched on it a lot more; Flash's style of bullying was revised as an update of the original concept more then anything else.

MCU Flash's style of bullying is more-or-less Harry's style of bullying from the Ditko era. Not sure how it's an "update", though. I've been seeing the word "update" being thrown around lately whenever bullies or loners are discussed on Spider-Man forums. There seems to be this belief among a small-but-vocal group of people on the internet that loners don't exist anymore or that they no longer get picked on by guys like Flash. I mean...yes, it is true we take bullying more seriously than we used to, and it is true that Hollywood portrays bullies too over-the-top sometimes...but we are still very far from a world where the bigger aggressive kid no longer picks on the scrawny quiet kid with no friends. We only have to look at the school shooter or incel phenomenons to see it still happening today, and those are just the most extreme manifestations of it. I doubt Flash's style of bullying will ever fully go away. I think, to an extent, it's just part of human nature. If it ever does fully go away, I think radical societal changes would have to happen first, like the end of capitalism and gender norms.

It's also a bit of a dangerous narrative to push IMO. Setting any personal preferences aside, the people that match Peter Parker's background (young, alienated, white men) are a pretty dangerous demographic. This is the same demographic most likely to become school shooters or vote for Fascists. Sending them the message that there is something 'dated' or 'non-existent' about Peter Parker and Flash Thompson AWKT (as we know them) sounds like something that could seriously backfire.

MCU Peter and May were based on their Ultimate incarnations, not the 616 one. Also, they have little in common with Miles and his dad's relationship.

Not really. Ultimate Peter was similar to Peter as we know him but with the passive-aggressiveness of Ditko's Peter brought back (makes sense as they were both in high school). Ultimate Aunt May wasn't that different from 616 May besides being younger and a bit more liberal. She was still an older-than-average parent figure with a somewhat worrying/overbearing personality. MCU May is like a PG version of Bell-mere from One Piece.

Sorry, not really seeing how MCU Peter "stole" that.

He stole it in the sense that that was a story element unique to Miles. It still kinda is one of the things that differentiates the two. Peter's stories have historically not dealt with that but with the opposite (the responsibility part).

Yeah, I'm one of those people who thinks that Ultimate Miles was a good concept on paper, but Bendis's first pass was a really bland character that didn't really live up to the full potential. Now Bendis's writing on the comics was hardly bad, but when reading the Miles comics, I just can't help but think that it was a mistake to not have Ultimate Jessica Drew take over the mantle (she was a grossly underused character). The Spider-Verse movie was a vast improvement (giving Miles better motivations for his origin story and making his personalty more then just the "nice kid" did wonders for him).

Agreed on all accounts.

Guess we'll see how an MCU Miles works or doesn't when they get there. I do think that it's a bit early to tell what kind of staying power Miles will have. It's a safe bet that Peter will always be the "main" Spider-Man; he is one of the most iconic superheroes of all time and as we've seen from the Flash, the superstars will not be replaced even if the replacement was cemented as the "one true" hero. Kinda wonder if Spider-Man is moving towards Green Lantern-style roster; lotta heroes wearing the mask, but one is the default main one (although I hope Peter remains a more interesting character then Hal Jordan, poster boy of the "cis white male character who always trumps the better written legacy characters because he came first" club).

I think if any Marvel hero can pull off the Green Lantern-style roster, it would be Spider-Man. If they were to do that with anyone, it would be the character that has historically put the most emphasis on anonymity.

I think if we were get there, it would look something closer to what Morrison envisioned for Batman minus the part about Peter funding everyone. DC could have totally had a decently-marketable version of Dick's Batman to co-exist with Bruce's, even if Bruce always maintained more of an edge. They've also been trying to do this with Barry and Wally.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Solid post, and I hope you're right about the part I bolded. As of now I'm skeptic that my gripes with MCU Spider-Man can be fixed. The problems with him arguably run deep to the very core (for the reasons you mentioned). That means it's not so easy to write or cast your way out of, say, the ageist and elitist undertones that inform him, or the Miles Morales elements.

