Anticipating Spider-Man: Homecoming (and then presumably Spider-Man: Prom)

(these movies, not this movie specifically)

If the contention is that P Parker's science geek chops feel tacked-on in this movie that seems fair to me

I mean Pythagorean Theorem? really?

re: Ant-Man: I think his coming up with the time-travel idea is fine. He doesn't have any idea how to build a time machine, he just observes that his time in the quantum realm passed differently than it did for everyone else. Michelle Pfeiffer may have gone through something similar and shared it with him off-camera in AM&TW. So he comes to the Avengers and says hey, I've got these quantum gadgets and they have something to do with time; you guys think we could build a time machine? Seems viable. The only gap is that we don't have Reed Richards here, so Banner and Stark are having to do a level of Impossible Science that I don't normally associate with either of them, but ehhh, hey.

re: Tony Stark: I definitely don't need what you think I need, DJP! I just think in a spree of movies where the most popular character is always building murder robots, for nobody to ever tell him "it's wrong to murder people with robots" is striking, given that there are many times characters have long drag-out fights with him over every other problem save that one. I'm not looking for a Greek chorus condemning him - I'm looking for a screenplay to a passable 100-minute techno-thriller that has these issues on its mind. Even The Dark Knight's surveillance-state business, which certainly tips into "DO YOU SEE?" territory, does manage to spell this out as a conflict: Freeman thinks it's wrong, Bale thinks the ends justify the means, and Bale going down that path is cast as one of many sacrifices he's made towards stopping the Joker. Perhaps a bit pat and convenient, but the audience is meant to understand this as one of the moral conflicts between the characters. If it was a Marvel movie, Freeman would have beheld the surveillance gizmo and started arguing with Bale about what if it falls into the wrong hands. Or over a sudden revelation that Thomas Wayne ran over his dog.

IMHO the screenwriters didn't have to have Tony invent all these terrifying drone systems. They chose to do that and then to duck the implications. I think this is because the filmmakers ultimately think these gadgets are not in themselves terrifying, but really cool (in the right hands), for reasons Tombot succinctly sketched above. Far From Home's plot hinges on Spider-Man discovering the incredible, omnipotent death powers he wields; his response is not to say "Happy, I don't think what Tony built is right - let's shut it off" or even "We need to go public with this - it doesn't feel right that people don't know this thing is up there." Rather, his relationship to the gizmo is through a Spider-Man character arc concerning who should wield it: first he doesn't believe he's worthy of the great power and great responsibility, then later he determines that he is. It's something that disappoints me in these movies, which again I have otherwise enjoyed, mostly.

btw have we discussed the elephant in the room?

https://youtu.be/U_wDGbQYlK8

Waiting for the Night Monkey spinoff.

xpost That is sort of what I was getting at. When the character and the superpower are inextricable, That's where we get a lot of the conflicts between power and responsibility. But these movies have been promoting Tony Stark technology as the peak of power, equalling or even trumping even superpowers, and they continually fall into the wrong hands, so you would think that would be greater moral and ethical questions. Vs, I dunno, Spider-Man, who is given these powers he can't turn off and has to decide what to do with them.

night monkey ruled!

tho for a moment yesterday talking about peter's science gifts, i entertained the idea that it'd be cool if he was a fashion geek (going to like a "design" high school.... y'know everybody's booking time on the MakerBots etc.) and that his main non-super-powered addition to spider-man would simply have been the design of the costume. a cute reversal of the idea that the first, home-made costume must necessarily be kinda goofy and bad.

