Oscars 2022 Educated Guesses

Another awards season brings with it another year of the Academy Awards behaving like the Democratic Party, ignoring its base in hopeless pursuit of some mythical Joe Sixpack who has no interest in the Oscars but apparently will watch them if the show is just a little shorter.

The latest round of self-recrimination was brought on by last year's ceremony, which aired on TV right around the time the Covid vaccines were becoming widely available and had to make major adjustments for safety's sake. The already challenging situation was marred by the embarrassing ending to the ceremony, where Best Actor was moved to the end of the show in anticipation of a big moving tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman...only for him to be upset by Anthony Hopkins, who wasn't even there to accept the award. Whoops! Just goes to show that they really don't know what's in those envelopes ahead of time.

However, it's not that anticlimax that upset the show's producers as much as the historically low ratings. People just weren't digging an awards show in the midst of all the bad news, can you blame them? The Academy's gut reaction to these situations is always to disrespect large portions of its membership and sure enough, there was another announcement that several categories would be presented off the air and edited into the broadcast. Stuff like editing, cinematography, sound...all pretty important to movies, but typically not awarded to beautiful movie stars so Joe Sixpack can't handle it. In fact, the Academy looks particularly bad this time because last year they convinced the sound branch to very reluctantly accept the merging of the Sound Mixing and Sound Editing categories into one, with the promise that they wouldn't attempt to cut them from the live show again. Only one year later and here we are! Despite the backlash, they have dug their heels in so, as of the Friday before the show, it looks like this is how it will play out. Don't be surprised if some of the winners call them out in their speeches.

The Oscars are not a huge mainstream event and that's okay. There's nothing to be gained by chasing the Superbowl's clout, not when football is basically America's national religion. It would make much more sense to solidify the appeal to movie fans everywhere, to fully establish it as a fun annual event for people who find the Superbowl irritating and avoid it. If it's long, oh well. People will spend 12 hours watching a whole season of streaming television, remember? Since the pressure is coming from ABC, maybe the answer is just to divorce the entire thing from network television and stream the whole show. It would honestly solve a lot of these problems.

There's another unique aspect of this year's show that is well worth discussing...

Oscars Fan Favorite

A new category? It's too early to say but it's quite an experiment.

When Spider-Man: No Way Home packed theaters in a way that hasn't been seen since before the plague, a loud contingent of industry folks declared this feat worthy of a Best Picture nomination. Does the movie deserve it? Well, that's up to each individual viewer. In my opinion, the one it should really get is Supporting Actor for Willem Dafoe. That man is a god. Was it ever likely for it to actually get that Best Picture nomination? No.

As fun as the movie is, it's way too dependent on Marvel lore for the large portion of the Academy who just don't follow this stuff. You need to have seen like 5 or 6 other movies to appreciate everything. When the nominations came out, there were immediate cries of "snub," although to be snubbed you have to had a chance in the first place. It was never going to happen. At the very least, I will agree with Jimmy Kimmel that the movie is indeed better than Don't Look Up.

The Oscars are very uncomfortable with these situations, especially when the movie in question is from Disney, which owns almost everything at this point including ABC. So they created this concept almost entirely for a chance for Spider-Man to get something. The way it works is that people chime in with their picks on social media and at first glance, you can kind of see what they were going for. Spider-Man is getting a lot of love, but there are also a lot of people pushing for Zack Snyder's director's cut of Justice League. Meanwhile, the horror community has rallied behind Malignant. 

I rolled my eyes at the initial announcement, but I've warmed to the idea since then. It could end up being a fun thing to do every year. The only thing I worry about is how susceptible this process is to bots and trolls. We could end up with some other random movie winning the poll that was chosen as a joke. If that happens, I doubt we'll see this category again. If all goes to plan, I think Spider-Man is the obvious winner and I'd be happy to add it to the annual list of predictions in the future.

