The Big Picture: Too Many Villains

[Sejborg]

This movie looks great! A very diverse and strong cast ranging from Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, to Jamie Fox and all the way to Paul Giamatti. That is just amazing.

I can't wait to see Spiderman taking on all these villains. Some of the CGI in the first movie was a little off, but it seems like they have stepped up their game for the second one. And I like how Marc Webb used the relationship between Peter and Gwen as the high notes instead of just the action. I think Mark Webb succeeded where Raimi failed in how Peter Parker is struggling to maintain a normal life all the while being a Superhero as well.

I think that is what makes Spiderman special from other Superheroes, and that just didn't work between Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone on the other hand is great. But Emma Stone in always great in my opinion.

 

[Britisheagle]

I thought the trailer looked really good! And being a massive fan of the Spiderman animated TV show back in the 90's, my genuine excitement to see the sinister six on the big screen outweighs most of my sceptisism.

Bob makes a good point though, I think a film with a number of villains could be potentially interesting as it could finally show a super hero who isn't strong enough!

 

[RJ Dalton]

The whole aim of 'feeling adult' is the problem with most recent entertainment franchises. From the perspective of an adult, the lot of it rather just feels like a mixture of kiddie and teenager crap, both masquerading as 'adult'. The former is taken care of by the Saturday- Morning-cartoon choreographed action scenes and the bright colors. The latter is taken care of by the weapons-grade angst that gets pumped into the story and characters at every turn.

While I wouldn't cite Spider Man 2 as a shining example of how to 'do things right' with this kind of stuff, I recall there being quite a bit of decent character development and subplots. One of the better ones was the one that had Peter figuring out how to come clean with Aunt May about his role in the uncle's murder. Others, like the Mary-Jane arc, were a bit more irritating to endure (especially that wedding scene at the end). Overall, however, that movie at least did a good job of spacing out the action set-pieces with slower character development sections.

Of all the superhero movies I've seen, the one that comes closest to adult subject matter is probably the second X-Men movie, a movie that at least portrayed humanity and its characters in largely-believable ways. This was well-illustrated in that film's many juxtapositions of young mutants and older mutants. The Nolan Batman movies posture themselves as heavily 'adult' works, but don't work for me at all because they feel too much like an Ayn Randian adolescent fantasy about the kid with the most expensive toys saving the city, etc... As well, the bottom of that 'adultness' seems to fall out when you see scenes like the final battle between Bane and Batman where, for some reason, not a single gunshot gets fired by anyone in their respective cop/criminal armies, etc... Where was all the adultness at that point?

Exactly. It's not really adult, it's a teenager's imitation of adult.

And yeah, Spider-Man 2 has it's flaws (and I usually do skip that wedding scene myself), but what it did right, it did right. I like to describe it as "enjoyable, despite its flaws." The Nolan Batman movies I enjoyed at first, but as time has gone on, I find it easier to find problems in them. Oh, they're viscerally entertaining and it is one of the few settings where that kind of dark tone is actually really appropriate, but in the end, the series, though entertaining, really doesn't have all that much to say. And never is it more apparent that the series doesn't have anything to say than in its third film. I could look past Spider-Man 2's flaws because I liked what it had to say, but Batman is empty and therefore its flaws stand out more and make the third film damn near unwatchable.

Been so long since I saw X2 that I don't even remember what it was about, though, so no comment there. I definitely remember that X3 was a clusterfuck of everything you could do wrong for a series conclusion, but since that is pretty much everybody's opinion at this point, I don't get points for it.

 

[Lee Jd]

Looks good. I am VERY excited about the prospect of having a crapload of ACTION in a superhero movie! Freakin' finally!!

Has no one besides me been wondering why there's been so little action in these things?? It's a SUPERHERO movie!!!

And this is Spider-Man we're talking about. People, Spider-Man has the most action-packed comic series in the mainstream world! More than the Avengers, more than Thor. More than the freakin' Hulk! He FIGHTS. All the time! And he often fights more than one enemy. Anyone ever hear about the Sinister Six? They're not called that for no reason. (Please note: I cannot account for anything that's taken place after The Slott)

I DO worry they won't go into the history of the characters, though. The film will have to strike the right balance between writing and action to come up with a story that we care about, here.