(oh and IOW: that he would have his own backup costume designed to make him look like some other themed hero entirely. feel like the comics have done this at some point, but i might just be thinking of Hawkeye being Ronin or Cap becoming Nomad.)

oh and another thing i thought verged RIGHT on the edge of being too winky-winky but was actually very delightful and got applause: the montage "toast" sequence laying out mysterio's origin. are we in spoilers?

next movie is the REAL night monkey getting revenge for spider-man stealing his or her shtick
night monkey is probably french or belgian

Would be funny if instead of Venom his black suit nemesis was Night Monkey.

in this universe, his black suit nemesis will be a dumb techno-costume tony built for him that gets a mind of its own when it falls into the hands of, let's say the Ringmaster (played by Elijah Wood)

I've got to hand it to Spider-Man, though: after a lot of fumbling and lack of confidence, he really took those drone things down hardcore in the last act

The nemeses will be college apps. If he has six top choices and they are all sinister...

alternatively, "the sinister six" could be the marvel universe nickname for the Ivy League. anything is possible!

on the other hand there's a scene where he's wearing a t-shirt of i think literally the pythagorean theorem and my son's like "dad look at his shirt, he's a geek"

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, July 8, 2019 1:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

it's a meme-y tshirt of a geometry question that asks you to "find x" and then the x is circled

ahh that makes much more sense

lol Tracer I didn't realize THAT is the shirt you were talking about

IMHO the screenwriters didn't have to have Tony invent all these terrifying drone systems.

I feel like this fundamentally goes against decades of established characterization.

I also should rewatch all of these movies before commenting on them but I feel like the objections you're raising are... all expressed in the movie, just via subtext rather than overtly?

I had only had dim memories of Homecoming - I think I had only seen it on a plane prior, so I watched it last night- Keaton was great in it. The two movies are probably about as good as one another on balance.

Like, the entire throughline of the "wrong hands" argument is that certain things shouldn't be done because the potential for abuse is too great; sure I might trust you not to go too far with it but do I trust your successor? And the movies show what happens and reinforce the idea through storytelling that these things aren't the wonderful ideas they may look like at first blush, and the characters deal with the fallout, both good and bad (the objection to Vision I find interesting considering that he couldn't exist as a sentient character without that arc, which is adapted from the comics so that Stark is responsible for his creation rather than Pym; you're making the argument that Age of Ultron should have ended with them murdering an ally).

I also think that the villains in these movies being directly motivated/created by Stark isn't accidental. Tony and his methods brought as much harm upon the world as they did good, which is partially why he's so reluctant to jump back into the fray in Endgame and why his actions at the end have so much resonance. You say "they missed the opportunity to do this as a redemption arc for Tony Stark when, IMO, that is exactly what they did.

(And one of the side-effects of a redemption arc is rose-colored glasses get directed upon your faults, which is why the public perception in Far From Home is so fawning and why Beck's connection to Stark is important in underlining how Stark's M.O. had profound negative consequences.)

His MO of farty acronyms? Hm... maybe next Tony inspired villain will be MODOK : Malignant Odor Designed Only for Kvetching

See, to me, "this can't fall into the wrong hands" is different from "certain things shouldn't be done because the potential for abuse is too great." To you, one implies the other, but in simplistic action movies it's easy to resolve "wrong hands" by getting it back into "the right hands," and that's that. Indeed this is precisely the resolution of Spider-Man: Far From Home: it was bad that the bad guy got the glasses. Thank goodness, Peter realizes that he was good enough to wield the glasses all along, and then, thank goodness, he gets them back. Order is restored. It's a little like "the wicked brother has usurped the throne" stories for children: we celebrate when the true, good king returns. If I said "this basically endorses the notion of monarchy and rule by divine or blood right," would you say "what are you talking about - the film shows that it's bad when a bad king is on the throne so clearly it's in the subtext that throne-based government is no good"?

To me what it comes down to is that the nature of the objections to the drone murder systems is never "there shouldn't be a drone murder system." It's always some adjacent or even parallel problem: you went off and built it without consulting us, you wouldn't listen to me when I said Bucky was innocent, etc. In a universe with like two hundred characters and ~supposedly~ able to tell all kinds of varied stories, in which everyone is constantly mad at Tony for all kinds of other things, in which Tony's origin story is that he ostensibly decides to no longer make weapons, it's conspicuous that nobody is raising this point.

