#peter parker: the spectacular spider-man (2017) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

anisecandy · 2 years

Note

Character ask number 21 and characters Peter and Eddie

21- Wild card! Talk about anything to do with this character! Anything at all!

Welcome everybody to a series of rattled off reviews concerning Peters and Eddies of all kinds from cartoons I don't remember well and/or didn't finish!

Spider-Man: The Animated Series from 1994s

In Polish dubbing he was voiced by Jacek Kopczyński. While he wasn't excellent voice actor at this point, he sticked around as Peter's voice all the way to the Ultimate Spider-man and definitely became an important part of character's image. I also believe that casting Przemysław Stippa as Peter's voice in Into The Spider-verse was at least partially due to the similarities in their voices, and since Stippa did a wonderful job with this role, I'm willing to forgive the slight awkwardness of some of Kopczyński's lines.

Yeah, that's all I got. I only watched like three episodes of this one because I was looking through Venom iterations in cartoons. This Peter feels very whatever to me.

Moving on.

2. The Spectacular Spider-man (2008)

My feelings regarding this version are that while it’s an example of an okay Spider-man, the Peter Parker part ultimately lacks charm and leads to more slices of life segments landing flat due to the feeling of Peter’s relationships often being underdeveloped, which is pretty much crucial to a Spider-man story. I especially didn’t enjoy the romance subplot. Peter’s infatuation with his love interests for a gigantic portion of the series felt very skin-deep, causing him to appear pretty shallow and at times egocentric and unpleasant.

While I feel that tssm had some pretty interesting and well developed concepts, their Peter Parker wasn’t one of them.

3. Ultimate Spider-man (2012)

I like this guy. He’s my homie.

Ultimate Spider-man’s Peter Parker is simultaneously a quite good, entertaining and what’s perhaps most important, likable character, and a very different interpretation of Peter Parker as a whole. This Peter goes to a private school for superheroes, has a ton of cool gadgets, his own team he leads and confides in and a mentor figure in person of Nick Fury. Basically gone is any mention of financial struggles, gone is the loneliness Peter usually faces while trying to balance his double identity, as well as the lack of guidance that comes with them. Instead, this Peter’s journey is more of a conventional one toward simply becoming the best superhero possible, with him learning how to be a team player, taking responsibility for his mistakes, trusting others, etc.

And this doesn’t make it a bad story.

The lessons he learns mostly stick, and he has enough charisma to actually be able to be the one man show Spider-man’s role often demands him to be (something that in my memory of the show, tssm failed to do). While I heard that the “imaginary segments” of Peter’s narrative were annoying to some people, I found them even if they weren’t always funny, charming and original and appropriate for a cartoon exaggerated take on Peter’s already vivid imagination and sense of humor.

His most important characteristic though, is curiously something that basically no other interpretation, nor the original of Peter Parker has; his empathy. While he often resolves the villain of the week problems through fists (that’s the kind of genre he is in after all), there are numerous examples of this Peter being the most emotionally intelligent and observant of all the characters, trying to understand the antagonists and attempting to help those he can with kindness and compassion.

This is his greatest strength as a character, while at the same time being, at least from my point of view, the most crucial deviation from the Peter Parker character. I think while he shares personality traits with classic Peter Parker, ultimately he might have worked better when seen as just a different character. The story is already different enough from most Spider-man adventures, that it perhaps would have been better to just introduce a new character, with new backstory, powers and gimmicks. But this would have made less money, wouldn’t it...?

My only real problem with this version is that his empathy doesn’t extend to the symbiotes Ultimate introduces. But since from all the versions here at least one of them reaches a happy ending with Flash and isn’t treated as evil incarnated, I’m willing to turn a blind eye to this one flaw...

Oh, also I headcanon him to be aroace (and as long as I won’t see the finale and discover that my dreadful premonition of him getting with MJ was true it won’t get disproved), which is always a plus.

