Hacker Cinema
Spider-Man
2002 · Film · 121 min
Part of Spider-Man Collection
Directed by Sam Raimi
After being bitten by a genetically altered spider at Oscorp, nerdy but endearing high school student Peter Parker is endowed with amazing powers to become the superhero known as Spider-Man.
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70 comments on Hacker News
Agreed. Not to say there is no such thing as franchise fatigue, but fundamentally it’s about quality. The large studios expect us to just gorge ourselves on anything with a favorite logo or name on it like it’s a brand loyalty thing, but movies are about storytelling and emotional resonance. Odyssey made me feel things, so did Spider-Man, so did Obsession. Supergirl did not. Simple as that.
I think this year is actually the final nails in the argument that people are desperate for "original" films. The top ones this year are Spider-Man and an adaptation of a literal ancient story. Followed by a fifth Toy Story, a Michael Jackson biopic, a Mario film, the Devil Wears Prada 2 and Project Hail Mary. Only Michael and PHM are arguably non-franchise films, and PHM wasn't one of the ones that grossed over a billion.
And the next expected major films this year that will pull in audiences are Dune 3 and Avengers: Doomsday.
It's looking like franchises are what are reliably bringing people in. They just want quality stories and not a deluge of committee-designed experiences. The new Spider-Man film was good because it gets Spider-Man and what audiences like about the character.
This is fairly timely since you'd probably be hard pressed to do the same thing with the new Spider-Man movie, which was apparently shot in Glasgow?
I just saw the new Spider-Man movie and there were a ton of notices about Canada-based film credits and from various provinces, too. I'm not sure how these credits work, but maybe spreading the work out to various tax incentivized areas is the current play.
> The point is that the heroes in the MCU stories didn't have to outgrow their nerd phase through virtues like courage, responsibility, duty - instead science made them into men. Peter Parker is bit by a spider, The Hulk got irradiated, Captain America got injected, Tony Stark's invention is a literal shell which superficially turns him into Iron Man and protects him from consequences/reality.
Tell us you know nothing of those characters without telling us you know nothing of those characters.
For both brevity and character recognition, I'll stick to Spider-Man. This is a character who starts off as an average person like any one of us, and suddenly, he's granted amazing powers after being bitten by a spider. However, that isn't what makes him a hero.
No, what makes Spider-Man a hero is his underlying theme of responsibility. He recognizes (largely due to his uncle's teachings) that he has a duty to use his powers to help others.
Unfortunately, his hero persona effectively ruins his life -- he regularly loses friends and loved ones, and his constant need to jump to the rescue of others prevents him from ever holding down a reasonable job, leaving him barely scraping by most of the time.
It's not all rainbows and unicorns for his hero persona, either, as the editor/owner of New York's top journalism outlet, the Daily Bugle, spends all of his time and effort portraying Spider-Man as a villain, he has a huge rogues gallery trying to kill him, and it's pretty common for other Marvel heroes to ignore or refuse him help when he needs it.
Leaving his costume behind and blending in with the rest of New York would unquestionably improve his life, and yet, he soldiers on, because he recognizes that should he do so, people will suffer and die for it.
Now, if you're only familiar with the movies, I'll grant that they haven't always done a good job at showing this. Sure, Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man lost his uncle early on, and his failure saving Gwen Stacy was tragic, but we never really see his hero persona impacting his regular day-to-day life. Tom Holland's Spider-Man largely has the same issue: we don't even see his uncle die, and it's not until nearly the end of his third movie that he finally loses someone. His choice to be forgotten at the end only sets up the possibility that he may finally be portrayed correctly in follow-up movies (I haven't seen the newest one yet).
If for some reason you feel the need to stick to films, the ones that come closest to capture how rough things are for Peter Parker trying to balance his private and hero lives, you're best off watching the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films, and in particular, the second one.
But realize that none of the movies get close to how bad Peter has it in the comics. It's somewhat of a meme that the Spider-Man writers hate Peter, given how much punishment they dole out to the character for daring to try and help others. As a result, he's constantly questioning whether he's making a difference and whether he should give it up, and it reaches a point where even the One Above All (i.e., God in the Marvel universe) has to give the guy a pep talk. But, in the end, he always rises to the occasion, no matter how much personal sacrifice he has to make.
That is why Peter Parker is a hero.
The IMAX screenings are pre-committed to future movies -- it might be the case that Spider-Man takes over in two weeks and the window for The Odyssey is closed, even if more people want to see The Odyssey in IMAX than Spider-Man.
I don't expect exponential growth to continue indefinitely... I don't think the current line of LLM based tech will lead to AGI, but that it might inspire what does.
That doesn't mean it isn't and won't continue to be disruptive. Looking at generated film clips, it's beyond impressive... and despite limitations, it's going to lead to a lot of creativity, that doesn't mean someone making something longer won't have to work that much harder to get something consistent... I've enjoyed a lot of the StarWars fan films that have been made, but there's a lot of improvements needed in terms of the voice acting, sets, characters, etc that arre needed for something I'd pay to rent or see in a thaater.