Best Animated Feature
Encanto
Flee
Luca
The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Raya and the Last Dragon

Who Will Win: Sixty percent of the nominees were released by Disney, which I find just obnoxious. That's not to say the movies themselves aren't good! Typically the Pixar film is the safest bet, but Luca was released so long ago it feels like it's not even eligible. Meanwhile, Encanto is vintage Disney that has people excited in a way not seen since Frozen. A bit of trivia - the Danish animated documentary Flee is the first movie ever to be nominated for Animated Feature, Documentary and International Feature. Pretty impressive, although this is the one it's least likely to win.

My Choice: Encanto is the best Disney movie I've seen in ages, but I have to go with The Mitchells vs. The Machines. The animation division at Sony, which won a couple years ago for Into the Spider-Verse, is putting out brilliant and innovative work and should be encouraged.

Best Documentary Feature
Ascension
Attica
Flee
Summer of Soul
Writing with Fire

Who Will Win: Flee is the most innovative documentary here and it also tells a story of the refugee experience that's newly relevant because of what's happening in Europe. It may well win, but I'm predicting the Oscar will go to Summer of Soul, which unearthed footage of a huge Harlem festival in 1969 and made an electrifying documentary out of it. The key factor is that the director is Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, who was actually the DJ for last year's Academy Awards. He must have made a few friends in the process, so that should work in his favor.

My Choice: I expected Summer of Soul to be good, but I didn't think it would capture so much of the excitement of being at a real concert. It's also an impressive feat of archival work given that this footage had sat in a basement for decades up until now.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog

Maggie Gyllenhaal for The Lost Daughter

Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe for Drive My Car

Sian Heder for CODA

Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth and Jon Spaihts for Dune

Who Will Win: This is quite competitive and you can make a decent case for any of these writers ending up with the Oscar. The Power of the Dog might seem to be the front-runner, but Campion is likely going to be rewarded elsewhere. Meanwhile, the voters might favor Villeneuve and his co-writers for making a generally successful adaptation of what's considered a very difficult novel. My guess is that Sian Heder will win for CODA, which explores issues within the deaf community that typically go unaddressed in the movies. 

My Choice: I don't have a strong preference, but I suppose I would give it to Maggie Gyllenhaal. The Lost Daughter jumps between past and present in ways that offer insight without ever being confusing.

Best Original Screenplay

Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza

Zach Baylin for King Richard

Kenneth Branagh for Belfast

Adam McKay and David Sirota for Don't Look Up

Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt for The Worst Person in the World

Who Will Win: You could make a good case that the revered writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson is long overdue, with eleven career nominations and zero wins. He may pull it off this year, but my gut says the Academy will favor Branagh and his semi-autobiographical story of growing up in Northern Ireland during the "Troubles." The other three are likely out of the running although the writers of Don't Look Up would certainly give a memorable speech if the movie is any indication.

My Choice: I would probably give it to Belfast as well. Despite the cultural specificity, the struggles of the family depicted in the film really feel universal. Maybe that's more a reflection of the world than the movie, though.

Best Supporting Actress

Jessie Buckley in The Lost Daughter

Ariana DeBose in West Side Story

Judi Dench in Belfast

Kirsten Dunst in The Power of the Dog

Aunjanue Ellis in King Richard

Who Will Win: Ariana DeBose has been racking up awards for months now as Anita in the new West Side Story and there's no reason to think the Oscars will be any different. This is the same role that won Rita Moreno an Oscar back in 1961, which means Anita will join Don Corleone and the Joker in an elite club of characters who have won Oscars for multiple actors. Could anyone upset? Jessie Buckley played a very difficult character to great effect and Kirsten Dunst could possibly win if The Power of the Dog dominates the ceremony...but I wouldn't bet on it. We like to be in America, we win awards in America.

My Choice: I couldn't fault anyone for giving it to DeBose given how she walks off with that movie, but I lean towards Kirsten Dunst. She's been stuck with a lot of uninteresting roles during her career and must have loved the chance to go in a way different direction. It was unusual casting but it paid off.

