Stan Lee (1922 - 2018)

This is my enduring image of Stan, and from
the time when I was most enamored of him.

What the hell do you even say? Where do you even start? Ninety-five years. A long life—a charmed, stone-cold lucky, twice over, fairy tale roller coaster of a life—a living reward for a body of creative work that is worth billions today. He died knowing he was beloved, lionized, and canonized the world over. We should all be so lucky.

Stan Lee’s career spans the whole of the comic book industry from its modest origins to the mega-billion dollar Marvel franchise he helped to create. I can’t parse this. It feels like the end of something. Earlier this year when Steve Ditko passed, I knew that there was one shoe left to drop. It doesn’t seem fair to this Spider-Man fan to have to mourn both of his creators in the same year. But Stan Lee was not just Spider-Man’s creator, although if that were all he ever did, it would certainly be enough. Stan was an architect of Cool, the self-styled "Homor of the Comics," the kind of creator that contained multitudes. There's a lot to unpack. Please be patient with me.

The Children of Generation X, Part 2: My Rambling Thoughts on the MCU

Part 1 of this essay is here.

I don’t want to rank these movies for you. What’s the point? You’re just going to incredulously point out that Guardians of the Galaxy should be higher or derisively sneer that Iron Man 3 should be lower. Make your own damn list. Instead, I’m going to talk about my impressions and insights (such as they are) regarding the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies up until now.

In very broad strokes, I liked all of them, and moreso than any of the previous Marvel movies, with a few exceptions, as you’ll see below. This giant-ass list of entertainment media contains only one genuine false start and one really sour note, both of which were recent TV properties. Everything else has been overall quite pleasurable to watch, and as a fan with an understanding of the different storytelling mediums and how they might dictate the way a story is presented, it has been fascinating to watch the MCU origami-fold 35, 50, even 75 years’ worth of stories into the essential beats and elements for a film series. Some things get added, some things get taken away, and many things get re-purposed or streamlined. But the ends have justified the means in nearly every instance.

More to the point, let me say that, judging movie for movie, the MCU movies that I liked the least--out of all of them--I liked way better than I liked Spider-Man 3. Or X-Men: The Last Stand. Or Elektra. Or Daredevil (the Affleck version). Or X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Or all three Fantastic Four movies. So, if you need a barometer by which I'm grading these things on, let the above movies stand as your negative integers. I talked about this clear line of demarcation earlier in the year as part of a long diatribe on Super Hero Fatigue.

The other thing that these movies have done is to create a sub-genre unto themselves: “The Marvel Super Hero Movie.” I know it seems like a thin distinction, but perhaps the best thing that the studio did was to figure out how to translate the Marvel Comics style of storytelling into movies. That now-famous quote from Feige comes to mind about how Captain America: Winter Soldier isn’t a super hero movie; it’s a Cold War spy thriller that just happens to have super heroes in it. That aesthetic going forward, especially in Phase 2 and Phase 3, really set them apart from the Distinguished Competition, who have been trying, with limited success, to replicate their previous successes with Batman and Superman. I say this genuinely and without any acrimony whatsoever, because I love those characters, but Marvel has simply beaten Warner Brothers to the punch in nearly every way—with notable exceptions, like 2017’s fantastic and long overdue Wonder Woman.

Meanwhile, Marvel’s movies have forged complex relationships with one another, fueled by secondary and tertiary plotlines that eventually converge into Avengers movies. We get to see these heroes at their best, and also at their worst, and sometimes, they are more on point in their civilian guises than they are saving the world in their battle suits. Such as always been a key ingredient to the Marvel storytelling formula. Heroes with problems. Relatable, undate-able, and debatable—these guys aren’t always right. They make mistakes, bad calls. Tony Stark in particular has to carry the weight of several Silver Age scientists who screwed up, but Marvel Studio has deftly given Stark an ego the size of Avengers Mansion so he can handle it when he has a mega-setback (like, say, Ultron, for instance). They are Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and they are also wonderfully broken in the ways that make them fascinating characters to watch. Some of the best scenes in all of the Marvel movies happen with no high-flying punching, just people sitting around a table, talking, or better yet, standing up and arguing.

Finally, this is not necessarily part of their plan, but because of their aggressive schedule it’s worked out in their favor. Having three movies a year gives Marvel a tighter turning radius than other studios and super hero properties. It allows them to make corrections on the fly—relatively speaking—regarding inclusion and representation. I think Marvel has done an excellent job of folding these concerns into the movies and letting them stand on their own merits, rather than asking to be noticed with press releases. More studios could take a page from this practice. Show, don’t tell. Make Shuri from Black Panther a cool character and more people will want to see Shuri again. Because she’s cool, see? It’s not hard to do in a universe where people have lasers coming out of their faces. Make cool characters, and then tell good stories. That’s certainly the Silver Age and Bronze Age ethic from which most of these films are derived.

Here are my talking points and take-aways from the MCU projects, all of which I’ve watched at least twice, and some as many as ten times. Skip over any shows or movies you haven't seen, because I cavalierly discuss plot points that you may not want to know. Spoiler alert. 

Phase 1

We didn’t even know there was a “Phase One” until they started talking about “Phase Two.” Looking back on these early movies, you can readily see that they had an idea in place, even if it look a while longer to get up to speed.

2008

Iron Man

Still very watchable for a number of reasons, most of them related to Robert Downey, Jr.’s brilliant performance of Tony Stark. He carries the movie—he really has to—and comes out of it both better and worse in the end. The suit tech has this veneer of believability to it, like using the repulsors in his gloves to stabilize his flight. And the updating of his origin—while sticking really close to it—was just the thing to bring the fans in. Bonus for the Stan Lee mis-cameo as “Hef.” By 2008, Stan had been in all of the Marvel films from other studios, and so it was a bit overplayed, but Tony mistaking him for Hugh Hefner was very funny.

And it was very cool (at the time, really forward thinking) to use Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" for the closing credits. Stark playing AC/DC and wearing old metal band shirts is another reminder that he's really one of us, the kids from the 1980s, much as the actor himself wasn't much other than we were in those teen comedies he played in.

The Incredible Hulk

I wish this had been Ang Lee’s Hulk movie. What a pleasure it was to not have to sit through the Hulk’s origin (using a montage in the opening credits, borrowed from the TV show of the same name). Let’s just cut to the chase, literally, as Banner’s hiding out in South America and looking for a cure. They threw a lot of stuff into this movie, but the biggest puzzle piece they re-arranged was the idea that Banner was looking for the Super Soldier serum. It was a nice shortcut that served as a dog whistle for comic book fans in the audience—all 40,000 of them—to signify that this was, in fact, the Marvel Universe, just different. A lot of people thought this movie was mindless, but frankly, a lot of Hulk comics were slugfests, too. The movie ends with a teaser about The Leader, but I don’t think we’ll ever see that particular villain until Hulk’s rights gen unentangled from Universal.

And as much as I love Ed Norton, watching Mark Rufalo take over for the Hulk, physically, has been great. His involvement in the character’s arc has been a positive all the way, and I think it’s because he got to play both sides of the character.

2010

Iron Man 2

People frequently list this at the bottom of their Marvel rankings, but it holds up much better the second time around, and in hindsight with what’s gone on since. At the time, a Russian ex-convict being a brilliant computer hacker was stretching the bounds of credulity; but in 2018, it now makes perfect sense. Whiplash was always one of the many B-Grade villains from the Justin Hammer stories, and it was nice to see him re-imagined as a blunt instrument/ex-Soviet terrorist who actually gives Iron Man some trouble.

The best thing about this movie is the introduction of Black Widow. Scarlett Johansson took a cheesecake role and leaned into it, playing the seductress and the ass-kicker with the same aplomb. Later she would get to do more than just pole-swing around a bunch of stuntmen, and this is when her character really takes off. Don Cheadle as Jim Rhodes was another inspired choice, and he’s a much better foil for Downey, Jr. to play off of, and their chemistry is noticeable. Another quick shout-out to Stan Lee being mistaken for Larry King this time around. 

