First, the news, I guess. Robert Downey Jr. will appear in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Marvel’s Spider-Man movie, when the film debuts on the seventh of July. That’s not even news because it had been rumored for a while and I read about it yesterday. Still, that’s the excuse to write about the movie itself.
We know who will play Spider-Man and we know he’ll appear in Captain America: Civil War. Not sure of how big his role will be, as I think a lot of the script was finished before Marvel had the rights to Spidey, but the cool trailer let’s us know he’s in the movie. And (at least for a while) is on Iron Man’s side. Cool.
What I hadn’t thought much about was the title of the Spider-Man movie: Spider-Man: Homecoming. Home. Coming. Talk about a passive-aggressive meta slap in the face of Sony. With just that title alone Marvel is saying, “Yeah, yeah, we know you’ve seen him in other movies but now the real Spider-Man is here because this is the true Marvel Universe and you know we know how to do it right.”
Which is kinda true. Sony was responsible for five Spider-Man movies. Two of them were borderline cinematic abortions, one was simply bad, one was very, very good, and one is amongst the best superhero films of all time.
Spider-Man: Can you go home again?
The first Spider-Man movie was awesome. It totally captured everything that makes Peter Parker great and I really do think Tobey McGuire is a good Spider-Man precisely because people kinda didn’t like him. Parker is a dork and an outcast. He should look awkward and out of place. He “prematurely” shoots his organic webbing, which at the time I didn’t get – and never did until someone pointed it out to me – in a nod to being awkward teenager.
The organic webshooters were a big deal at the time but now no one seems to care. Though it is weird that he developed the ability to make webs, like a spider, but they come out of his wrists and not ass. Spiders use their feet to walk on walls, and eyes to see, and all that, but their webs come out of their asses. I know they couldn’t do that on screen, because the idea of having a bajillion dollar movie feature the lead shooting webs out of his ass would be too much. Or out of his dick. But how funny would it be to see him literally shooting webs out of his cock and grabbing his shaft as he swings.
The biggest negative was casting the greatest Norman Osborn ever then having him where a weird metal mask. You could’ve just taken Williem Dafoe’s face and painted it green and it would’ve looked just like the Goblin. Oh well. Minor quibbles.
Spider-Man 2 was amazing. Molina was the perfect Doc Ock, the movie had some of the best fight scenes ever, a coherent plot, emotion, all of that. The number of superhero movies that are better – even after a decade plus of really, really good stuff – are few and far between.
Then …
Spider-Man 3: NOT the worst Spider-Man movie which is saying something.
That’s it. For that alone, the Marvel Middle Finger is warranted because this movie is when it became clear Sony was meddling (in fairness, that’s actually kinda right up Raimi’s ally so he may have been behind it). They forced Venom into the plot and it’s clear Sam Raimi did not give a shit about the character and half-assed his inclusion. The stuff with Sandman is good to great, with his first appearance being genuinely emotional despite also being 100% CGI.
Plus, Sandman’s arc in the movie is an actual arc and is, ya know, good. Venom … fuck off.
The Amazing Spider-Man: the reboot no one needed
Sony then reboots it all because that’s what you do and we now have a good looking guy who is more emo than nerd. They retell the origin story, make some pretty major changes, add in a bunch of complicated and stupid shit about Parker’s parents, and the result is a bad movie. Some cool scenes save it, and Emma Stone is so hot she alone is worth the price of admission, but what a failure. Oh, and the Lizard story is a direct ripoff of the Doc Ock story Sony already did. (In the original draft I couldn’t think of her name and wrote “INSERT NAME HERE” and almost left it.) I mean, they ignored fucking Uncle Ben in favor of having Peter make a promise to Gwen’s dad about how he’d do right and not get her involved. OK. Not bad. Maybe play it up in the second film as the, “I can’t be with the one I love but I do it for her own good but she doesn’t know” deal. NOPE! NOPE! NOPE! Ten minutes later, he’s knocking on her door and taking her to fuck town. “With great power comes … responsible use of condoms.”
Finally…
The Amazing Spider-Man 2: SECRET FUCKING RAILWAY CAR
Insert Name is hot. That’s it. Emo Spidey sucks. The guy who played Harry was decent but they gave him such shit that it was no good. Jamie Foxx was some sort of autistic villain. They had the main-villain be unrepentant bad but also legitimately retarded. And he fucking shoots electric razors to the rhythm of the itysy bitsy spider. And Peter’s dad had a secret government conspiracy shit and then it got bad.
Nothing will ever top this scene. Ever. Peter Parker’s dad had a batcave (spider-cave) that was an abandoned subway car in the 50s or something. I was in the theater and when it happened my younger brother said he actually saw me shake my head and mouth “this is so stupid.” I wasn’t doing it for attention (a rarity) or anything, just in that moment I couldn’t imagine anything dumber ever existed.
Then they killed Insert Name and there was no reason to ever let Sony near Spider-Man again.
And so we come to Marvel getting the rights to make the movie. I’m excited, in a way, because Marvel basically doesn’t make bad movies ever and sometimes makes great ones but I’ve already seen a great Spider-Man movie. Two of them. I’m much, much more interested in his interactions with the rest of the Marvel Universe. So, I guess I really wanna see him coming home.
Well played, Marvel. Well played.
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