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traincat · 4 years

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I like MCU Spider-Man, but I agree with nearly all of your critiques. The 3rd film will have the same director and writers, so I don't expect the problems to be fixed, but I'm curious: do you think MCU Spider-Man is salvageable? If you could be completely in charge, how would you write the story and fix the problems?

Yeah, I don’t really expect the problems to be fixed in the third film, no matter how many times they promise it’s going to be something “different.” If I’m honest, besides the incredibly weak scripts, I think a big part of the problem is that Jon Watts is a bad director for a Spider-Man project. Which, to be fair, I think is actually why he was hired – he’s got a pretty short list of credits under his name. I mean, “Cop Car”? “Clown”? Nothing about his repertoire suggests he was going to give the studio the kind of artistic pushback they have a history of receiving from their more experienced directors. He’s basically the director version of Jell-O – easy to mold and bland to boot. The perfect guy to direct a car commercial I mean mainstream superhero film.

This is actually part of the reason I’m disappointed that the Sony-Marvel rights deal ended up sticking after all. I think that if the film rights had reverted entirely back to Sony, there might have been some damage control. We know that they intended to keep Tom Holland, if not the whole cast, for at least one more movie even if the rights had reverted entirely back to Sony so I don’t really get what the raising of arms was about. The rights reversion would’ve cut the apron strings with the rest of the MCU which would have been good, forcing both this Spider-Man to stand on his own two feet within his own narrative and also forcing the movie to focus solely on Spider-Man and on his cast. Sony’s recent Spider-Man films as of the time of writing this (I no idea what the hell they’re gonna do with Morbius and I don’t really care) have dealt with some element of “corporations are evil” – Oscorp pulling the strings in TASM/2 and Venom’s whole entire deal – and I would really like to see this version of Spider-Man be thrust into a plot where that’s the reality and that’s something he has to deal with and where he’s actually forced to defend normal people not just against a costumed villain with a grudge but against an entire system that is set up to exploit and abuse the vulnerable. I think that would have gone a long way towards if not fixing the damage inflicted upon the narrative, then at least course correcting it for the future. But that’s not happening now so whatever.

I find it kind of hard to think of what I would do if I was handed complete control of MCU Spider-Man with the caveat that I had to go forward using the two previous films as my background just because I dislike so many of the choices they made so much. On the other hand, I do like money and inflicting my own opinions on a captive audience, so. I think I would want to scale back the stakes a lot – keep Peter in New York for the entirety of the movie’s plot and film mostly there if at all possible. I would want to cute the ties to all Iron Man cast members so sorry, Jon Favreau, but you’re out, while at the same time redirecting the film’s focus into something more oriented in Peter’s civilian community. Bringing in a character like Leo Zelinsky, a Holocaust survivor who works as a tailor specializing in super-clients, would be a really good way to give Peter and the audience a personal connection to Peter’s Queens community while also tying this Peter back to the Jewish subtext of Spider-Man, and it could work in a plot where cut the Iron Man cast – this Peter isn’t an experienced craftsman when it comes to creating his own costume, so bringing in Leo Zelinsky would make sense, and a costume created by the both of them could be quite meaningful if it was played out well.

I would definitely want to give May Parker much more screentime and rework her relationship from the “big sister” role (the writers’ words, not mine) to that of Peter’s mother, someone who realistically worries about the dangers of Spider-Man but also provides a strong moral backbone for him. I’d want to establish the exact circumstances of Ben’s death – I don’t know exactly what I’d do, but given this Peter’s development has failed to track with most other Peters I would definitely want to switch Ben’s death up somehow to kind of shed some light on that. Peter and May would have to talk about him. I would definitely want to bring Peter’s classic college friends group closer together, starting with Peter and Flash since I really like Tony Revolori as an actor. I find this MJ to be an incredibly inscrutable character, and not in a good way, so I’d want to shed some better light on her, her family circumstances, and what makes her tick. I’d bring Liz back and give her some of her comic counterpart’s fire (perhaps literally, given Ultimate Liz’s Firestar status) and also I’d get Betty’s actress a brunette bob stat. There would definitely be a bigger focus on women and on Peter navigating complicated friendships with women, not just letting him have a romantic interest and that’s the end of that. I’m very conflicted on what to do with Ned Leeds because I think Jacob Batalon has some of the best screen presence of that cast, but I find it hard to get past the “Ganke Lee with a minor Peter antagonist’s name pasted on him” aspect of the character. Honestly? I might rework Ned’s role to go full villain, skipping directly to the Hobgoblin with the shadow of the Green Goblin and the Kingpin behind him. That would solve my problem of wanting to give Batalon massive amounts of screen time and a big role but absolutely detesting the reworking of Ned Leed’s into the best friend sidekick position. I would say I’d want Ned to then have a romantic subplot with a young Richard Fisk, who would be here for some reason (it’s not like it’s the worst continuity crime the MCU would have ever committed) but I don’t want yet another Disney’s first ever gay character spotlight moment to be given to the villains, so. It would take some finangling. Maybe I would reinvent Aunt May’s one time fiance Nathan Lubensky as a woman so we’d have some nice balance.

And we defend not one single bank within the movie.

Alternatively, I go mad with the power and reveal that this entire cast is made up of clones created by the Jackal, thus explaining all the Ben Reilly-inspired costumes, and subject everyone to my five movie Clone Saga adaptation dreams.

What I would really want to do given full creative control and being told I could wipe the slate clean and restart Spider-Man within the MCU, no questions asked, would be to have Peter as a retired superhero who was active underground years and years before Iron Man or the Avengers were ever on the scene, and have his daughter Mayday be the young teenage Spider-Man of the MCU, someone fresh and new who carries her father’s legacy while living in a world saturated by the Avengers legacy.

Or I’d just kill Peter and bring in a great team to do a Miles movie. I maybe think about this theoretical where I can get my claws into things a lot.

#*replies #traincat talks comics #traincat talks homecoming #mcu critical/#Anonymous

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