2011

Thor

Probably the best decision Marvel made in this period was to make use of good directors with an affinity for the source material. Kenneth Branagh is the unsung hero of the first Thor movie, putting the emphasis on the High Court Drama and inter-family squabbling that is such a rich part of Shakespeare’s plays; his work with the Bard’s body of work is largely what made Branagh’s reputation as a director and an actor. The other best decision, geekily speaking, was giving us a glimpse of Hawkeye, character I never dreamed would be realized in a film.

This movie, I think, is probably the closest to a standard "super hero" movie, a structural hold-over from what had come before. There’s an economy of scale here that drops Thor into a small town in the desert, stripped of his powers, and so of course, the appearance of the Destroyer would seem epic by comparison, only it's not, really, is it. The final scenes felt a little cheap, almost rinky-dink. That’s not to say it’s not a fun movie, mostly because of Hemsworth, but subsequent uses of Thor had the spectacle that was missing from the inaugural outing.

Captain America: The First Avenger

Director Joe Johnston, on the other hand, knocked it out of the park. This is one of my favorite Marvel movies, despite a weak third act, and for one simple reason: this was the only way to do Cap, and it was the first time since the comics themselves in 60+ years that they got it right. Cap starts out scrawny Steve Rogers and takes the Super Soldier serum and bathes in Vita-Rays and out comes Captain America. Dr. Erskine is killed by Nazi saboteurs and Rogers goes on tour as Captain America. But what gets him into the war is the word that Bucky’s unit is captured. So he breaks them free and joins their unit, the Howlin’ Commandos. What’s not to love? It’s a great simplification of the story, and it’s really satisfying to watch Cap kicking Hydra ass with Dum-Dum Dugan. Talk about something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. Chris Evans is pitch perfect in the role, easily one of my favorite MCU characters, because he is instantly recognizable as his comic book counterpart.

2012

The Avengers

I love this movie, from start to finish. It starts small, gets weird, and then blows up at the end. We go from seeing one-on-one fights and petty bickering—straight out of the Marvel Comics Standard Playbook—to an epic, city-wide battle with civilians scrambling and Avengers as a team, coming together to save the city, and this incredible tableau of fantastic violence that is part of any good Avengers comic.

Joss Whedan knows what makes a good Marvel comic, having written and read a ton of them himself, and easily the best thing he did with the characters was beef up the role of Black Widow. She’s almost like Batman in this first Avengers, solving problems, providing tactical support for the big guns, and in general proving over and over again why she is on the team. Mostly, the movie was proof of concept that not only could super hero movies work, but that they would be accepted by a larger audience. Not just Spider-Man and the X-Men, but a movie with Black Widow and Hawkeye on the team. That idea moved the whole thing forward in a way that Elektra and The Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer never could.

Phase 2

These movies represent a lot of mid-points in various character’s journeys, and while they are perhaps the most uneven of the lot, they still hold up solidly under repeated viewings. Most of the playing pieces were on the table at this point, fueling rampant speculation about Thanos and it was around this time that the concept of “Super Hero Fatigue” first set in. Also, here in Phase 2 is when the Grey Beards in comic book fandom began to speculate that, despite the success of the first set of Marvel movies, they were sure to be upended, hoisted on their own petard, and otherwise in danger of screwing the pooch for bringing “Fill in the blank upcoming movie” onto the big screen.

The one I’m talking about that had everyone doubting the power of Marvel was, of course, Guardians of the Galaxy. Honestly, I thought this would be the one. They’d pushed it too far. Thankfully, I was proven wrong and those characters have become among the most popular in the whole MCU. I was happy to shut my mouth after that, but the Grey Beards, looking for a failure so they could cackle online and say, “See!? I was right all along!” because we are our own worst enemies, they next fixated on Ant-Man and were again proven wrong.

2013

Iron Man 3

I like this movie more than I should, mostly because of director Shane Black. For all of the off-putting weirdness and the misfires of the fake and real villain, Black working with Downey, Jr. is movie gold and this was no exception. Black is not afraid to go cynical, hate on children, and bludgeon Christmas to death as an ironic counterpoint to the horrible things happening in his movies.  Together, they brought Tony’s arc-reactor (see what I did, there?) to a somewhat satisfying conclusion, but left him wide open for future psychic trauma, as we will see. The misuse of the Mandarin was well-handled, meaning, as much as I would have liked to see the guy with ten rings on his fingers that each did something cool, building him as a political propaganda puppet (and explained just so) in the movie was a bold choice, and I think one that worked far better than if they'd grafted an actual Asian into what has since become a highly problematic character. I may be the only Iron Man fan that thinks that way, but let me ask all'a y'all this: would you rather the Unicorn? Remember, Iron Man has some of the dorkiest villains ever committed to pen and ink. Not a lot of primo choices, there.

Thor: The Dark World

I found this the weakest of the three Thor movies, but there are a lot of people who would disagree with me based on a number of reasons that boil down to personal preferences. Regardless, the epic scope of the movie was sufficiently beefed up after The Avengers, and Thor’s mass battle scenes were a lot more satisfying. Leaving most of Asgard on the table and concentrating on Thor and Loki’s relationship was a great choice, and one of the things that saved the movie.

It's not a stretch to suggest that Loki is the most interesting, most well-developed, and most popular villain in the MCU, and easily one of the most popular characters overall in the MCU. Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth are going to go down as one of the best acting duos in the first three phases. There’s a real rock star quality to the character even as he’s shown failing at more than one scheme. But his role never devolves into comic relief. Loki is too proud for that. This movie was the peak of Loki-mania, and I think this is what saved the movie.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

More than once I have referred to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as “the Silmarillion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” It’s not necessary to consume it to enjoy the main story, but for those who like deep dives into obscure background material, this is that show. What they initially sold as a spy drama with super heroes dropping in quickly pivoted away from that model and became the place to lay out real estate and concepts that they could pick up later in other projects; things like the Kree and the Inhumans. The Darkhold. Ghost Rider (a GOOD Ghost Rider, not a Nick Cage Ghost Rider). All sorts of great things have played out in five seasons. It’s one of my favorite shows on television, but I realize it’s insider baseball for comic book nerds like myself.

2014

Captain America: Winter Soldier

One of the best movies in the MCU, period. The Russo brothers perfectly balanced the Cold War Spy elements with the absurdities of super heroes and shadow organizations. And hey, best of all, we got The Falcon, another one of my favorite Marvel characters. He made a great partner for Cap in the comics and they are able to bond instantly as fellow veterans in the MCU. So simple, so well-done. A great part for Anthony Mackie, one he really seems to enjoy.

Also, Black Widow is all over this movie in a great way, using her Cold War spy stuff to get the upper hand more than once. Oh, and hey—Batroc the Leaper? Are you kidding me? What a cool way to use that iconic and also very stupid character. But I think Robert Redford as the spymaster was the best casting, clearly a more than passing acknowledgement of the Three Days of the Condor elements and another great use of these cool actors. The MCU is for American character actors what the Harry Potter movies were for British character actors.

Guardians of the Galaxy

As I stated earlier, I thought this would be the one that tanked. Mostly because of Rocket Raccoon. But I was wrong, and quite happy to be so. That said, as enjoyable as it is, it’s a little too silly for me at times and I think the humor doesn’t always work. I liked it. But I didn’t love it like how some folks do. Pratt and Saldana are awesome together, and I was glad to see their chemistry build in the second movie.

Still, I feel like this whole movie was Gunn’s audition tape and sizzle reel for making a Howard the Duck movie. That will be great, if they let him do it. Big if. Colossal if. Because Howard the Duck needs almost an R-rated sensibility to do the right way. Otherwise, why make it? 