But I was pleasantly surprised by the last film. I have hope the next one will do just as well.

 

[Kmadden2004]

I'm just posting here to admit I'm not even watching this one. MovieBob can argue and rant all he wants to about the Spiderman series, but he's so blatantly biased about the movies that I can't take anything he says at face value.

MovieBob, I love most of your work, but I cannot take your opinions on Spiderman seriously. Even if you're right in this case, you've been wrong enough that I'm gonna just ignore your takes on this specific IP. Sorry.

Pretty much this.

Last year we were subjected to a good six to eight months of Bob trolling the first Amazing Spider-Man film, and then when the film was released we got a whole week of videos and articles dedicated to raging over how much he hated the movie (quelle surprise!) that pretty much amounted to nothing more than fanboy raging with the typical Twilight comparisons that are fashionable for caustic critics to wheel out these days. You could tell there was a bit of a backlash to this, though, because the week after his little War on Sony/Spider-Man/Marc Webb, Bob wrote another article trying to justify his conduct.

And now, despite his claims otherwise, it looks like we're about to be subjected to all that again. Oh joy.

As others have pointed out to the first guy, your ignorance of the video is funny because it's actually in defense of the subject at hand where others bash the trailers and upcoming movie for it.

The summary of it was - "If this movie is bad, it won't be because there's "too many" villains."

Actually, I did watch the video before making my original post, thanks.

 

[shadowstriker86]

Couple things...

1) Did anyone besides me end up with that godawful hour long beiber ad before this vid started? seriously escapist, thats just...wrong.

2) the first AMS sucked, this one will too most likely for reasons we can already guess, and everyone besides marvel is playing the catch-up game instead of....you know...actually producing things worth seeing but regarding the too many villains issue? as Bob said, hit or miss. In the case of AMS2, sony couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

 

[KazeAizen]

I'm just posting here to admit I'm not even watching this one. MovieBob can argue and rant all he wants to about the Spiderman series, but he's so blatantly biased about the movies that I can't take anything he says at face value.

MovieBob, I love most of your work, but I cannot take your opinions on Spiderman seriously. Even if you're right in this case, you've been wrong enough that I'm gonna just ignore your takes on this specific IP. Sorry.

...well, then you missed an entire video of him SUPPORTING something in the trailer. He is still biased against the movie, but he says that the notion of ASM2 being bad because of its many villains is a weak argument at best. If it does suck, he argues that the fact that there are 3 villains won't be the reason.

OT: Interesting theory. Another good movie with multiple bad guys: Scott Pilgrim.

Multiple bad guys really isn't the problem. Spider-man 3 was not bad because it had too many villains in it. It was bad because the studio, from what I'm aware of, forced Venom onto Raimi. Which that was probably done way after the original script for the film was finished. A two villain movie with a Goblin Jr. Harry and Sandman could actually be a good movie. Now I still don't think Spider-man 3 is the god awful piece of trash people claim it to be. I rather enjoy it. I'm surprised he made it work as good as he did given the circumstances. The Amazing Spider-man series is going to have to do a lot to be better then the originals. I enjoyed the first one on a superficial level when I saw it the first time around. Seeing it a second time a part from Spider-man himself, Gwen Stacy, and a few comic moments with the powers I really don't like the film anymore. Then again I'm not the guy who's berating Man of Steel over and over again so take from that what you will.

If this ultimately does become the slow motion train wreck people are thinking it is then maybe one day Marvel can get the rights to Spider-man back and do something with him after Avengers 2. I mean seriously Marvel is working with their B-D listers and making a shitillion dollars. Imagine what they could do if they got Spider-man, X-men, and Fantastic Four back.

