Spider-man Month: TV-Retrospective: Ultimate Spider-man

And so we come to my final entry for Spider-man month

When Disney reacquired the animated rights for Spider-man from Sony, it lead to Spider-man appearing in The Avengers: Earth’s mightiest heroes. It also lead to the cancellation of The Spectacular Spider-man, to be replaced by a more in-house production.

“Based” on Marvel comics Ultimate Imprint (despite the fact that Peter Parker had long been replaced by Miles Morales in that imprint) Ultimate Spider-man was the result. It’s been the subject of infamy amongst fans. Some appraising it’s new direction and the focus of it integrating it into the Marvel Universe, others thinking it sucks. What do I think? I’ll get to that later.

Bear in mind, I have not gone over all the episodes of the series for the purposes of this review, I am doing this purely off memory (and limited research) so there may be a few inaccuracies and of course spoilers will follow

Guilty Pleasures #13 - Spider-man Month: The Amazing Spider-man 2

It’s the penultimate review of Spider-man Month!!

And yes, this is my favourite Spider-man movie. It’s also the only one I’ve seen at the cinema. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t got its problems, but I’ll get to that.

The Amazing Spider-man had a decent box office performance, making give or take $500million, and this one made about the same (I know it's the lowest grossing of the films, but it's not by much)… So why is this one judged a failure again? People expected it to break $1bn, why? None of the other Spider-man movies managed that. Iron Man 3 did it? Well, yeah and you wanna know why? Because it was that followed the f*cking Avengers! Iron Mans 1 and 2 didn’t get close. Because the 2^nd and 3^rd Nolan Batman movies did it? (The first one didn’t get close) here’s some advice Sony. SPIDER-MAN ISN’T BATMAN! Batman is the most popular super-hero, Spider-man is at best the 3^rd most popular Superhero, with Superman second. (OK, that might be a personal thing, but…) Speaking of our big boy Blue, remind me how Man of Steel did in the Box office.

Oh yeah, it did worse than this film. Seriously, DC is using Man of Steel to launch a DC Franchise, Amazing Spider-man 2… Might spawn a Sinister 6 movie. I suppose the issue is merchandise. Whilst DC, and its parent company Time Warner own all the  rights to their characters, Sony does not own the toy rights to Spider-man. Disney owns them, and gets most of the profits from movie related toys, and other merchandise. So really, the movie is Sony’s bread and butter. But $500 million, most of your movies don’t make that kind of money

OK, rant over… It just bugs me every time people say this movie was a commercial failure. It really wasn’t. But clearly it was enough to drive Sony into making a deal with Marvel to pair Spider-man into the MCU.

The Amazing Spider-man 2 was Mark Webb’s attempt to make a movie that stands on its own, whilst also giving opportunities for sequels and spin-offs. You’ll quickly see he succeeds in one of those but whether he succeeds in the other is questionable. So let’s dig into the Fairly Decent Spider-man 2 (well, that’s the more accurate title) and see what we’ve got here.

Arrow season 3 episodes 15-17 review

It's been quite a while since we last dived into the world of Arrow, but then the series took a break and I didn't have much to tell, but we're back with the episode that lead into the break, and the two episodes that followed it. Let's check them out

Spider-man Month - Mini-review: The Amazing Spider-man

It's still Spider-man Month!

By now, you probably know what my opinion is of the Raimi movies, namely that they all suck. Not to say that there weren’t some good things. Spider-man doesn’t blame himself for everything that goes wrong in the world (like he seems to in the comics, according to Linkara) some of the villains were decent, I actually like the Green Goblin, and erm… erm… yeah, that’s about it for the compliments, I have very little else to applaud.

Contrary to popular belief, it was not the poor reception of Spider-man 3 that lead to the reboot, well, not exactly. Raimi was working on a Spider-man 4, with Maguire set to resume his role as Peter Parker and Spider-man, hell: they had plans to make Spider-man’s 5 and 6 concurrently, if Spider-man 4 was enough of a success. (Having said that, the idea of taking Felicia Hardy, a character who has an alter-ego as the Black Cat in the comics, and turning her into a female knock-off of the Vulture does not impress me, in fact, with rumours of the Lizard, and the real Vulture also making an appearance, means it may well have gone down the same route as Spider-man 3 in terms of overstuffed villains)

However, creative problems and Raimi’s inability to get his wanted budget or time frame lead to him leaving the franchise entirely. Sony decided to the reboot the franchise with new director Mark Webb (yes, we all know that joke, don’t say it)

So we have this reboot origin story, the Amazing Spider-man. Which it’s time to look into

The Flash episodes 14-15 review - The Fallout/Out of Time

Yup, it’s now March, and I’m only reviewing the 2 episodes that have aired since the last review, because let’s be honest, the show had to take a break at some point.