Best Supporting Actor

Ciaran Hinds in Belfast

Troy Kotsur in CODA

Jesse Plemons in The Power of the Dog

J.K, Simmons in Being the Ricardos

Kodi Smit-McPhee in The Power of the Dog

Who Will Win: Initially, I thought it would be Kodi Smit-McPhee, as his character is the one that anchors The Power of the Dog. However, he's young and this category often favors older men. Vote splitting with Plemons is also an issue. The precursor awards have mostly been going to Kotsur, who plays the grizzled fisherman dad in CODA. He would be only the second deaf actor to win after Marlee Matlin (who plays his wife in the film). Now that I've seen the movie, I'm totally convinced that he has this locked down. That scene where he asks his daughter to sing for him despite knowing he'll never hear her and trying to feel the vibrations instead? That's the kind of scene that seals the deal. I'll be shocked if that's not the clip that's shown when they're reading off the nominations.

My Choice: There are a lot of performances I liked this year that aren't listed here, but out of what's available, I'd be happy to see Troy Kotsur get it. There were a lot of sides to that character and he got at them all using primarily sign language and facial expressions.

Best Actress

Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter

Penelope Cruz in Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman in Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart in Spencer

Who Will Win: If Olivia Colman hadn't just won in this category three years ago, she would be unstoppable. She still might pull out a win since that performance was just that good. For now, the odds favor Jessica Chastain as the televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, who preached traditional values while her husband broke the law left and right. It's a bit like Renee Zellweger and Judy a couple of years ago in that she's dominating the awards circuit despite being in a movie that otherwise has completely flown under the radar.

My Choice: Olivia Colman. Given that her background is mostly in comedy (even her winning role in The Favorite had a lot of humor), I did not see that intense performance coming.

Best Actor

Javier Bardem in Being the Ricardos

Benedict Cumberbatch in The Power of the Dog

Andrew Garfield in Tick Tick Boom

Will Smith in King Richard

Denzel Washington in The Tragedy of Macbeth

Who Will Win: Yo, this is a story all about how Will's life got flipped, turned upside down. I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, I'll tell you how he wins thirty years since "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." Too much? Sorry. This is the easiest call of the night. You've got one of the most charismatic actors on the planet playing a real person in an inspirational drama? It's like the whole situation was reverse-engineered to win awards. Just don't jinx it by moving the category to the end of the show.

My Choice: I have way too many fond memories of "Fresh Prince" to root for anyone else.

Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza
Kenneth Branagh for Belfast
Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog
Ryusuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car
Steven Spielberg for West Side Story

Who Will Win: Whatever happens to the movie itself, a win for the New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion seems inevitable. She's won just about every directing award this year, including the telltale Director's Guild honor. Headlines about the Academy giving this Oscar to two women in a row (following Chloe Zhao last year) must also be appealing.

My Choice: I've never connected to Campion's films despite their technical excellence and that includes The Power of the Dog. It might not sound like an exciting choice, but I'd be tempted to give it to Spielberg after seeing the amazing production design and cinematography in the new West Side Story. We take this stuff for granted coming from him, but if a previously unknown director came along with a movie that looked like this, we'd all be singing their praises to high heaven.

Best Picture
Belfast
CODA
Don't Look Up
Drive My Car
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story

Who Will Win: The usual indicators point to a win by The Power of the Dog. It's got a ton of nominations and has won many of the important precursor awards. However, I don't think it's going to happen. In fact, the movie is quite vulnerable. As well made as it is, it's emotionally cold and at times seems determined to alienate its audience. But if it didn't win, what would?

Nightmare Alley got here based on affection for Guillermo del Toro but I think most people would agree it's a mid-tier entry in his body of work. Dune is an impressive feat of blockbuster filmmaking but science-fiction is a nonstarter with this crowd. Licorice Pizza is a light comedy that looks insubstantial compared to some of these other films. King Richard is a familiar sports drama that benefits from great acting, which is where it will be recognized. A win by West Side Story would be interesting given that it's a remake of a movie that already won Best Picture, but this isn't 1961 and I don't think it's a year where an old-timey musical wins. Don't Look Up is the most polarizing of the nominees and will be undone by the preferential ballot system that rewards consensus. Sometimes a movie like Green Book can win despite that, but Green Book had sentimentality and attempts at racial uplift whereas Don't Look Up is just a giant wail of frustration. Could the Japanese film Drive My Car do what the South Korean film Parasite did just two years ago? The fact that it has gotten this far makes me think it has a real shot, but it's not a crowdpleaser like Parasite. It fits within most stereotypes of the typical "art film" - an understated three-hour drama with a lot of attention given to the messy personal lives of actors.

