Controversial Spider-Man Opinions

[Frontier]

I mean... That's completely off-screen in ASM 2.

But that's besides the point as far as why that was in there.

It's like how in Spec Eddie mentioned how Peter was involved with his school newspaper, obviously foreshadowing his future job at the Bugle.

I still absolutely hate that Marvel are too cowardly to unambiguously say they cast Zendaya as Mary Jane. "Michelle Jones" is the name of one of the goofy teachers on AP Bio.

Well, she's only marginally more Mary Jane than Ganke is Ned leeds.

In a weird way, The Dark Knight Rises with Bruce/Talia/Selina kind of did do "the love triangle in a superhero movie" thing. Talia is the rich girl with daddy issues, Selina is the poor woman who sasses and teases out richboy Bruce. Weird because Chris Nolan is not the guy who gets romance and yet he did that on the big screen.

Not that there was really much deep romance between Bruce and Talia in that movie. He thought they shared the same ideals and slept together, but it didn't really go that far compared to his interaction with Selina in my opinion.

[Kevinroc]

But that's besides the point as far as why that was in there.

It's like how in Spec Eddie mentioned how Peter was involved with his school newspaper, obviously foreshadowing his future job at the Bugle.

They said Peter had a job at the Bugle in ASM 2 that we never saw. Jameson only appeared via e-mail. It's pointless and adds nothing to the story. This is why the MCU films dropped this aspect, and I don't think it's a problem that they did.

Well, she's only marginally more Mary Jane than Ganke is Ned leeds.

The MCU Spider-Man films really are terrible Spider-Man films.

[Frontier]

They said Peter had a job at the Bugle in ASM 2 that we never saw. Jameson only appeared via e-mail. It's pointless and adds nothing to the story. This is why the MCU films dropped this aspect, and I don't think it's a problem that they did.

Working at the Bugle is part of Peter's established character in the mythos. I think it was how he justified to Harry how he could get in contact with Spider-Man? I'm not disagreeing they didn't do much with it but that feels like a separate issue from what we were previously discussing.

I mean, I'd rather see Peter working at the Bugle instead of bouncing around with Tony Stark, The Avengers, and Nick Fury but to each their own. I don't think the ASM films had anything to do with them dropping it.

The MCU Spider-Man films really are terrible Spider-Man films.

I think they definitely have their issues.

[Agent Z]

Amazing Spider-Man 2 took that crown.

No it didn't. At worst, it was a subpar sequel.

I feel like much of the hatred of the ASM movies is based on petty stuff like not having MJ and a supposed emphasis on Richard Parker over Ben and May (ignoring that May still gets plenty of focus and one scene even has her express anger that Peter seems to care more about Richard and Mary than her).

[Kevinroc]

No it didn't. At worst, it was a subpar sequel.

I feel like much of the hatred of the ASM movies is based on petty stuff like not having MJ and a supposed emphasis on Richard Parker over Ben and May (ignoring that May still gets plenty of focus and one scene even has her express anger that Peter seems to care more about Richard and Mary than her).

Not having MJ ended up being a significant problem in those movies, as has been discussed in this thread. I know they thought that having her around would undercut the Peter x Gwen romance, but it ended up destroying their film franchise in the long run.

Did Peter ever even catch Uncle Ben's killer? The first movie ended with the implication that Peter was still looking for him, and then nothing. But ASM 2 devoted so much time to Richard Parker and his secret underground subway lab, and his magic blood.

Calling ASM 2 "subpar" really undervalues just how much of an awful mess it was.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I feel like much of the hatred of the ASM movies is based on petty stuff like not having MJ and a supposed emphasis on Richard Parker over Ben and May (ignoring that May still gets plenty of focus and one scene even has her express anger that Peter seems to care more about Richard and Mary than her).

A few scenes here and there don't compensate for overall issues.

People dislike the ASM movies for the fact that they are
-- Scatterbrained. Divided between being a character-focused seires and a trailer for a series of spinoffs into an expanded Spider-Man Extended Universe.
-- Visually unimpressive. After Raimi's movies with their distinct approach to action, his special aesthetic of mixing the '60s and the '90s with subtlety, and his earnest tone that mixes comedy, action, romance, and a touch of horror...we have a banal and dull indie approach, so there's not a real sense of tone and consistency.
-- Rehashing beats from the Raimi movies, like redoing the origin but doing it half-assed, so you have Martin Sheen obviously avoided saying "With great power...", we have the burglar not getting caught and becoming this dangling thread.

The fact is that the TASM movies aren't well executed.

[Kevinroc]

Working at the Bugle is part of Peter's established character in the mythos. I think it was how he justified to Harry how he could get in contact with Spider-Man? I'm not disagreeing they didn't do much with it but that feels like a separate issue from what we were previously discussing.