Gotham episode 18 review - Everyone has a Cobblepot

I was considering postponing this review, however, I like to keep my promises and I said that in the event of a hiatus, I'd post the review at the scheduled time anyway.

Spider-man Month - TV Retrospective: The Spectacular Spider-man

It's still Spider-man Month

Watching those 3 movies made me want to make a deal with Mephisto. They were all god-awful. And no-one is going to change my mind on that. I’ll get onto the Amazing (the title, I’m not saying they’re amazing) movies next week, suffice to say I find them a lot more enjoyable, even if they are flawed.

But that’s next week. This week we look at Greg Weisman and Victor Cook’s attempt to bring life into the wall-crawler. Bear in mind, for the purposes of the review, I have not been able to watch all the episodes. I’m doing most of this off memory, so there may be a few inaccuracies. Obviously spoilers will be discussed.

Spider-man Month - Mini review: Spider-man 3

Oh boy, Spider-man 3, considered by most fans to be the worst of the trilogy. Great… In case you haven’t been reading my previous reviews, here’s what I think of the first 2: THEY BOTH SUCKED!

Hammy dialogue, an unlikeable protagonist with an even less likeable love interest, a shallow aunt and a range of iconic if still 1-dimensional supporting characters. Hell, Harry Osborn is thus far the most interesting character of the 2 movies and he’s being set up to become the THIRD SCHITZOPHRENIC VILLAIN OF THE SERIES! Seriously, if you cut out most of the filler, the FIRST TWO MOVIES ARE BASICALLY THE SAME PLOT! Science creates a villain, Peter Parker struggles with his powers, his social life sucks, he flirts with Mary Jane and she gets kidnapped a lot and the villain kills himself and has a change of heart at the last minute. So, with that in mind, I’ve come prepared for Spider-man 3 with plenty of alcohol… I have a feeling I will need it

Star Wars Rebels Season 1 Finale review - Fire across the Galaxy

It's time to look at the final episode of Star Wars Rebels

#17 Spider-man Month - Spider-man 2

I don’t want to review this one… But it’s Spider-man month

And it’s time to dig into Spider-man 2, considered by many the best Spider-man film out there (I have no idea what people are on when they watch this film and think that but I’d like some right now!)

OK, a little detail. Just because I’m reviewing this one as a rage review, does not mean I believe it to be the worst. Going into this, I don’t even remember Spider-man 3, agreed by most of the Raimi fanbase to be the worst of the 3  (I have now watched it and yes, it’s terrible, shockingly, see my review of that later this week). I chose to review this one as a rage review, mostly because this happens to be the only one I’d watched prior to the Spider-man month announcement. I’d do rage reviews for all of them but I lack the time, so you’ll have to make do with this one. Besides, when you hear that a film is the greatest but it still turns out to be terrible, yeah, that inspires some rage.

So after the success of the original Spider-man film, Spider-man 2 was announced with the original cast returning, and Sam Raimi continuing to direct. It wasn’t quite as big a success at the box office, not breaking the $800million mark this time. So, is it better than Spider-man 1? Of course it f*cking isn’t, let’s take a look.

TV Retrospective: Arrow Season 2 episodes 22-23 review

And so we come to the last TV Retrospective on Arrow, I can't believe I have already done 15 of these, but it's time to do TV Retrospectives on other shows, Starting with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. yay!

Anyway, let's cut to the chase and see what the last two episodes of Season 2 of Arrow have to offer

Spider Man Month - Mini review: Spider-man

It’s Spider-man month!

Sit back and watch as we go through the 5 movies and 2 of the latest animated series for our favourite wall-crawler.

I’ll get this out of the way now, I’m not an avid reader of Spider-man comics, in fact I don’t read any ongoing Spider-man series. I am however familiar with the character from the comics through research and the trades I’ve read (mostly Ultimate Universe stuff, but from what I here it’s pretty similar, at least pre Miles Morales taking the suit) and Linkara reviews

So, with that disclaimer out of the way, Spider-man is the first Sony Produced Spider-man movie, featuring Toby McGuire as Spider-man and Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane. Directed by Sam Raimi, the movie did pretty well at the box office, earning $827m on a $140m budget. But that was 13 years ago, has it aged well? Let’s take a look

Agent Carter episodes 7-8 Review - Snafu/Valediction

With the finale of Agent Carter having aired last week, and the midseason premiere of S.H.I.E.L.D. (which I thought was really good) having aired, let's take a look at the final episodes and put the series to rest, hopefully only for now

 

#16 Justice League: Cry for Justice

It took Linkara 3 atop the fourth wall episodes to cover this hellishly bad story. Watch me try and cover it in one, because I’ve got Spider-man to cover next month and I hate dragging things out. Also, I'm a glutton for punishment apparently

So, let’s dig into Justice League: Cry for Justice and see just how bad things really are, again