I suppose part of the popularity of this movie lies in the fact that it’s a one-off. I mean, there’s nothing to connect it to the plots on Earth, save the mutual threat of Thanos. As such, GotG is actually a weird on-ramp to joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe in media res, as it were. Granted, there’s probably only a dozen people in America who made this movie their first MCU film, but I’ll allow it could happen. There are some people, though, who aren’t big into comics and super heroes, but love space-pirate-based Science Fiction, and this movie is certainly SF of the “Pew, Pew” variety. It just happens to have a couple of super heroes (barely functional, but still) in the space pirate movie. If there was ever a need for proof of concept regarding the MCU, it’s this movie, right here.

This was also the first of the Marvel movies to trade on the 1980s nostalgia, another hand-waving sign that Generation X is helming and lensing these movies for the 45-55 year olds in the audience. That’s not to say that 1980s music (really, it’s 1970s music in the movie, but we were listening to it back then, too) isn’t for everyone, but...okay, you know what? It’s not for everyone. But in this case, the songs were a nice counterpoint to the action on the screen, if a touch overdone and in a couple of cases, repurposed.

Marvel’s Agent Carter

This was one of their best projects and the reason for its cancellation has never been fully explained nor was the half-assed explanation satisfying in the least. Peggy Carter kicked ass for two full seasons, and even got to re-unite with The Howling Commandos. It’s available to stream. If you loved the first Captain America movie and you somehow didn’t catch this series, go fix that right now.

I wish this series had found a wider audience. It had everything that people praised Wonder Woman for in 1017, and it did it in an 8-part series that was much sharper in its commentary. Probably the best part of the show is the Howling Commandos episode where Peggy re-joins them as not only an active member of the squad, but as team leader, something she hadn’t been able to do until that point. It was glorious, watching her finally get the acknowledgement in the show that we’d been giving her since the first episode. Also, we get to see the Soviet program that trained the Black Widow agents (but only super nerds would know that). 

2015

Avengers: Age of Ultron

I think this movie suffers from two things: it didn’t meet the unspoken expectations of its audience, who all seemed to say, “We don’t know what we were expecting, but we weren’t expecting that,” and also you can see the stress cracks from Joss Whedon dealing with his new Mouse-Eared Overlords.

All that aside, it’s a pretty worthy sequel to the first Avengers, made all the more interesting by the choice of James Spader to play Ultron. He’s never not James Spader, and so it’s alot like putting Joker make-up on Jack Nicholson. He’s still terrifying, even as he’s reading to audience members completely as Spader and not the homicidal Vibranium-enhanced AI Android from Marvel comics that we all know and love to hate. Instead, he's playing the James Spader villain we love to hate. Am I splitting hairs? Yeah, so did the movie.

Avengers: Age of Ultron pays a lot of things forward, introducing Klaw and Wakanda in one fell swoop, right alongside Vision, Quicksilver, and Scarlet Witch. Lots going on. I went back and paid close attention to the Black Widow trying to start a relationship with Bruce Banner and I really think a lot of people had a knee jerk negative reaction to the idea of Natasha having any kind of romantic entanglement. Unfortunately for the Internet, that was her character from the very first page in her origin story; a seductive Soviet super-spy who uses any means necessary to achieve her goals. Eh, to each her own, I guess. The George Perez-inspired slow-motion capture shots at the beginning and the end of the movie kept me more than somewhat entertained.

Ant-Man

The second film in the “Will ‘Movie X’ be the film that kills the Marvel Franchise” litany of “Well, I don’t know...I mean, it’s Ant-Man...” nonsense. Especially with an outlier like The Guardians of the Galaxy doing so well previously. I think people were nervous about the attempts to work with writers and directors and actors known for comedic work. After all, comics aren’t funny, right? Oh yeah, smart guy? Then why do they call them “funny books?” Boom. Done.

Where was I? Oh, right. This heist-caper flick starring former thief Scott Lang, played by Paul Rudd. I know I sound like a broken record, but I love this character so much. I always liked the one-off heroes with really specific gimmicks. The Falcon. Hawkeye. Black Panther. Ant-Man. It’s like The Marvel Cinematic Universe was made for me.

This movie was no exception. Rudd does an incredible job as Lang, the former Do-Gooder thief who is just trying to make things right with his daughter, his ex-wife, and her new husband, who just happens to be a cop. I don’t normally like Michael Douglas, but he was great as former bad-ass Hank Pym, now that he’s finally playing characters his age and not being creepy as a sex object.

The only problem that some people had with the movie was the sameness of the hero/villain set-up from Iron Man. That couldn’t be helped. Tony Stark and Hank Pym were both scientists. They both made cool suits. They both fought their mirror images, armed with tech they created, and often. I think Ant-Man was different enough that it didn’t bother me any. But, then again, I’m the hardcore fan.

Daredevil

I had no idea what to expect, other than the guy that was the showrunner also did the first two seasons of Spartacus on Starz, and that went over pretty well, so what the heck. I was not disappointed in the slightest. De Knight spent a long time—hours of it—introducing Wilson Fisk and making us actually care about him. Then, when he finally meets Daredevil, and says, “Take your shot!” and Fisk beats him nearly to death in an inconsolable rage, we are reminded that “oh, yeah, right, the Kingpin is a sociopath.” This first season, from its hallway fight tracking shot in episode 2 to the long, slow burn to simply line up all the pieces in a thoughtful manner, it really altered the tenor and scope of what could be done with narrative TV and super hero stories. Bonus points for actually letting us see Murdock and Nelson doing lawyer stuff.

Jessica Jones

If there was any doubt as to how “dark” the Marvel Knights line on Netflix was going to be, Jessica Jones answered it and spiked the ball: charcoal. Kristen Ritter has found her calling as the exceptionally capable and exceptionally damaged private investigator and former super hero. Jones was a more recent addition to Marvel Comics, but writer Brian Bendis wasted no time in stitching her into the fabric of the world. Specifically, she hooks up with Luke Cage. Now, in the comics, they end up together and having a baby. I don’t think we are quite there yet. But when Luke Cage showed up in Jessica Jones, the Internet exploded.

Phase 3

By the time this was announced, everyone knew that there was an endgame movie and it would feature the inevitable dust-up with Thanos. But as the schedule got longer and longer, thanks to real interest in a Spider-Man movie and an Ant-Man sequel, the timeline didn’t so much as lengthen as the number of hurdles before we got to Avengers: Infinity War have increased. I see this as a feature rather than a bug, since we had a great many things to distract us while we waited for Thanos and the Guardians of the Galaxy to come crashing down to Earth.

2016

Captain America: Civil War

Why are the Captain America movies so good across the board? I don’t know, but this one ticks all of the boxes. You’d think with twelve heroes onscreen, squaring off against one another, plus the introduction of Spider-Man and Black Panther, that the movie would feel crowded. Instead, it moves with alacrity toward the inevitable conclusion and teases a couple of great instances; namely, Cap breaking everyone out of jail, and the Wakandans working on Bucky to get the Winter Soldier program out of his head. Both events obviously (we presume) happened between movies, but that we know exactly how these things played out is a testament to the quality of the writing where Chris Evans and Captain America are both concerned. Some of the credit has to go to comic book writer Ed Brubaker, whose excellent stories were the source material for Cap’s (and Bucky’s) character arcs.

That super hero throw-down at the airport is, again, a classic Marvel trope, expertly rendered, full of great surprises, like Ant-Man’s embiggening, and of course, everything that came out of Spider-Man’s mouth. Sony’s past attempts have done a good job of capturing one or two aspects of Spider-Man’s character and pathos, but they never really got it all in one place. With two scenes, inside of the Captain America movie (and a bonus scene at the end), Marvel showed how Spider-Man could and should be done.