Well look at the X-Men Films. Okay that might not sound like an optimistic opener, but hear me out. After X-Men The Last Stand, the franchise was backed into the corner...people were writing them off and so on. Then Mathew Vaughan came in and did X-Men: First Class and suddenly the X-Men on Film were cool again. Vaughan recast Xavier and Magneto, made Fassbender mainstream as Erik, glammed up the aesthetic and introduced humor and sex appeal to a series that denied its existence. Look also at LOGAN, that was a movie that had little going before release but after it became a beloved instant classic of the superhero movie genre. So I don't think it's entirely impossible to fix MCU Spider-Man. If the Fox X-Men can be fixed then MCU Spider-Man (which for all the criticisms, I think we can say is better than the Fox X-men movies around The Last Stand) can be too.

That, to me, is what separates this version from the previous two and what makes MCU Spider-Man uniquely chillsome. Whatever problem someone had with Maguire or Garfield's version, it was always something you could write or cast your way out of in a sequel. I'm not so sure you can do that this time...at least not in one film, and plus it would require the people working on these films to have a bit of an ephipany about how they handled Spider-Man so far.

Well one way to salvage MCU Spider-Man is to somehow return Spider-Man to a more familiar set-up. Like at the end of Far From Home, Peter's identity is made public right? So obviously at the end of Part 3, Peter's identity has to go under wraps. In fact that's probably why Doctor Strange is in the cast because he's the guy who can make that happen. So my feeling is that at the end of the third Spider-Man film, Peter's identity and knowledge of it is erased...so that means nobody in the MCU will know -- not Happy, not the Avengers, not SHIELD, not Aunt May, not Ned Leeds, no one at Horizon. That will allow for a hard reset.

So the final part of the film is Peter designing his own suit by himself, his own web-shooters using dumpster dive recycling. It will be a bittersweet moment in that Peter's back to square 1 (bitter for fans who liked the Iron Man Jr. thing), but Peter's also out of the Avengers and the wider MCU (sweet for fans who hate the Iron Man Jr. thing). The epilogue will be Peter waking up at Forest Hills in the old Parker residence (i.e. the MCU will end with Peter returned to a classic set-up), he goes to college on first day, and there he meets Harry Osborn (who's revealed to be dating Liz Toomes also attending the same college), Gwen Stacy, Tony Revolori's Flash, and also Zendaya's MJ (who I think will be the only one who remembers Peter's identity). The frustrating aspect however is the fact that we have to slog through three movies before we get Spider-Man in one of his most charismatic settings.

Isn't the whole point of Holland's Spider-Man being so young so that he can actually grow into an adult Spider-Man?

In theory, that might have been the thinking. In practise, given the murky nature of these movies. The fact that it depends on senior high level executive goodwill on both sides...the truth is that these are made movie-to-movie. And given that the deal got ruptured after FFH for a bit, I think at present, Disney would be committed to another film in the MCU...but after that if Sony aren't willing to accept a buyout and return Spider-Man fully to Marvel, I don't think Tom Holland will continue indefinitely as Spider-Man in the MCU. And likewise, Tom Holland's contract is with Sony and not Disney. Any scenario where Disney gets the rights back doesn't automatically include Holland's contract with it (though I think a movie agent can fix things anyway).

I'm just not sure what kind of adult Spider-Man he'll get to grow up into, if he does at all.

Casting young for a part that calls for an actor to grow with the part is a mug's game. In the case of Spider-Man, if you want to do it right, you need to cast a teenage actor who can start as Lee-Ditko's Peter and then age into Romita's Peter, and eventually the Peters to follow -- Andru's, JRJR's, Frenz's, Mike Zeck, MacFarlane. That's really hard or impossible to do. It'll be like casting Leonardo DiCaprio around the time of The Boy's Life in a part in anticipation that he's gonna grow up to be the Leo from Titanic and later the Leo of Inception and The Wolf of Wall Street. Nobody predicted that DiCaprio would transform and change the way he did at that time...because that kind of thing is unexpected. In the Harry Potter movies, the young actors they cast for the most part haven't broken big because the actors cast as leads in children's part don't grow up into leading men. Daniel Radcliffe for instance isn't much of an actor, and he's taken to working quirky weird independent stuff and theatre productions (the fact that he's rich means he doesn't have to act for a living). Emma Watson has had more success (and she's got real talent as a performer) but the rest of the young actors haven't made it.