 

[Zenron]

About the Mary Jane thing. I think it's really weird that they were able to just cut out an entire character out of the movie. How do you cut Mary Jane out of a spiderman story and still have it work? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Are scripts generally that versatile? I was actually looking forward to that bit of the film because I remember Shailene Woodley being really good in The Descendants.

Ah well, I didn't really care for the first one and I'm probably not going to care about this one. Maybe I'm just disappointed in it because I loved the Sam Raimi films and these ones are so soulless and lacking in comparison. It still isn't good when taken on its own but when it's up against Spiderman 2? No chance.

Also Jamie Foxx looks ridiculous.

 

[Kmadden2004]

I'm just posting here to admit I'm not even watching this one. MovieBob can argue and rant all he wants to about the Spiderman series, but he's so blatantly biased about the movies that I can't take anything he says at face value.

MovieBob, I love most of your work, but I cannot take your opinions on Spiderman seriously. Even if you're right in this case, you've been wrong enough that I'm gonna just ignore your takes on this specific IP. Sorry.

Pretty much this.

Last year we were subjected to a good six to eight months of Bob trolling the first Amazing Spider-Man film, and then when the film was released we got a whole week of videos and articles dedicated to raging over how much he hated the movie (quelle surprise!) that pretty much amounted to nothing more than fanboy raging with the typical Twilight comparisons that are fashionable for caustic critics to wheel out these days. You could tell there was a bit of a backlash to this, though, because the week after his little War on Sony/Spider-Man/Marc Webb, Bob wrote another article trying to justify his conduct.

And now, despite his claims otherwise, it looks like we're about to be subjected to all that again. Oh joy.

He even hated Peter Parker, and that's the one thing they got spot on. As someone whose apparently a big Spider-man fan, you'd think he'd at least give ASM that much.

I think Bob's problem is that he's really only knowledgeable (and a fan) of a certain type of 'Spider-Man' and seems either ignorant, indifferent or indignant toward the various other (and perfectly valid) takes on the character that have been circulating over the decades.

Take his comments about the Rhino being a mech suit, or his dismissive attitude toward Spidey's villains being the result of Oscorp practically running a super villain production line, both story elements from the Ultimate books and Spectacular animated series. It seems to be okay in Bob's eyes for Marvel Studios to amalgamate the 616 and Ultimate universes to make a decent film universe, but not when Sony does it for Spidey, which just feels like 'bitching for the sake of bitching' to me.

It's almost as if Bob just wants the Spider-Man films to stay in the silver-age trend of Peter being the spectacled science nerd in a cardigan instead of trying to be something a little more - dare I say it? - modern...

 

[annoyinglizardvoice]

Anyone notice that these movies seem to be following the Ultimate designs of the villains rather the the traditional versions, what with Rhino's suit being power-armour rather than a costume that happened to up his strength and the general design of Electro? (not that I'm complaining, this approach is working for Avengers)

I prefer when they have more than one villain. While I admit that Spiderman 3 screwed up with regards to how to use them, I find having an extra bad-guy for the hero t fight early on stops the first half of the film being dragged out too much. It also allows less well-known villains to get a chance to be cool.
I haven't seen the first of the new Spiderman films, but I'm willing to give this one a try.

(sorry if this appears twice, my connection is acting up)

 

[KazeAizen]

Couple things...

1) Did anyone besides me end up with that godawful hour long beiber ad before this vid started? seriously escapist, thats just...wrong.

2) the first AMS sucked, this one will too most likely for reasons we can already guess, and everyone besides marvel is playing the catch-up game instead of....you know...actually producing things worth seeing but regarding the too many villains issue? as Bob said, hit or miss. In the case of AMS2, sony couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

Everyone is playing catch up it seems. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if X-men: DOFP is kind of like a soft reboot for the franchise so they can incorporate the planned Fantastic Four reboot into the mix (yes fox wants to do that). The guys working for the CW are actually doing something interesting for DC. I'm not sure if you've seen Arrow but its not a half bad series and now in season 2 its getting in a comfortable groove between Nolan style realism and its own comic book origins. Its like Nolan's Batman series except its not quite ashamed of its crazy origins anymore. In the most recent episode Barry Allen showed up and pretty blared with trumpets that Thrawn the Reverse Flash is going to show up in his own spin off series set to debut in a few years. Yeah a live action Reverse Flash. How cool is that? While the big guys at WB studios are trying to hammer out a DC cinematic universe kind of haphazardly their TV guys seem to have a plan for a DC TV universe starting with Arrow and branching off into The Flash and Amazon. So if nothing else hopefully this TV universe survives and we can have that until someone at the movie making level gets their act together and actually wants to make DC superhero movies.

