Good morning (if anyone is present).

@Richard There are enough successful Netflix Original series (critically - Netflix don't release viewing data so it's impossible to know how many people view their shows) for me to say that that isn't neccesarily true.

@MichaelEdenfield That list offends me deeply, by the way. Man of Steel, Superman Returns and The Amazing Spider-Man are awful films.

@MichaelEdenfield The Incredible Hulk is only OK (and barely a reboot), and X-Men: First Class isn't even a reboot at all.

@DrRDizzle IMO Spider-Man 3 was awful. Taken separately from the raimi version, and ignoring some of the design choices (looking at you green goblin) I liked the ASM movies, I just felt like they retread too much of the same stuff (still looking at you green goblin).

@phantom42 The Amazing Spider-Man was bad, but TASM2 remains one of the worst films I have seen.

that said, we own the first two raimi movies on disc, and have not bought, and have no intentions of buying spidey 3 or either of the ASM movies. i feel no pull to rewatch them ever again.

but i didn't walk out feeling ripped off like i did with S3

(except that i wanted to see spidey fight rhino at the end of ASM2)

@phantom42 I can't talk about how good either the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy or the TASM films are from the perspective of "how close does this match the comics", but as a huge film fan I hated TASM films so much more than even the worst moments in the Raimi trilogy.

worse than the dance scene?

@phantom42 Yes, way worse. That dance scene is great, I've never understood the hate for it. That isn't the film trying to make Peter Parker cool - that's Peter Parker thinking he is cool, and trying to act like he is. The reactions of the people around him should be enough to show that you are meant to be internally cringing for him during that scene.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is barely even a film, instead taking the form of a series of increasingly random scenes until it just ends. Genuinely one of the most incompetently crafted films I've ever seen.

i'm not typically one to rail on about "comic-peter would never do this", but i felt like even movie-peter wouldn't have. there's a difference between "i feel free and confident" and being... whatever that was.

@phantom42 Well the point is he was acting out of character, thanks to the introduction of the symbiote.

to me, i always felt like the symbiote was like being drunk - it makes the user more willing to do things they want do to, deep down. that didn't seem like what peter is deep down to me.

@phantom42 I saw it as a sudden urge to abuse the power he has, forgoing the responsibility he learned in the first film. He got sick of Eddie Brock and JJ and his on again off again relationship with MJ and said "f*ck it, I'm looking out for me now"

@phantom42 You don't think Peter just wants to be liked deep down?

@phantom42 His way of trying to make people like him is wrong, 100%, but that's part of who Maguire Peter is - socially awkward.

liked? yes. a bit more flirty? sure. dancing and playing piano? not so much.

@phantom42 That's what he sees as cool, and he tries to emulate it. He has no concept of how to be likable, so he falls on his face.

My point is, that part of the film really worked for me because it felt like some really well written character work, that has since been misinterpreted by an awful lot of people.

i think a dance scene may have worked well. i just don't think that scene worked.

but that's just me. /shrugs

@phantom42 Fair enough - it was intensley uncomfortable to watch. But it was also significantly more memorable than anything in the TASM filsm.

i'd generally agree with that

though watching anything with emma stone is inherently more memorable than anything with dunst imo

@phantom42 When even Emma Stone can't save your movie, you've messed up.

@MichaelEdenfield so... how was F4?

I didn't go :\

we had rootbeer floats at work and they made me sick ahahah

I'm going tonight.

My problem with the dance scene wasn't that it was out of character, or failed at making Peter look cool. It was just really stupid in general.

I liked ASM better than SM but I liked SM2 better than ASM2.

I liked Doc Ock

I was really looking forward to ASM2, knowing the big "twist" at the end, but the way they played that whole scene just seemed like they were totally phoning it in.

maybe my expectations were too high going in :)

@MichaelEdenfield I will never not be amazed that some people can tolerate the TASM films.