Tom Holland is not gonna grow up the way he needs to play Lee-Romita's Peter, or Roger Stern's Peter, and so on. He's primarily a character actor and if you see the MCU Spider-Man movies, he almost always appears in scenes where he's talking to some other character...his AI, his classmastes, Happy, Avenger handler, villains. He works by reacting to others rather than carrying himself in individual scenes where he's by himself. Tobey Maguire had many scenes in the Raimi trilogy where he did that because he's an actual leading man. For all his flaws, Garfield had that quality too. They cast Tom Holland as a high school Peter but they didn't cast him with the idea of how much he could or should change to become college Peter and so on.

[WebLurker]

Yeah, once a character becomes high enough profile, it's harder to replace them.

I have this (unproven) theory that new characters (or mantles, as the case may be) have an undefined period of time in which they're still plastic enough that major changes to their characterization or development (or even have the mantle passed on to someone else) will stick, but once that period is over, the stage of development they're in is what their's ground zero self will always be. I mean, Black Widow and Rogue started out as villains, but they're always going to be depicted as heroes going forward (I mean, the Evolution and Wolverine cartoons had token references and parallels to Rogue's past as a bad guy, but were pretty clear that she was a good person who got lead to the wrong side briefly and Black Widow was introduced in the Marvel movies as a reformed woman seeking redemption). Conversely, Star Sapphire in Green Lantern started out as a villain and while having her be a hero isn't uncommon, she's pretty frequently taken back to her roots as a villain; she didn't quite reform in time for it to be her default form.

So, yeah, any of the big superstars, they lost their flexibility to rebrand and all that a long time ago.

Barry is ironically a legacy character himself, but he was more popular than Garrick, so yeah, really unlikely for Miles to replace Peter for good, we can have alternate universes like Ultimate and Spider-Verse's movie for that to happen though, just unlikely for Peter to be killed off and Miles be seen as his definite replacement like it happened with Barry and Wally to begin with, much less that decision being permanent.

Forgot about Barry being a legacy himself. Exception to the rule, I guess (or Flash had a longer plastic period).

Makes sense, though it is kinda funny how Marvel doesn't use him as much to hype up sales from stuff that has him, even when he's just there on the background, not that I'm complaining, him getting too much spotlight would suck, and it's bad enough he may show up in a cover and have little relevance in the story itself.

Huh.

Well, he brought back Hal, made fun stories, expanded the Green Lantern's world (And while making different colored corps is rather predictable, making it work with interesting characters is another story), so this is where the "Great" comes from, the thing is that he kept pushing Hal to look that aweome, while screwing up other Green Lanterns, which made the fans of those characters get sick of it, and I bet there are even Hal fans who think he does it too much.

Ah.

Yeah, I don't really remember how it happened exactly, but Henshaw showed up being a threat, and while Hal was around, he didn't take over the plot, then like one issue before the last one we got this focus on Henshaw and Hal's personal story, but it wasn't the major focus and Jessica and Simon were helping to defeat some other enemies (I think Simon found alien guns for that), and then the last issue is basically "Hal and some other random Green Lanterns vs Cyborg Superman", yeah... While it could be okay for a crossover story, to end with that, this was Jessica's and Simon's comic and it was completely ridiculous that Hal took over it, specially since it was the last damn issue, and the last pages were just to explain why Jessica is in that other Justice League (Odissey I think?), so yeah, that was a bad way to end it.

Too bad, series was pretty good overall and do wish it hadn't been canceled.

