The Big Picture: Too Many Villains

MovieBob

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Too Many Villains

MovieBob weighs in on the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man movie.

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castlewise

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Jul 18, 2010
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Is it just me or do a lot of the shots of him swinging around the city look like that one PS2 spiderman game?
 

jaymiechan

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castlewise said:
Is it just me or do a lot of the shots of him swinging around the city look like that one PS2 spiderman game?
Not just you. i ignored ASM, and so when i started seeing shots from ASM2, i had to actually look it up to find out they were from ASM2 and not a game.
 

Hades

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Is it just me or does the spidersuit look really ugly and fake in this trailer?
 
Jan 12, 2012
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I think Bob both hit and missed with his explanation. Movies with multiple villains work when they have an established hierarchy; Gruber and his henchmen, Bond villains, etc. Even Batman Begins had a secret organization, with each villain having his strings pulled by another.

Audiences can accept that two villains might team up, but not when they don't have a reason to do so. Movie antagonists tend to have one big motivation (take over the world, resurrect a loved one, etc), and when that obviously clashes with the other villain(s), we want to see the problem dealt with, either openly between the villains or through a big reveal.
 

Plinglebob

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Nov 11, 2008
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Wow, I thought he'd wait to see it before showing obvious bias against this film. Otherwise, good episode.

Also, why do people have a problem with Rhino? While I get the greater argument of whether or not he should have been in it at all, a large mech is a lot more interesting (and looks no where near as stupid) as the costume he has in the comics.
 

Uriain

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@Plinglebob I imagine the bias for the Rhino is there because "Robot Rhino" is not a popular (or well thought out) incarnation of the character in the comics, while the traditional Rhino while silly (it looks like a dude in a Rhino suit) has time and backstory on it's side to lend it weight in the eyes of people who know the character.

To those who don't know the character I imagine both look somewhat ridiculous
 

Burnouts3s3

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What's most funny to me about this situation is that I consider Raimi's Spider-man 2 to be my favorite of the superhero movies: 1 hero, 1 villain (Well, 2 if you count Harry in the ending) but tons of focus on Peter's situation. To me, that intimacy has been sorely missing for a while in a lot of comic book movies.
 

C.S.Strowbridge

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This is what I wanted them to do from the start. Each of the movies would introduce a main villain (and maybe a side villain (let's face it, Rhino can't handle a movie on his own)). Then have them all team up as the Sinister Six in the franchise finale. However, if they don't spend enough time on each villain, it won't make sense when they team up.
 

Quiotu

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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.
 

Jman1236

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I totally agree that having too many villians at once is a problem no matter what your doing. Using power rangers like bob mentioned about, I think having four different villian factions at once in Boukenger/operation overdrive made the series WAY too confusing for me to follow nor care for(not that operation overdrive had my attention at all since that was a huge trainwreck of an adaption/entry in the series). While Goseiger/megaforce(mostly Goseiger)had the same thing but in cycles, when one group fell a new group came in to make up the next story arc with one villain manupulating the others behind the scenes to become the big bad for the final story arc.
 

Guffe

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I'll see it, then decide.
I did the same with the first one.
I hated the new Lizard, maybe the situation won't be the same with Electro/Rhino/Hogoblin, but we'll see in 6 months.
 

Raesvelg

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There's a certain irony here for me given that the Rhino really was just some thug in someone else's super-suit. I can understand the trepidation towards the Vulture/Doc Ock reveal though.

I'm also entertained by the fact that Bob conspicuously avoided discussing Spiderman 3, despite the fact that it serves as the epitome of the "too many villains" problem. Then again, Bob's deep and abiding bromance with Sam Raimi made that unlikely, since I still can't recall him ever saying that the third Raimi film was genuinely worse than Amazing Spider-Man.

Because it was.

I suppose part of my distaste for the Raimi films came in how they absolutely missed the point in almost all of the villains they featured, but that's just me I suppose. As it is, I'm gonna reserve judgment on ASM2 until I actually see it.
As for axing Mary Jane, it makes sense if they want to have a more complete buildup and then kill Gwen Stacy at the climax of the whole thing. They may decide to alter her death scene a bit, since they pretty much did it already in the first Spider-man movie, just wussed out on the whole broken neck aspect of it. Despite how much I wished they had. Couldn't stand Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane.
 

Greg Tito

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Jandau said:
Massive props for the Feyd Rautha reference! :D
Agreed. That shot reminded me of Sting when I saw it in the trailer and that sentiment is confirmed by both you and Bob here. That's why I love this community. You are extensions of my own nerd-dom.

Greg
 

xaszatm

That Voice in Your Head
Sep 4, 2010
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Quiotu said:
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.
 

RJ Dalton

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Aug 13, 2009
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This looked ugly to me from the beginning. It's the tone of the trailer I hate. Sure, the VFX look terrible, but those could be early, unfinished shots and I don't pay much attention to effects in the end anyway, if the story's good. I was on the too many villains bandwagon for a bit, but I guess Bob's right, they could pull it off if they did it properly. But like I said, what really throws me off this is the tone.
I don't like the mopy, brooding, overly serious tone in this. One of the things I liked about Spider-Man was that it wasn't overly serious. This trailer is trying so hard, you can hear it shitting its own pants from the effort. Have some damn fun with it. That's what's great about the Raimi films. Flawed as they were (and they did have their flaws), they were having fun. They also managed to have their serious moments without those moments consuming the entire tone of the films. And they weren't constantly hitting you over the head going "Take this seriously, damn it! We're doing Heavy Stuff!!!"
Dude, this is not Schindler's List, it's a movie about a guy in a flashy, red-white-and-blue costume who fights a guy in a giant robot-rhino suit. Brooding and angsty-serious is not the right tone for the source material.