I mean, I'd rather see Peter working at the Bugle instead of bouncing around with Tony Stark, The Avengers, and Nick Fury but to each their own. I don't think the ASM films had anything to do with them dropping it.

I think they didn't think they could have someone replace JK Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, so they just left them all off-screen. The MCU movies obviously thought the same thing, so they brought Simmons back.

I think they definitely have their issues.

You could argue whether they're decent or not on their own merits, but they're definitely bad Spider-Man films. Vulture and Mysterio were both motivated by their hatred of Tony Stark, which feels like a real disservice to the actual protagonist of the movies they were in.

[witchboy]

While I enjoy the Tom Holland movies, it bugs me a lot that the personalities of his supporting cast are unrecognizable to their comic versions.
MJ is a bookworm (and sort of not really Mary Jane anyways, but taking her place), Flash is a geek, Ned is this jolly best friend, May is sexy and vivacious....they're not bad characters in their own right, but it's jarring and distracting to have them have those names and not be anything like the actual comic characters.

[Agent Z]

My controversial take, which I mentioned before and will reiterate now, is that Emma Stone's Gwen is a very poorly written and concieved character, and is far inferior to Laura Harrier's Liz, leave alone KD's MJ and Zendaya's MJ.

She is very much based on Ultimate Mary Jane but she absolutely is not an effective substitute to MJ in any shape and form.



The producers never really understood Gwen Stacy and her actual function in the story, even in the story of her death. They removed all the dramatic baggage such as her hating Spider-Man, blaming him for her father's death, her poor relationship with Aunt May.

They basically made Emma Gwen similar to Busiek/Ross' take on her in MARVELS and that version of the character makes sense when you glimpse her from the nostalgia-laden style of Ross, and the perspective of Sheldon but it can never actually function as a co-lead of her own movies as the Garfield movies set her to be. And that meant that they shouldn't have killed her off when they did.

Ideally they could have used SPIDER-MAN BLUE as a model. That way you can tell the Peter/MJ/Gwen love triangle and you have more options than picking a lane that you could never fully follow down all the way.

It's an adaptation. They don't have to follow the comics that closely so long as the character is well liked and that is all that matters to audiences.

The only reason to get this anal over the changes to Gwen is being pissed over MJ not being used and I say this as an MJ fan. If the ASM movies had used MJ in the exact same capacity as Gwen, the people who hated Gwen would not have an issue with it, save for her getting killed off.

[Agent Z]

Doing Peter and Gwen as if they were "meant to be" all along is a bit like following Han and Leia for the first two SW movies and in the third one, either of them dies (don't bring up the ST, that's far in the future when they had a relationship/marriage/child and so on...different context), and somehow you have to expect to return to the bright optimisitic feeling you came in at the start. Like imagine how ROTJ would have felt if Han died, and you had a morose and sad Luke and Leia, and then you had the smash cut of credits to Williams' soaring fanfare, it would never have worked.

If you want an example of how that would have played out, look at The Amazing Spider-Man 2, at the very end, Gwen dies and then Peter spends a year sulking and not being Spider-Man, and then has the epilogue with Rhino where he suddenly becomes quippy again...and it just doesn't work. You can't sell two movies on a big romance, and then have Gwen die, and then basically manufacture a upbeat tone to end on. You need some kind of relief and sense of hope, but for Spider-Man to lose what's basically celebrated and spotlighted as the love of his life and the relationship that will never be as good, it's catastrophic for the movie and the character. The only way forward is to make it like Spider-Man Reign. (I know there were plans to bring in MJ in the third but that would never have worked under the conception that Marc Webb and Co. chose, after the way they built up Gwen, whoever cast as MJ would come off as weaker by far).

The story of Spider-Man isn't supposed to be "man loses the love of his life and spends the rest of his life being sad". You could work that with Wolverine, and with Batman , since they're supposed to be a tragic but badass brooding dude, so for instance BATMAN RETURNS, MASK OF THE PHANTASM, THE DARK KNIGHT ends with Batman permanently separated from the woman he loves but him continuing to be Batman regardless of loss is meant to be inspiring and cathartic nonetheless. In the case of Wolverine, however sad and f--ked up and dark you make his life, especially something like Logan, he's gonna crawl out claws popped and screaming.

In The Night Gwen Stacy Died, Gwen dies midway into the comic, and the rest of the comic is Peter in a violent rage lashing out at people, going in a dark place and then beating the stuffing out of Green Goblin (in the movie Dane DeHaan skulks off...which yeah), and then Goblin dies at the end, and then you have the epilogue with Mary Jane showing that no matter how bitter and alone and sad Peter feels (and should feel), there are people in his life who care do love him and that eventually he'll be alright.

