Ironik

I have the agreeance with this, oh muchly much I do.

While I generally agree that characters *in* the story don't have all the information we have, there is a qualitative difference between lowercase "npcs" and uppercase "NPCs", namely that the latter are stand-ins for the Devs and thus have a direct line to the story bible. So I give more weight to what War Witch-NPC says than Azuria-npc says.

I think I speak for all of us when I say:

You're so weird.

...I like that.

Sounds reasonable. The IV would've only lasted 2 days, tops, and he could've only survived for *maybe* four days without water on top of that, due to his low-energy state. My guess would be he woke up a day or two after the hospital got overrun. I grew up among nurses and doctors, and most of them would absolutely stay until the last possible minute in order to protect their patients. (Read stories about Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, for instance.)

The Dude doesn't have all his brain cells any more. But it's cool... he still abides.

Not crazy about that song, but I do like that they say "Harpo! Zeppo!" right in the middle of it.

Having Christopher Yost on board as story editor means it has a higher-than-average chance of being a pretty good series. Yost and Craig Kyle co-wrote what I consider to be the best graphic novel of the past few years, X-23, and I've enjoyed all of their previous cartoons.

This is a great shot. You should add it to the Terrific Screenshots of Cool thread.

First time on the internet, is it?

One person's boredom is another person's riveting moment. The best you can do is what's true to the character and story and let the rest of it fall as it may.

Not at all. My favorite example of cinema's power to capitalize the fact that "a picture is worth a thousand words" is from Robert Towne's Tequila Sunrise. In that film, a five-second shot of a matchbook on a bar says more about trust and betrayal than five pages of ranty soap opera-type dialogue ever could. It is a brilliant moment, one of the most perfect such moments in movie history.

That's a structure issue, not a story issue. There are so many basic ways to get around this it's not even an issue. Even the tried-and-true flashback a la Forrest Gump would work fine. But "no action" doesn't have to equal "boring." Check out The Social Network or Dead Poets Society for how sitting at desks can be made into a riveting movie. Trotting out another film, Gosford Park, the first half of that movie setting up the movie was so interesting that I completely forgot it was supposed to *be* a murder mystery.

It wasn't that they left things out, it's that they changed core parts of the character for no good reason other than they were too lazy to work out a better way to integrate all those key elements.

If he's going to spin webs the way spiders do, then he needs a fold-down flap in the backside of his Spidey suit.

His dad wasn't working on a web fluid, PETER re-purposed it for that. The kid's smart. Haven't you ever met a smart person? I mean a genius-level-IQ type of person. They don't think they way you do.

As I say, there is plenty of room for exploration regarding those things as a subplot. Since it goes to the core of the character, it's worthy stuff to add.

I didn't say they were the major reason, but nice try putting words onto my post.

What I said was this: They aren't a detail, they underscore the reason why Spider-man is a terrible adaptation. If you're going to argue with someone, at least pay attention to what they say instead of what you think they say.

I'll just hold a boombox over my head and play the Stones' "Satisfaction" and she'll be back.

"Easier" does not mean "better."

The best version of the web fluid thing was in Ultimate Spider-Man by Bendis. That's where it was shown to be his dad's unfinished formula and he'd been working on it for years. Peter's breakthrough comes after the spider bite, so one might say his abilities also allowed him to clear his mind or concentrate better, or perhaps it was simply a coincidence. Bendis dispensed with the entire matter in less than two pages of the comic, succinctly summing it all up.

One reason why he doesn't apply this knowledge to other fields of endeavor is because of the web fluid's limited use. It only lasts for an hour or two before dissolving -- which might be useful in construction or something, but how does anyone explain that they've come up with this idea? (Although that might be a good subplot for a second movie, now that I think about -- Pete uses someone as a cut-out to market the fluid, but they take the lion's share of the profits. Pete can't sue the guy because he'd reveal himself to be Spidey, and so on.) Then there's the notion that it simply never occurs to Peter to capitalize on the web fluid, as other characters have commented that he could make a fortune with it. He *is* rather distracted by events in his life, plus his mind doesn't work like that. I don't recall if Reed Richards or anyone have analyzed the stuff, but that's certainly one thing that could be examined in a movie. I'd rather see that sort of thing instead of the scene in the lunch room and fight in the hallway.

