#56 Marvel's Spider-man season 1

This might be a review that takes a while it because of scheduling, but this made me stop in my tracks! I’ve put a review on an early list before, but never have I started writing it before its time was coming, that stopped with this. Yup, we’re talking about Spider-man again.

Ultimate Spider-man was not a series I enjoyed, it had a number of issues, particularly regarding their over-use of 4^th wall and anime-style jokes, some of the sitcom plots and the fact that Peter Parker as an entity is ignored for large chunks of the series, also the series tried to expand its universe at the expense of having its own identity. But the series did have some decent animation, occasionally a joke would land and there’s no doubt a guest appearance would bring a smile to kids’ faces.

So… WHAT THE F*CK IS THIS SH*T?

I’ll admit, when I heard about the reboot, I was excited. Hearing it would go back to Peter Parker’s roots, and the design aesthetic kinda reminding me of Spectacular Spider-man, which is a favourite series of mine, all good signs. But… from seeing the first few episodes my first thoughts were… my god is it awful. I mean it, this is the worst Spider-man cartoon I’ve seen, and it’s by a considerable margin. But I’ll stop beating about the bush and try and explain why.

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.

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

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