Expelled Grey Matter

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is one of the most telling examples of Robert Browning's quote about best laid plans.  After Spider-Man 3 underperformed with both critics and audiences Sam Raimi wanted to produce a fourth movie that would make up for it.  What Sony wanted, unfortunately, was to stick their noses into his business and pretty much end up messing Spider-Man 4 up as bad, or maybe even worse.  Their solution when Raimi left was to reboot the whole thing using a different Spiderverse, and so Tobey Maguire was out and Andrew Garfield was in for The Amazing Spider-Man .  While the movie did a good job despite going over well-worn territory it did have some problems.  A good portion of The Amazing Spider-Man was about Peter Parker accepting his powers and learning to live with them.  The romance with Gwen Stacey was there, but unlike the original trilogy it wasn't to make her a damsel in distress or cause dramatic tension outside of Parker being concerned...

After releasing what are consider the one of the best and one of the worst superhero films ever made Sam Raimi was ready to take the series in a new direction.  First, he wanted to make up for the problems in Spider-Man 3 , but also introduce new villains and lay out a completely new track for Peter Parker.  After all, by the end of Spider-Man 3 Harry Osborne has been redeemed through self-sacrifice, Mary Jane and Peter are together again and, by letting the Sandman go, Peter has learned to see beyond absolutes of good and evil.  For all its faults it still largely wrapped up the beginning of Peter's journey. Raimi wanted Curt Conners, played by Dylan Baker in a small role as Peter's physics professor, to finally morph into his role as the Lizard, one of the major villains from the comics.  Sony, however, wanted to feature the Vulture, and had plenty of notes for Raimi.  While Raimi's script, and some of the tangents it took, did have a lot to do with why Spider...

The world of Spider-Man is a legacy of unfinished projects.  While Sam Raimi's series did have closure of sorts it was originally meant for the next films to start a new chapter, while Andrew Garfield's tenure as the webslinger came to a crashing halt with the failure that was The Amazing Spider-Man 2 .   Though a Marvel character, Sony owns the rights to Spider-Man, and Raimi's series pre-dated the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Therefore when it came time for Spidey to be introduced in the MCU it meant doing a deal with Sony and, since The Amazing Spider-Man had been released just two years prior, Tom Holland's version came pre-bitten and plopped down in the middle of Captain America: Civil War .  It was a relief since it meant not having to go through retelling half the story again, and it let this version of Peter Parker have his own path once he got his own films - and also be an integral part of the Avengers. Despite him helping to defeat Thanos, Spider-Man b...

Spider-Man went through so many reboots in such a short time that it was ridiculous to expect audiences to stay around for each iteration.  The ironic part is that it took years to get one of the most popular superheroes on the big screen, finally arriving with the 2002 Sam Raimi film.  After Raimi's trio of films a new shot at the franchise, The Amazing Spider-Man , when down in flames after the second movie.  It was to the credit of everyone involved in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that when they brought him back it was in Captain America: Civil War , and not a standalone film. When that standalone film, Spider-Man: Homecoming , did arrive, it was an enjoyable surprise.  We were treated to a film where the makers correctly estimated that everyone already knew the origin story and, in a twist many of the Marvel films, gave us a human villain for Peter Parker to deal with rather than some giant worldwide threat.  The humor worked, the characters (even Park...

For all the superhero films that have been released in the last decade there have been few that get things right.  Either the directors hate the source material, have no idea what to do with the characters, can't figure out how to present a decent villain or, when things get good, undercut themselves at every step.  The different series featuring Spider-Man, until recently, have had a bad habit of doing that. Take the first two movies.  Sam Raimi, one of my favorite directors, makes a halfway decent first one, and then makes one of the best comic book films of all time with the second - only to throw together a muddy plot and Peter Parker doing a silly dance for the third.  Well, can't win them all, but I was sure Raimi, one of my favorite directors, could pull things together to make up for it. In steps the studio, out goes Raimi, and in comes The Amazing Spider-Man - two dull movies, and a unnecessarily rebooted series put out of its misery before a third eg...

I would make a reference to the Sony Spider-Man Universe dying with a whimper rather than a bang, but it didn't really even do that.  It died more with the underwhelming sound of a punctured whoopy cushion.  The cast and crew behind  Venom: The Last Dance wasn't really informed of what Sony's plans were, and it seems like neither was director J.C. Chandor, more known for doing mid-budget dramas than big-budget superhero films.  It's another case of someone getting their big chance and the studio either interfering with or just ignoring what they do. In this case it wasn't just the studio.  Audiences did as well, with buzz about the movie being as bad or worse than Morbius and announcements ahead of the release, which had been delayed for over a year, that this was it with Sony's attempts to keep Disney from being able to use characters from the Spider-Man comics.  That any of these movies were watchable is the true miracle.  If there had been any dri...

It has reached a point for Sony that it would benefit them more to just turn over their Marvel properties, which seem to revolve solely around Spider-Man, to Disney.  Disney hasn't been doing great with the Marvel Cinematic Universe lately, but at least they occasionally figure out how to make the minor characters work.  Also, the only Sony films featuring a Marvel character that have done well are the Spider-Man movies that were made in tandem with Disney.  Sure, the Venom movies have been fun, but nothing that matches the main character in the series - a main character that the live-action movies take pains to ignore exists. Besides two Venom films Sony has given us Morbius and Madame Web, both major financial and critical disappointments.  It's not something that's even new with Sony; the two Amazing Spider-Man films were misfires after the studio got nervous and rebooted the series after Spider-Man 3  instead of letting Sam Raimi get his series back on track...

I am often fearing that each time I review a movie from the Marvel Universe series that they are getting almost as repetitive as the movies themselves.  In truth, there are only so many ways to rephrase my opinion that, while the movie is okay, I feel like I'm watching the same thing over and over again.  It is for that reason I was really looking forward to seeing Spider-Man: Homecoming.  The first two Sam Raimi directed movies were pretty good, even if the third was a silly mess that, instead of getting a chance for redemption, ended prematurely, with Andrew Garfield replacing Tobey McGuire in the role and beginning, again, with the origin story.  The Amazing Spiderman movies represented some of the worst handling of a superhero franchise, and a third movie was ultimately scrapped. Thus it was nice when Spidey showed up in Captain America: Civil War , already bitten by a radioactive spider and whatever drama with Uncle Ben in the past.  No origin, jus...