Comic Book Movies

[Dr. Insomniac]

Maybe it's the romance? Garfield and Stone had the best chemistry out of all the 3 Spider-couples, enough that I'm pretty sure all the Spider-Gwen/Gwenpool/Gwen clones who've popped up in Marvel lately came from people wanting more of that. But that's about the only thing I remember the TASM movies excelled at.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Since apparently everyone is doing it now, here are my rankings for all of the Spider-man movies (including Venom, since again apparently everyone else is).

11. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
10. Venom
9. The Amazing Spider-Man
8. Spider-Man: Far From Home
7. Venom: Let There Be Carnage
6. Spider-Man 3
5. Spider-Man: Homecoming
4. Spider-Man
3. Spider-Man: No Way Home
2. Spider-Man 2
1. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse

It's worth noting that I don't actually hate any Spider-Man movie so far. Don't coonfuse that with me not thinking that that there are in fact some pretty bad Spider-Man movies, but even the worst of them have things that I like about them. For me, TASM2 is easily the weakst of the bunch since on top of being a mess, it actively makes a lot of writing decisions that I absolutely detest for the character and that particular iteration of the Spider-Man Universe. Even then, I do have to give props to Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone's performances in it. It's the one aspect of the movie that I can say is genuinely good. The first TASM is much more competent but it's also....kind of bland for me, for lack of a better description. Nothin in it actively offends me (or very little does), but by that same point not much stands out about it to me either. It feels like a lesser version of Sam Raimi's first take on the character in every way.

Venom is trash, but I'd be lying if I said that was the kind of trash that I sort of enjoy despite clearly having a lot of developmental trouble and being tonally inconsistent throughout. Venom 2 on the other hand I will say that I enjoy very intentionally since it clearly knows what kind of movie it is. I firmly believe that they set out to make a Superhero B-movie with this one and it's very self-aware throughout. It's done in a way that I found to be rather enjoyable in all honesty.

For the Home Trilogy (or really just the MCU Trilogy so far), I have to say that Far From Home really went down for me after my initial viewing. It has a lot of writing issues and really does a lot of injustice to the character for me on repeat viewings. It's not atrocious by any means, but it's one of those times that even for me (who isn't as negative on the standard MCU formula as most people understandably are) found the MCU-ness of it all to be way too overbearing in a pretty bad way. Homecoming I feel was a genuinely fun movie on the other hand, and to me it felt like the closest thing we got to a live-action version of TSSM. Far From Home is still really new, but it's one of those movies that just knocked me out of my seat in a way that only happens once every few years, and it's easily a top three for me.

The Raimi trilogy is special to me so I'm biased. Spider-Man 3 has a ton of writing issues and is plagued by behind-the-scenes drama....but damnit, the emotional moments still hit for me, and I find that it has a lot of beats to it's story and to the characters that work more than people give it credit for. The dumb stuff is dumb, but at least for me it's entertainingly dumb. It's actually a surprisingly rewatchable movie despite the abundance of issues that it has. The original 2002 film isn't perfect, but it's still the best enty-point movie out of any of the live-action ones, and still one of the best origin movies ever put to screen, IMO. And of course Spider-Man 2 only gets better with time and re-watches for me. I've already gone on at length about why Into The Spider-Verse is not only my favorite Spider-Man movie, but my favorite superhero movie that I've seen so far, but yeah, it just nails the entire mythos of the character and why people love just about any iteration of him.

[Avaitor]

That's a good list.

It's been too long since I've seen the vast majority of these for me to rank them. But I definitely still need to see the new Venom soon. I only just saw the first one a few months ago, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I haven't seen Venom 2 yet, so:

10. Amazing Spider-Man 2
9. Amazing Spider-Man
8. Venom
7. Spider-Man Far From Home
6. Spider-Man 3
5. Spider-Man
4. Spider-Man No Way Home
3. Spider-Man Homecoming
2. Spider-Man 2
1. Into the Spider-Verse

Venom's okay for what it is, and Tom Hardy arguing with himself is fun, but it falls heavily into plenty of the superhero movie cliches. Particularly how the villain's just a bigger version of Venom with under-defined motives or barely even a personality.

[Avaitor]

I'll give the Amazing Spider-Man movies this- besides Garfield and Stone, Sally Field is a pretty fine Aunt May. My favorite scene in both of those movies even comes from the second, when she tells Peter to stop obsessing over his parents, as she and Ben were his. It was a well-acted scene, and it does call out a problem that these movies have- Uncle Ben doesn't seem to matter in them.

Even besides the weird fascination the movies have with his non-entity parents, Peter seems more affected by Captain Stacy's death than his own uncle, the man who supposedly raised him. Hell, the MCU has been playing coy about the existence of a Ben Parker, and even those seem to have him more of an impact in those movies.

[Dr. Insomniac]

What a waste of Martin Sheen. It's easy to go "lol, chocolate milk" and laugh at him for the reason he died, but then you remember how they shot his death scene where he's wrestling for the gun for no reason. But the TASM movies weren't interested in rooting Peter. They were the movies that decided his radioactive spider-blood was an important plot point. Of course, TASM 2 backtracks on that hard in its final scene going "No, Peter's not just Spider-Man because he has magic blood. Look at him helping this little kid and saving his life!", but it leads to a movie juggling "Peter is the chosen one" and "Peter is just your average kid trying to do his best" and struggling at both. And it's no coincidence the most popular new Spider-Man characters in the last decade started off as reactions against these films.