Ironically, the push towards modern progressivism and division from Hollywood has largely been a shortfall... If they really wanted to make money, they'd lean into pop-culture fun and rah rah 'Merica, imo. Even with the new He-Man movie, the biggest critique is they bothered to try to integrate real world Earth as a grounding point. Let it be fantasy. For that matter, extend the delay from theater to PPV even. "Only in theaters for 2026" might actually be just enough push to get butts in seats.
I used to go to the movies a few times a month, now it's been at least a year since I've thought of going. I actually might for He-Man or the Spider-Man movies... Mixed on Mandalorean.
For AI and coding... I've started using it more the past couple months... I can't imagine being a less experienced dev with it. I predict, catch and handle so many issues in terms of how I've used it even. The thought of vibe-coded apps in the wild is shocking to terrifying and I wouldn't wany my money anywhere near them. It takes a lot of iteration, curation an baby-sitting after creating a good level of pre-documentation/specifications to follow. That said, I'd say I'm at least 5x more productive with it.
I don't think Adams is talking about how reluctant the hero is but about failure and misfortune.
Frodo definitely doesn't want to be there but he is far from being a failure. He saves Middle-earth, goes home to the Shire and saves that too, and is regarded as such an incredible mortal that he's invited to live in Valinor with the elves (this is a very big deal and I believe has only ever happened for Frodo and his buddies).
The same goes for Harry Potter. He's a loser at the beginning but after going to Hogwarts he's very much a hero that saves the day by being good at everything and exceptionally brave.
Also, I'd say there are plenty of reluctant heroes in American literature and film. Luke Skywalker hesitates to go save Leia in the first film, Spider-man straight up quits being Spider-man multiple times, John McClane just happened to be there when terrorists attack.
It seemed like there were a lot of cherry picked examples.
He showed Spider-Man to prove we don’t have strong action heroes anymore. Why not The Rock? The Mountain? Thor?
Arnold largely created the market for strong action heroes, and it’s been more and more the trend ever since. Look and old Superman and Batman vs modern versions. Starting out, people thought Arnold’s size would hold him back from getting roles. Now it’s the bigger the better. Most actors looking to play a super hero need to get a trainer and hit the gym hard.
He also talked about them not being as violent, and then showed John Wick. Keanu Reeves might not be huge, but those movies are extremely violent, and he’s 61. He’s not going to pack on 40lbs of muscle for a role, and that also can look a bit awkward in a suit.
Except American movies(and entertainment in general) haven't been good for about 10 years now, it's all slop based on established IP from 20-30 years ago.
When I was a kid growing up in the post communist 90-00s, we were going nearly weekly to the cinema to watch the latest American movies: Blade, Shrek, Toy Story, The Matrix trilogy, LotR trilogy, American Pie, Batman trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Fast & Furious, X-Men, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Scary Movie, Rush Hour, etc
We couldn't get enough of US entertainment, while now everyone here avoids the new US releases like the plague since it's only cash grabs injected with $CURRENT_DAY identity politics, diversity box ticking based on focus group testing, resulting in sterile, predictable, zero-humor, zero-edge, zero-creativity slop that's not even worth pirating.
Americans have no idea how much soft power they lost worldwide by forcing their identity politics and ideologies in entertainment. Japanese anime and Koran movies and TV shows now run rings around the US entertainment industry.
Batman, Superman and Spider-Man are not real. And that does matter. It is super normal to watch a movie and sympathize with what would be clearly bad guys in real life.
So yes, batman in particular would be considered bad by most people. He is just another gangster cause quite a lot of damage to the city on the regular. We do not care, because it is made up movie city.
Superman and Spider man afaik do not go around randomly assassinating people, but it is a long time since I watched that.
> I meant pacifism is promoted as the only recourse for the general citizen
What media are you consuming? Take a look at any list of top-grossing films of the past few decades and it's riddled with non-state lone wolf actors using violence to solve their problems.
You're saying that John Wick, Creed, Spider-Man, The Fall Guy, Furiosa, Venom, etc. are teaching Americans to be pacifists?
Some of them are even within the borders of cities! See, for example, much of Queens, NY. Forest Hills is especially pretty. If you're not a New York, go back and watch the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies and marvel (ha) over the difference between where Aunt May lives and where Peter works.
Interesting. How long does it take to build the index of a movie like spider man (on whatever hardware you have at hand)? And how big will its index be?
Nice project. Spider-Man (2000) was a great game for the time. It had a solid action/platforming engine, it had voice-acting with a number of actors pulled from some of the animated shows that were running at the time, and it came out before the 2002 Sam Riami film that forced most subsequent games to follow the movie timelines. I played the N64 version at the time, and found it fairly polished and much better than most of the Spider-Man games that came out before it (Arcade's Revenge, Maximum Carnage, Separation Anxiety, to name a few).
I would argue it would hold the crown for best Spider-Man game for some time until the flawed masterpiece Spider-Man 2 (2004) gave us truly amazing web-slinging physics in a sandbox environment, or the less-free-but-tighter-overall Ultimate Spider-Man in 2005.