As far as explaining who his dad was, you don't even need dialogue for that. Especially after Uncle Ben is killed, just have Peter in his room reflecting on his life. Just *show* that his dad was a chemist as Peter pulls out old newspaper clippings, photos and certificates, then have him glance over at the formula on the board again. Just a brief shot to establish it's both important and related to Pete's dad. Have that board in the background from the start of the film to establish its presence. Maybe even have Ben or May yell up to him to get a move on or he'll be late for school as he stands concentrating on the thing. You can dispense with all of that stuff in less than a minute, simply allowing the audience to draw the correct conclusions by association via montage. Maybe even throw in a bit of dialogue for the slower viewers.

On bus:
Mary Jane: What were you doing?
Pete: Looking at my dad's formu - nevermind, just geeky stuff.

Or even more on the nose, but lame:
Mary Jane: Looking at your dad's formula again?
Pete: Still.
Mary Jane: You'll get it, you're the smartest guy I know.
Pete: You so need to get out more.

The Origins as written *are* constraining, because it comes with authorial decree. The major NPCs say things like "mutants didn't exist before 1938." Which instantly made my slow-aging 117-year-old mutant non-canon.

Other things, such as NPC Positron's mention of Powerset proliferation, are completely unnecessary. Why does it matter in the game world why powers were shared with different archetypes? That's the equivalent of explaining why we can suddenly color our powers or have kittens on our shoulders. But the main issue from that lies in the fact he claims that even Naturals are affected by Power Proliferation... which changes them from Natural to some sort of silly Magic-Tech hybrid.

As I went through Percy Winkley's arc, I just got more and more annoyed because the writers were constraining us ever more... for no apparent reason. There's no need to explain proliferation because it's just a game mechanic. I was afraid there would be some arc explaining why we can suddenly see shadows after UltraMode was added. It's ridiculous to put limitations on characters' backstories.

Absolutely not, and anyone who's read any of my posts over the years knows better than to claim such. But you need to get the *core* of the character right and hew close to the *theme* of the piece, or else you're changing too much. The details don't matter as much if the foundation is solid.

That's the primary reason why the web shooters were retarded. The whole *point* of the mechanical ones are to show how smart Peter is. He's also supposed to be freed from his humdrum existence by the Spider-man persona, which is one reason why he makes so many wisecracks. Despite all the baggage that comes with the great power and responsibility, there's a part of him which *revels* in his alter-ego, because it's an awesome lift from his day-to-day life. Yet he barely makes a single joke in the movie and I never once got the feeling he loved being Spider-man beyond a brief scene. Peter loves the freedom yet constantly feels guilty about it, because he failed to use his gifts when they mattered most. That's what drives him. Mostly we got an angsty emo kid who just gets one more crappy thing heaped on his shoulders. That's part of Peter Parker, but that's not *all* of Peter Parker, so it's a huge miss.

Then there are clumsy things happening like him using the web shooters in full view of dozens of classmates and moving inhumanly fast right in front of people, yet there are no repercussions from that. Yesterday he's a dork and today he's superpowered, yet it has zero effect as we ignore that and move on to the main plot. The acting was fine and the cinematography is passable (except for the web-swinging scenes) but the writing is jumbled at best and, as I've said, missed the heart of the character entirely.

And this coming from Raimi, who made the terrific Darkman and Evil Dead movies. That's why I was disappointed.

I did "Ultimate Marvel" versions of the characters of some of my friends' characters to show them the new stuff, since they haven't played in some time.

No, they really weren't. The single good thing about the first movie was the part lifted directly from the comic: the wrestling scene. Organic web shooters, 'nuff said.

The Origin of Power nonsense was a huge story mistake. Not as big as the terrible choice made when designing CoV's backstory which crams us all into the same railroad tunnel, but it's pretty huge. It puts us in straitjackets and limits our creativity. The only way to deal with it is to ignore it, and that's a shame.