The remaining two films are the ones with a chance to upset. Belfast is the closest to a "traditional" Best Picture nominee, a period drama with a finale that leaves viewers reaching for tissues. Don't underestimate a tearjerker at the Oscars, folks. CODA is the "happy tears" version, a feel good story that's also a legitimate breakthrough for the depiction of deaf people on screen. It surprised most observers by winning the Best Ensemble prize at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, with the Producers Guild following closely after. It's coming for the big prize. 

This starts to feel familiar if you've followed the Oscars for a while. We seem to be headed for a replay of the infamous Brokeback Mountain vs. Crash matchup in 2005. Once again we have a gay cowboy movie going into the ceremony looking unbeatable only to be potentially taken down by an unassuming challenger. Crash was one of the most divisive winners ever and its win was followed by a wave of scathing think pieces about the latent homophobia lurking within the supposedly progressive Academy membership. I would almost feel bad for CODA if it wins, since it's a sweet little movie that wouldn't deserve the resulting backlash.

But it may not turn out that way. I don't think the Academy particularly wants to experience that again and in a year where the Oscars have already gotten a lot of bad press, "fixing" a certain result in the past might be appealing. So maybe they will go with the easy-to-appreciate-hard-to-like choice this time. There's some real suspense this year. I didn't see the 2005 result coming but this time I think CODA will win. We shall see.

My Choice: Belfast > West Side Story > Dune > CODA > Drive My Car > Nightmare Alley > Licorice Pizza > King Richard > The Power of the Dog > Don't Look Up. Even though I don't really see Spider-Man as Best Picture material, I do sympathize with people who would like to see some more outside the box nominees in this category. The increasing presence of movies from other countries for the last few years is encouraging and I hope that the idea of what an "Oscar movie" is continues to broaden.

Not this Father's Spider-Man

(Mild spoilers, maybe?)

It's hard to imagine now that we're at our third Spider-Man movie series since the turn of the century, but there was a time when comic book movies were rare. Back then, the conventional wisdom was that the movies might help sell the comics. A lot's changed since Marvel Studios began its shared universe project and left other studios scrambling to catch up with interconnected properties of their own to varying success. Whereas the comics was once the core of what Marvel was, now it's clearly the movies. These things make a boatload (Staten Island Ferry load, even) of money and now it's the job of the comics to sell the films. Take a good critical look at the Marvel comics in a shop near you and I bet it won't take long to come to that same conclusion. So with that in mind, the way these films go about trying to please their target audience has changed a great deal, with much less of an interest in old guys like me who read them before there was any Spider-Man movie to speak of. That was undeniably clear after I saw Spider-Man: Homecoming.

So you may be thinking "Who cares, Rob? Is it any good?" Well, sure I guess. It's quite entertaining in that typical Marvel way. The studio's gotten very disciplined at putting out fun, unoffensive blockbusters with a welcome emphasis on character-based humor. They're usually good but almost never great and always too cool for opening credits. They are disciplined about their world-building, which is a good skill after seeing how The Amazing Spider-Man 2 crashed and burned three years ago as it tried to start its own cinematic Spidey universe single-handedly, failing to learn the lessons of Raimi's Spider-Man 3 and stuffing the film with so much backstory, villains, and lore that it went down in flames. Sony hit that brick wall so hard that it crawled on bloodied hands and knees to Marvel's doorstop, offering to share the profits if they could just help come up with a movie that felt like an actual movie and not just a checklist.