Planet Money did an episode about this, The Spiderman Problem: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/28/1076531156/the-spider-man-problem
Short story is that Marvel licensed Spiderman for cheap with a clause that Sony could keep the license so long as they produced a movie every N years.
> People have been complaining that the theater is full of sequels and superhero movies for decades.
Yeah, but the thing is people go to see superhero movies and sequels and remakes. And have been for a long time.
When people stop going to superhero movies, they'll stop getting made. Except for Spider-Man; Sony is going to keep rebooting that and doing another series of three movies until they are bought by Disney; if they lose that license by not making a film in time, they'll never get it back.
I find Sony the most egregious example of poor product placement - especially in Spider-Man films
Copyright doesnt exist only to prevent people from getting your books for free. It's also there to prevent other authors from using your story for their own - for example, this is (part of) what prevents Universal Studios from putting out their own Spider Man movie.
Now, arguably this has even worse consequences on culture than the banning of copying ebooks. Still, it complicates the expected cost of a book significantly, so replacing current copyright with your proposal would require some alternative for this case as well.
Diamond painting is a fascinating hobby in which small resin "diamonds" are placed on a canvas to produce sparkling artwork. We look at three kits that were inspired by three classic movies: "Avatar," "Star Wars," and "Spider-Man." Starting with Avatar diamond painting, artists can use this fascinating form of art to recreate the rich hues and sceneries of Pandora, including the Na'vi's blue skin.
The Star Wars Diamond Painting Kit immerses painters in a timeless world and gives them the chance to recreate iconic characters and moments, such as the epic battles between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader and the charismatic Han Solo. Each diamond gradually builds a stunning tribute to this enduringly famous franchise.
Finally, the Spider Man Diamond Painting Kit allows us to portray Marvel's most popular superhero in exciting metropolitan scenarios. With the help of this kit, fans can recreate Spider-Man's web-slinging adventures. Each small resin diamond adds to the precise features of the Wall-Crawler's iconic costume and thrilling action scenes, creating a vivid tribute.
These kits provide an interesting artistic adventure, regardless of whether you prefer comic books, movies, or just the immersing technique of diamond paints. You can bring your favorite movie characters or scenes to life in a stunning display of colors and textures by carefully putting each tiny piece together one at a time. Grab a kit, then begin your exploration of the glittering world of diamond art paintings.
For me the suggestion algorithm used to insistently make me learn about music/celebs and random topics I don't care about, but now it just shows you friends of friends and random Blue users, who are largely crypto rightist propaganda like "black people getting in fights" accounts.
There does some to be an effort to make it look like the reddit default page since there's some viral meme pages mixed in.
Though for the last week it really desperately wanted to show me posts about some Spider-Man movie, so the old stuff still activates sometimes.
> , but irl conversations I've had mostly skew towards media, computers, and gossip.
Same, but like, how do you talk about any of that stuff, without also touching on "gender, relationships, and life dynamics".
Like, I have no idea how a group of friends would talk about, say "that cool new Spider-Man movie" without also talking about gender / race / life dynamics / etc. Those topics are so fundamental, they're a part of almost everything.
Spider-Man is kind of a special case, though. It's pretty much an essential part of the Spider-Man universe that the main character and all his friends are teenagers, so if you're going to make new Spider-Man movies you have to start over with new actors every few years. Tobey Maguire was (IMO) the best movie Spider-Man, but he's 47 now -- it'd be hard for him to play a high school/early college student. :-)
Contrast with something like Batman, where the main character isn't any one specified age. You could probably get away with a Batman who was anything from mid-20s to mid-40s, or maybe even older.
There’s already a lot of creative work that is somewhat superficial and unoriginal but serves its purpose, for better or worse. There are pop songs I like, for example, where the lyrics could have been written by an AI (but the production and vibe of the music make up for it). The lyrics were actually written by a producer or two in an afternoon while they were having a good time and not taking it too seriously, just writing what sounded good (in constrast to the suffering-to-put-words-to-one’s-pain described in the letter). I think it’s possible to underappreciate how art can carry a message, and creative works can touch people in a way that an AI working by itself won’t because it has no reason to; it has nothing to say. GPT-3 is basically a fancy autocomplete. That said, will AI-generated works probably touch people deeply and make them feel things? Sure. It’s not hard to make humans feel things. And AI that is good at summarizing and reflecting things back to us will make us feel seen. It’s easy to underestimate AI and overestimate the genius of the poor artist who is trying to generate new ideas and produce work based on them at the limits of his human capacity for generating novelty and synthesizing output.
It’s already easy to generate mediocre work, and humans decide what gets popular, whether it’s the audience or the people choosing what gets made or distributed.
Movie scripts have been getting more superficial and less original, so if an AI writes a Spider-man movie and no one can tell, it will be because we’ve met in the middle.
You seem to be quoting Spider-Man (if my quick google search is on point); I was quoting my law school professor.
Is Spider-Man well-known as the source of this mnemonic? I’m pretty sure lawyers were saying it for decades before the books/movies came out, but I could be wrong.
I don't agree with the parent commenter, but wasn't Captain Marvel originally male? The female character of Captain Marvel in the movies was known as Ms. Marvel in the comics (until 2012): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Danvers.
