Spider-Man: Homecoming (July 7, 2017) Movie • Page 29

The meme-ification of Tobey Maguire's face as a critique of the Raimi movies always bothers me. It's basically criticizing the movies by saying he's ugly.

 

No, it's criticizing the movies by saying he's a bad actor that over acted the fuck out some really fucking awful scenes. (And it has the side job of me being able to point out how much I hate how much his mask is off in the movies.)





He's a movie star, he's a really good looking guy. It has nothing to do with his appearance or attractiveness.

 

He is not ugly.

 

I don't see "overacting" in those still images. Regardless, I trust that's not your intent, but "Look at how weird his face looks" is overbearingly how it comes across.

 

Again, it's look how stupid this scene is.



Because ... look how fucking stupid these scenes are and how fucking dumb this is:

 

I see this criticism come up often but I've never understood it. It seems to imply that Tobey Maguire's portrayal of the character is how Peter Parker/Spider-Man should be. This just isn't true though- I've never read a single comic where Parker is an utterly clueless, useless dork. It's fine to prefer Maguire's version, but Garfield's portrayal, while not perfect, is much closer to the source material.

 

Depending on the source material, this is definitely true. Some very old Spidey books has a very nerdy Parker:



But even then he looks like he should work at Sterling Cooper.

By the 90's he's literally dating a super model and being a creep:



But from like 1996 - Civil War-ish, he's a very "cool" guy.

And even going to USM (one of my favorite depictions), he's way more Garfield than he is Tobey. This criticism always bugged me too.

 

Okay. There's a talk to be had about why those scenes don't work. Particularly because there's at least some motion to analyze. Still images don't do anything. And again, I don't think you think he's ugly. But you're not the only one sharing those stills across the internet and making fun of them, and overall, the general feel is "look at this guy's weird face".

I don't know how else you'd act that train car stopping scene, and if you take a still of any actor crying, one can make fun of it because, on its own without any context, the actor is making an emotional, strange face. But it is about the least interesting way one can start a discussion about a performance. And maybe starting a discussion is not your intent, and that's fine. But it doesn't come off well to me, particularly in the larger context of how people, not just you, snark about those stills.

 

Out of all the movies, "Spider-Man 2"'s the only one worth re-visiting for me. Good villain, Raimi seemed more confident and the story more streamlined. Everything else is different shades of bad, especially SM3 and ASM2.

 

I feel like even the original super nerdy Parker from the 60s was still a different character from Maguire's version. He came across as highly intelligent in the comics whereas Maguire always seemed kind of slow? Also, in his very first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15 he has the confidence to ask someone on a date, something which Maguire's Parker would never do.

 

You could ... not make your face look like you're holding in the world's biggest fart. That's how you could act the train scene differently. And of course I don't wanna talk about those shitty movies in detail anymore. I've been deconstructing their horribleness for a decade now. Their existence is for me to mock their awfulness, that's the only good thing they have left in them.

 

Also a good point. Either way, there's always been different ways to play Peter Parker and the different parts of his personality depending on time/age/etc. -- and Tom Holland plays it closer to Garfield so far, and I'm more than ok with that. The funny, snarky, sarcastic, pretty good looking guy that has a smaller group of friends but isn't in the "popular crowd," (but isn't a complete outcast), is one of my favorite versions of Peter. That's how I've always liked him.

 

Well, if that's your outlook on those movies and the way you'll talk about them, enjoy it. Sincerely.

 

lol. Rarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

 

I really liked the Webb films as they came out, but having gone back recently and checked them out again, along with Raimi's, I can't help but feel like the Webb movies are potato chips. Like, they were pleasant at the time, but looking back, there wasn't much memorable to take note of in the bag. The only scene from both movies that made the movie more of an interestihrg party mix was the Time Square sequence in ASM2

 

Every time I go down the Google Image rabbit hole I keep laughing and it always leads me back to ....

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppppppp.

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeepeeppppppppp.

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeepeeppppppppp. Ha ha ha.

They're all trash.

 

You consider ASM2 and Spider-Man 3 equally as bad? Can't be

 

There's a cut of ASM2 that could have been a decent movie. It's not the final film at all, but there's a cut in there that may just work. You can't say the same for SM3.

 

You don't even have to go to the 90s! By the time Romita (my favorite Spider-Man artist; him and Lee are my favorite Spider-Man era) replaced Ditko in the 60s, 30-something issues into ASM, Peter was modeled after classic romance comics, and he had two coveted women vying for his attention, and his roommate/best friend was rich. He was a dork for a few years, and then was cool but bad at balancing his life (like in ASM2) for decades, before revisiting his dorky high school days became a never-ending trend.

 

I will say this 'til I die. Someday I may even make said cut (though it'll be poorly edited and use a couple unfinished scenes). Theatrical ASM2 is a mess, but with some work, it could be so good.

 

Genuinely curious, where is that cut? Electro and Green Goblin are awful, Peter and Harry have a friendship based on expositional dialogue, rather than any dramatization, and the emotional center of the movie is Peter breaking up with, and then stalking, Gwen, until she dies (in a scene that the movie explicitly states is her fault).

edit: oh God, I forgot about all the Peter's dad has a secret subway science base stuff.

 

lol i am now down the rabbit hole

 

ASM2 is the best visual Spider-Man that's ever been put to screen. The action is incredible, the scientific elements to Peter's personality and how he thinks in action are there, and there's a beautiful scene where Spider-Man helps out a bullied kid. None of the stuff it does well is emotionally tied to the story the movie is trying to tell, which gets lost in Electro's messiness, Harry's concern about dying, and Peter and Gwen's problematic, to say the least, relationship. If the cut in ASM2 that works is a 3 minute short film of just that scene with the kid, I agree. It'd be a beautiful and wonderful short film.