And I just had to laugh at the meteorite carring the bit of symbiote falling to Earth in Central Park going completely unnoticed not only by all the NYC papers but by Peter and MJ who were apparently a few yards away. It’s sad, but John Stewart’s joke while interviewing Maguire about a bit of goo falling from space ruining Stewart’s suspension of disbelief rang far too true.

Ian

Peter Parker forgives the Sandman for… killing his uncle. Well, wonderful, fellah, but it doesn’t make your uncle notably less, you know, _dead_. How does _he_ feel about it?

Not to mention the half-dozen other people the Sandman killed or maimed in the course of the movie. This guy is a one man murder-machine; he has a definite problem with impulse control.

What Parker is really forgiving the Sandman for is making him, PP, _feel_ bad; a narcissistic focus on his own feelings is sorta-kinda evident here, and just _so_ Hollywood. Get over your emotions, PP; they aren’t all that important to anyone else and they shouldn’t be to you.

Murdering his uncle wasn’t bad because it made the survivors ‘all tore up’ about things and full of negative feelings — it was bad because it made the uncle _dead_.

You can, if you wish forgive people for things they did to _you_. Forgiving them for things they did to other people is a bit hubristic — that’s God’s perogative.

Is the Sandman going straight? Is he going to turn himself in to the cops? Is he becoming any less of a deranged menace?

Is it, like, just sorta-kinda socially irresponsible to let a superpowerful criminal with a history of impulsive murder go loose, ’cause you had a Magic Moment with him and looked into his eyes and did some bonding?

You are what you do, not what you think about it all. A bad person is a person who does bad things.

Why does Sandman want to kill Spiderman? Supposedly all Sandman wanted was to get money to take care of his deperately ill daughter. Well, he got money. What does he care about Spiderman?

They try to take the curse off the character by having it be an accidental shooting, but it undercuts the power of Uncle Ben’s death. Peter is a selfish little shit, and it has consequences. It isn’t about who hurt uncle it’s about making Peter squirm and suffer — which is our task as writers. We’re _supposed_ to torture our characters. Peter trying to take vengeance is far less interesting than his guilt over his actions/inactions leading to the death of the man who raised him.

I’ve not yet seen Spidey Trey. I haven’t seen much to encourage me to do so. This is just the latest, and one of the more cogent, arguments against.

Though I suspect you know this about me already, I publicly want to add my name to the list of those who utterly hate the “screaming female hostage” cliche. I only wish a certain person in charge of a certain project we’re both involved in saw things that way…

Glad to see your phospers in these here parts. The female hostage is something to grab for because you want something that our hero (and it’s always a hero) cares about and will be drawn to the fight to rescue her. It would be wild, and probably wouldn’t go over well if you had a villain taunting our hero “I’ve got your girl, I’ve got your girl!”, and hero says — hey, I can’t fight you and win. I need to go gather support or get the guns tee hee (sorry, folks a little inside gaming joke), or I’m just not going to give into your demands over a single individual.

The only movie that had the male as the whimpering hostage was that truly awful pirate movie with Geena Davis. Oh yeah, CUTTHROAT ISLAND, that was the name.

– yeah, but he has to have some sort of exculpatory _excuse_ to start acting like a jerk.

I suspect that because a lot of people in the industry are twentysomething jerks, they’re unsympathetic to the idea of someone acting like a jerk without excuses being make for it.

And, as you once pointed out, ‘they’re all such chickenshits’.

Compare this to a _good_ action movie — “Casino Royale”. Where the protagonist really _is_ a jerk(*), and no bones are made about it.

(*) in fact, he’s a murderous jerk. Yeah, the bad guys are considerably worse, but they don’t kill themselves to spare the image of the protag.

“Yeah, you’ve got my girl/SO/partner/little blond moppet/puppy with big eyes, but principle is more important than personal interests, so I’m going to refuse your demands and shoot you anyway even if he/she/it dies.”

One of the reasons they rarely do “conflict of duty and love” movies any more is that the people who make movies have no concept of duty. And not much of love, except the sort the emote into the mirror every morning.

Bad guys and heroes can snatch them up easier and they can dangle precariously longer.

Try that with a full-figured crony or an atheletic type built like a tank.

Spiderman 5: MJ is being held hostage by one of the eleventy-seven villains.
She smiles tremulously and says to Peter:

“I guess now would be a bad time to mention I went down on Nick Fury.”