Similar story with Spider-man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Morales. There hadn't been an African-american spider-man until 2011.
I'm not a comic book nerd, so I'm probably entirely wrong about this.
Plenty of people here don’t make that much but the sentiment is largely true. Lots of hand wringing in a thread a while back about the tragedy of paying like $14.99 so a family of 4 could watch the newest Spider-man movie I think.
Zero sympathy for the companies that seem to be burying content for tax benefits or residual avoidance, just saying the price for someone to watch video content has dropped in a pretty remarkable way, especially inflation adjusted, over the last few decades (theaters may be the exception), though people rarely “own” their copy of content these days.
My DVD collection of maybe 40 movies & shows will last as long as I don’t get rid of my PS3 but in 10 years I haven’t watched any of them.
There need to be legit competitors so the creators of new content can negotiate deals that don’t allow or incentivize the shelving of content. Currently if someone offers someone who isn’t a household name any contract to make their dream project they probably accept it with no redlining. Meanwhile John “Jim from The Office” Krasinski posted 8 episodes of maybe the dumbest, most tone deaf slop to YouTube in March of 2020 before immediately selling the “show” to Viacom and walking away.
The “golden age of TV” ended super suddenly, hopefully this is the end of the re-bundling and we’ll see another unbundling soon!
And as far as Marvel movies go: Iron Man, Spider Man, Doctor Strange. Even Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and Thor:Ragnarok.
Many superhero films, especially marvel films, are not heroic journeys. They’re entirely different concepts entirely. To pick the most recent one, Dr strange and the multiverse of madness, his (imo awkwardly executed) character arc is trying to figure out if he’s happy with his life and what superhero’ing has gained and lost him. The latest Spider-Man certainly had a great deal of personal loss if that’s what you must have.
Risk of personal death is tough to pull off convincingly. Risk of death to those they’re trying to protect is much better. And happens pretty frequently.
I find it to be almost the opposite for movies. Yes, it's rare to find something unique, but after starting watching at least a movie per week, I'm now getting references I would never have gotten otherwise and put the movies in a completely different light.
For example, you're not gonna fully appreciate the latest spider-man movie unless you already watched the whole 3 series.
Or the other day, I was watching Ted (the teddy bear movie) and they recreated the dancing scene from Airplane. If I had never seen Airplane, I would probably still have laughed, but I wouldn't truly have gotten the joke.
Or in the Doctor Sleep movie, there's a story being told, but the Director also tried to reconcile The Shining movie, The Shining novel with the Doctor Sleep novel. You don't truly experience the movie fully unless you've experienced all of them.
I don't know for other media, but I find movie makers tend to be very meta and you gain as much by having seen all the low fruits as you lose by doing so.
I think it's more about the stakes, obstacles, "psychic wounds" etc, than the actual superpowers. Being born with superpowers isn't that big a deal, if you're in a film where every other significant character also has superpowers.
Spider-man lets his uncle die because he's busy showing off. Batman in The Dark Knight "has no cartilage in his knees, scar tissue on his kidneys, concussive damage to his brain, and a host of other issues". Bruce Banner is subject to fits of uncontrollable rage. Logan is dying and in constant pain. Doctor Strange's hands are mutilated due to a car crash caused by his own arrogance.
IIRC Wonder Woman has a naivity due to growing up on a remote island populated by women, but she's basically confident and hypercompetent throughout. Captain Marvel's big issue is she's forgotten she has galactically important superpowers. Black Widow's character has a bit more going on, and I liked the film better than the other two. But, I think there is a difference between the amount of freedom big budget movie screenwriters have with male and female characters.
At lower budgetary levels, you're more likely to see women with less straightforwardly heroic characters, facing more interesting or engaging stakes.
Before Captain Marvel Brie Larson was doing great indie flicks like Room and Free Fire. She's said she was quite conflicted about taking the role, and I can't blame her for taking the money but I think I understand her hesitation.
I recently re-watched Spider-Man (2002), not having seen it in over a decade. I watched it in 4K on a 100" screen from my JVC DLA-RS400 projector.
I was pleasantly surprised that the movie was as good as I remembered, and that the special effects held up remarkably well.
I enjoyed its first major fight scene than the one you linked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiaTyUcu5VM
The frozen people effect in Amazing Spiderman 2 reminded me this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OANHfaJW3IM
I think that’s missing the point. Most movies are mostly forgotten, and the merits of the story and storytelling carry the movie as a thing.
If you pick a mediocre movie in 2019 and compare to a mediocre movie in 1959, the garbage storyline will be the thing you will turn the movie off for.
In my mind, the weakness with CGI overuse is it enables lazy/sloppy practices that don’t scale. Similar to in graphics work where Photoshop is abused to create impossible edits for expediency.
My family has a tradition of watching Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” every holiday season. It’s quaint how you can see the painted backgrounds and stages… the opening scenes feature cardboard bricks and cheesy props. The point of the article is that this era of filming is bland and will look cheesy in the future because of the reliance on tools. You can already see it today - compare the Sony Spider-Man movies to the last iteration - the age is apparent.