Should probably get those Odyssey trades sometime, although I'm really wishing that Jessica would lose the Omega powers and get back to normal.

[blackspidey2099]

I honestly think the MCU "Peter Parker" is unsalvageable, and while I have no negative opinions towards Holland as an actor, I can't wait until the whole thing collapses and we get a reboot of Spider-Man (hopefully far away from Feige and the MCU). I am glad that more and more people are recognizing how terrible of an adaptation it is though... I remember when Homecoming came out, it was like people couldn't wait to fall over themselves to shower the MCU and Feige in wholly undeserved praise.

On a similar note, I don't think any of the live action Peter Parkers we've seen so far have been good adaptations. The closest one was probably Andrew but the actual movies were a mess, so that's unfortunate. However, it's only the MCU which seems to treat the character of Spider-Man with actual disrespect, which is why I think it's easily the worst adaptation we've seen.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I am glad that more and more people are recognizing how terrible of an adaptation it is though... I remember when Homecoming came out, it was like people couldn't wait to fall over themselves to shower the MCU and Feige in wholly undeserved praise.

That's nothing new. People forget this, but Marc Webb's TASM-1 was actually well recieved by fans when it came out at the time. It got decent reviews and there were people at the time, unironically, saying it was better than the Raimi movies (which at the time was in a period of backlash). Then the sequel crashed and that soured people's views and suddenly Raimi, Tobey, Kirsten, and Willem were cool again. People tend to be drawn to novelty and shiny new stuff, and are always looking to be the first on the block to anoint something as the latest whatever.

That said, I don't think that the flaws of the MCU Spider-Man is entirely Disney's (or Feige's) fault or Sony's fault. It's basically a result of a hastily made agreement that neither party has any idea how long it will last so they decide to get as much as they can out of it without real longterm consideration. I do think that fans have an exalted idea of Feige that needs pushback and correction to a large extent (people don't seem to get that Feige has never done actual producer work -- i.e. produce a Non-IP movie with lesser known talents and shepherd that to success and acclaim).

On a similar note, I don't think any of the live action Peter Parkers we've seen so far have been good adaptations.

In terms of accuracy and 1:1, no version of Spider-Man is entirely true to the character. That I agree. I do think Tobey Maguire's Peter was a good adaptation, even if the scripts, especially in the sequels weren't there for him.

Garfield though I feel was miscast. He's a terrific actor but he's just not right for that part.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Well look at the X-Men Films. Okay that might not sound like an optimistic opener, but hear me out. After X-Men The Last Stand, the franchise was backed into the corner...people were writing them off and so on. Then Mathew Vaughan came in and did X-Men: First Class and suddenly the X-Men on Film were cool again. Vaughan recast Xavier and Magneto, made Fassbender mainstream as Erik, glammed up the aesthetic and introduced humor and sex appeal to a series that denied its existence. Look also at LOGAN, that was a movie that had little going before release but after it became a beloved instant classic of the superhero movie genre. So I don't think it's entirely impossible to fix MCU Spider-Man. If the Fox X-Men can be fixed then MCU Spider-Man (which for all the criticisms, I think we can say is better than the Fox X-men movies around The Last Stand) can be too.



Well one way to salvage MCU Spider-Man is to somehow return Spider-Man to a more familiar set-up. Like at the end of Far From Home, Peter's identity is made public right? So obviously at the end of Part 3, Peter's identity has to go under wraps. In fact that's probably why Doctor Strange is in the cast because he's the guy who can make that happen. So my feeling is that at the end of the third Spider-Man film, Peter's identity and knowledge of it is erased...so that means nobody in the MCU will know -- not Happy, not the Avengers, not SHIELD, not Aunt May, not Ned Leeds, no one at Horizon. That will allow for a hard reset.