Doctor Strange

I’m on record as not being a big Benedict Cumberbatch fan, mostly because I’m not a woman, but also because he has an oddly-shaped head that I find distracting, but when he was cast as Doctor Strange, I had to admit that at least from the point of view of his gargantuan cranium, it was a good fit. Kudos, too, for taking the source material as created by Steve Ditko and making movie-sense of it. Ditko frequently drew Doctor Strange off-kilter, and in fact, many of his more strange and unusual characters (like Odd Man, a one-shot deal from DC comics) used spatial distortions to frighten and confuse enemies. Yes, Yes, Poindexter, they did the same thing in Inception. We get it. You spotted it. You’re very clever. Now go sit down. Having Inception do the heavy lifting of establishing the architecture of dreamscapes in such a way made it instantly recognizable and something they didn’t really have to spend any time dwelling on. It was a smart choice.

Points, too, for getting Dormammu into the movie and making his head be a giant ethereal ball of flame. Take that, shitty Galactus from the second Fantastic Four movie! I can’t wait for more Doctor Strange, and honestly, I’d love a cameo from him in everything in Phase 4.

I wonder, since Doctor Strange is so removed from the rest of the MCU, if this isn’t another weird on-ramp to the Marvel Universe, alongside GotG. I’d like to think there’s a gaggle of very confused Cumberbatch fans who came staggering out of the movie on opening night, stunned, and said, “Well, I guess we’ve got to watch Thor, now.”

Luke Cage

Sweet Christmas! Another of my favorites, done right, and really done with the kind of agency and also gravitas that really helps his origin rise out of the “black hero” trope that Marvel and DC both employed during the seventies, when they tried the first time to be more diverse and inclusive. In Marvel’s case, they copied the language of Blackploitation films. Only, see, Luke Cage, hero for hire, couldn’t swear in the 1970’s. So, “Sweet Jesus” became “Sweet Christmas.” You can guess what “flamin’” was a stand-in for. Most of the “mature characters” in Marvel comics in the 1970s have their own version of Cockney Rhyming Slang that is just hilarious in hindsight.

But we’re talking about Luke Cage, expertly and deftly written to knowingly nod at the Blacksploitational elements in his comic stories, but not imitate them. Update, yes, but with the kind of verve and swagger that’s more New Jack City by way of Do The Right Thing than, say, Super Fly. Mike Colter plays the part like he’s born to it, and his supporting cast is terrific all around. Also, the music is practically its own character, and easily the strongest soundtrack the MCU has produced, hands down, no takebacks.

It’s a small thing, tiny really, but there is one scene in the show where Cage appears, wearing blue jeans, the headpiece he wore during the experiment that gave him his powers, and a yellow blouse that he found on a clothesline. He takes a look at himself—the spitting image of Power Man in the 1970s, and says, “I look like a damn fool.” I haven’t laughed that hard at an in-joke since Cyclops glanced at Wolverine, back in 2000, and said, “Would you prefer yellow Spandex?”

2017

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

I don’t know if this movie was a home run, but it was certainly an off-the-wall triple. Director James Gunn doubled down on everything that worked in the first movie, and while the experience was different, it was also kinda the same, too. The only character that got any growth was Star-Lord, and it was forced upon him by the realization that his father, Ego, the Living Planet, was actually a rampaging asshole. Go figure. With a name like Ego, the Living Planet. I can't make this stuff up, folks.

I really think that the combined soundtracks are part of the appeal of these movies. This deliberate attempt to tap into the broader tapestry of pop culture (dig the Ramones album cover-inspired poster on the left) and the judicious application of certain songs in both the trailer and the movie should get partial credit for this particular franchise's continued success. I'm not going out on any limbs here when I say that was the best use of "Fox on the Run" ever in a movie. Sweet gets no love these days. 

Also, massive Kudos to Gunn for giving us Ego, the Living Planet (take that, shitty Galactus from the second Fantastic Four movie!) as well as all of the original (and really damn goofy) Guardians of the Galaxy, like Charlie-27 (that's really his name) and Martinex, in a more recognizable form.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

This was one of the mid-stream-announced Marvel movies that I was most looking forward to. I pinned my fanboy hopes on this movie not sucking and I was not disappointed. Not just in the setup and execution of the film, but in all of my fears being allayed by them doing everything the way I thought they should do it. That doesn’t happen very often, but in this particular case, I was so relieved.

 Here’s what they got right: 1. They didn’t even bother to re-tell the origin. More room for a better story; 2. They scaled down the scope of the movie to something resembling the kind of things Spidey dealt with in his first 20 issues. They Lee and Ditko stuff. It wasn’t epic stuff, Wagnerian opera-type things. It was Peter standing up his homecoming date. In high school, that is epic enough. And it played that way in the movie; 3. Tom Holland is the youngest guy to play a teen-age Spidey, and it shows. Spider-Man should be a teenager, not a senior-nearly-a-freshman-in-college, nor a thirty-year old glandular case in hipster clothes. The teen angle is what made all of his choices—the “Great Responsibility” parts—have that extra oomph; and 4. No Green Goblin/Gwen Stacy iteration anywhere in sight. Thank you Marvel. And the Ramones in the soundtrack made me extra happy. ‘Cause they’re from Queens, too, ya mook, and not just from Queens, but Forest Hills, which is Peter Parker’s old neighborhood. Is that a deep cut, or what? I know, right!?

Thor: Ragnarok

I loved this movie, but it’s a hybrid. Tonally speaking, it’s about two-thirds Guardians of the Galaxy and one third Thor: The Dark World. But the part that is a Thor movie at least focused squarely on the Loki-Thor-Odin triangle. Thor and Loki manage to patch up their differences, to both escape the garbage planet and reclaim Asgard, and then they don’t really, because Loki will always be Loki. The Hulk, as he has been written in the comics for fifty years, finally makes an appearance as the guttural-speaking brute who can keep himself transformed so long as he keeps simmering. We finally get a Valkerie (if not the Valkerie), which is nice. Idris Elba finally has something to do as Heimdall. And Kate Blanchett crushes it as Hela. Oh, brother, does she crush it. 

Ironically, there’s more Kirby-inspired design in this movie than the other two Thor films, though they did take a stab at it in the first movie. And while Jack Kirby got his due credit, it would have been nice to see a little bit more of his work represented. The Doctor Strange cameo sorta makes up for it. 

But I mentioned before how Thor should have an epic scale. This one has that scale, and as bookends to the movie, no less. If you didn’t get a vicarious thrill out of the Mjolnir-Cam at the beginning of the movie, then you’re dead inside and probably not the target audience for these movies. Moreover, if the inspired use of Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” as fight scene music didn’t move you, then I suspect you never played Dungeons and Dragons as a teenager, which begs the question: how did we meet, again, exactly? Finally, Jane Foster was completely written out of the story. This made me way happier than it should have. That story was going nowhere, and their romance felt weirdly shoehorned in to the second movie, anyway. I like Natalie Portman, but not in this role. Don't worry about her. She's got Star Wars money. She'll be fine.

Iron Fist

From the first announcement that Luke Cage and Iron Fist would be in the Netflix shows, I had two parallel thoughts: well, martial arts are easy to do these days; they can’t possibly screw this up—and—holy crap! We’re going to get a Power Man/Iron Fist team-up!

Well, I was wrong. At least, about one thing. They could mess up Iron Fist, and did. It’s not that it’s bad—but it’s certainly the weakest of the four Netflix series. Allegedly the show got the shortest amount of lead-in time (this same showrunner also worked on The Inhumans—see below) and it actually feels like a first draft script with a lot of weird redundancies that a couple more passes would have expertly eliminated. It’s a shame, too, because I loved both Power Man and Iron Fist as a kid, and when they teamed up, my head exploded. I wanted this to be great, especially since I was the target audience for this show. And I wanted to like it, and I tried to like it. There are certainly pieces of it that aren't bad, and I think the criticism was so vitriolic because the other three shows were so good. It just felt like a major step down in quality and tone. 