I haven’t seen 2017 justice league, but I have seen enough modern day superhero films to be sceptical that’s why his strength is unthreatening.
Of course he’s going to be defeated, he’s the villain. Heroes don’t get injured. Every strength based character is infinite strong.
Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound, then fly, then fly in space, then lift a continent made of kryptonite which is “Superman’s Kryptonite”, if you will.
Tobey MacGuire Spider-Man hurt his knee trying to slow down a train, Tom Holland held a flying aircraft carrier together with his hands. Yesterday’s Doctor Octopus would be no match for today’s Spider-Man and his small scale plots no interest. Even so, Alfred Molina’s Doc Oc was a good and threatening character despite having CGI assisted arms.
Hulk used to throw tanks about, now he punches alien spaceships into the ground.
Iron man was a guy in a cyborg suite, with hulk buster he’s hulk strong.
Magneto was a strategist who could push away wolverine, now he can lift sunken battleships and stadiums.
Wolverine was an eternal soldier now he can survive a hit from a nuclear bomb(!)
Batman was a strategist who worked out, now he’s strong enough to fight superman hand to hand.
Nobody gets injured unless they can walk it off, nobody dies unless they’re about to come back to life[mostly]. Nothing is damaged unless it’s background scenery buildings and cars.
Of course people aren’t thinking it’s hush stakes, it isn’t. That’s not CGI fault, it’s poor story telling papered over with CGI, bad character writing with CGI energy beam weapons instead of personality.
He also says it was during "a movie night for kids," and the author thinks people should be paying for normal movie theater stuff, like popcorn:
>You want to see Spider Man? You desperately want to bring your kids to Encanto or Sing 2? And you want your popcorn, food, and drinks? Cool. But if you don’t tip...
If someone is taking their kids to a movie night, I wouldn't expect them to tip for tickets, popcorn and soda. And if there's a theater where the workers get upset that you don't tip them for those, I'd expect people to avoid it and go to a normal theater.
Reminds me of https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/13/business/media-business-advertising-lawyers-for-spider-man-win-fight-over-times-square.html where a bunch of billboard owners in Times Square (New York City) tried to sue Sony over digitally replacing the advertisements in scenes in a Spiderman Movie. Luckily the judge in that case came to a similar conclusion.
I'm still dubious the city skylines can be copyrighted - NYC believes they own the copyright on the city's skyline. I'm also dubious that the NYC Subway can copyright the route indicators (letters in circles).
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/the-port-authority-thinks-it-owns-the-new-york-city-skyline/375256/
http://www.fordhamiplj.org/2010/01/07/mta-symbols-intellectual-property-or-new-york-citys-public-domain/
>300 (released in 2006) was the first popular film that did this
Does Spider-Man count in 2002?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM7Eou4bV-Q&t=56s
Considering I have many pictures I took from the latest Spider-Man movie (for my own collection), if they had to do something about it from a legal perspective, they would have done it already.
people like spider-man movies but just go out and watch squirrels.. it's real life super heroes that fit in your hands. these go so fast, fly left and right you barely see them, quite amazing
For now, yes. But people are worried that that's just the first step to get the snooping service onto your phone. Because why stop here? Soon it maybe scanning photos not just destined for iCloud.
And why draw the line at photos? Videos, music, text files, anything could be interesting for governments, film studios and record companies. Why do you have an MP4 of the latest Spider-Man movie on your phone? Did you legally buy this Miles Davis album? Is this an image of a rainbow flag on your phone, my dear Russian citizen?
It's just a small step from here to constantly scanning all your local files on iOS, padOS and macOS because someone, somewhere might want to take a look at them.
Interesting lists, although I think maybe books based movies are more towards original side if we map this as a spectrum instead of a binary value :)
New books with great stories are written every year, and I would rather watch that than spider man reboot #4 honestly.
Well, yes... that is the 21st century way so far. Spider-man has been done 3 times already in 20 years. You can bet they're already planning the reboot of the entire series of Marvel films. You have to look hard to find anything original these days. But there are some if you'd like some recommendations?
Wow, thank you for the extra bits!
I can't believe I have missed the boh! reference in the most recent Spider Man movie.
Re: ere, I learnt it the hard way with the word "ereyesterday" (and on that note, the word "overmorrow" is nice too) .
Some extra interesting stuff:
[Pie Barm] One of the things I miss most about living in the UK is its breakfast sandwiches from manchester. Usually some mix of sausage, egg, bacon, beans on a big white barm/bap. Can't seem to get anywhere near as good sandwiches here in Canada. [1]
[Erstwhile] There word ere is still used almost the same as its Aer root word [2]
[Ogden's Basic English] XKCD had a play on this [3] using the first 1000 most common words. The Simple english version of wikipedia also feeds off of this basic 850 set [4]
[boh!] Was referenced in the most recent spider man movie [5]
[Why we can smell copper] Nile red had a video in 2019 where he synthesized the organic compound that is created by touching copper [6]
[1] https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/great-british-breakfast-bap
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ere
[3] https://xkcd.com/1133/
[4] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_write_Simple_English_pages
[5] https://youtu.be/NBuPOofPplY?t=139
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqLH-nTZEOc
movies became too formulaic over time
Don't forget about the endless reboots. E.g. Batman in film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_in_film
1940s (before my time)
1966 movie
1987+ reboot with 4 movies
2005+ reboot with 3 movies
2021 apparently yet another reboot
I probably got some of that wrong, because there's just too many of them. And I probably missed some. And that doesn't include the "extended universe".