Re: Ultron and Vision, I'm definitely not arguing that they should have murdered an ally! I'm arguing that the movie should have been written differently. If you're saddling me with all but the last ten minutes and saying "okay, all this stuff can't be changed, now end this story," is that really fair? Similarly, it doesn't really matter what decades of Tony's established characterization are. Tomei's Aunt May is more or less the opposite of the comic book character, who is defined by hating Spider-Man, not knowing his identity, and being one thousand years old. Tbh I haven't read a lot of Iron Man comics - are spy-and-execute satellites really that big a thing for him? The only big character things I can immediately think of for comics Tony are him being an alcoholic (something the movies dispensed with in one and a half scenes) and him being a high-handed establishment authority figure (something the movies garbled by making him a wise-ass rebel executive, meaning that when they get to Civil War, making him The Man versus rebel Cap is a serious screenwriting Hail Mary).

re: Tony's arc and the implication/subtext that he's really been a real problem - I'm open to this but it's something we have to read into the films, not something that's there. Okay: not everything has to be spelled out! But these are superhero movies that spell tons of other things out (witness the nightmarish scene in GOTG with Kurt Russell going line by line through "Brandy"). As well, one of the great accomplishments is supposed to be that they feel like an interconnected tapestry - so why can't characters call out things from previous films so that it feels more like an intentional downward-then-upward long-term arc? If they really intended Tony to be an asshole, it would not have been hard, or make the films be painfully literal and dumbed-down, to toss this into AoU:

STEVE: "Tony, you can't appoint yourself the guardian of the world. No man can."
TONY: "Couldn't agree more. That's why I'm putting it in the hands of an AI. A good AI. Programmed to look out for us. To fight the fights we might not be around for."
STEVE: "I've heard that before - from Fury. His system was supposed to make us safe, but HYDRA almost used it to murder millions of people. And after that, I realized something. It's not just WHO has the power ----"
TONY: "You mean 'what.' Not who. AI? Computers? I know you know what computers are by now."
STEVE: "I'm serious, Stark! It's that nobody SHOULD have the power. This --- this thing you've created, this power to invade people's lives, to kill people because you've decided to create this without consulting the world you're trying to protect ---- it's all wrong!"
TONY: "Oh okay, I get it. I'm arrogant for wanting to detect threats and stop them, by whatever it takes. But us deciding to put on custom suits and go punch the bad guys? That's A-OK with you? What I think is, I'm a realist, and there are threats out there, and if Ultron can stop them, we need Ultron. Get out of my way, Steve. I'm turning it on."

(FIGHT ENSUES. TONY SUBDUES STEVE AND ACTIVATES ULTRON. FROM THIS POINT ON, TONY IS AN EVIL VILLAIN UNTIL HIS REDEMPTION ARC STARTS, BECAUSE DOING WHAT TONY IS DOING IS ACTUALLY *BAD* AND NOT JUST A BIG MISUNDERSTANDING THAT ALLOWS ALL SIDES TO COME OUT UNSCATHED AS DESIRABLE HEROIC ACTION FIGURES.)

on reflection it is possible i have become the Vision, only instead of Jarvis and Ultron, i am the fusion of Morbs and Tuomas

Doc OTM on this one IMO, I hate all this military drone techno-thriller stuff in Spider-Man

fun movie though despite that

also - isn't Spider-Man the wisecrackin' hero? Does he make one quip this whole movie?

Iron Man is the hero who solves problems by building weapon systems he can fly around in.

.. .and remote control.

also - isn't Spider-Man the wisecrackin' hero? Does he make one quip this whole movie?

― Screamin' Jay Gould (The Yellow Kid), Tuesday, July 9, 2019

"i love led zeppelin"

I think they’re better off writing him as a teen goof who is trying his hardest AND trying to play down how little he knows about what he’s doing than a quippy wisecracker

? Quippy wisecracker (incl false bravado) is Spider-man’s defining characteristic.

One of the reasons i find the character tiresome but thats beside the point

toning it down for MCU is good. nonstop catskills humor in the middle of a fist fight seems like mmmm possibly not that effective onscreen

I feel like the last film had a better sense of the thing where up against Flash, he's hopeless, but with the mask on, he's got the confidence to toss zingers - like in the ATM robbery scene.

