A note on Amazing Spider-Man 2
Mar. 19th, 2014 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficNot to be that fan, but I've been thinking about how the comic book canon's been rewritten so that Oscorp is responsible, directly or indirectly, for the Lizard, Electro, Green Goblin, the Rhino, Spider-Man himself, and apparently the entire Sinister Six. Now there's nothing in canon that precludes this from being the case, but it's still a bad idea.
Why? Simply because Spider-Man has never been about some crusade on Peter's part to bring down Oscorp. That's not the logline. It just isn't. Spider-Man is not about an epic struggle between good and evil, it's about Peter's interactions with Gwen, Mary Jane, Flash, Jameson, Robbie, Betty Brant, etc. The soap opera, the humor, the love affairs, the humanity.
And yet this "Norman Osborn killed my parents!" plotline is getting so much screentime that we won't get to the Daily Bugle in two movies (the Spider-Slayer dude is in ASM before J. Jonah Jameson), that Mary Jane Watson has been cut out of Amazing Spider-Man 2, that Harry Osborn is becoming a supervillain in the SAME MOVIE he's introduced as Peter's bestest friend--and functionally, it's no different than if the villains had been created by random accidents like in Raimi's movies.
I mean, is Peter's final confrontation with Norman Osborn going to be even more epic because Norman has killed his parents AND killed his girlfriend AND created over a half-dozen supervillains to terrorize New York? At some point, Peter just cannot possibly hate Norman more than he already does. Think about Adolf Hitler. Would you dislike Adolf Hitler anymore if it came out that he kicked a puppy once?
And yet, we're getting two Spider-Man movies devoted to Adolf Hitler kicking puppies. One of them doesn't even have Spider-Adolf in it! It just says "oh, man, Adolf is coming, and when he gets here, he's gonna kick the crap out of some puppies! Boo! Hiss!"
Why? Simply because Spider-Man has never been about some crusade on Peter's part to bring down Oscorp. That's not the logline. It just isn't. Spider-Man is not about an epic struggle between good and evil, it's about Peter's interactions with Gwen, Mary Jane, Flash, Jameson, Robbie, Betty Brant, etc. The soap opera, the humor, the love affairs, the humanity.
And yet this "Norman Osborn killed my parents!" plotline is getting so much screentime that we won't get to the Daily Bugle in two movies (the Spider-Slayer dude is in ASM before J. Jonah Jameson), that Mary Jane Watson has been cut out of Amazing Spider-Man 2, that Harry Osborn is becoming a supervillain in the SAME MOVIE he's introduced as Peter's bestest friend--and functionally, it's no different than if the villains had been created by random accidents like in Raimi's movies.
I mean, is Peter's final confrontation with Norman Osborn going to be even more epic because Norman has killed his parents AND killed his girlfriend AND created over a half-dozen supervillains to terrorize New York? At some point, Peter just cannot possibly hate Norman more than he already does. Think about Adolf Hitler. Would you dislike Adolf Hitler anymore if it came out that he kicked a puppy once?
And yet, we're getting two Spider-Man movies devoted to Adolf Hitler kicking puppies. One of them doesn't even have Spider-Adolf in it! It just says "oh, man, Adolf is coming, and when he gets here, he's gonna kick the crap out of some puppies! Boo! Hiss!"