Sigh. Can't they find any other stories to tell?
I think the same applies to e.g. Spider Man? Countless reboots? Don't people get reboot fatigue? Or does enough time pass that the movies simply appeal to a new audience?
The thing that the MCU does—that Star Wars has not yet figured out how to do—is have multiple parallel stories that only occasionally intersect. Marvel can release a Guardians, Spider-Man, and Thor movie in the same year because those movies basically have nothing to do with each other.
In contrast, every Star Wars movie is squeezed into a single linear storyline. Lucasfilm has created alt storylines but so far they are all in TV shows, not movies.
> A small detail many forget is that Netflix pays very different prices for different shows.
Yeah, it's extremely annoying. Netflix essentially mocks its customers by keeping the best works just out of their reach. Almost every time I search for a classic film, I find its sequels instead. The film I actually wanted to watch was apparently too good for Netflix's pay grade.
Netflix has Terminator 1 and 3 but not 2; the first Mad Max but none of the others; Spider-Man 1 and 3 but not 2; several Hannibal movies and a TV series but not Silence of the Lambs; some Star Wars movies but not others; the list goes on...
I was once in a Walgreens in New Orleans, waiting on other members of the party to finish shopping, and someone walked in, filled a backpack from one shelf in under 30 seconds, and walked straight back out again. I looked to the registers, and saw that one of the cashiers had also seen the whole thing, apparently doing nothing.
It felt a little odd to realize that I didn't feel like I owed Walgreens anything in that moment, not even to report what I saw. At the time, I really identified with the scene in the 2002 Spider-Man movie when PP steps aside for the wrestling venue robber. Go on, li'l Robin Hood; stick it to The Man and be well. My relationship with Walgreens has always been purely transactional; they did once have an opportunity to upgrade it, back when I lived in Chicago, but chose not to.
The money that goes into their registers gets sent to Deerfield, and from there on to the shareholders. The merchandise that walks out the door presumably stays local. So why should the cashiers care? They're only hurt if the whole store shuts down.
An entity like that would not do well on the honor system, I think. Walgreens isn't even a person to me. If they won't support my community at even a minimal level, by hiring one local to mind the store, I don't feel particularly motivated to keep their operating costs low out of some sense of goodwill. And I don't have qualms against stealing from robots. If you want me to not steal, on the basis of my own honor, you need to show me the person that would be harmed if I did. If they are all anonymous, and far away, it just doesn't feel as much like stealing. But that real live employee, who may be getting only $10/hour, suffices entirely, even if they just sit there and watch as I check myself out at a kiosk. If I steal, and the store shuts down, that real person loses a part of their livelihood.
Like corporate loyalty, "honor" is a two-edged sword. To benefit from the honor of others, the business must cultivate honor of its own. Walgreens hasn't build up enough for me to care. And they did bribe government customers with kickbacks, and murder that homeless guy in Hollywood, and back Theranos.
You're helping google by tagging its searches, so many people ask for this kind of things that they can prioritise results that gets the most clicks (people rank searches for google everytime they click).
By contrast, the new privacy friendly search engine from the article, with a lot less money and users, can answer a simple question like "news guy actor in spiderman" with
Cliqz:
- And the new actor playing Spider-Man is... this guy (www.foxnews.com)
- J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) | Spider-Man Films Wiki (spiderman-films.fandom.com)
Not bad for a small German company uh...
And even if it didn't, when I know it's Jonah Jameson, I can search for the actor that played Jonah Jameson. Search engines are not about having "the answer to life the universe and everything" but helping users refine their searches until they find what they were looking for.
No it doesn't. The Tim Burton movies were also campy and they reveled in it. Also, the point isn't about whether the movies are campy or not but simply that we're at the point where you can show superheroes on screen believably. Even Burton's Batman had to use fake penguins and matte paintings to try and make Gotham seem real and it still looks wooden and lifeless.
I would say that Raimi's Spider-man (though not fully) and Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy pushed us into the age of superhero believability and popularity.
It's the difference between Lou Ferrigno being painted in green makeup lifting up cardboard and foam vs. a fully realized Hulk that matches what was originally in the comic books in ferocity and strength.
This commentary gets the psychology of superhero narratives entirely wrong:
> Primarily, mass-market superhero movies seem to be abetting an audience who do not wish to relinquish their grip on (a) their relatively reassuring childhoods
It’s the exact opposite. Superhero movies speak most strongly to those whose childhoods were traumatizing. The misfits, the rejects, the nerds who were bullied and had no protector. These narratives are about downtrodden heroes discovering their inner strength and standing up to evil and abuse. Look at the archetype of the mild mannered geeky protagonist who hides his incredible abilities - Spider-Man, Superman with his Clark Kent glasses and persona.