Seriously they just need to establish a DC studio with WB and hire people for that studio that all they want to do is make comic book films. A studio devoted to doing that is one of the big reasons the Marvel Cinematic universe is kicking so much ass these past 5 years.

 

[Something Amyss]

Been so long since I saw X2 that I don't even remember what it was about, though, so no comment there.

Literally all I remember of it right now was a clusterfuck of Magneto/brotherhood/weaponxprogram/military/teaseforfuturevents

Yeah.

Then again, I was never as in love with these movies as the normal folks, so that could just be me.

If this ultimately does become the slow motion train wreck people are thinking it is then maybe one day Marvel can get the rights to Spider-man back and do something with him after Avengers 2.

Yeah, except people were saying that about the first and it made big bank. Sorry folks, it's almost certainly going to be a financial success. What you would need is a Batman & Robin level of failure, and no matter how much people want it to be true, need it to be true, or claim it is true....It's VERY unlikely.

About the Mary Jane thing. I think it's really weird that they were able to just cut out an entire character out of the movie. How do you cut Mary Jane out of a spiderman story and still have it work? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Are scripts generally that versatile?

Well, Mary Jane wasn't exactly a vital component of the Spider-Man comics for a good chunk of time. And since Gwen is still around in these movies, she'd most likely just be a secondary love interest.

So no, it doesn't have to be versatile and yes, it could work pretty easily.

 

[sXeth]

Spiderman is a movie that probably could work with multiple villains, I think its more their choice of villains.

Rhino is more or less a goon, and some other Spidey regulars like The Scorpion or Shocker also work well enough as random mooks or henchmen to a bigger bad. Vulture and especially Doc Ock don't really fit that mold though. You can go back to X-men and there were a bunch of "Welp, here's an evil mutant, look at them go" blink-and-you'd-miss-their-names, but they didn't try and shove Magneto into the same movie as Apocalypse or Sinister.

 

[Cybylt]

Actually, I did watch the video before making my original post, thanks.

And yet you went on a tirade about his complaints about the previous movie with not hint of the content of this video as if you hadn't? Weird.

 

[Something Amyss]

I think Bob's problem is that he's really only knowledgeable (and a fan) of a certain type of 'Spider-Man' and seems either ignorant, indifferent or indignant toward the various other (and perfectly valid) takes on the character that have been circulating over the decades.

Which would explain his love for Raimi since Raimi basically hated anything but "his" Spider-Man as well.

Anyone notice that these movies seem to be following the Ultimate designs of the villains rather the the traditional versions

Yup. Between the trailer thread and this one, we've got literally dozens of people saying it. Myself and the guy quoted up there included.

The problem I have here is that Electro and Rhino both look lamer than their ultimate counterparts. And with Lizard being so hated, it's not surprising even Ultimate fans are unhappy with the look. "Patterned after" doesn't necessarily mean anything positive.

 

[RJ Dalton]

If this ultimately does become the slow motion train wreck people are thinking it is then maybe one day Marvel can get the rights to Spider-man back and do something with him after Avengers 2.

Yeah, except people were saying that about the first and it made big bank. Sorry folks, it's almost certainly going to be a financial success. What you would need is a Batman & Robin level of failure, and no matter how much people want it to be true, need it to be true, or claim it is true....It's VERY unlikely.

While it's a very sad truth that absolute turds can still be financial successes in this world where critical thinking is not only not a survival skill, but not considered overly valuable in general . . .

