The Lizard said:
Yes, poor Betty does seem to get the short end of the stick in all the different Spidey adaptions outside the comics, doesn't she? The additional problem we could run into with the Spidey films is that if Pete has a different cute girlfriend in each movie, it kind of undermines his nerdy outcast image. In a long-running comic or TV series, the transition from no girlfriend to Betty to Gwen to MJ would flow more gradually, but in a film franchise it could almost seem like a James Bond girl situation until MJ stuck around. It's unfortunate, since I really like the Betty character (except for her gun-crazy bandana-wearing period during the '90s), but she seems destined to merely flirt with Pete outside of the comics. Perhaps another TV series could change that.
The way I'd portray Peter Parker after he gets his powers is the way he was in the comics in that he'd be a babe magnet (let's face it, he was), without the full confidence, skills, time and stability to make it work with anyone, seemingly. Post-spider bite, he was a complete draw for women, once he got to college especially. The only thing that made people not like him there (everyone besides Flash, that is, who was holding a grudge) is because he was very distracted and was mistaken for snubbing and ignoring everyone.
In high school, he had Betty Brant and Liz Allen vying for his affections, which is how I'd have it in the first movie. Liz probably won't show interest until not only does Peter get his powers, but he also starts dating Betty Brant-- both factors boost his confidence and comes across as attractive, in addition to the fact that it's ironically bad timing.
In college, two even more attractive women were practically having cat fights over him. When Gwen didn't like him, it's actually because she liked him and he didn't show interest, and Peter never had to try to get Mary Jane to like him at first.
The main themes for Peter's personal life here are irony and frustration. Not only have the new powers given him a job to do, it's given him traits that let him unconsciously overcome his geeky outcast status, and only through unfortunate circumstances and lasting reputation was he seen as a complete nerd afterward. The problem is, he can't make good on it, because the powers and crimefighting are also a huge consumer of time, availability, energy and focus. He doesn't have his head clear enough to make new friends, and when he does, he has to keep disappearing and blowing off dates/appointments, and back when he
could juggle everything well enough, his girlfriend couldn't stand him being in danger, so he could never tell her the truth.
Sam Raimi's movies got this wrong, among many other things. Or at least he was inconsistent about it. At times, Peter was confident enough to talk well enough (the context for it is not only unfaithful but disgustingly trite... Mary Jane was never Peter's object of affection before college, in any conceivable way), and others, he's not just a geek, he's a complete idiot with nothing to say.
That's the other main thing that Raimi got wrong about Peter Parker: he made him a blithering, indecisive child instead of a witty, mature young man. I'm not even going to get into the more obvious ways in which Parker's intelligence was hidden in the first movie (*cough*organicwebshooters*cough*), but even though he seemed to have book smarts in the second one, he didn't know a damn thing about what he wanted to do with his life. I'm not judging people his age that have that same problem, but I condemn anyone who would even think of presenting Peter Parker in that light.
Did the
real Peter Parker know what he wanted to do with his life?
Of course he did!! He just couldn't make it work for the same reasons he couldn't handle his social life all that well and had trouble in school. It's not because he didn't know, it's because he couldn't punch a clock the way a non-superhero could. Peter Parker wanted to be a bio-chemist. I would have that made very clear in my movies. He knows what he wants and he knows who he wants, but he can't make it work. Period. This is not primarily the story of a man discovering who he is after the first movie. It's a discovery of the world and the types of people in it, and what he discovers about himself whether he can can handle that world and those people under various circumstances. Again, it's not about what he wants or who he is, it's about how those things stack up against what's going on and how things are. That's the tragedy of it all. If a person doesn't know what they want and don't get it, who the hell cares? If a person actually has their act together for the most part and still gets denied at every turn, then that sucks and people might care that it sucks.
Peter Parker has never been an "everyman" character-- a common misconception people like to pass around-- up until recent years. He was always smarter than most people, and not just in book smarts. He was self-aware, and we saw all of his self-knowledge through the word bubbles. There would be a lot of voiceover from him in my movies. Not for every little thing, though, and it would be well-timed with what's going on. You can get a lot of comic mileage out of it as well. If 'Fight Club' and other great movies with self-narration can get away with running voiceover commentary, I think Spider-Man can.
Anyway, Spider-Man is one of the most interesting characters to me because of his self-awareness and the fact that there's something worth being self-aware about. My movies would get into his psychology as much as is appropriate, and he would never be seen as a mystery to the audience. What we see is an intelligent, mature, neurotic, self-deprecating young man trying to deal with life's challenges at the highest (saving the city from megalomaniacs who possess weapons of mass destruction) and lowest (thinking up excuses to tell Aunt May for why he's home so late) levels. I think if it was done the way I envision it, the non-action aspects might appeal to adults as much if not more than to kids in many ways, since it's grounded in
psychological reality, and the moral dillemmas are decided on picking the
less selfish choice, not the selfless thing as choice to the selfish choice. We're working on a higher level of philosophical thinking and moral development here.
Agreed. If the continuation of the Spidey franchise beyond 3 films were set in stone, Venom should definitely wait. I think Hollywood is still waiting for the other shoe to drop regarding superhero films, and thus we see the push to pull out all the stops before the public supposedly loses interest.
Sounds about right. Good assessment.
Venom deserves to be done properly, whichever position in the franchise he/they happen to show up.
Just as I'm interested in the psychology of Spider-Man, I'd certainly get into Eddie Brock's psychology and definitely work the "lethal protector" aspect-- the fact that does believe he's a hero and does heroic things when not harassing Spider-Man-- for all it's worth.