I though Andrew Garfield was a much better Spider-Man than Tobey Macguire, and I liked the finale a lot.

i admit that i throw down my money for bayformers, so my judgement may not be the best.

I also think Kirsten Dunst was terrible as Mary Jane.

I only paid for 1 Transformers movie.

I have #1 on DVD but that was mostly because the DVD case transforms into Optimus Prime

ASM started off slow, though. I could FFWD through the first 1/3 or so.

the only thing I really liked about SM was DaFoe.

dunst was a horrible MJ. she does ok as the girl next door she's written as in the first film, but MJ is supposed to be a bombshell, and dunst just isn't.

she's played Mj way too low-key-emo for me.

raimi conflated gwen and mj too much

I wonder which of them's gonna be in the new ones.

MJ or Gwen

since we're starting mid-career I assume MJ

twist: it's gonna be the little person girl from superior.

i forget her name now

anna maria

all the rumors seem to be about MJ

mj makes sense. she's the one most people know.

even ignoring the movies

true. plus, Gwen died pretty early in Spider-Man's career, right?

I know this is a reboot but there's no reason they couldn't pick up as-if it were a sequel to ASM2

relatively, yes

spiritual sucessor

with a better director and story

@MichaelEdenfield There isn't a world in which Marvel Studios will try and keep a loose canon with the TASM movies. This is there own thing now, and I fully expect Gwen to be alive and well in Peter's school.

but Spider-Man doesn't belong to Marvel Studios. Sony still owns it.

gwen dies in ASM 121/122

@MichaelEdenfield Sony still own the rights to the property, but it is an open secret that Marvel Studios will be the ones running the show.

IMO, Gwen dying is a big part of his backstory, so if they're going to try to throw him out there "fully formed" as a superhero I think that needs to already have happened.

Kevin Fiege is producing the solo Spider-Man outing, and Sony Pictures need the link to the MCU more than Marvel Studios need Spider-Man as a character.

just makes me sad that we'll probably never get to see anyone do the Death of Gwen Stacy justice on film

> The director of the new Fantastic Four film says it’s not his fault the movie has been getting such poor reviews—it’s the studios.

not a good sign.

@MichaelEdenfield We already know that it isn't going to be an origin story, but that (to me) just means we won't be seeing Peter getting bit or Uncle Ben biting the bullet. I'd be really surprised - like, genuinely shocked - if Marvel Studios decided that Gwen should already be dead. Remember, the new Spider-Man is still in High School.

@MichaelEdenfield blaming studio meddling?

@MichaelEdenfield Apparently, there was a full 40 minutes of reshoots after he was kicked off the project.

@DrRDizzle I believe Spider-Man has been in high school for 56 years.

@phantom42 yah.

> Josh Trank tweeted, then deleted, a post on Thursday saying, “A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would’ve received great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though.”

@MichaelEdenfield Actually, for a long time the comics followed real life time, right up until the birth of Franklin Richards.

Although we're also going to see a grown-up Jessica Jones on Netflix, and she's the same age as Peter Parker

isn't trank attached to some other big upcoming project?

@phantom42 He got kicked off/left a Star Wars film after he got kicked off/left Fant4stic.

And, of course, Spider-Man is the new Civil War, in that the rumor mill has every new-york-based hero in the MCU appearing in it.

@MichaelEdenfield Peter grew up in the comics, Jessica was always an adult.

Daredevl, Luke Cage, etc.

@MichaelEdenfield None of those are in the cast list.

@DrRDizzle but she went to high school with Peter Parker. thus, she is the same age as him.

@DrRDizzle " in that the rumor mill has every new-york-based hero in the MCU appearing in it."

@MichaelEdenfield As a retcon. She was introduced to the comics as if she has been there the entire time, but she hadn't.

yes. kind of like Spider-Man is going to be introduced into the MCU as if he had been there the entire time, but he hasn't.

stan lee has actually been playing peter parker in various disguises across the MCU

he's been there the whole time and we just never noticed

ahaha

If the F4 movie is as bad as I'm hearing (I'll know tonight)... I wonder if Fox is going to keep trying to hold onto them.

