How Can Sony Pictures Save Spider-Man?

MovieBob

New member
Dec 31, 2008
11,495
0
0
How Can Sony Pictures Save Spider-Man?

Sony has a problem on it hands with its Spider-Man franchise. What can be done to salvage the web slinger from impending doom? MovieBob has some ideas.

Read Full Article
 
Jan 12, 2012
2,114
0
0
From Page 1 Apart from the occasional animated hit (less so, now that the Ice Age series has concluded and the infrequently produced James Bond movies, Spider-Man is at this point the backbone of Sony's entire feature film business.
Close your brackets, Bob! Also,
Page 3 A lot (and I mean a lot) of big comic-book crossover "events" have the same big climactic reveal: A designated uber-villain stands before the assembled heroes, demonstrates his (or her, but usually his) tremendous power and reveals that every damn seemingly random catastrophe that has befallen them in their own separate adventures have actually https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJRL5iXg8Qo" title="" target="_blank">all been part of his master plan the whole time!
Page 4 And it's why he winds up with a supporting character like Black Cat: "Well, I'll never sleep with Catwoman... but I can write/vicariously-project-myself-into Peter Parker sleeping with what is essentially just Catwoman!"[/i]

Three strikes and someone needs to talk with the editor of this piece and ask what they have against checking their commands. It's a good article, but a surprisingly sloppy editing job for an Escapist piece.
 

Burnouts3s3

New member
Jan 20, 2012
746
0
0
Interesting idea on Miles Morales, Bob. It would actually work out with Garfield wanting to leave the series.

As for the solution, I think Sony needs to learn to cut back costs on these movies. They're getting way too expensive and they need to start focusing.
 

Razuli

New member
Feb 26, 2013
10
0
0
Kumagawa Misogi said:
Hey did you know Amazing Spider Man 2 has already made more money than two of Bob's favourite comic films X-men First Class and Captain America the First Avenger.

So why weren't they called problems for Fox and Disney?

Oh right Bob liked those film's.

Funny how if a film does well but Bob's dislikes it, it's either a 'problem or universally panned' when it isn't.
According to wikipedia,
Captain America 2 cost 170 million and earned 681 million- it earned 36 million in its first day (using only American sales), and 95 million in its first week (also only counting sales in America).

X-men first class cost 140-160 million and earned 353 million (minimum). It earned 3.4 million on its first day in America and 55 million over its first week (again, in only counting American sales)

Amazing spiderman 2 is estimated to have cost around 400 million (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/movies/amazing-spider-man-2-makes-92-million-in-north-america.html?_r=0)and earned 92 million in its first weekend in the american markets.

Its certainly doing better than I think Bob gives it credit for, but you need to consider the base cost of the movie. It costs more than both X-men and the winter soldier combined, yet it doesn't look like it is earning as much money as the figure would lead you to believe. That's not to say the move will fail. I omitted all of the foreign box office figures above, and these movies (all three of them) tend to do well there, so it will probably eventually earn its money back.
 

Soviet Heavy

New member
Jan 22, 2010
12,218
0
0
All they need to do with Black Cat is what the Spider-Man 2 game did with her. She's not there as a love interest, but she does help Peter get over himself and embrace being Spider-Man again.

Spider-Man 2 remains a great fucking game, despite Toby Maguire's terrible voice work.
 

klaynexas3

My shoes hurt
Dec 30, 2009
1,525
0
0
I vote Donald Glover for black Spiderman. And Michael Cera for shaft. That is all.
 

Cousin_IT

New member
Feb 6, 2008
1,822
0
0
Miles Morales would be cool, except they'd cast Jayden Smith or some other rapper's son whose primary casting attribute for the role is his sur/stagename.
 

SonOfVoorhees

New member
Aug 3, 2011
3,509
0
0
They need Spiderman in his own fully fledged world. Look at the Joker in The Dark Knight, he was already committing crimes and didnt need a back story. Just seems like if Peter Parker committed suicide, there would be zero super villians killing innocents. Maybe they need to add villians that are already around like news paper/TV stories with "mystery flying criminal calling himself The Vulture strikes again" for instance. If he is a secondary villian then we dont have to have a backstory for now.
 

hermes

New member
Mar 2, 2009
3,865
0
0
I still don't understand MovieBob problems with the destiny thing in Spiderman. I get it in a general way, but in the case of Peter Parker? He has always been a magnet for weirdness to form around him, with or without his suit.

Lets see: in the comics, every schoolmate of him end up as a villain or a super hero. In Spiderman 3, the three super villains were Peter's childhood friend, whose father was also a mentor figure for Parker and who cheats on his girlfriend (but is also the ex of said girlfriend); his nemesis at work, who also was interested in the same girl he kind of has a thing for; and the man that really-but not really-but kind of really killed his father figure. His girlfriend at one point run out of her wedding with the son of Peter's boss to be with Peter.

For a hero that lives in a city as big as New York, a lot of weird things happen to those around him... if the writers wanted to add "agent of fate" as one of his powers, nobody would bat an eye...
 

Redd the Sock

New member
Apr 14, 2010
1,088
0
0
In fairness to the world building they're trying to do as compared to the avengers: the Avengers fight guys with big plans and world domination on their minds. Spidey fights guys in funny suits with odd powers that think the best use of them is robbing banks. They have to try for more or they're left with "spider-Man vs. the high tech bank robber. I'm not sure I'm on board with the ideas for the Sinister Six, but I find them better than Electro being someone's whose whole MO was "nobody loves me."

