The Big Picture: Too Many Villains

[twosage]

I'll put it simply.

Too many villains, too few villains, it makes no difference.

The Spider-Man reboot has no soul and it sucks REALLY bad.

I've heard this complaint so many times, but no one ever explains what they really mean. How did Amazing Spider-Man have no soul, but the completely formulaic hundred-million dollar Hollywood monster movie cheese factory titled "Spider-Man 2" is somehow John Coltrane?

Does "soul" mean "full of awkward silence that only the stoned cast thought was funny"?
Does "soul" mean "completely nonsensical storyline about losing his powers for no reason then getting them again"?
Does "soul" mean "having random conversations with single-scene stunt cast comedians"?

There are a lot of problems with ASM, primarily centering on the incredibly poorly-handled Lizard plot, but this charge that it has no soul is insulting. There is more emotion in the final scene when Andrew Garfield's Peter brings Aunt May the eggs than there is in every scene between Tobey McGuire's Peter and Aunt May / MJ / Harry from that entire trilogy combined.

 

[Sovereignty]

Holy crap.

A solid video, where your points are clear, your natural accent isn't bob-bing in and out, and you hold my interest all the way through?

Great video Bob. Keep it up, and I may return to regularly watch your stuff again!

 

[C_Topher]

Just a quick word on the "6 doors" scene. If you watch closely, they are actually mark 1-7. I know the Sinister team has been know to go that way from time to time, so it's not a big deal. It was just bugging me that know one else seemed to notice.

 

[Puzzlenaut]

I think my main problem is: WHY THESE VILLAINS?!!

Electro? Rhino? Seriously?! The Lizard was bad enough (being a poor man's Doc Ock), but jesus, these guys are the bottom of the barrel. And now they're setting up Vulture, apparently.

The good Spiderman villains are as follows:
The Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Kingpin, Venom and the Black Cat.

Ok, fair enough, Doc Ock and Venom: probably too recently used by Raimi, but the Kingpin and Black Cat could be pretty damn cool.

Electro. Lol.

 

[Caostotale]

This movie is pandering to the people who want things to be serious so it can feel adult. But I'm of the mind that part of being an adult is learning that you don't have to always be serious. Honestly, Spider-Man 2 felt more adult than Amazing Spider-Man to me, because it explored the issues of being a super-hero better. Those scenes where Peter's just trying to get through his daily life, but the spider-man stuff keeps getting in the way add a lot to the film, because it makes it about more than just Spider-Man beats up bad guys. Those films were about something and had complex running themes as well as individual themes unique to each movie.

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?

 

[Pyrian]

Central conflict. You can have as many villains as you like, so long as they all contribute, plot-wise, to the central conflict. This usually means a big bad who drives that conflict and his supporting henchmen, but it's not strictly speaking necessary. Two-Face in The Dark Knight managed the interesting feat of directly supporting the central conflict without answering to the big bad.

 

[SilverUchiha]

I've argued on the side of too many villains but not simply on a numbers factor. For me, it's how many villains can a film do and do well. It's one thing to cram several characters into a movie, but it's another to actually do it right. I say that Amazing Spiderman 2 has too many villains because Spiderman 3 had too many villains. And by that, I mean that Sony doesn't know how to make a movie with this many characters properly, as demonstrated once before. Then again, I never will have faith in Spiderman movies until Sony actually lets a team of good writers and a skilled director make the films instead of handling it with some strange level of corporate mentality.

 

[Swarmcrow]

excuse me bob but the number of villains in batman returns has never been a problem in the film ...heck is perfectly been use.. in way not even nolan did ... that the film embraces the idea that batman and his villain are all basically the same person like in the comics .. and no one seem to gets it ..doesn't necessarily mean the film use the wrong

 

[twosage]

I think my main problem is: WHY THESE VILLAINS?!!

Electro? Rhino? Seriously?! The Lizard was bad enough (being a poor man's Doc Ock), but jesus, these guys are the bottom of the barrel. And now they're setting up Vulture, apparently.

The good Spiderman villains are as follows:
The Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Kingpin, Venom and the Black Cat.

Ok, fair enough, Doc Ock and Venom: probably too recently used by Raimi, but the Kingpin and Black Cat could be pretty damn cool.

Electro. Lol.

One: Kingpin is almost certainly owned by Marvel now (as he is more often associated with Daredevil whose rights reverted back from Fox recently) and Black Cat isn't even a villain. Lizard, Rhino, and Electro are unquestionably top tier Spidey villains. Vulture is certainly up there (my only hesitation is in the guy's age). These are the Ditko/Romita villains that were the mainstay of the character for decades.

Two: This obsession that people have with "big name" villains is absurd. Yahtzee complained about the new Batman having Firefly in it, but dammit, Firefly was pretty well designed. I was a lot more impressed with that than seeing another slightly different take on a purple-and-green-suited Joker.

Properly adapted, just about any of his rogues can be a legitimate threat to a cinematic Spider-Man. Scorpion, Mysterio, Tinkerer, Kraven, Chameleon, Morbius... hell, even the Spot if they give him a new name and appearance. What matters is the movie itself. If the story works for the characters, then those are the right characters.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I agree, X-Men 3 was bad because of the shitty writing.