So the final part of the film is Peter designing his own suit by himself, his own web-shooters using dumpster dive recycling. It will be a bittersweet moment in that Peter's back to square 1 (bitter for fans who liked the Iron Man Jr. thing), but Peter's also out of the Avengers and the wider MCU (sweet for fans who hate the Iron Man Jr. thing). The epilogue will be Peter waking up at Forest Hills in the old Parker residence (i.e. the MCU will end with Peter returned to a classic set-up), he goes to college on first day, and there he meets Harry Osborn (who's revealed to be dating Liz Toomes also attending the same college), Gwen Stacy, Tony Revolori's Flash, and also Zendaya's MJ (who I think will be the only one who remembers Peter's identity). The frustrating aspect however is the fact that we have to slog through three movies before we get Spider-Man in one of his most charismatic settings.

Possible counter-argument? MCU Norman Osborn (if ever introduced) can easily cause Spider-Man to fall back into Iron Man Jr. territory just by nature of Norman also being an Iron Man villain, having worn Iron Man armors before, and the MCU version likely having already interacted with Tony off-camera.

I honestly think the MCU "Peter Parker" is unsalvageable, and while I have no negative opinions towards Holland as an actor, I can't wait until the whole thing collapses and we get a reboot of Spider-Man (hopefully far away from Feige and the MCU). I am glad that more and more people are recognizing how terrible of an adaptation it is though... I remember when Homecoming came out, it was like people couldn't wait to fall over themselves to shower the MCU and Feige in wholly undeserved praise.

On a similar note, I don't think any of the live action Peter Parkers we've seen so far have been good adaptations. The closest one was probably Andrew but the actual movies were a mess, so that's unfortunate. However, it's only the MCU which seems to treat the character of Spider-Man with actual disrespect, which is why I think it's easily the worst adaptation we've seen.

In Homecoming's defense, Peter rejecting Tony at the end was supposed to be exactly what we were thinking it was supposed to be. I'm basing this on statements Feige and Watts said at the time. Watts said he based that scene off ASM #1 where Peter doesn't join the Fantastic Four, and Feige said something among the lines of Peter rejecting Tony because he (Peter) is working-class.

It was retconned in Infinity War to Peter just wanting to impress Mr. Stark because the Russos clearly had a different interpretation of Spider-Man from the start - this was obvious as early as Homecoming just based on contradictory statements Watts and the Russos made. Then FFH doubled down on the Iron Man stuff even more. So what was once a decent way-out from Iron Man is now like Joker's line from TDK about them being meant to do this forever. The plans clearly changed (or more accurately, there were no plans, like Jack said).

Still, there was a decent amount of Peter Parker stuff in Homecoming. His relationship with Liz was all classic Peter Parker. His sassy humor came out more than in FFH/Infinity War/Endgame. And there was more of an independent soul in him ("Well it's simple Ned! I'm gonna go to do some stuff and I don't want Mr. Stark to know about it. ").

Homecoming wasn't a masterpiece, but it hasn't aged well partly due to everything that came after.

[Frontier]

That gets into my issue of how wishy-washy Spidey in the MCU feels. He feels all over the place in terms of his role in the movies or what the creators want him to be (at least to me) and subject to being whatever he needs to be from movie-to-movie.

Is he supposed to be Tony's legacy? His own independent hero who still needs Tony's resources and bodyguard helping him out? Some kid Avenger?

Is his secret identity a joke or something that's actually important because every time a villain has figured out who he is it's been treated as something bad? It definitely doesn't seem important enough to warrant showing Peter and Aunt May dealing with it but that would involve treating Aunt May seriously.

Is he supposed to be important to the MCU? I remember thinking about this regarding the original "breakup" to where you could probably remove Spider-Man and nothing about the overall MCU would change. Now, I guess that gets into how isolated Spider-Man is in his own corner (even if that hasn't really been fleshed out much in the movies) but at the same time, when one of the points as to the creative decisions behind Peter being more involved with other heroes in the MCU...you'd kind of think he'd have had more significant interaction time with other characters or stories than he actually has. I mean, his only significant interactions has been with Tony, Strange, and a Skrull posing as Fury. Carol had a cute scene with him but I don't really see that going anywhere. And Strange is going to be in the third movie so that's just building on a pre-established relationship instead of a new one.

And does he quip or not? He only seems to quip when he's utterly confident but that's treated like a bad thing in Homecoming and then he just doesn't really quip at all in subsequent movies, or at least how people expect Spidey to. I think one of my issues with Holland's Peter is that they put so much emphasis on him being this nice, unassuming, everykid that they've taken some of the bite out of Peter's personality.

Even the supporting cast gets hit with this where they use recognizable names but not necessarily use them recognizably aside from surface elements.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Possible counter-argument? MCU Norman Osborn (if ever introduced) can easily cause Spider-Man to fall back into Iron Man Jr. territory just by nature of Norman also being an Iron Man villain, having worn Iron Man armors before, and the MCU version likely having already interacted with Tony off-camera.

With Norman situation is different. Unlike the villains in the MCU Spidey movies (Vulture, Mysterio) so far, he's a villain who has been featured in a previous film, and he's a villain who has been adapted pretty well with Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin. So whoever they recast as Goblin is essentially gonna have to be approached with the respect that Nolan and WB went when they recast the Joker nearly 20 years after Jack Nicholson played him in Batman 1989 on the Big Screen. The MCU Green Goblin will have the same relation of legacy/baggage with Dafoe that (pre-release) Ledger's Joker had to Nicholson. [BTW, yeah I am aware Chris Cooper played Norman too in TASM-2, but that's not really the same thing]

Recasting Doctor Octopus is a similar issue in that Alfred Molina was also a defining portrayal of the character in Spider-Man 2, though with Octopus there are obviously more things that can be done since the Raimi only did a bit of the character...so the MCU can do Octopus as the 'leader of the Sinister 6', 'The Owl/Octopus War' and since they made Aunt May so young, they can do the romance between Ock and May. Of course some might expect Superior Spider-Man but that story is a) obviously not a "First Ock" or Reintroduction story, b) competes with Kraven's Last Hunt owing to similarity in premise and not being as prestigious as that, c) a generally very difficult sell to do in live-action, unless they make it a superhero version of John Woo's Face/Off (which the comic definitely wasn't).

So what was once a decent way-out from Iron Man is now like Joker's line from TDK about them being meant to do this forever. The plans clearly changed (or more accurately, there were no plans, like Jack said).

Obviously the nature of the deal was that they needed to get as much value as possible out of Spider-Man in the MCU with the version of the Avengers introduced with RDJ...because Feige and others weren't sure how long it would last. So that meant Tom Holland's Spider-Man was essentially a kind of mascot figure that they had to rush-insert in the Avengers Thanos movies character arc-be-damned.

Is he supposed to be Tony's legacy? His own independent hero who still needs Tony's resources and bodyguard helping him out? Some kid Avenger?

He's whatever the creators feel they need him to be while they can still use Spider-Man because who knows it can be yanked away at any time. That's really the tension underneath Holland's portrayal in the MCU. Feige and others want those big shots of Spider-Man swinging and in cool armor and so on...but they don't have the luxury of time to slow-walk Holland through a character arc. So the airport scene in Civil War which featured a very strong, agile, and capable Spider-Man who basically held himself against everyone except Captain Rogers had to be retconned into a moron in Homecoming. Because Russos wanted Tom Holland in that airport scene to be not just Tom Holland's Spider-Man but the "action-figure" version of Spider-Man with the Avengers in that scene for the trailer.

[Cornbread11]

I don’t care for the 616 gwen and I’m totally ok with sin’s past��
Plus: Imo....I prefer miles paired up with spidergwen over every other girl in his supporting cast����*♂️

[phonogram12]

Venom's weird tongue was not an improvement upon the character visually at all.

Norman was more interesting as a dead villain than a resurrected one.

Zendaya's MJ is the most interesting version of Mary Jane to ever hit the big screen (and I didn't mind Kirsten Dunst all that much, but Raimi really didn't do much with this character).