4. Spider-man (2017)

...Did you notice that all of them have different eye colors...?

Anyway.

This is probably a very controversial take, but here goes nothing. I think this is what Raimi’s Peter Parker should have been. Personality-wise anyway. He’s very socially awkward, incredibly nerdy, a little stuck up and ultimately, likable. That is, for the audience. In universe it’s very easy to understand why he would get picked on and have troubles finding friends outside of Harry and later other tech-savvy students.

But unlike Raimi’s trilogy, 2017 presents a Peter Parker who is full of emotions and passion. From the first scene he isn’t just “a geek”, we’re shown how much he loves science, how much he loves discovering and how learning and creating excites him, something that, for me, Raimi failed to convey. We can connect to this Peter through seeing what he cares about. That applies to people as well. His friendship with Harry feels genuine and natural, we can see why they click together and it hurts when they start drifting apart. His relationship with Aunt May is very sweet as well, with a lot of charming little moments that show his dedication to her and his desire to help.

While he might feel a little too soft and lack the inner anger and less heroic and likable traits of original Peter Parker, I still find this interpretation to be worth checking out.

Unless it gets worse after the first half. I only watched, like, eight episodes of the 2nd season...? Oh well.

And now onward to the Eddies!

1. Spider-Man: The Animated Series from 1994s

Why is he ginger.

Now, I’m not an expert on Spidey-media, but as far as I’m aware of the adaptations timelines, this is the one that introduced the concept of Eddie a) working with Peter b) being a photographer instead of a journalist. And while the a) could, (and I stress the but wasn’t really present in that word,) be used well to establish him as a character before he became Venom, b) from the start is something I’d say is in no way tied to character’s backstory, personality or motivations and the “rivalry with Peter” that it’s supposed to lead to doesn’t really make up for it, or serves to make the character more entertaining. It could be argued that it makes for a foundation for Eddie’s hate toward Peter, but personally I think that an important part of Eddie’s original character is that there is NO foundation. There’s no ties, only baseless resentment and misplaced need for revenge. The fact that initially he was a completely outside force of which Peter had no prior knowledge, and that Eddie’s hatred was something incidental and completely out of Peter’s control made him more scary.

And on the topic of scary. My other issues with this character are that he doesn’t really feel like a threat. He starts out basically as a comic relief, he’s pathetic. And while Eddie SHOULD be a little pathetic, the problem with this version is that he’s silly and unthreatening all the way toward the end. I mean... I can’t be the only person who thinks this design for Venom makes him look kinda like a duck with those plump lips.

Also screw the “Symbiote is evil and manipulative” trope, all my homies hate the “Symbiote is evil and manipulative” trope.

The biggest fault of all though, is that this version is dubbed in Polish by Jarosław Boberek. My distaste for this guy’s voice is immeasurable. How does he sound like, you ask? Imagine Alex Hirsch voicing Stan Pines, but a tone higher. Now imagine him speaking like a village idiot. You have now a pretty close picture. And yes, this voice actor IS good at his job, but I loath his voice. So this means this version is automatically the worst, 0/10, blocked and won’t recommend.

2. The Spectacular Spider-man (2008)

Is this... even still an Eddie Brock...?

I mean, he’s not a bad character, the way too quick 360 ° shift in personality aside. That was lame. But being Venom and general look aside, there really isn’t much left there from our beloved original feral rat man Eddie. I guess that’s what happens when you interpret an already very remote interpretation of a character in a way that won’t make the audience want to throw bricks at him (yes, I’m talking about the Eddie from the comic Ultimate Spider-man).

Dunno what I could say about him, fam. I guess he’s a nice kid(how old he is actually...?) and it’s cute how protective of his friends he is? Especially Gwen- I think he has a little crush on her? With all this “I have the person you love the most Peter!” or whatever (was it, “I have your girlfriend maybe...?) and Peter being all “er...MJ...?”... not gonna lie, I think he was both jealous and projecting.

