#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 - 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

#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.

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