You're not being consistent here. You say that the story of Spider-Man isn't about Peter losing the love of his life and being sad and then complain because he is able to move on from it.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Doing Peter and Gwen as if they were "meant to be" all along is a bit like following Han and Leia for the first two SW movies and in the third one, either of them dies (don't bring up the ST, that's far in the future when they had a relationship/marriage/child and so on...different context), and somehow you have to expect to return to the bright optimisitic feeling you came in at the start. Like imagine how ROTJ would have felt if Han died, and you had a morose and sad Luke and Leia, and then you had the smash cut of credits to Williams' soaring fanfare, it would never have worked.

If you want an example of how that would have played out, look at The Amazing Spider-Man 2, at the very end, Gwen dies and then Peter spends a year sulking and not being Spider-Man, and then has the epilogue with Rhino where he suddenly becomes quippy again...and it just doesn't work. You can't sell two movies on a big romance, and then have Gwen die, and then basically manufacture a upbeat tone to end on. You need some kind of relief and sense of hope, but for Spider-Man to lose what's basically celebrated and spotlighted as the love of his life and the relationship that will never be as good, it's catastrophic for the movie and the character. The only way forward is to make it like Spider-Man Reign. (I know there were plans to bring in MJ in the third but that would never have worked under the conception that Marc Webb and Co. chose, after the way they built up Gwen, whoever cast as MJ would come off as weaker by far).

The story of Spider-Man isn't supposed to be "man loses the love of his life and spends the rest of his life being sad". You could work that with Wolverine, and with Batman , since they're supposed to be a tragic but badass brooding dude, so for instance BATMAN RETURNS, MASK OF THE PHANTASM, THE DARK KNIGHT ends with Batman permanently separated from the woman he loves but him continuing to be Batman regardless of loss is meant to be inspiring and cathartic nonetheless. In the case of Wolverine, however sad and f--ked up and dark you make his life, especially something like Logan, he's gonna crawl out claws popped and screaming.

In The Night Gwen Stacy Died, Gwen dies midway into the comic, and the rest of the comic is Peter in a violent rage lashing out at people, going in a dark place and then beating the stuffing out of Green Goblin (in the movie Dane DeHaan skulks off...which yeah), and then Goblin dies at the end, and then you have the epilogue with Mary Jane showing that no matter how bitter and alone and sad Peter feels (and should feel), there are people in his life who care do love him and that eventually he'll be alright.

I disagree with this. Flawed as ASM2 is, the ending I find to be one of the best superhero film endings of all time and the pinnacle of what Spider-Man is all about.

Where we happen to disagree (at least from what I inquire from your post - I don't mean to put words in your mouth) is that you regarded Webb franchise's Gwen as "the one" and "meant to be". I don't think either the writers or Peter as a character in those films sees it that way.

From a Watsonian perspective, Peter and Gwen are clearly in love but none of them romanticize their relationship to the point where they think they're "meant to be" or that there is literally no one else in the world they're compatible with. They overall had a pretty mature understanding of relationships for someone their age (Peter not as much as Gwen, but he is still pretty mature for an 18 year old). What I mean is that they seemed to kinda get that relationships take work and that we have to focus on the present and not stress over whether or not it will last 'forever'. I think most healthy couples can relate to this. Peter becoming Spider-Man at the end is him finally moving on the way every person has to move on if (God Forbid) something like that ever happens to their partner. His character arc is essentially no different from that of Artemis in Season 3 of Young Justice - it just occurs within a much shorter screentime.

From a Doylist perspective, we knew MJ was coming had that franchise kept going and nothing in the films played up Gwen as "the one" or "meant to be". So far the only franchise to play up their love interest as "the one" or "meant to be" is Raimi's, and it fits the tone and story he was going for. I don't think Emma Stone and Zendaya's characters have been played up like that, though.

[Frontier]

-- Visually unimpressive. After Raimi's movies with their distinct approach to action, his special aesthetic of mixing the '60s and the '90s with subtlety, and his earnest tone that mixes comedy, action, romance, and a touch of horror...we have a banal and dull indie approach, so there's not a real sense of tone and consistency.

I'll dispute this. One thing I think the ASM films did right was seeing Spidey in motion and in a fight, particularly the Electro and Goblin fights.

I think they didn't think they could have someone replace JK Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, so they just left them all off-screen. The MCU movies obviously thought the same thing, so they brought Simmons back.

Again, though, the original point was why they had Peter interested in photography. That's separate from how they actually used the Bugle in my opinion.