Thankfully, Jeph Loeb has been listening to the massive feedback. Iron Fist Season 2 is now at the back of the schedule, and they are clearly driving for a Heroes for Hire team up. But Danny needs fixing, first. He’s got a better showrunner and more lead-in time to get it right. If Into the Badlands can have a third season, there is no reason on Earth why Iron Fist can't be fixed so as to not suck.

The Inhumans

Well, here it is: the first real failure from Marvel since 2008. And it’s a total failure, too, from the casting on down to execution. It’s a failure made all the more baffling because it didn’t have to be. This could have been handled by the same team working on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (and really should have been) but for some reason, they wanted a mini-series and gave this thing literally 3 months of prep time (as opposed to all of the Netflix shows, which got 9-12 months lead-in time or more). Not only do the stitches and seams show where they jammed this Frankenstein together, but the two greatest sins it commits are (a) it didn’t even bother to link up with the detailed groundwork laid out by Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. over three seasons, and (b) from tone to execution, this feels like it was made in the mid-1990s, back when producers would say, “Okay, we get it, she’s got telekinetic hair, but that’s going to inflate the budget, so how about we cut her hair off in the second episode?” and “hey, I get it, this is based on one of those, whaddayacallit, graphic novels, or some shit, but no one is going to care if we switch some of this stuff around. For example, do you know how cheap it is to film in Hawaii?”

Skip this show. I’m serious. You gain nothing by seeing it, and you lose nothing by omitting it. And if anyone tells you, "Oh, it's not that bad," you punch them in the throat and unfriend them on Facebook. Because they are wrong, so very wrong. 

The Defenders

It’s not fair to cast this mini-series as “the Avengers of the Netflix MCU series” but that’s kinda what it was, only not really. Sorta. Kinda. I don’t know. The biggest problem with the show is that the timing of the series didn’t quite match up regarding villain development. The Hand, an ancient criminal organization that fought both Daredevil and Iron Fist, was the engine driving the storyline, which is about extracting dragon bones from under the bedrock of New York City. The process would have caused the city so suffer massive seismic distress that would have brought it tumbling down, but the Hand doesn’t care, since it would have the dragon bones it needed. Not bad, but as a story goes, it’s both too epic and not quite epic enough. It could have used a lot more Vincent D’Onofrio and a lot less Sigourney Weaver, a statement I never thought I’d make in print.

As a story point, people are going to look back on The Defenders with fondness, since it presents connective tissue into everyone’s second and third seasons, and also manages to get some key players into the room together. I’m looking at you, Misty Knight and Colleen Wing. For my money, I’d take Knight Wing Investigations right alongside Heroes For Hire, if both are on the table, and why wouldn’t they be? The Defenders goes into conspicuous contortions to get those two in the same room together. There’s no other reason other than to have them team up.

All that aside, it's okay. It's not awesome. There are parts of the series that are great. Scenes in every episode that are just awesome. But it doesn't hang together as well as it should. Those great scenes feel like padding, which isn't fair, because among other things, they establish these characters getting to know one another despite vast differences (Danny and Luke, for example). 

The Punisher

This Netflix series was an add-on after Jon Bernthal tested so well as the Punisher in season 2 of Daredevil that they sort of had to make a spin-off. Now, I am not a big fan of this character. Written well, he can be entertaining in small doses, but he’s very rarely written well. The reason for this lies in the Punisher’s origins. Not his character origins, but how we got to him in 1974, shooting Spider-Man with a gun on the cover of the comic book.

Marvel was floundering in the 1970s. We didn’t know it at the time, but the Silver Age was over and they were really trying to keep up with the rapid changes in the world. So, they took a lot of cues from movies. Shang Chi and Iron Fist were attempts to slipstream behind the martial arts movie craze. Luke Cage was the attempt to borrow some cool from Blacksploitation. Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk and Spider-Woman were trying to emulate Wonder Woman’s success as a feminist symbol for the Women’s Lib movement. And The Punisher? Well, he’s straight up a costumed reworking of Charles Bronson from Death Wish. He hunts the people who killed his family. With a gun. Back in 1974, this was very radical stuff. Heroes didn’t use guns and they didn’t kill. Not back then.

The Punisher changed all of that. He appeared in a vacuum, the literal “good guy with a gun,” although that’s not quite right, either. For years, he was written as an antagonist, right up into the early 1980s. But he became insanely popular, thanks to Frank Miller using him in Daredevil (which is why he showed up in that Netflix series, of course). And it was inevitable that The Punisher would get his own movie. How hard could it be, right? I mean, he’s got no super powers. He just shoots people with guns. Easy peasy, right?

Google the Punisher movies. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Yeah, they all suck green donkeys. The reason is simple: what’s unique and special by omission in comics is woefully commonplace in the movies. He shoots criminal with guns? Get in line, Frank Castle. Everyone shoots everyone in the movies. You can’t feed beef back to the cow. That’s how you get Mad Cow’s disease. Or, if you prefer, shitty Punisher movies.

So, I told you that to tell you this: Netflix finally got it right. This series isn’t about him killing people. It’s about how he got so messed up—and now that we know more about PTSD, unfortunately, in modern combat veterans, this story bristles with meaning and nuance, something that was always lacking in every other movie version of the character. You won’t believe how good it is. You may still not like it for its subject matter, but you will not-like-it way less than any of the other Punishers that you totally hated. That sounds like I’m damning it with faint praise, but I’m really not. There’s a great story in there, but it starts in Daredevil, Season 2 and you need that before you watch the series. Not a chore, I promise.

2018

Black Panther

It’s easy to like this movie; it’s got everything going for it. A likeable and engaging cast, from the heroes to the villains (Andy Serkis retuning as Klaw is awesome), some cool spy-drama throwbacks that are half Captain America: Winter Soldier and half Luke Cage, and the coolness of Wakanda, in all its splendor (I’m totally including Man-Ape when I say this). This is also a more intricate back story than the set-up we got in Captain America: Civil War—which, it turns out, did some of the heavy lifting for this movie by giving us the short-hand origin story. I can’t think of another movie franchise which is able to chain-link its heroes in such a way as to introduce them in a couple of scenes in one movie and then spin them off into an entire film all their own the following year. That kind of thing has never been done before, but they did it with two different characters in the same damn movie, both times with great end results. No small accomplishment.

Oh, and for the record, I want an armored war rhinoceros. I think that would effectively end them being poached if we gave them armor and taught them to charge their attackers. That whole scene felt like an outtake from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I say that in the nicest possible way.

Part 3 coming Tomorrow. 

In Defense of Amazing Spider-Man 2

I drove to Wichita Falls on Saturday, about an hour’s drive for me, in order to participate in Free Comic Book Day. In years past, I would make sure that we had copies of whatever movie-tie in comic they were promoting on hand at the theater to give away to the children at the matinee show. This always went over well, with a mixture of excitement and confusion. Parents would either get excited for the kids: “Look, Baker, Look Archer! Comic books! Wow, that’s neat! Can you say thank you to the nice, strange man?” Or they would look at me with dull indifference, take the comic book, and maybe the kids would read it later, maybe not. I didn’t care. I did it for me.

I haven't read it yet. I'm just glad
Doctor Octopus is no longer
skinwalking in Peter Parker's body.

As I looked over this year’s offerings at two different stores, I noticed that I had absolutely no interest in anything on the table. Not even for free. This didn’t bother me too much; the point of Free Comic Book Day is not to give me, the lifelong fan, a free comic book, but rather to try and hook new readers into the wonderful world of comics. I believe strongly in comics as a storytelling medium, one that is just as viable and important as movies, books, and audio drama. I don’t care what the kids start out reading, so long as they enjoy it, and keep on reading.