The reason these movies are resonating so deeply in this cultural moment is we have an entire generation of traumatized kids, now adults, who are searching for stories to help them make sense of their reality. This is directly linked to the rise of so-called mental illness, aka trauma.
I’m not saying that all of these mass produced movies are works of art, but you need to understand where the appetite is coming from. The root is in collective trauma.
The only connection to DW Griffit’s racist film is surface level - literally just the fact that masks and capes are involved. Pointing to that film as a forerunner of superhero movies is frankly absurd.
I'd sooner credit Sam Raimi's Spider-Man with starting the modern big-budget superhero movie trend. That movie beat Harry Potter's box office record. It was a big hit and I think it proved the concept.
DMCA claims might not affect the ranking of the page (but whether or not it affects duplicate content checks is anyone's guess) since a search for free movies[0] shows the Lumen DMCA takedown notice[1], even on the first page of results.
0: https://www.google.com/search?q=watch+spider+man+online+free
1: https://i.judge.sh/bright/CozyGlow/chrome_IJqvwxiRT1.png
Spider-Man has been rebooted twice in live-action movies since the Raimi version. The last and current incarnation, starring Tom Holland, debuted in Spider-Man: Homecoming, which is getting a sequel this year (Spider-Man: Far From Home). The other reboot, starring Andrew Garfield in two movies, was eminently forgettable.
"Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse" is an alternate-reality version (where SM is a black/latino teenager) in animated form. Somewhat surprisingly, it's also qualitatively better than any live-action version to date. It will probably get a sequel, again in animated form, in the next few years.
Could you explain how watching a Spider-Man movie would teach us that ultra-thin spider-silk has enough drag to lift a spider up in the air?
But I think an important difference is that in classical literature and in Shakespeare the author does a lot to put his own spin on the story, including often substantially changing the plot (Ovid's Metamorphoses is notable for doing this... which also happens to mean we're not sure what the "real" version of myths that we only have in Ovid now are). Does every new Spider-Man film really have something new to say?
I strongly disagree with this. Part of Captain America’s story was that he was only given physical strength because he deserved it as a moral individual. Iron Man spends a few movies feeling guilty for being a war profiteer and trying to make up for it by doing good, and then in the post-Avengers movies he struggles even more with the idea that his heroics have resulted in just as much death and destruction as his weapons sales. Doctor Strange gains his power by being willing to question his beliefs and then work really hard. And of course there’s Spider Man, who tries to use his powers for good but ends up bumbling around and screwing things up most of the time because he needs to learn that teenagers don’t actually know everything and the wisdom of age is important. Winter Soldier specifically railed against giving the government too much power because it’s impossoble to ensure it will be used for good.
I could go on, but hopefully I’ve made my point!
> ads are such an integral part of our lives
I'll skip the futurama reference for now, but for me ads are far rarer than in the 90s. Adblock handles most things online, iPlayer, Netflix and amazon don't really have adverts on TV (they have a graphical menu but I would call that an advert), Spotify doesn't have adverts. Sure there are a few adverts if I go to somewhere like london, and Sainsbury's advertise their own deals in store, and of course products on the shelf are adverts in of themselves, but the only advert I have seen in the last 24 hours was one raising awareness of cistic fibrosis in a billboard outside of Sainsbury's. Oh and the train announcement saying "the on board shop is open for teas coffees and light refreshments". There wouldn't have been any product placement in the episode of once upon a time I watched last night either.
The TV jingles I remember from childhood are still etched in my brain, the adverts I see in this decade are ones I hunt out depberatly (the John Lewis Xmas advert for example, or film trailers, or something about amazon delivery people stealing your sofa that was recommended at work)
I did see adverts on Saturday night when we went to see Thor. I don't recall what was advertised other than odeon limitless, the trailers are adverts too of course, alas they don't really work - we'd rather see more films at the cinema than we do now, but getting babysitting is a pain. We missed Spider-Man and kingsmen for example.
If anything there are more opportunities to avoid adverts than ever before.
> "Sony set a review embargo of opening day for “The Emoji Movie,” which left the Tomatometer blank until after many advance tickets had been sold and families had made weekend plans."
So studios do know that the movie sucks in advance, but still blame RT for poor performance? I don't see them putting an embargo on Spider-Man...
Opera's been rebooted more times than the Spider-Man movies at this point.
I was joking that if Sony ImageWorks doesn't already have a relatively complete digital backlot for just about all of Manhattan between the Spider-Man and Ghostbusters franchises alone, then what have they been doing...
The interesting/tough part would presumably be inter-effects house sharing/community work. I'm almost surprised that there doesn't seem to be a company focused entirely on reuseable digital backlots because that does seem like a niche that someone in Hollywood would already be exploring.
You could also see it coming from an outside direction, too. If I was Rockstar and already throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at digital open world simulations, I'd probably be shopping that around as the basis for digital backlot work. "Filmed 'on location' in GTA V's Los Santos" sounds almost silly right now, but I've got a feeling it won't for much longer. (Also, I would suspect it's Vancouver-based genre television that would be in the market for this before films.)
