Spider-Man was horrible…
Spider-Man 2 sucked so bad it me nauseous…
Spider-Man 3… Actually it doesn’t look that bad. I just watched the trailer, and the scenes with the symbiont look awesome. Chances are that this movie will be much darker than the previous two, and that can possibly be a good thing.
Venom is one of my favorite villains of all time, so naturally I will have to go to see it. If nothing else, just to see how badly are they going to rape the great character and storyline from the comic. I have only one question. Can someone please explain to me why the hell did they pick Tohper Grace to play Eddie Brock? WTF?
Let me explain this. Eddie Brock was a steroid freak, who spent a large part of his life pumping iron and plotting revenge on Spiderman. The symbiont does not give him super-human abilities – it only slightly enhances his natural strength, heightens his reflexes and allows him to stick to walls, and shoot webs like Spiderman. That, and it can mimic any clothes and make him invisible like predator. Eddie is kinda like batman with a cool living costume – no powers, just superior skills, strength, endurance and few costume based skills.
Eddie was always portrayed as this hulking beast of a man with a ridiculously broad shoulders, square jaw and football player/night club bouncer look about him. Tohper Grace is none of that. He is the wimpy Foreman dude from That 70’s show! I think that Kathy Driscoll and Francine Maisler were doing crack when they were casting the role of Venom!
Spider Man 1 was actually quite good, except for the fact that they eliminated a recurring villain in Spidey’s life right off the bat (kinda like what happened in the first Batman movie). That’s my big beef with it.
What bother’s me about the third movie is that he has never met the Fantastic Four (god forbid they try and make that one), and it’s like the Secret Wars never happened. I’ll admit I’m actually kind of pissed that they chose to bypass a crucial moment in not only Spidey’s history, but Marval history! Spending time thinking about the film maker’s point of view, I suppose avoiding the overly unrealistic things would make it easier to grasp that this Spider Man could actually be in our world. I don’t justifies the crime though… Something else that it doesn’t justify is how the hell an alien symbiot comes out of nowhere in the teaser–I hope they don’t play it off as a science experiment! Oh, and I’m pissed about the absent white emblem on Spider Man! It should be there on Venom though, so I’ve heard.
The Venom suit did in fact give super human capabilities, as Spider Man was much tougher and Stronger with it. It also made Brock twice as strong as Spider Man, which I doubt could be called a minor increase to his natural abilities. Also included in the suit was mimicked webbing because Parker didn’t need his mechanical shooters with it on (which were totally skipped in the movies). When Brock got the costume, he also got all of spidey’s powers. This is more than a Batman suit.
When I first heard that Topher was Brock, I laughed because I thought it was a joke. I think I cried later that day…
I think that Secret Wars would be a topic for a whole separate movie. It would be really hard to play it off as a flashback scene or some sort of footnote.
You can sometimes get away with things like that but you have to establish two things:
1. The portrayed universe is big and dynamic. Essentially you must show the viewer that Spider Man exist in a huge, complex Marvel Universe full of super heroes and super villains. There are things happening in this universe that have nothing to do with Peter Parker, or the actual plot at hand, but which nevertheless impact the lives of all the characters in a big way.
2. The viewers must believe that Spider Man is actually quite busy, and he does all kinds of exciting things when he is not on the screen. They must think that he fights super villains every other day, hangs out with Fantastic 4, Avengers, X-men and etc…
Once you have all of that in place, you can easily say “Yeah, Peter went into space with bunch of other heroes and brought back a living costume.” and the viewers might buy it. TV shows do things like that all the time, and get away with it. You just need to set yourself up the right way.
Unfortunately, the previous two movies set up something completely opposite. They suggest that Spidey mostly chases after pickpockets, street thugs, and bank robbers. He only fights big and evil once in a blue moon – and when he does, we see this on the screen.
So they can’t really explain the real source of the symbiont without making people think that you are just using some contrived plot device to get the action going.
Re Venom’s super strength – you might be right. Now that you mention it I think I vaguely remember him tossing a car at one point (but I’m not sure). I distinctly remember panels with Eddie pumping iron, claiming that he needs to keep in shape because he does not have super-powers like Spidey.
But then again, Venom would always totally kick Peter’s ass – and that is not easy without super reflexes and super strength. I always loved how Parker’s main strategy against Venom was to make him shoot allot of webs so that the symbiont can’t regenerate it fast enough and starts using it’s own mass, forcing Eddie to disengage or risking fighting in a weakened, thinned out costume that can’t shoot any more webs. :P
I think that Peter’s biological web shooters in the movie are totally lame. It completely downplays the fact that Peter is a really smart dude underneath that costume.
Yeah, I thought the shooters were kinda lame too, but it does skip the lame transformations. The six arm thing would have been cool to see though…
Brock was a muscle head, you remember that correctly.
And you hit the nail on the head on why they break canonfor movies. People won’t believe that he does all this stuff and maintain that he’s Peter at the same time, and the movies do make it look like he’s the only hero on the planet too. It’d probobly turn into an endless saga like James Bond if they had to be entirely truthful.
I’m glad that Sam Raimi took the task of presenting Spider Man, because I’d really pay not to see the other super hero movies that came out… It really is better than the other movies that have been coming out. Spare for Batman Begins maybe, because that was probobly the closest a super hero movie has come to the actual book.
Batman Begins was good – but then again, anything looks good next to the crapfest that was Batman and Robin :mrgreen:
I also liked Hellboy, but that’s probably because I never read the comic book version so I had nothing to compare it to. I’m sure they made it 10 times more shallow, and stupid – but it was not a bad movie.
Although, I admit that I might have been totally distracted by Selma Blair and didn’t really pay close attention to plot and stuff like that. Btw, they are making a second one.
I also think that another big problem in actually implementing Marvel Universe™ on the screen are legal issues and royalties. I don’t know exactly how these things work, but I bet that securing rights for Spiderman and Venom alone is much easier than securing rights for those two, and Fantastic Four at the same time. Especially if F4 was already made into a movie and audiences expect to see Jessica Alba as Susan Storm. :P