Apparently, TASM 3 would've went back on some of the character deaths (Norman would've come back after dying of "the Osborn curse", producers said they were looking to revive Gwen and maybe Captain Stacy too). Along with their attempt to turn the Sinister Six to their own Avengers or something, I wish someone at Sony published a book explaining what the hell happened in these movies. They really wanted their own MCU, but forgot Kevin Feige's job is harder than it looks.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I saw a bunch of people talk about a Batman: No Way Home or an Into the Bat-Verse, and while I'm not as multiverse fatigued as others, I wouldn't want either of those unless certain actors were still alive. You put two Spider-Men in one scene together, they're gonna banter, talk about each others' lives, have fun. Put two Batmen in one scene together, they're going to make stern judgments about each other, speculate on perceived differences, and only find camaraderie by the end of the film. You can't do a movie with Bale, Keaton, Pattinson, and Affleck together because aside from some differences (Bale plays him as a romantic, Keaton portrays him as a bit of a creep, Affleck an old soldier), they wouldn't make for that much contrast with each other. If Adam West was still around, I could see a farce between him and a couple of the other Bruces. But alas. While the other idea sounds neat on paper, it also feels redundant to throw half a dozen Batmen in a cartoon at the expense of the Bat-Family.

[Daikun]

Form of...water!

[Dr. Insomniac]

Pattinson revealed his favorite Batman comics.

A Morrison, 3 O'Neils, and an Azzarello.

He also said he'd want Batman to fight the Court of Owls or Calendar Man in his sequel. He also wants a 13-year-old Robin.

[Avaitor]

Oh wow, Shaman. That's one of the first non-Archie or cartoon-based comics I ever read, and I have good memories of it.

That's a pretty good list, especially as it's light on the more obvious choices.

[Daikun]

AMC Theaters is going to charge higher ticket prices for The Batman.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

My quick first impressions of The Batman is that I really enjoyed it and find it to be a fairly strong entry in the franchise. It's not as good as The Dark Knight or Mask of the Phantasm, IMO, but that's hardly an insult.

Though, I do have to ask....

Spoiler

....Did Riddler have any backup plans in-case Batman or the cops didn't act exactly as he predicted they would? That's probably my one big issue with the movie. For how grounded and serious it's supposed to be, it relies way too heavily on the villain having things go way too "according to plan" to the point of coming off as kind of ridiculous once you stop to think of how many variables there could be in any given scenario. Like The, what if Batman brought Falcone out the back of the building, instead of the exact right place for him to be sniped? Or what if his followers chickened out and didn't go through with the job after he was locked up in Arkham? To be fair, it acknowledges that his plans are fallible when trying to kill Bruce Wayne, but it still feels like way too much was left up to luck lining up with all of his other plans. The Dark Knight's Joker also seemingly had a lot of things happen to his benefit, but it was also made clear that he was mainly trying to spread chaos and that many of his plans didn't rely on a definitive outcome.

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The ending felt a tad underwhelming given all of the buildup, but on the other hand I loved what it thematically represented for the character. It's especially refreshing to see after Snyder's take on Batman.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Still processing the movie, but on the whole, I really liked it. Colin Farrell was my favorite out of the cast. Re-imagining Riddler as a TikToker was weird but I dug it, even if his plan at the end was too much like Bane's in TDKR (imagining we'll get a ton of annoying "Riddler was morally right, they just made him kill innocent people so you think he's the villain" takes on Twitter too).

On an adaptation level, the movie's picks were curious. It took a lot from the Earth One books, a bit from the Telltale game, and I even noticed a little influence from the unused Miller/Aronofsky script. I didn't care for any of those, but it's like how No Way Home took One More Day and made that work. But it did leave the film feeling very familiar. I mean, this isn't the first time Zoe Kravitz's played Catwoman. Which kinda disappoints me even though I enjoyed the film. I was expecting something a little more groundbreaking rather than the back-to-basics approach here, similar to how TDK blew everyone away and made them go "You can do that in a Batman movie?"

Spoiler

I also see that WB was so nostalgic for the Nolan era that they pruned not just the guy from Tenet but the kid from Dunkirk as Bruce and Joker.

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[Avaitor]

The Batman was pretty good. I like that it really did feel like the detective movie that it was hyped up as, and the action also worked pretty well. I don't know if it's better than the Nolan movies, since yes, it is pretty familiar, but I think it works well enough to justify its existence.

Remember when we thought that DC was slumping compared to Marvel? While I'm still not convinced that Snyder is the visionary his fanbase claims him to be, they have been doing a good job of distinguishing their films from Marvel's, and letting them go in enjoyably weird directions. I feel like we couldn't have got this five years ago, or at least not nearly as well. We definitely couldn't have gotten Peacemaker.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Spoiler

So WB had to have been pushing hard to connect this with Joker (2019) before Reeves resisted and hired Keoghan? The film's tone, portrayal of a few characters, message about class struggles, and especially the climax where a public personality is shot on live TV to start a revolution make it such a spiritual sequel to that film that if you took out parts like the iPhones, this film could easily take place around a couple decades after Joaquin Phoenix shot DeNiro.

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