I ended up trying to find something to buy, instead—after all, that’s what Free Comic Book Day is designed to do: get consumers in the store and have them consume. I spent about a half-hour, looking for something to take home. I tried, very hard, to find something to interest myself. Anything, really; it didn’t have to be super heroes. Granted, I wasn’t at Austin Books, so my selection was limited, but after pawing through a dozen Spider-Man trade paperbacks and being either thoroughly unfamiliar with the storyline, or profoundly uninterested in the storyline (or both), I gave up. I tried this with several other “go-to” favorite characters of mine, from Batman to Captain America. In the end, I picked up the newest re-launch of Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man #1, with Peter Parker in the driver’s seat. $5.99. Jeez Louise. I also picked up a couple of action figures on clearance. Dr. Strange! Always good, never bad. They were symbolic purchases, obviously. In another time, I would have had to cut myself off, or do without some groceries.

Why aren't you reading this comic?
Go. Now. Buy it. Love it.

All of this made me wonder briefly if I’d outgrown comics. That’s ridiculous, I thought. I have a number of comics I’m reading currently: Fables, Hellboy, Conan, Red Sonja (by Gail Simone), Black Science, Bandette, Doc Savage, Velvet, Hawkeye by Matt Fraction and, unbelievably, Batman 66 by Jeff Parker sprang instantly to mind as I sat in the car, thinking. I still have favorite creators, for crying out loud! I have good friends in the industry who are turning out great work. That I’ve mostly jumped over to buying trade paperbacks is beside the point. I still even pick up the various individual issues, mostly just to see if I’ll like something or not. If I do, I add it to my trade paperback list.

However, what struck me about the books I still read is the lack of superhero comics from Marvel and DC I’m currently reading. There are a lot of reasons for this, ranging from the fact that I hate their editorial policy, to the fact that I hate every single thing that they are doing to their super hero line. Of the two, Marvel catches far less of my ire. I can see that they are trying creatively to do something different. This ranges from putting a half-black, half Hispanic kid in the Spidey suit to publishing comics with female super heroes that don’t look like the underage strippers and porn stars that DCis currently putting on its comic book covers in an attempt to be “edgy.” It doesn’t mean that I actually like a lot of what Marvel is doing, but that’s because I’m over forty and not part of Marvel’s target demographic right now. I’m not talking about making Marvel more inclusive regarding gender and people of color; that’s great. I’m talking about stuff like Doctor Octopus deciding to take over the body of Spider-Man and run around as him for a while. The X-Men remain as intentionally obtuse and soap operatic as they were back when I was reading them, in the time known as “the Good Old Days,” when Claremont wasn’t off in the weeds and John Byrne wasn’t bug-nuts crazy.

The less I talk about DC comics, the better it’s going to be for my blood pressure. In the immortal words of Peter MacNicol from Ghostbusters 2 when he says, “Everything you are doing is bad. I want you to know this.” I am not even kidding. Don’t even bother to write me and say, “But Mark, you don’t know about yadda yadda yadda!” or “How could you ignore blah blah blah?” No, trust me, it’s all bad. But again, I’m not the target demographic, here. And that’s okay. There are enough older comics out there that I can buy and collect—comics that I always wanted to read and couldn’t, or didn’t, or whatever. I don’t have every single issue of Batman there is. If I really want to keep reading the stuff that I do like, well, there’s nothing stopping me.

This comes on the heels of a good Brian Bendis interview I recently read. Bendis is the current architect of the Marvel Universe, and the Ultimates Universe and the overall tone of Marvel Comics for the past fifteen years or so. In the interview he makes some really good points about recent controversies and conversations, and he furthermore talks about something I’ve always thought Marvel did better than DC and that’s playing the quiet moments between the Earth-shattering conflicts. This idea is an outgrowth of the original Marvel storytelling formula of portraying super heroes with modern problems. Bendis understands this idea especially well, and some of his best efforts (along with writers like Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker) really showcase the idea of creating dynamic stories in the quiet moments.

Bendis also pointed out something about the recent and controversial decision to kill Peter Parker in the Ultimates Universe and replace him with a person of color, Miles Morales. This was his point, and it’s a good one:

When you become the writer of Spider-Man, all of a sudden, every day, every week, every month, someone of color — all different races — comes up to you and tells you, "Spider-Man was my favorite and this is why," and then I hear a version of this story: "My friends, when I was a kid, wouldn't let me be Superman, wouldn't let me be Batman, because of my skin color. But I could   always be Spider-Man, and Spider-Man became my favorite. As a little kid, I didn't even understand why he was my favorite, but it was because anybody could be Spider-Man under that costume, because it was head-to-toe.

Now, I’m all for this, because of three things.

1. From a marketing standpoint, it’s genius. Spider-Man can be anyone under that mask. Why not replace him with someone more indicative of modern-day New York City?

2. Mile Morales in a comic book in no way negates, nor diminishes, nor threatens my 30+ years of reading Peter Parker Spider-Man in the least. Those memories and those physical comics don’t fade away like the photographs in Back to the Future. It’s all still there, for anyone to check out.

3. Having worked on the other side of the comic book counter (and behind desks and art tables) for nearly fifteen years, I can say with authority that white male boys aren’t the only people who read comics. If you tell a kid they can be anything they want to be when they grow up, it’s probably a good idea to have some black, Mexican, Chinese, and Hispanic (and others) superheroes running around in both the male and female varieties.

Doing that may not magically resuscitate the comic book marketplace to its Post WWII heyday, when millions of comics sold on a monthly basis, but it will at least be a viable option for the consumer who is currently reading them. No, not the various neck-beards, man-children, and doughy paste-eaters of the world; I’m talking about the 14-29 year olds of the world. That’s who DC is trying (and failing) to appeal to. That’s who Marvel is trying (and more or less succeeding) to appeal to. That’s the elusive Youth demographic, and if you believe the video gaming world, and Hollywood, it’s worth billions.

If you’ll look closely, there is no neck-beard demographic. Not one that matters, anyway. We are a subset of a subculture, now. We’re a niche in the subculture we helped make. Which brings me to The Amazing Spider-Man 2. From this point on, Spoilers Abound.

Why, yes, this is from the 1977 TV show. And yes, that is
his web-shooter, on the outside of his costume. And
you are correct, it's the only one. And yes, it's also
firing a length of clothesline. You are furthermore
correct: this was terrible. But it was all I had...

You may have figured out by now that I’m a Spider-Man fan. One of the first comics I ever owned was a Marvel Tales Spider-Man reprint, bought for me from a flea market. I grew up in the 70s, which meant I got to watch the 60s Spider-Man cartoons on television, along with the terrible, awful, horrible prime-time TV show in the ‘70s. I watched the Electric Company for years past my recommended viewing age, and why? Because of those Spider-Man live-action skits.  Years later, I raw across some Japanese Spider-Man live-action shows during a hitch on the Underground Tape Railroad. In this show, Spider-Man battles a number of exploding and multiplying ninja warriors until the main bad guy shows up and grows to a spectacular height, at which time Spider-Man summons his sleek roadster and drives up into his giant Shogun Warrior-style robot and battles with the monster using a magic light sword. I kid you not.

There were other animated series, both syndicated and sanctioned by Saturday morning, along with this kind of unspoken truism that it would be just too difficult to pull off a live-action Spider-Man movie. For one thing, there’s the swinging. And then there’s the web-slinging. And the sticking to walls. And how do you do Doc Ock’s arms? Stop-motion animation? Sheesh, fuhgettaboutit.

When it became possible to do super heroics (starting with The Matrix movies), and do them well, the first thing that went into pre-production in the new digital effects age was Spider-Man. Granted, they optioned everything, but notice that Spider-Man came out right on the heels of Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies.

When Spider-Man came out in 2002, I saw it opening day and it brought tears to my eyes. Not because of the special effects, which were terrific, and worked like a charm, and for the first time ever gave us a sense of what being Spider-Man would actually be like. Not because of the casting, which was great. It was because Sam Raimi nailed the emotional core of the character. For all of the concessions they made to the Spider-Man canon—organic webshooters instead of the mechanical ones Peter invents; replacing Gwen Stacey with Mary Jane Watson in the Peter Parker/Harry Osborne/Green Goblin triangle storyline; all of the truncations and adjustments, like the Green Goblin’s helmet mask—you’ve got to remember that this was before Marvel took control of their movies. This was pre-Avengers. This was pre-Marvel Studios making five movies just to set up making a sixth one. It was still a Hollywood movie, not a comic book movie, and for all of the other baggage that came with that, they got one thing right. The most important thing right. The thing that made Spider-Man work on the big screen.

At the end of the movie, Mary Jane tries to tell Peter she realized all along that he was the person she was supposed to be with, and here it is, the one thing Peter has always wanted, right in front of him, and then that voice-over kicks in: “No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, the ones I love will always be the ones who pay.” And he walks away from her. “With great power comes great responsibility. This is my blessing. My curse.” And we cut to Peter as Spider-Man, swinging through Manhattan, and that final swinging sequence still gives me goosebumps. That was Spider-Man, right there, in a nutshell. Raimi understood it and he stuck the landing with that movie. Everything else was just window dressing, meaningless details.

Of course, some of those promises made in the first movie were dashed on the rocks of focus groups and Hollywood heavy-handedness in the second Spider-Man movie. I guess to make up for the fact that he didn’t tell the love interest his secret identity in the first movie, Spider-Man is unmasked in front of a train full of commuters and no one snaps a picture. He also tells Mary Jane, and we get the impression that Robbie Robertson at the Daily Bugle and Aunt May both know he’s Spider-Man. There are a number of extra Hollywood-isms and of course, the ending is so riddled with plot holes it’s almost ridiculous. Doc Ock suddenly wakes up and decides to not be a villain anymore. He drops his sun into the ocean and well, that’s that. It’s not very satisfying on any level, but the movie continues to focus on Peter Parker having a choice between his obligations and being happy. And while the unmasking is problematic, that scene has all of the heart, the drama and the emotional punch of the first movie.

The less said about the third movie, the better. It’s not really even up for consideration, because of the studio insistence to cut short the Green Goblin storyline in favor of some fresh blood: Sandman, who fundamentally changed the point of Spider-Man’s origin in a way that made me howl at the moon, and Venom, hastily shoehorned into the plot so the Youth Demographic, who considered Venom to be “their” villain, would be represented and appeased in equal parts. It was all a mess. Just awful.

You can imagine, when Sony announced they were restarting the Spider-Man franchise, what howls of nerdrage followed. The casting of Andrew Garfield didn’t help, but it sure didn’t hurt. After all, have you seen that guy’s head? It’s the perfect approximation of both Steve Ditko and Todd McFarlane’s artistic take on the character. But that’s neither here nor there.

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) made it very clear that they were updating, a la the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, the franchise to be more “modern” and positioned for the youth of today. See, Peter Parker rides a skateboard and has a hoodie. Modern youth, get it? They were all about keeping it real, except, of course, when they didn’t. Take Gwen Stacey, Peter’s new love interest, literally ripped from the pages of Johnny Romita-era Spider-Man comics, and of course, the death of her father, even if it wasn’t by the Green Goblin. But, since the Lizard was made at Oscorp, one can symbolically see the hand of Norman Osborne behind the whole thing. And we get the impression in the movie that we will see a Green Goblin in the next movie.

The first appearance of Electro. Note the
singular unfilmability of the costume
Electro is wearing. In 1964, this is was
the bomb. in 2014, it's just goofy.

And guess what? Harry Osborne comes back after his father dies and yeah, we get a Green Goblin, after all. Oscorp, in the newest refreshing of the Spider-Man story, is the big corporate bugaboo that is responsible for all of Spider-Man’s major villains. This is because when Steve and Stan were churning these stories out, over fifty years ago, they couldn’t waste time on things like a meaningful origin for villains like Electro. It was a throwaway bad guy. At the end of the original Electro story, in Amazing Spider-Man #9...I’ll let that sink in for a minute...after a two page origin story for how Electro becomes Electro, and the subsequent fight and defeat by Spider-Man, he unmasks the villain and realizes he has no idea who he is. He’s just some guy.

Of course, that was one of the famous documented fights between Lee and Ditko, concerning the origin of the Green Goblin. They made a big deal about him being a mystery man, and Ditko wanted to keep him a nobody—or at least, no one connected to Peter Parker directly. Stan disagreed, and felt that after so many years of teasing this villain out, it needed to be someone close to their main character. This was one of those calls where Stan was right. And the results of that storyline, which culminated in Amazing Spider-Man #121 and #122, some ten years after the first Spider-Man comics began, are among the most famous comic book stories of all time. The Night Gwen Stacy Died is in so many ways the quintessential Spider-Man story; the encapsulation of the whole blessing/curse dichotomy that Raimi tapped into for his first two Spider-Man movies.

I had some real problems with The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), and none of it was casting-related. In fact, it was that the through line on the Spider-Man character, i.e. “with great power comes great responsibility,” was noticeably downplayed for the vast majority of the movie. We were instead expected to care about the fact that this version of Peter Parker actually knew his parents before they disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Never mind that Uncle Ben and Aunt May were literally the coolest set of foster parents any kid could ask for; never mind that even though Peter is a little dorky and shy, he’s not the helpless, hapless and hopeless kid from the first set of movies. Even the fight that leads to the inciting event leading to Uncle Ben’s death feels petty and petulant. And yet, what I did like about the movie was that we had ten years of better movies and super hero shenanigans, which led up to a more active, more talkative, and more comic-book authentic Spider-Man than we’ve ever seen before. In costume, they really got Spidey right.

Thankfully, in Amazing Spider-Man 2, the emotional heart of the story has been addressed, and I was finally able to engage Peter Parker as a character. He’s likeable in this movie, and he and Emma Stone, looking even more like Gwen Stacey from the comics, right down to her vintage wardrobe, have real chemistry and it shows. 

Amazing Spider-Man 2 isn’t perfect. It’s still aimed at the teenagers of the world, and yeah, I’m including anyone under the age of 30 in that group. It’s loud, and everyone talks fast, and there are some great narrative shortcuts taken to tell the story, some of which work, and some that don’t. They skip over the difficulties of Peter and Gwen dating, which works great, but the re-introduction of Harry Osborne feels extremely contrived. Of course, a couple of scenes worth of set-up would have been great, but this movie clocks in at 146 minutes already.

It's hard to imagine how this shocked comic readers
at the time. Its influence on all other dramatic
comic moments since then can't be understated.

In some ways, this movie is the most authentic to the source material. For the first time in five movies, we’ve got the major plot points of one of the most famous Spider-Man stories ever—and yeah, it’s unfortunate that this is the second time we’ve gotten the Green Goblin, but to be fair, Raimi didn’t use him in this way. In fact, he goes out of the way to keep Mary Jane alive. This was back in 2002, when Peter was still married to M.J. in the comics. We’ll see if the third movie will push through. I have my doubts, as they are hinting broadly that they are going to try and field The Sinister Six. Frankly, it’ll be a magic trick if they can pull it off and not have it feel like a night of televised wrestling. I mean, by the end of this film, they’ve got four villains to play with: The Lizard, Electro, The Rhino, and the Green Goblin himself. And you would have had to been in the bathroom to miss Doc Ock’s arms and the Vulture’s wings in the super secret lab in this movie. I shouldn’t pooh pooh it, though. Ten years ago, I thought trying to make an Avengers movie was a stupid idea.

