You know what deserves indepth critical analysis? Superhero movies

So I was thinking about Spider-Man 3 the other day (which is more than Avi Arad ever did. BOOSH!) and man, Raimi really got screwed two ways there. I mean, firstly, Venom was never going to happen. He wasn't a fan of the character and more than that, it's obvious the kind of grim gritty grim darkness that fans would want to see the storyline handled with just wasn't in his wheelhouse. His conception of Spider-Man's character and reality just had too much playfulness to indulge in that kind of cynicism. I mean, can you imagine the WB saying to Chris Nolan "Hey, loved Dark Knight, but for the third movie, you should put in Clayface. He's really popular with the fans, so just think of a way to make a walking mass of sentient clay work in your little movie film. Also, can Batman make more wisecracks?"

And the solution Raimi came up with was pretty good, even if it only showed up half-formed for the film--that the symbiote doesn't make Peter cool, it just makes him a geek who acts like a dick. And maybe that just wasn't what fans wanted. Maybe they really wanted that Nutty Professor arc of Peter coming to see it's better to be a lovable loser than a cool jock.

More than that, but the Venom arc is actually really uncinematic. Not in that it's undramatic or cerebral, but that it just doesn't fit into a traditional three-act structure. To do the storyline any justice, you have to have Peter get the symbiote (you can see both how rushed the film was and how much Raimi didn't give a shit in Venom's origin on-screen: a fucking meteor lands next to Peter), then you have to have the symbiote turn Peter into a monster, then he gets rid of the symbiote, and then FINALLY you get to Venom. So obviously Peter gets infected somewhere in the first act, then you can't just have him say "This thing sucks!" and get rid of it five minutes later, so the second act is Peter being a jerk, which leaves only the third act for Venom. Which is what happened in the final movie.

Now, what might've worked was to make Eddie getting the symbiote into a cliffhanger ending. Of course, Spider-Man 2 already ended on "Oh no, a supervillain knows Spider-Man's secret identity", so that leaves Spider-Man 4 with "Oh no, a supervillain knows Spider-Man's secret identity and Peter... doesn't give a shit about kicking his ass." But even so, there's a work-around. You could have some Venom vs. Spidey antics in Spider-Man 4, leading to Carnage and the classic scenario of them working together against him. You could even get really fancy and have some sort of symbiote apocalypse/Maximum Carnage scenario. And if Spidey and Venom aren't enough, you can always call in an expert on evil entities running around possessing people and turning them into monsters...


If you'll excuse me, I have to go masturbate vigorously to this idea now.

Writer's Block: Following the leader

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I would use pop culture references to sway public opinion. BND? Not a problem. "Much like Joe Quesada, the Qurac government wants the peoples of the world to forget its human rights abuses, but we will not forget how the innocent have suffered, and we will not forget that Peter Parker and Mary-Jane Watson were married." New Deal? Reconstruction? Pah. I'd bring back Firefly with this shit.

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I tell you what, the *Mariner* won't take ten years to whip Clark Kent into shape

At risk of being a bit too fannish, I'm going to spam you with some more movie stuff no one probably cares about. Kevin Costner as Pa Kent in the new Superman movie. That is just shockingly good casting there, since Costner has spent the last decade pretty much being Jonathan Kent. As disinterested as I am in watching, say, Swing Vote or The Postman, it's good to know there's someone out there rooting for aw-shucks cornfed Americana, and that's exactly what any Smallville scene needs to work. Echoes of how Batman Begins took Thomas Wayne and actually gave his inevitable death some traumatic impact...

I gotta say, between this, Nolan's involvement, and the shortlist for Lois (even though no one's been cast, it's good to know no one's thinking, say, Blake Lively for a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist), I'm kinda getting excited about Superman again.