 

[tzimize]

So. Who is to blame if this movie is shit? (which it will be). Sony? Marvel (Disney?)? Who? I need someone to hate. My instinct says Disney, because the stars in this movie just reminds me of high school musical. And that makes me want to kill myself. Or Sony. Or Disney. WHOSE FAULT IS THIS MESS?

 

[Cybylt]

I'll put it simply.

Too many villains, too few villains, it makes no difference.

The Spider-Man reboot has no soul and it sucks REALLY bad.

I've heard this complaint so many times, but no one ever explains what they really mean. How did Amazing Spider-Man have no soul, but the completely formulaic hundred-million dollar Hollywood monster movie cheese factory titled "Spider-Man 2" is somehow John Coltrane?

Does "soul" mean "full of awkward silence that only the stoned cast thought was funny"?
Does "soul" mean "completely nonsensical storyline about losing his powers for no reason then getting them again"?
Does "soul" mean "having random conversations with single-scene stunt cast comedians"?

There are a lot of problems with ASM, primarily centering on the incredibly poorly-handled Lizard plot, but this charge that it has no soul is insulting. There is more emotion in the final scene when Andrew Garfield's Peter brings Aunt May the eggs than there is in every scene between Tobey McGuire's Peter and Aunt May / MJ / Harry from that entire trilogy combined.

It has nothing in relation to the previous Spider Man movies though, not from what I understand at least.

"This movie kinda sucks."
"Yeah well the old one sucked too."
There was no mention of the previous series until you brought it up. That's a non-argument. It is pointless. It's like the console war bullshit of "You don't like X therefore you must like Y."

Sony is rather explicitly makes these movies strictly to keep a hold on their Spider Man license so Disney can't have it and profit off of it(and make movies that don't suck but that's not the point for them). And the only reason they're doing that is because super hero movies are the top cash grab right now.

So bad it made $750 million.

Wish I could make something that sucked that bad...

Popularity and profitability rarely comes hand in hand with quality.

 

[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.

 

[Crimsonmonkeywar]

I actually enjoyed this video, good points, but I do find it irritating how he states something that's objective as fact "ASM was a terrible movie", maybe to you, but I like it just about as much as the original, no where near as much as two, and I absolute HATE three with a fiery passion, but NC seems to like it.

All that said, I'm usually not a fan when movies(especially with a character like Peter Parker) go the serious route. It's a bad sign imo.

 

[Crimsonmonkeywar]

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.

 

[MB202]

I genuinely like how this addresses the "Too Many Villains" argument and never once goes into Spider-Man 3. I don't think that would be wise for Bob to do in this context.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Wow, Electro really, really looks terrible....

I think they're using the Ultimates version of Electro here:

Spoiler: Image is in here :D

 

[Cybylt]

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."

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

As someone who watched the Spider-man musical, I can definitely say that having too many villains is a bad idea. However, that's mostly because they only seemed to be there for one song, and all of them looked really stupid. In fact, the whole musical looked really stupid. And I felt stupid for paying money to watch it.
So I guess you're right, Bob. It's not the villains that matter. It's how you use them.

 

[RJ Dalton]

> implying they have any respect for the source material whatsoever.

Seriously, they're (and by they I mean all of the studios doing this comic book thing) all trying to market the movie to the general public. And the general public will think lots of the stuff found in the primary source is stupid. Not being a comic book fan, I'm one of those people. This is not to say that I don't agree with you, though.

I'm not actually a huge fan of comics either. I've always been a stickler about pacing - well, okay not always, but for all of my adult life - and comics are almost always paced poorly. They're in such a rush to get through their story in the mere 15-20 pages they're allowed that they don't take the time to really enjoy themselves. This is not always true, of course. I have read a few that do it right (Niel Gaimon's Sandman being one of them), but most just feel too rushed to me.
But I do love a lot of the ideas in comic books, the set-up of it and many of the derivative works. That said, there are ways you can update the source material of comic books in a way that people who haven't been reading comics all their life will find stupid that isn't actually just another kind of stupid. I won't complain about robot rhino from a design perspective, because, as I recall, Rhino's suit was supposed to have mech enhancements underneath the rhino skin exterior anyway, so if they want to make it more obviously mech to get that across, more power to them. I'm also one of the few people who didn't really mind the Green Goblin's suit design in the first Spider-Man movie. It's more how you portray the character that concerns me. Admittedly, I'm not enough of a comic fan to know what Rhino does in the comics (I think he was just a hired mercenary who got some unusually tech from an anonymous benefactor, probably Norman Osbourn), but I'm not as much of a stickler for that anyway.

But like I said, the tone of this is really off-putting to me. They're just trying to hard to be serious. Few things can really survive when you try to be this heavy and this serious. Like, Lord of the Rings managed to pull it off, but only because they did it in small doses spaced properly out between fun action and some genuinely good character drama. But the so-called drama in Amazing Spider-Man 1 was like an absurdist joke: laughable because it makes no sense at all, so all you've got is this hammer with the words "I are a serious movie!" etched on its handle hitting you on the head repeatedly.

Also, Peter Parker was a real douche in that movie. And his HAIR!!! D: