Spider-Man 4 - Will it suck?

[TomH1138]

I actually enjoyed the fact that we never learned what actually happened to his parents, and that he never found the burglar, and the fact that there ARE actually unanswered questions. It's kind of refreshing in a way, and NOT tying up these subplots and having Peter move on actually work great for the character development.

I honestly can't see how not finding out about his parents enhanced his character development. He developed as a character in exactly the same way as the '02 Spider-Man, so far as I can tell.

In fact, learning something about his parents might have made him grow as a character differently than '02 Spidey. As it is, they both have the same lack of information.

As always, of course, you're entitled to think otherwise.

As for Ben's killer, just about the last scene shows the artist's rendering of the killer's face still on Peter's keyboard. That looks like foreshadowing for a future movie for me.




And while I suppose the parents mystery is a sequel hook that's going to be explored further, I really hope we never see the burglar who killed Uncle Ben ever again.[/QUOTE]

 

[Farlander]

I honestly can't see how not finding out about his parents enhanced his character development. He developed as a character in exactly the same way as the '02 Spider-Man, so far as I can tell.

In fact, learning something about his parents might have made him grow as a character differently than '02 Spidey. As it is, they both have the same lack of information.

As always, of course, you're entitled to think otherwise.

As for Ben's killer, just about the last scene shows the artist's rendering of the killer's face still on Peter's keyboard. That looks like foreshadowing for a future movie for me.

Regarding the rendering, I don't see it as foreshadowing, more like a visual representation of the unanswered questions in life thing that Ben mentions in his voice message.

And it's not about the lack of information. It's about being able to move on through that lack of information (which '02 Peter didn't have to do with or deal with in any way). Peter his whole life wondered what happened to his parents (heck, this whole Spider-Man thing was a result of him trying to find out). And then he also, unsuccessfully, tried to find Uncle Ben's murderer. But focusing on those things too much prevents him from being who he can be - Spider-Man. And he accepted the fact that most likely he won't ever find conclusion to the problem with his parents or Uncle Ben's murderer, and that it's okay, and that's why it's important for his character development.

 

[Omaru1982]

The problem with nothing being revealead about peter's parents is that they touched upon those scenes and story in the trailer and sold the movie based on them "learn the truth about Peters parents"

All that ended up on the cutting room floor so I felt cheated into seeing the amazin spider-douche. Yep I thought Peter was far too cocky even at the end of the film, it was like his only development was becoming a bigger d-bag after gaining his powers, in the same way trolls on the internet must've been after leaning about how anonymous they were.

And now there's talks of the sequel with Mary Jane being unwritten from the script and not even recasting her and just ommiting the character entirely while they recast for the later films. The Death of Gwen is possibly the only the only thing to look forward to in the sequels. Especially if they tie it into Peter's disregarding of his oath to Captain Stacy.

 

[Hymie]

Honestly, I have little problem with Peter being a douche, as it fits with his character well enough. I hope they turn it down a bit when he's not in the suit, but as Spidey I think its perfectly fine.

As for the MJ thing, I'm glad. I don't know what they were going for with the character, but the few pictures they released seemed like she was some biker chick or something. MJ is suppose to be a supermodel, a woman that is supposed to be out of Peter's league yet loves him. They already messed that one up once, I don't want them to do it again.

 

[TomH1138]

Farlander, I'm going to have to go with Omaru on this one. Sure, we don't always get the answers we want in life, and a good movie could probably be made out of that idea. But this movie was sold on finding out what happened to Peter's parents. It was the only unique storytelling point the filmmakers had, and they tossed it aside, likely to make us wait until Pt. 4 for the answer.

However, Omaru, I'm going to have to go with Hymie on the MJ thing. Spider-Man 3 suffered from way too many characters. If the filmmakers realized that the movie was going to be overstuffed with the addition of MJ, I'm all for waiting for the next film to introduce her properly.

The other thing that bothers me, though, is that Electro is in the next film. The whole "bridge" scene was completely done wrong in the '02 film. This was the chance to do it right. Norman Osborn was mentioned as pulling the strings in the last film, and that's who seemed to show up in the teaser in the end credits. So we had Osborn, Gwen Stacy (instead of MJ), and a promise about Peter staying away, which he made clear he may not follow, setting up the tragedy. Everything was perfectly in place ... for the appearance of Electro???

Oh, well. I can keep an open mind. But it does make me nervous.

 

[Sunarep]

I like Farlander's take on this. but the problem was the nature of unanswered questions was never really dealt with in a meaningful way for me. so it felt more like they tacked those questions on top of the spiderman storyline but never truly implemented it into the story in an organic way

 

[Farlander]

Farlander, I'm going to have to go with Omaru on this one. Sure, we don't always get the answers we want in life, and a good movie could probably be made out of that idea. But this movie was sold on finding out what happened to Peter's parents. It was the only unique storytelling point the filmmakers had, and they tossed it aside, likely to make us wait until Pt. 4 for the answer.

See, I actually was negatively predisposed to all that parents thing from the marketing campaign. All I wanted was a good solid origin movie that marks the start of a new reboot (the question whether the reboot was needed or not is irrelevant, Sony decided to do it and since it's the situation, I wanted it to be a good movie), but the marketing campaign screamed "OH MY LOOK AT THIS THIS IS WHY WE'RE DIFFERENT FROM THAT OTHER SPIDER-MAN MOVIE AND WHY YOU SHOULD TOTALLY GO AND SEE US", and I was just afraid that they're going to focus too much on that, because, really, how do you cram all those answers into the origin story without it feeling just tackled on to make it feel special? And setting up questions to be answered later - I'm cool with that. And I'm glad they've gone with that. Because we've got what I think is a very solid, personal origin story (with a kinda weak villain) which I find much more relatable (not to mention with a more rounded character arc that doesn't end in the middle of the movie... also, where even Flash got a small arc of his own) and prefer over the '02 version (even though I do enjoy the '02 movie too).

 

[dangermouse]

Just watched the amazing spider-man (finally).
Could think of a few more appropriate film titles:
The Underwhelming Spider-man
The average Spider-man
The meh, it's ok Spider-man
Spiderman (again - no really, we just told the same story nearly the same way, BUT WITH A LIZARD instead of Goblin and Gwen instead of MJ, and then we turned the screws by killing TWO father figures. Awesome. Oh and Peter's a dick)
The new Spider-man movie that'll make you want to watch the old one again because it's better and even manages to have better SFX even though it's 10 years older....