This incarnation of Spider-Man has actually already appeared in an amusing sequence in last year's Captain America: Civil War. He's played by Tom Holland as one of those Hollywood nerds who is very charming and quick-witted and yet somehow totally unpopular. Say what you will about Tobey Maguire, he played Peter Parker as a bona fide awkward geek. He's in high school, which I think was a smart place to start. Poor feeble Aunt May is also a lot younger, played by Marisa Tomei as a total AILF. (Seriously, she hugs Peter and I'm like "that lucky little bastard.") Ned Leeds shows up for the first time, not as a Daily Bugle reporter but as Peter's best friend at school. Jacob Batalon is really funny as this new Ned, one that I can't ever imagine becoming the Hobgoblin. But let's be real - the thing that makes or breaks the movies most of the time is the villain, so how did we do?

I might have cast Charles Dance as the Vulture, but Michael Keaton is damn good as Adrian Toomes. The Vulture is a fairly one-note villain in the comics, so there's a lot of room for a movie to experiment with him. This version is a working-class mechanic/construction type who gets screwed over thanks to bureaucratic bullshit before making a name for himself as an illicit arms dealer (unlike respectable arms dealer Tony Stark, but we'll get to him later). The flying costume itself is the same armor-plated look that we've seen in a hundred movies like this already, but Keaton is great. He's at the center of the film's best scene, when Peter Parker unexpectedly encounters him in a civilian environment. Plus, his right hand man (Bookeem Woodbine_ is the Shocker, a nice way to fit in another villain without succumbing to bloat.

So that's what I liked. What I didn't like, ironically, is what was supposed to make this one superior to its predecessors - the connection to the Marvel cinematic universe as a whole. In the comics I remember, Spider-Man could be standoffish around other superheroes. It made sense, he was picked on so much in school that he didn't trust people to treat him fairly so he generally operated as a loner. I don't mind the "guy in the chair" friendship with Ned Leeds in this movie, but Peter's desperation to be a part of the Avengers and impress Tony Stark/Iron Man just hits a sour note. Especially when we find out that the Stark-designed Spider-Man costume has all sorts of hidden systems and gadgets in it and even a Siri-esque artificial intelligence. Really? It's all just such corporate cross-promotional wankery.

But Marvel's not worried about what a old-school Dad like me thinks. Not anymore. Marvel needs kids to be obsessed with the Avengers, so Spider-Man is obsessed with the Avengers. This Spider-Man is tailored to this era, not my era, and I think kids who have grown up over the least several years of Marvel movies will find this one delightful. I can either reject that and tune out entirely, or keep watching them with the interest of what directions they will take the characters. Plus it's always fun to speculate about the upcoming movies. This one makes it pretty clear that the Scorpion will be showing up next time, although I'm still waiting on Mysterio, preferably played by Bruce Campbell.

There's also some other rumored Spidey content on the way, from characters that Sony has held on to. Tom Hardy is set to play Venom in some kind of solo movie, and how they will introduce that particular character without Spidey himself should be pretty interesting. At least it's better casting that Topher Grace. Another benefit of more movies for old Dads is that new collected editions of the old comics usually show up when a movie is coming soon. Always a silver lining.

With Great Budget Comes Too Much Responsibility

(Don't ignore your spoiler sense because it's going off right now)

It's hard to remember now that we're at the fifth Spider-Man movie in 12 years, but when the original Sam Raimi Spider-Man starring Tobey Maguire came out in 2002, superhero films were actually quite rare. Bryan Singer's first X-Men film had shown their potential a year before, but the runaway success of Spider-Man meant that they would be showing up at movie theaters for a long time. Marvel Comics took things to the next level by producing movies themselves, introducing a slate of films featuring various characters that would all eventually join The Avengers. It was the cinematic equivalent of an interconnected comic book universe and audiences have been eating it up. If you're making superhero movies right now, you're either Marvel or you're trying to be Marvel. Warner Bros is certainly going that route with the DC characters - a few years from now, Ben Affleck's Batman will team up with Henry Cavill's Superman from Man of Steel, with a Justice League movie planned for a few years after that.