I'm sorry, I'm now too sad to remember how I was going to finish that sentence.

 

[Kmadden2004]

Actually, I did watch the video before making my original post, thanks.

And yet you went on a tirade about his complaints about the previous movie with not hint of the content of this video as if you hadn't? Weird.

Because, despite what you call a "defence" of the next movie, it's still just Bob trolling. Again.

He still goes on about how the film looks terrible and nitpicks that the next film is using variations of the characters and stories from sources that aren't from the silver-age. It's the same sh!t all over again.

Weird, right?

 

[KazeAizen]

snip

Yeah I know and I think at this point studios have at least figured out how to avoid that level of a mess up. I mean Origins and X3 weren't good at all but they weren't a complete divergence from the series original style like Forever and Robin were and if Fox can survive that I'm sure they and Sony can survive anything so long as it isn't over the top stupid. I feel like an awful person for saying this but I do hope both studios run into that problem so Marvel can get their toys back. If nothing else can be said about the X-men movies at least they have a pretty legit cast. Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and Ian McAllen (spell) are the only people who can play Wolverine, Prof. X, and Magneto in their "old" forms anyway.

 

[maninahat]

I came to a similar conclusion: my initial reaction was "ugh, three villains? Didn't they learn from Spiderman 3?" But then I thought about how a team of supervillains could work perfectly well - if introduced as a team, rather than individuals each with their own arc. Compare Spiderman 3, which combines three villain origin stories, with one of the X-men movies, which have a gang of villains (and other non-mutant villains on top of those). By going into the origin of each, too much of the movie's screen time is used up on hammy melodrama, instead of what we really want; hammy action. In the latter, each villain is quickly given a flavour, a personality, and an opportunity to shine in the action scenes. That's really all you need to make it work.

Come to think of it, the villain thing was even a problem in Batman Begins and the Dark Knight. The latter felt overly-long because of the whole two-face story arc, which dragged out the third act for what felt like another 20 minutes. In Batman Begins, it felt like they couldn't really decide how much to use Scarecrow, so he just randomly disappears and reappears throughout the latter half of the movie (once the real villain is introduced).

 

[Strain42]

Actually, I did watch the video before making my original post, thanks.

And yet you went on a tirade about his complaints about the previous movie with not hint of the content of this video as if you hadn't? Weird.

Because, despite what you call a "defence" of the next movie, it's still just Bob trolling. Again.

He still goes on about how the film looks terrible and nitpicks that the next film is using variations of the characters and stories from sources that aren't from the silver-age. It's the same sh!t all over again.

Weird, right?

Fun fact: Someone have a different opinion than you, even if it's a negative one does not equal trolling. Trolling would be if when Bob was writing this episode he was rubbing his hands together gleefully going "This oughta piss them off." and if you believe that's the case here well...then I personally think that's kinda petty, no offense.

And having just re-watched the video, I think it's also a bit of a stretch for you to say he "goes on" aside from the one quick note at the beginning and a single line towards the end just saying he doesn't think it looks very good based on the trailer, he really doesn't spend much of this episode talking about how good or bad Amazing Spiderman or it's sequel are.

And aside from like two lines in the entire video, the one about the Rhino being in a robot suit is kinda boring (and frankly, I agree there. I admit the robot looks a lot cooler, and I know that's more his Ultimate story, but to me a science experiment involving a polymer being bonded to a dude resulting in super powers and quite the mutation is far more interesting than a guy in a mech suit)

and the other one being slightly disappointed that the villain setup so far seems more like "All the villains just get their gear and backstory from Osborne hiring them rather than having their own unique individual setups" which doesn't really seem like that unreasonable of a thing to be kinda disappointed by, no matter what Spiderman stories you like.

So the stuff that you seem to think was the big rant of this episode was maybe 30 seconds or so out of a 5 minute video, and not even consecutive seconds.

I'm just saying, it's not like a huge chunk of this episode was Bob going "But c'mon, would it have been so hard for them to give Electro his giant lightning Starfish face?"