I could take or leave them as a superhero group, but Reed Richards is a big deal, and I love to see a Secret-Wars kind thing sometime in the future.

yeah they've never interested me in the slightest, but they have far reaching ramifications since they're so tied into everything

@MichaelEdenfield From what I hear, they aren't going to be acting like he's been there the whole time, but that he had an origin story some time between Age of Ultron and Ant Man that we just didn't see.

@MichaelEdenfield Fox have no reason to let the rights revert. They aren't haemegoring money like Sony Pictures were, and there is a lot of bad blood between Fox and Marvel.

true, but they've given up on failed marvel properties before.

Marvel got Daredevil and Electra back after just one flop.

If this movie tanks, it'll be two separate attempts that bombed for them

@MichaelEdenfield Only because the people they had creating Daredevil dropped out at the last minute, stopping Fox from putting anything into production. It wasn't a deliberate lapse of the rights, Fox got unlucky.

They've rushed crap movies into production before just to keep properties... even movies they had no intention of releasing into the theatres.

if they wanted to keep Daredevil, Fox would have found a way.

@MichaelEdenfield The rights don't revert back for about 7 years either way. We are looking at 2022 at the earliest, and that's only if any FF characters aren't used in a sequel or in the X-Men films.

Are you sure they don't have to make an F4 movie to keep the rights? That's usually how those deals work

otherwise, putting them into the X-Men movies does sound like a much better idea.

their superpowers fit right in with the kind of things mutants can do

@MichaelEdenfield No one is 100% sure because the details of the contracts that Marvel signed in the 90s have never been made public. That being said, Marvel haven't had the rights to the Skrull back yet (who were part of the FF Fox deal) and they've never been used. I think as long as some element of the property is in production, the whole thing stays with Fox.

but if the F4 aren't making them any money, I dunno why they would bother to keep them. "Just to spite Marvel" is a pretty bad business justification.

@MichaelEdenfield Marvel cancelled the FF comics just to spite Fox. It isn't unheard of.

@DrRDizzle true, but in the past, most of those deals were about getting a F4/Daredevil/spider/whatever movie out to keep everything from that deal.

Yes but Marvel is clearly really bad at doing business. Thus: bankruptcy, selling their properties, and being bought by Disney. :)

@MichaelEdenfield The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the most financially successful film franchises of all time, along with critical acclaim. I wouldn't say that's bad business.

and most of those movies were made after Marvel was bought out by a more successful company with the money to finance them.

@MichaelEdenfield I may have miscommunicated something - Marvel cancelled the FF comics earlier this year, not way back. The move to spite Fox was a recent one.

They also killed off Wolverine, which again a lot of people see as a way to attempt to harm Fox.

Yeah, I also know they're doing something silly with the entire X-Men franchise after Secret Wars ends.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Disney is far less involved in the day-to-day business operations of the comic books than the movies... if Marvel wants to kill off their comics business and turn it into an advertisement for the MCU I guess that's their choice

from all the interviews and such i've read with various comic writers at marvel, i've never heard of them complaining about disney getting involved

@phantom42 To be fair, you don't bite the hand that feeds you.

the only upper-level vs creator strife has been at the film studios

no, but some of the writers are pretty candid, even if they have to fuzz up details a little bit.

bendis, for example, has made mention that "this editor made that choice", but it's always been within the comics domain, not "well, disney said we had to do this"

and yes, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen - just that if it does, it's likely either innocuous or everyone is very much afraid

related:

@phantom42 100% did not expect and Epic Rap Battle to commentate on the soulless repurposing of original IPs

@DrRDizzle yeah, i really didn't like this one. way different in tone than their normal stuff.

the whole thing just felt like it was a dig at disney