Guilty Pleasures #45 - Spider-man: Homecoming

Time to go back to Spider-man in his third iteration of the 21^st Century. I took issue with the Raimi Spider-man stories, mostly because of the dialogue which has aged terribly. I also don’t like the direction they went with the relationship between Peter and MJ (although it’s a million times better than selling their marriage to the devil)

The Amazing Spider-man movies are less cringeworthy when it comes to dialogue but have issues when it comes to storytelling and tone, with the second movie in particular being too busy setting up multiple plotlines and attempting to establish an expanded universe, rather than being a smaller self-contained story.

Sony were knocked back by the ‘poor’ performance of the Amazing Spider-man 2, dropping its sequels and I have no idea what they’re doing with Venom. They made a deal with Disney to incorporate Spider-man into the Marvel universe. My understanding of it, beyond merchandise which is another can of worms is this: Spider-man can become a part of the Marvel cinematic universe. Sony are still responsible for making (and financing) the movies, but with Kevin Feige, overseeing it as producer, as he is with all MCU movies. Sony do not have to pay Disney for any MCU characters they use, but at the same time, Sony do not get paid when Spider-man appears in any other Marvel movie. 

So, after making his debut in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, Spider-man would be in his first MCU solo movie with Spider-man: Homecoming.

The movie was well received with a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (average 7.7/10) and made $880m on a modest $175m (well, modest by Marvel standards) budget. Is it deserving of all that praise? Let’s take a look

Marvel Month - Mini Review: Iron Man 2

Well, Iron Man 1 was a success, so a sequel was inevitable. Iron Man 2 came out in 2010 to critical acclaim at the time, however looking back on it people’s tastes seem to have soured towards it. Still it made $623m on a $200m budget so it was successful enough for Marvel as they continued to build momentum towards the Avengers. Here’s how I see it

Marvel Month - Mini Review: Iron Man

So, it’s been a while since I did a theme month in November, but here’s one

It’s Marvel Month

So, for this month I’ll be covering all the Marvel movies in the MCU that I haven’t already covered. Iron Man 3, Age of Ultron and Civil War have already been done, so I’m not doing them again. I also won’t be doing Spider-man Homecoming since that’s still a Sony product, just in the MCU (plus I don’t have any space for it) Logan and Deadpool I’ll try and cover sometime next year. Also, because since most Marvel movies haven’t been critically slammed and I don’t dislike them personally, this will be entirely mini reviews.

So, with that said, let’s get to where it all started with Iron Man.

2008 was when Marvel struck it lucky with the beginning of their cinematic universe, with a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes it remains one of their most critically acclaimed movies but not their most successful, it made $585m on a $140m budget, which was a good enough starting brick for the towering behemoth the Marvel Cinematic Universe would come to be. Does it hold up nearly 10 years later? Let’s take a look. And spoilers for a 9-year old movie will follow