The Venom design for this one is also cute! I like it a lot and they were doing pretty cool stuff with the Symbiote’s powers. And, as bad as the “Symbiote is evil and manipulative” trope is, in this one at least there were some pretty explicit romantic connotations, so I like that.

All in all, I have only one question... Do people in the USA actually call each other “bro”? Because this feels on the same level like, idk, “cowabunga” or “radical”.

3. Spider-man (2017)

At first, I didn’t really care much about this one. But I started thinking about it, and now I came to a conclusion that this one just could have worked. You see, 2017′s Eddie has exactly one scene that for me feels a lot like potential. Wasted potential.

This Eddie has one scene, when he’s genuinely scary.

And I’m a little... invested into why and how what really clicked there could carry over to the rest of characterization in a way that would make this take memorable and more horror-like than other villains of the 2017′s??

The scene I’m talking about is when Peter finds Eddie in his room, and he starts to talk to him about his life and how Peter is supposedly ruining it. It feels unpleasant. Out of place. At this point, Peter doesn’t know that he has the Symbiote yet, so this doesn’t play out like a villain encounter. Eddie doesn’t feel like a supervillain here - he feels like a stalker. Peter is uncomfortable, doesn’t know what to make of it, reacts how a normal person would, threats to call the police. It grounds the scene in reality and makes how creepy this really is. We know basically nothing about Eddie at this point, aside from seeing him in the passing and now how he got the Symbiote, so while there’s some prior establishing, he’s still a stranger to both Peter and the audience. A stranger apparently obsessed with a teenager he should have no ties to.

And it works. It’s scary.

But right after that, when Peter with help of Miles does research on him, we’re reminded again how pathetic Eddie is. He lives in a dump, his photos are of horrid quality, how did he even get hired, he's a worse photographer than a kid with no real training! When he is again introduced as a threat, it’s in full super-villain form, with his main asset being physical strength and- And that’s it. That’s not scary anymore, we’ve seen Peter take on superhumans. This doesn’t stand out, provides new challenges, shakes the status quo. He goes out unmemorable. The same way any other villain of the week would.

Bud damn, that scene, that one scene. I want so badly to build on it! Because this could work!

So, what can we do? The first problem is the “pathetic factor” as in, if he’s this incompetent, then how are we supposed to be scared of him? to this I say, you could a) change him from being a horrible photographer to, perhaps, doing photos that Jameson just personally finds horrible. This Eddie could be all about artistic photography and very arrogant and proud of his work, refusing to change his approach and ultimately this being his downfall. Or b)he’s good at his job and is just your typical journalist photographer, but his (actually established in the show!) shady methods of getting photos have already resulted in some legal actions and he’s more of a problem than an asset at this point, Peter appearing and taking Spider-man’s photos that he couldn’t is simply the last straw. Or even c)leaving everything the same, but simultaneously establishing him as a different kind of threat. Maybe he has a scrapbook with informations on the competition that he got rid of by publishing compromising photos of them, that would be in character with his immoral methods of working! Maybe he was obsessed with Peter even before getting the Symbiote, maybe Peter finds evidences establishing Eddie as an actual stalker. And then later, when it comes to the confrontation, maybe Eddie doesn’t just use brute strength, maybe he blackmails Peter with some informations and photos he shouldn’t have, maybe he says he’ll spread some info that will cause problems for Aunt May.

I don’t know! But I see some potential here and I hate to see it going down the drain like that. Idk, maybe he gets better in the second half of the 2nd season. Wouldn’t get my hopes up though.

Aaaaand that’s all folks! Well, that was long, wasn’t it? I wanted to give you a nice pic of Ultimat’s Agent Venom, being the one and only happy symbiotic relationship of the cartoons, but I couldn’t find anything good. Oh well. What can you do.

Laters!

#peter parker #eddie brock #ultimate spider man #spider man 2017 #the spectacular spider man #ask #ask game #long post

33 notes · View notes