The other thing that I liked—no, loved, about this second outing is that Spidey does Spider-Man stuff and he does it well. From the web-swinging to the fisticuffs, from using his brain scientifically to dealing with kids and the general public. He’s a genuine hero in this movie, and he’s apologetically heroic. That’s nice to see, especially after the nihilistic disaster that was Man of Steel.

I’ve seen some of the reviews, and like most people who write movie reviews for a living, they fail to take into account that super hero movies are by definition spectacles. What I find most insulting is this tone that so many of them have, and kind of righteous indignation that the film is so excessive. I want to drop a couple of stats on you all.

The number of comic book super hero movies made from 1950 to 2000: 28, most of them being Batman and Superman movies.

The number of comic book super hero movies made from 2000 to 2014: 49 super movies to date, with 52 out by the end of the year.

In both cases, these are movies based directly on comics already in existence. It doesn’t account for non-super hero things like Ghost World or American Splendor, and it doesn’t count any original super hero movies like Hancock or Darkman. Obviously with those two categories added in, the numbers are much higher. Factor in television shows and animated series, and it’s higher still, although when you do that, you lose the spectacle factor I’m talking about.

In the interest of parity, I present to you
the first appearance of the Rhino, from
ASM #41. This was never a great
costume design, although to be fair,
in the 1960s, this was the height
of spectacle and drama.

Put simply, if you’re indignant because the movie is too loud and fast, and focuses on impossible action, then you are either an immigrant from the Moon, new to our ways and customs, or you’re pissing and moaning to justify you not getting it. That’s fine if you don’t, but let me be very clear about this: there will be other super hero movies, and they will always have some component of a vicarious power fantasy in them. That ability to deliver spectacle is one of the reasons why so many people want to see movies based on super heroes they love. But if you don’t like spectacle, and prefer cinema that enriches as it draws back the curtain on a different point-of-view, that’s okay, but please stop reviewing super hero movies. In fact, stop reviewing spectacles altogether.

It reminds me of the people who saw The Avengers without seeing any of the other Marvel movies and complained that they didn’t understand what was going on. I’m a little sympathetic, because no one has ever tried world building with a multi-billion dollar movie franchise before, so, you know, uncharted territory. But now that you do know, what did you expect? And also, how dumb are you, anyway? I really feel sorry for people who can’t enjoy Warner Brothers cartoons, The Three Stooges, and now Super Hero movies. It’s like trying to play with the weird kid in class by showing them your dinosaurs and they look at your plastic dinosaurs and say, “Those aren’t real animals.”

I do think this version of Spider-Man (in this particular movie) is as close to comic book Spider-Man that we’ve ever gotten. There are so many moments plucked from the Ditko and Romita era playbooks that are wonderful to see writ large on the silver screen. The first ten minutes is a jaw-dropping joy to behold, and easily one of the things I’d point to who asks me what’s so great about Spider-Man, anyway? As spectacle, this is everything I’ve ever wanted to see in a Spider-Man project, hands down. And it only took, what? My whole entire life?

I’m not going to defend Amazing Spider-Man 2 in terms of whether or not you found it emotionally lacking. It certainly does. What I am going to do is chalk it up to this movie being aimed at a much younger crowd. Case in point: every teenager that has seen the movie so far, including my staff, and one of my projectionists, who is a dyed-in-the-wool Spider-Man fan from a young age, have loved the movie. They cried when Gwen died, and they love Andrew Garfield’s take on Peter Parker. They love the wisecracking, and they are following the storyline with no problems, no concerns, and no questions. They don’t think anything about the Toby Maguire Spider-Man movies. Most of them haven’t seen them, except my aforementioned Spidey fan in residence.  He made an observation that I missed: one of the other big influences on the movie is the Spider-Man animated cartoons that they’ve been churning out for fifteen years or so. Those cartoons trend young, and that’s who this movie is aimed at: people who are nostalgic for their childhood, watching the “old” Spider-Man cartoons.

But for the number of people who were just kinda "blah" about the movie, let me ask you, and I do this without any rancor: what do you want out of a Spider-Man movie? How do you tell the Spider-Man story that keeps its singular identity and also showcases the weirdness of Spidey's rogues gallery and have it be movie-worthy? What villain do you use that will connect with the widest possible audience? And don't say "Venom," okay, because there's too much backstory to that character to make it work. Not unless, you know, you use the revamped Venom from the Ultimate Spider-Man universe...yeah, see where we're at again?

Would Marvel Studios do a better job with the Spider-Man property than Sony? Maybe, but probably not. Given the small number of Spider-Man villians we've seen in past five movies, and even if they are really shooting to do the Sinister Six in the third movie, one third of these "new" villains will be revamps of the old villains we've already seen.

The point I'm making is this: it's harder than you think it would be. there are certain touchstone moments in the long Spider-Man history that rise above all the rest, and in keeping with the very nature of the character, they are inevitably the big epic tragedy stories. That's central to Spider-Man. The other stories that resonate are actually Peter Parker stories. In some ways, it's the same reason why they've rebooted Batman, starting with the origin: those origins affect and color every story that comes after it. And, unfortunately, in the movies, you've got to underscore the through line by emphasizing the important details in the origin. In Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, it's the death of Uncle Ben. In the new Spider-Man movies, it's the promise Peter makes to Captain Stacey and the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Peter's parents that all ties back to Oscorp.

I say this because (and remember, I just wrote 4000 words explaining how much I like Spider-Man) there's not enough meat in the Spider-Man universe to hang a movie on otherwise. You've either got to stack up a couple of villains, really bring out the soap opera tragedy aspects of Peter Parker's personal life, or heighten one villain to Doctor Doom-like status and have him be an overarching bad guy for three movies.

The first appearance of The Sinister Six:
The Vulture, Electro, Sandman, Doc
Ock, Kraven the Hunter, & Mysterio.
A great, great comic book, but I'm
worried about trying to pull this off
as a movie. We'll soon see, won't we?

Think about it: what exactly would a Spider-Man versus the Vulture movie look like? About twelve minute of video game footage, is what. I could make an argument for a trilogy involving J. Jonah Jameson hiring several villains, such as Mysterio and the Chameleon, to mess with Spider-Man and create doubt in the minds of the public as to him being a hero. Then you fold in Smythe and the Spider-Slayers, the Scorpion, and hell, just for good measure, Man-Wolf. Would you watch those three movies, especially if I wrote them? Of course you would. But would they have the resonance that The Death of Gwen Stacey has had? Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

Considering the quantity and volume of Super Hero movies that have spilled out of Hollywood over the last ten to fifteen years, and how many of them have been better than we expected on up to freaking great, I think it's okay if some of the movies coming out aren't aimed at the neckbeards and man-children of the world. I'm willing to concede that this latest clutch of Spider-Man movies isn't great, as long as you're willing to admit they are better in some ways than the Raimi films. Whenever I come out of a super hero movie thinking, "Well,I would have done that differently," I'm reminded of the terrible mess that Spider-Man 3 was, and then I think to myself, if we'd have seen that movie first, in 2002, before X-Men 2, and Spider-Man 2, and of course, the things that came after
it, like Iron Man, et. al, we would have lost our collective minds at how cool we thought it was (and we would have shrugged and excused all of the nuttiness because, "Hollywood never gets it right, anyway.")

As a sub-genre of film, it has yet to fully define itself. There are indicators of what is possible, and there are zeniths (The Dark Knight) and nadirs (Catwoman). Much like the Supreme Court definition of pornography, we can't define what constitutes a good super hero movie, but we know it when we see it. When the dust settles, I think these new Spider-Man films will have a place in the conversation, if not outright at the table, because they handily fulfill the role of translating the power of the artwork inherent to our understanding of comics into real moving visuals that convey power, grace, and hyper-violence, in equal measure. Hopefully, the generation currently watching the movies on their portable electronic devices will want to have that conversation with us.