Yeah thats standard m.o. for writing the character

It's also how he was in Civil War and they did bits of it in this movie, although not as much because he was really in a headspace of "I'm not sure I want to be Spider-Man" for most of it.

"i love led zeppelin"

cool to have comics references in this movie

Saw this today & loved it.
Tom Holland is such a good Spidey/Peter & they handle all the teen stuff so well. And there’s nothing I love more than hero’s journey stories;i mean i know they kind of all are versions of that but this one has him outright rejecting the call, not even on the fence or doubting but basically saying NO... I love the way Holland showed the emotion in that, and Fury being like Marvel Great Santini at him was such good drama.

And Zendaya! Those two have SUCH great chemistry.

I got teary when Peter & Happy were talking about Tony. I still miss him too!! idc if he was a warmonger or w/e

Jake was fkn great, I was thinking later he would have been a good Spidey in his younger days. though maybe his acting chops now are better than they were then so that is prob moot. His heel turn was great, and I enjoyed the meta special-effects angle of the story.

Super dork moment: When Mysterio/Quentin & Peter were at the bar all i kept thinking was how great would it have been if Peter was drinking an Aqua Velva!? :D

it makes spider-man seem like a total dumbass who hasn't learned anything from anything and has to go through the same arc each movie. kind of a harry potter thing. or an iron man thing for that matter.

― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Monday, July 8, 2019 12:18 PM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This was Mr Veg’s complaint too but I feel like it discounts Peter’s age & that he’s an anxious self-doubter at heart. Ok so he overcomes x but that doesn’t mean his baggage gets left at the door. When he faces y he’s still going to panic & freak out because he’s still ~emotionally~ the same guy. For him, with a doubter’s mind & low self-esteem all x just taught him is that he could do x! We see him as a superhero but he’s not able to see himself that way so he still makes decisions as a teenager, not as a superhero. He’s not got the confidence or perspective to assume he can now do y or even z for that matter. Maybe that’s annoying for ppl to watch but that’s kinda how life is when you have that mindset. Just bc you have superpowers doesn’t mean that goes away.

So I saw this yesterday, and it was fine but I think pretty firmly bottom-tier MCU for me. Way below Homecoming imo. I'm glad lots of folks itt enjoyed it as much as they did, though. It was fun, and the cast is still great, but it just seemed to be missing something. Kinda feel like someone reading the script should've at some point said, 'Oh hey guys, you know the thing where a chunk of the last movie revolved around mishaps during a class trip? Maybe we don't need to go back to that well in the very next movie.' Seeing the WTF look on my unwitting gf's face during the Mysterio reveal was fun. The mid- and post-credits scenes were great, but problematic inasmuch as they're probably the scenes that grabbed my interest the most. The scenes during the actual movie should be the ones to do that, maybe.

Disappointed that Ned and Betty's breakup in no way involved a goblin mask or pumpkin bombs, boooooo.

I wanted a few more bantz with Mysterio's team

One of my favorite things about these Marvel movies, maybe even (especially even?) the not so good ones, is how their tiers and unevenness or whatever sort of reflect how the comics themselves work. There might be an epic arc for a couple of months, followed (or interrupted) by some silly one off storylines. Not every issue is a major crossover event, some are just, I dunno, Peter Parker trying to pick up the dry-cleaning.

I do agree that the biggest (or any of the biggest) moments in these movies really should not occur after the movie is over.

I went and re-watched Homecoming after seeing this and they're both good, but Homecoming definitely superior. I had forgotten how menacing Keaton was. Still, the cast went a long way for me, and I found them more fun- maybe more relaxed as an ensemble- to watch this time around.

I mean the cast in Far from Home vs Homecoming

The car ride Peter takes with Keaton in Homecoming is probably the best moment of suspense filmmaking in this entire enterprise.

totally! I love keaton's speech - the way it's delivered and staged.

Ahahahahahahahaa

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adambvary/spider-man-leaving-mcu-tom-holland-marvel-studios

Good luck with yr fucken Morbius movie you absolute nutsacks.