[Frontier]

Good, the less of Wally's traits Barry steals, the better, I'm kind of okay with him fighting Wally's villains, can be interesting when heroes fight someone else outside of their rogues gallery, just don't hog all of 'em lol.

Or try to pretend Wally's villains have only ever fought Barry.

At least Peter hasn't stolen any of Miles' villains yet.

When he's not killing D-listers at random too much, or missing the point of a character, yeah, he can write well, Sinestro Corps War was fun (Even if I disliked how much of a jobber Anti-Monitor was there).

Although if Johns' writing pattern is any hint, he could end up writing Norman as less villanous, since he did make characters like Sinestro, Black Adam, and I think Orm in New 52, be less villanous (Not that those 3 are interchangeable, Sinestro is still an evil ass, Black Adam, is more complicated).

I think he'd write Norman more like he wrote Luthor and Thawne.

She planned to dress up as Batman? Huh... That's odd lol.

Not so much dress like him but become him and everything he represented.

I'd never be able to tell it's him, guy has a great voice range.

Dude played Norman too. That's a fact .

Maybe. In Ultimate, it was a running point that he didn't know how to sew, so was reduced to comically bad homemade costumes when he didn't have any other options (Mary Jane usually helped him replace them, but there was one stretch where they weren't speaking to each other, so he had to make due until the reconciled).

I like Peter sewing .

Obviously she wouldn't be a Spider-Man, but I still think she should've been the character to succeed Peter as the mail Ultimate Spider-person instead of inventing a new character who's origin to tie them into the mythos was janky at best. (Course, we never would've gotten the Spider-Verse movie without Miles, so I guess it worked out in the end.)

A clone taking over does have franchise precedent...although it would've been a big change either way in my opinion.

I'd say save Miles for when Tom Holland is done with the franchise and preplan his exit so there's a logical transition.

I just don't see them doing teen Spider-Hero redux again. They already stole Miles' best friend from him.

In theory, any character can be given a good characterization, but I don't see that with Hal as the default. (Anyways, more my point was that like Green Lantern, Spider-Man is racking up a collection of other Spider heroes with their own compelling stories, but, like with Hal, none of them are ever going to supplant Peter.)

I guess it just depends what you read or see of him.

Suppose they don't need to push him that much, since he's already at the top as is? (Funny, I thought Johns was considered one of the great Lantern writers, but all I hear about lately is how he was too much of a Hal fanboy.)

I think the more common criticism is he was too much of a Sinestro fanboy.

Which kind of reminds me of Slott and Doc Ock. Is Superior as bad as Parallax?

WTF?! I get that Hal will always be Lantern numero uno because he was the first and all that, but hijacking other characters' series? (Need to finish the GLs series, but man, was I hoping for something more satisfying then Simon and Jessica getting shafted in their swan song.

As far as I'm concerned, that was the end of the Sam Humphries run.

Well, he brought back Hal, made fun stories, expanded the Green Lantern's world (And while making different colored corps is rather predictable, making it work with interesting characters is another story), so this is where the "Great" comes from, the thing is that he kept pushing Hal to look that aweome, while screwing up other Green Lanterns, which made the fans of those characters get sick of it, and I bet there are even Hal fans who think he does it too much.

I think people kind of oversell the treatment of the other GL's in relation to Hal. I mean, Hal was obviously the lead character in the main GL book but they still got moments in the books when they were together and there was also the GLC book, although I get John Stewart fans were expecting he'd be more of a co-lead than he actually was.

I think Johns was more fair to the other GL's than the other Spiders are sometimes treated in ASM.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

I think Johns was more fair to the other GL's than the other Spiders are sometimes treated in ASM.

It's all relative. Peter Parker has always been more associated-by-default with Spider-Man than Hal was associated-by-default with Green Lantern. Hal himself was a legacy character and the precedent for having more than one Green Lantern was always there, while with Spider-Man it's a relatively recent idea.

Marvel is arguably working harder at closing the gap between Peter and other Spider-Characters than DC/Johns worked to close the gap between Hal/Barry and other GL/Flash's.