You could argue whether they're decent or not on their own merits, but they're definitely bad Spider-Man films. Vulture and Mysterio were both motivated by their hatred of Tony Stark, which feels like a real disservice to the actual protagonist of the movies they were in.

I don't disagree with you even if, by the end of the film, it becomes clear their main ire ends up directed towards Spider-Man.

But can we at least get one main villain in a Spider-Man movie (other than Electro) that doesn't figure out he's Peter Parker?

The only reason to get this anal over the changes to Gwen is being pissed over MJ not being used and I say this as an MJ fan. If the ASM movies had used MJ in the exact same capacity as Gwen, the people who hated Gwen would not have an issue with it, save for her getting killed off.

The thing is, they wouldn't have killed MJ off because that wasn't her role in the franchise, which they slightly gave to Gwen in the films before killing her off and without properly establishing Mary Jane. That was part of the problem.

(I don't hate Gwen or Webb Gwen, for the record).

[Spider-Tiger]

No it didn't. At worst, it was a subpar sequel.

I feel like much of the hatred of the ASM movies is based on petty stuff like not having MJ and a supposed emphasis on Richard Parker over Ben and May (ignoring that May still gets plenty of focus and one scene even has her express anger that Peter seems to care more about Richard and Mary than her).

I feel like they misunderstood the stories that they were adapting, and that soured my enjoyment of those movies. The emphasis on Richard Parker and handling of the Gwen Stacy saga including the removal of MJ is part of that.

But apart from that, I think the second film is a legitimately bad movie irrespective of its accuracy. There are some good elements as I mentioned earlier (Sally Field's performance as May and the chemistry between Garfield and Stone come to mind...and the costume and some of the cinematography is nice), but nearly everything else (the parent's mystery, the heavy handed foreshadowing of Gwen's death and the tacked on resolution, the jarring tonal shifts, the motivations and characterization of Harry Osborn and his Green Goblin, Electro, Rhino, etc.) is just bad.

It's an adaptation. They don't have to follow the comics that closely so long as the character is well liked and that is all that matters to audiences.

The only reason to get this anal over the changes to Gwen is being pissed over MJ not being used and I say this as an MJ fan. If the ASM movies had used MJ in the exact same capacity as Gwen, the people who hated Gwen would not have an issue with it, save for her getting killed off.

If Emma Stone's character in those movies was Mary Jane, it would be an entirely different story since TASM was built from the ground up around the death of Gwen. At the very least, Emma's character would'nt have been killed off. I don't hate this portrayal of Gwen Stacy, but I take issue with it. And I would probably take issue if the film portrayed Mary Jane as a brilliant science student without any problems. I don't particularly love PS4 MJ or Raimi MJ despite both versions shipping MJ hard. Regardless, I do enjoy those versions of Spider-man overall because they understand the core elements of the character, and (in the case of PS4, SM1, and SM2) are legitimately good stories.

[Kevinroc]

Again, though, the original point was why they had Peter interested in photography. That's separate from how they actually used the Bugle in my opinion.

Because we never see the Bugle or its cast, it feels completely disconnected from the story. If the most we get is some e-mails from an off-screen Jonah and Harry trying to use Peter taking Spidey pics as some kind of connection between them, that's real flimsy. You can cut those lines from the movie and it would mean nothing. It's the definition of superfluous.

I don't disagree with you even if, by the end of the film, it becomes clear their main ire ends up directed towards Spider-Man.

But can we at least get one main villain in a Spider-Man movie (other than Electro) that doesn't figure out he's Peter Parker?

Spider-Man is the one who kicked their asses, yes. Doesn't change the fact that those movies prop up Iron Man as a hugely significant character in Peter Parker's life, which just feels wrong.

(Every villain has to learn who Spidey is in these movies because they need some personal connection, obviously.)

[Frontier]

Because we never see the Bugle or its cast, it feels completely disconnected from the story. If the most we get is some e-mails from an off-screen Jonah and Harry trying to use Peter taking Spidey pics as some kind of connection between them, that's real flimsy. You can cut those lines from the movie and it would mean nothing. It's the definition of superfluous.

It's still an established aspect of the character even if they didn't utilize it as prominently.

Spider-Man is the one who kicked their asses, yes. Doesn't change the fact that those movies prop up Iron Man as a hugely significant character in Peter Parker's life, which just feels wrong.

(Every villain has to learn who Spidey is in these movies because they need some personal connection, obviously.)

Well, he beat Mysterio. He pretty much barely managed to beat Vulture (which for my money is one of the more underwhelming final fights in a Spider-Man movie). He needed help from his guy in the chair to beat Shocker.

(Remember when he was actually holding his own against Avengers in Civil War?)

Can't a villain just hate and want to kill Spider-Man anymore?