Well, for one, they could stop doing origin stories on well established characters. For example, the next Spider-Man movie will supposedly be a non-origin story as it is rebooted to be part of Marvel's cinematic universe. If they wish to start a new actor as a character it doesn't necessarily mean a reboot of the character. But issuing new actors over-and-over with reboots and origin stories for these characters would be the boring part.
I, for one, like seeing the new heroes being introduced into the mix such as Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man. Marvel has a large number of characters to rely on that haven't been introduced into the cinematic universe. Just because they are relatively unknown doesn't mean it won't work. Guardians was considered a risk because most people had no idea what they were, yet it did big numbers at the box office.
These stories can be told endlessly if they are done correctly. Not all of Marvel's characters are super-powered beings and some of the normal characters have interesting stories to tell. Daredevil on Netflix is a good example of this. It didn't even feel like a typical Marvel enterprise until the suit came into play. Up to that point it was an interesting drama with occasional action pieces. Agents of Shield is another; stories about mostly ordinary people dealing with living in this new world of super-beings and gods.
Where comic book movies/shows go wrong is when they are created to be commercials for selling toys and the story comes second. So far, Marvel has avoided this. Hopefully DC can do the same. If telling the story is always the most important aspect, then these things can last a long time before they get boring.
Because of this, Marvel has started to phase out entire classifications of characters from the comic mainstream. For example, mutants (read: X-Men) are losing favor to Inhumans, a similar group of characters.
The Fantastic Four series, one of the longest running in comics, is ending shortly. Speculation is that it's because of Fox's ownership of the Fantastic Four film rights.
It's a slightly strong-arm tactic, but also in the best interest of Marvel's bottom line. Why publish comic books with characters that appear in movies that you don't own.
Had Sony not been hacked, they would likely still control Spider-Man.
The fault for Hollywood's endless sequels, remakes, and remakes of the remake should probably be laid primarily at the feet of the American viewing public. We won't make the hike to the movies for artsy stuff like Birdman, but Spider-man I (Remake III)? Already got my ticket!
Thing about that is, the movie business is all about risk deference sometimes: making a dumb obvious move now, so you can afford to take the bigger risk later.
And remember too that while the sequels of both SM film series have been largely crap, the originals were big risks in some respect. The first Spider-Man gave a massive budget to a director largely known only for low-budget shlock, and the ASM reboot meant deciding only a few scant years after the last one to completely dump and start over a franchise that was circling the drain.
Podcasts are awesome for the long tail effect. What sorts of things are you in to? Do a little google searching (don't try to find these using your podcatcher's search) for podcasts related to those hobbies and try a couple. They likely exist, and there's probably one that's worth listening to (sometimes these amateur efforts take a couple episodes to grow on you.)
I really like Spider-Man: I really like the Amazing Spider-Talk podcast.
I like Dave Ramsay: I really like The Dave Ramsay Show (okay, it's just an hour of his daily radio show, but hey, it's also a podcast if I can listen on demand on my iPhone.)
I've come to be interested in the hobby of buying and restoring (and occasionally playing) classic (80s, usually) arcade games: I really like the Arcade Outsiders podcast.
I'm sometimes into World of Warcraft, sometimes into League of Legends, and I have Podcasts for both those games I'll dive in and out of.
I like to write and think about stories, as well as watch movies: I really like the Scriptnotes podcast. I enjoy the candor and outside-my-tribe perspective that Penn Jillette has: I really like Penn's Sunday School.
(Podcasts are a great way to dip your toes outside your tribe, a habit I highly suggest everyone try to develop.)
Apparently:
> I think the 'pain' comes when there are issues with the c > library that lxml binds to.
Scores 80.99/100
I think that the algorithm needs more work....
Also:
> I count 8: > Avatar (2009) - Yep > Titanic (1997) - Yep > The Dark Knight (2008) - Yep > Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) - Yep > Shrek 2 (2004) - Nope > E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - Nope > Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) - Yep > Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - Yep > Spider-Man (2002) - Yep > Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) - Yep
Scored 74.45/100
I count 8:
Avatar (2009) - Yep Titanic (1997) - Yep The Dark Knight (2008) - Yep Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) - Yep Shrek 2 (2004) - Nope E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - Nope Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) - Yep Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - Yep Spider-Man (2002) - Yep Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) - Yep
Let's look at the top 10 (I will use US sales): Avatar (2009) - Yep, Titanic (1997)- Yep, The Dark Knight (2008) - Yep, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) - Yep, Shrek 2 (2004) - Nope, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - Nope, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) - Yep, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - Yep, Spider-Man (2002) - Yep, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) - Yep
So 9 for 10
This should be interesting. Imagine the cross over possibilities - Mickey Mouse Clubhouse + X-Men for example: "It's the Mickey Mouse X-Men lair, come inside there's Mutants inside!" and "I think we need a Mousektool! Everyone say "OH XAVIER!!"".
I really hope they don't change the way the films have been going - Iron Man was a perfect example of what's possible. Then again, I hope they nuke the Spider Man franchise from orbit - it's the only way to be sure.