The Marvel angry hour

Lately Marvel has been bringing out a lot of films based around their comic book characters for the most part these films are rather good apart from if you have ever read a comic book in your life. If you have you’ll realise that these films are only loosely based around the comic book storylines and characters and are only really being made for a money injection. A comic book only takes a month, sometimes only a few weeks, but sometimes it feels like they put more effort into the storylines and everything into the comic book, then into a multimillion dollar film.

In this column and maybe some of the following ones I am going to let off some steam on some of the faults in the films compared to the comic books as I see it. This may not interest all of you or even any of you. You may tell me that it’s not important, but I believe if they are going to make a film, they should make it right.

Spiderman

A lot of people have already made this point, so I thought I’d make it again. In the comic book – “Amazing Fantasy, Introducing Spiderman” – Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive spider and is given special superhuman powers such as, sticking to walls, superhuman strength, spider sense – which gives him a warning to danger that is about to happen – and superhuman agility. In the film not only is it a genetically modified spider that bites him and not a radioactive one – which I can forgive them for as it was done on purpose to show that Marvel was moving with the times and the current scientific understandings. – What I can’t forgive them for is giving him an extra power that he doesn’t have in the comic books.

In the comic book Spiderman doesn’t have the ability to spin a web from his wrist like he does in the film. In the comic book the spider passes him on the information and knowledge to make web fluid. Parker, then using his scientific knowledge comes up with the design for a web shooter and then makes it. Now I know that this may seem neither here nor there but there are a few reasons I think this shouldn’t have been changed; In the films the viewers will never experience Spiderman running out of fluid and falling through mid air leaving the views in “suspense” as to wether he will survive or not. Well we all know he will survive, but it’s not the point, it is all part of the history of Spiderman. I’m sure Spiderman would be very happy having gained an extra power, but I just don’t believe that the basis of who he is should be changed. I always thought that Parkers making of the web shooters showed that he was actually an intelligent scientist, but in the film he’s…. well he’s just a bit of a twat to put it a bit rudely. Parker was always meant to be a bit goofy, but intelligent as well.

I’ve also wondered for a while about another point in the film that has had me baffled. Now I realise that the change from, Radioactive spider to GM spider was a mark of the times, which is fine, there are though some points about this change I don’t like. In the comic the spider became radioactive out of chance in this the spiders were made GM by scientists. Now you would think that these top class scientists would have at least put them in a secure container, but no one manages to escape. We don’t find out if its ever found, I mean how come it doesn’t go off biting everyone else and turning them into spidermen. Also if these scientists were so clever you’d think they’d have thought these few things before they went about making their little spiders.

What happens if these things bite humans: surely theyd have done some tests with human cells or something. What if they had just created a spider who’s bite was deadly.

Why give the spider fangs: Well? It’s a simple question. Why would they give these spiders fangs, surely it’d be a lot safer if they didn’t have any.

Why create them in the first place?: This is probably the most important point. Why oh why were these smart scientists creating a super spider? Maybe they would set it wild to kill all the other spiders as they got on with their everyday work, maybe they were just bored and had nothing better to do, or maybe they were doing it to scare all the arachnophobics out there. Who knows? No one Who cares? Me!

RIGHT! Now Mary Jane, in comic books she doesn’t live next door to Peter Parker, she didn’t go to the same school as Peter Parker and she wasn’t his first love!! Ah that was short and sweet.

Ok then people can someone please tell me this. Peter makes his first Spiderman costume that he then goes off in to wrestle, now this original costume was a bit crummy a few lose stiches round the edges, with a red balaclava Aunt May probably knitted him for Christmas three years before, and not a designer label in sight, in other words its crap. Now how does old Spidey go from this costume to the nice spandex rubber costume with those lovely Okley reflection glasses? There is no real complaint about this, I just want to know.

Ok folks that’s about it I will just leave you with two points I also thought of while writing this. Firstly, the Green Goblins costume was crap, I just didn’t think it really deserved it’s own paragraph. Secondly why can’t Canadians shut up when in the cinema. There is no need to shout he’s behind you to a screen as it will make no difference.