The Richard Parker thing, well, part of me thinks the problem is that they're treating it too much like a TV show where pieces can be laid out over time, for an audience that looks for as much tied up in the 2 hour run time as possible. Still, it's a bit off. It loses something just being a megacorp rather than stuff involving the Super Soldier Serum and SHIELD. Still, another part of me doesn't see world building so much as duality. Richard was the guy that stopped experiments before they were Frankenstein. Connors and Harry said screw it and shot themselves up. Peter had to come to terms that he wasn't abandoned entirely by choice, while part of Harry's character is rooted in "daddy didn't love me even as he tried to say his own life." There's also motive here. By taking his research, Richard Parker was in part responsible for the death of Norman (at least that's how Harry will rationalize it). You may not be a far of the Sins of the Father bit, but in the comics, it's was really Harrys primary reason to wear the goblin suit. It's not well done by any measure, but I think they were going for that.

As for Miles, nothing against the character, but in 2 years he's developed little beyond "I'm not Peter Parker". That's still a lot of who he is in the books: how do I live up to the great hero Peter Parker. That works for one movie, then we're back at square one. Diversity is all well and good, but it Miles doesn't solve a problem so much as kick it down the road.
 

Right Hook

New member
May 29, 2011
947
0
0
klaynexas3 said:
I vote Donald Glover for black Spiderman. And Michael Cera for shaft. That is all.
That's a great stand-up routine. Donald Glover would have killed it as Spider-Man when the reboot first hit, now I think he's grown past it, Childish Gambino has become too much of a thing, I feel like it'd distract people now.
 

RealRT

New member
Feb 28, 2014
1,058
0
0
Kumagawa Misogi said:
Hey did you know Amazing Spider Man 2 has already made more money than two of Bob's favourite comic films X-men First Class and Captain America the First Avenger.

So why weren't they called problems for Fox and Disney?

Oh right Bob liked those film's.

Funny how if a film does well but Bob's dislikes it, it's either a 'problem or universally panned' when it isn't.
Umm, nope, there's also the fact that both of those movies were made on a smaller budget.
And ASM2 is the lowest-rated Spider-Man movie on RottenTomatoes.
 

malestrithe

New member
Aug 18, 2008
1,818
0
0
Anything you can do with Miles Morales you can do with Miguel O'Hara, Kaine Parker, Ben Reilly, or Flash Thompson. Or do the gender swap thing and have the Spider-woman be Anya Corazon, Julia Carpenter or Jessica Drew, Hell, have it be Gwen Stacy's clone. That's what happened in the Ultimate Universe, the clone took over and no one cared.
 

Alterego-X

New member
Nov 22, 2009
611
0
0
MY reason for hoping the "apocalyptic scenario", is not so much that I would expect Disney to make better Spiderman movies, but that at this point I'm so done with the copyright regime and it's control over our pop-culture, that I would rather just watch thow it turns into an even more straightforward duopoly, than hope for it being held off by third parties.

Let's get over with it, and we might as well have Disney and Warner divide the gaming industry between them as well, and expand their movie interests too, until there is nothing left free. I'll grab the popcorn.
 

Sniper Team 4

New member
Apr 28, 2010
5,433
0
0
(Reading article, having a nice time, click to page 4)

BIZZ-ZAM!

Black Cat kind of hits you right in the face on that page, doesn't she? I actually forgot about her.

I haven't seen either of the Amazing Spider-man movies. They just don't interest me, and the guy playing Peter Parker does not look or seem like Peter Parker to me. And that just kills any interest I have in this franchise. Switching in Miles though, I would go see that. I know nothing about him beyond the basics that I've glimpsed, but that would be a truly gutsy move and I would give it a shot.

Bob constantly talking (and many will say whining I'm sure) about Spider-man reminds me of how I go off on Star Wars sometimes. Love that series to death, and watching it get murdered at times is hard to take. Just recently watched another episode of The Clone Wars and it just stuck another thorn in my side about the whole lack of common sense in the writing of the entire prequel trilogy.
 

RJ Dalton

New member
Aug 13, 2009
2,285
0
0
I haven't finished reading it yet and will probably edit the comment after I have, but at this point, I want to say I really don't want Spider-Man and X-Men to be a part of the greater Marvel cinematic universe. For one thing, there are so many better fitting elements of the Marvel universe for them to play with that would have chance of getting in if they had to spend that time working Spider-Man and the X-Men into it.
For another, I don't think either of them would make sense in the context of the MCU. For example, Spider-Man and X-Men are both required to get hate from the general public (Spider-Man because Triple-J turns the city against him with news, the X-Men because of a bigotry metaphor), but in this universe, heroes are established and worshiped. Especially in the case of the X-Men, it makes no sense. I mean, you've got Hulk (A giant monster), Thor (a man with god-like powers) and Captain America (a drug-powered superman). All of these people have powers that are either natural, or in some way a part of who they are and they get to be heroes, but X-Men are hated because their powers are mutations. Honestly, is the average person going to be able to tell the difference between the Hulk's powers and a mutants powers enough to really get some bigotry going, especially when the X-Men are helping save the world alongside the heroes they already worship?
So, yeah, I would rather Spider-Man and X-Men remain in separate continuities to the Avengers.
However, I do wish they'd put somebody competent in charge of Spider-Man.

And now that I've read it all:

I totally agree about Black Cat. It would be nice to see her being made into a more interesting character than she usually is.
Don't know anything black Spider-Man, though, so I can't comment on him as a character. I'm down with the idea if it's executed in an interesting way. But that's why I don't want to see Sony take it on. They clearly have no idea how to make good movies and I don't want to put up with the internet exploding with racist trolls *and* seeing the idea being royally fucked up as well. That's more annoyance than I wish to bother with. On the other hand, I would be all for killing off the current Spider-Man, as he and his stupid Edward Cullen haircut irritates me.