That leaves Sony in a bit of a strange position. The whole reason this reboot even happened was that they could retain the rights to the character but what will they do without any other superheroes in their stable? The answer seems clear after watching The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which is stuffed with so many different aspects of the Spidey mythos that its massive two-and-a-half hour length just barely covers them all. In addition to the cast from last time, there are three new supervillains and an onslaught of various names familiar to those who know the comics. Lesser known characters like Felicia Hardy and Alistair Smythe have smaller roles which may or may not be developed in further sequels. The Ravencroft Institute, Marvel's kinder and gentler Arkham Asylum, appears in a few scenes, although the head psychologist Dr. Ashley Kafka has been inexplicably made into a male character with a stock Dr. Mengele-esque mania. J. Jonah Jameson, absent from the last film, appears here only in e-mail form and it's actually one of the movie's funniest bits. There were even plans for some scenes featuring Shailene Woodley as Mary Jane Watson, but those reportedly were cut from the final film.

Enough of the nerdy tidbits...the main plot is busy enough. Still haunted by the death of Captain George Stacy in the previous film, Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) agonizes over whether or not it's responsible to be in a relationship with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) when his double life puts him in so much danger all the time. Meanwhile, his long lost friend Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) has returned from abroad. DeHaan, who played a similar character in the underrated Chronicle, is the best part of the movie. There's a chilling scene early on featuring him and his father Norman Osborn (Chris Cooper), who is dying from a mysterious illness that just happens to make him resemble a green-skinned goblin. The illness is hereditary, forcing Harry into increasingly desperate schemes which lead to his transformation into the Green Goblin. The reboot's greatest strength has been its casting and this is no exception. DeHaan gives a fantastic performance, although for the bulk of the movie, Spidey's main adversary is Electro (Jamie Foxx).

It was an unexpected casting announcement, but it mostly works. Foxx channels the inferiority complex that drove the character of Max Dillon, a nerdy engineer who gains the power to manipulate electricity after a bizarre accident. Unfortunately, once he transforms, the actor has a lot less to work with. The movie has gone with the blue-skinned Dr. Manhattan rip-off look from the Ultimate Spider-Man continuity...too bad, I would have enjoyed seeing Foxx in the classic yellow lightning-bolt mask. His battles with Spider-Man aren't the most satisfying unfortunately. There are a few neat shots here and there, but by and large the action moves just too quickly and is buried under the conspicuous CGI. I also really could have done without the bizarre nu-metal music that seems to represent Dillon's inner monologue (the whole soundtrack of this movie was surprisingly intrusive, even for a superhero film).

Meanwhile, Peter is also investigating the mystery left behind by his dead parents, which was briefly discussed in the last film. While it might seem like a burdensome subplot, it leads to most of the movie's most emotional moments. This is largely because of the acting from Campbell Scott as the stoic Richard Parker and Sally Field as Aunt May. In general, the human element of this film is stronger than its predecessor; I really liked how Spider-Man was constantly saving random pedestrians from the destruction wrought by his battles with supervillains. It was a nice contrast to Man of Steel and Superman's flagrant disregard for the tens of thousands of people who must have died during the final battle in Metropolis. During the climactic battle with Electro, director Mark Webb keeps cutting to a plane overhead that has been affected by all the electrical craziness going on. It's perplexing at first, but I was grateful that the movie was reminding its audience of all the ordinary lives in the balance. After all, those people are the reason a superhero does what he does.

And while we're on the subject of human moments, we should talk about Gwen Stacy. Ever since the fans knew she would have a major role in this series, we all wondered if the writers would do that storyline. Going into this movie, I still wasn't sure. But when I saw Emma Stone wearing that iconic green coat and purple skirt...and then the Green Goblin showed up...I felt that unique anxiety of knowing what's about to happen, like when Robb and Catelyn Stark went to a certain wedding to try and make amends with Walder Frey on Game of Thrones. Some of the details are different, but it's an absolutely wrenching moment that will really shock Spidey-newbs. Regardless of the movie's problems, any fan should check this out just to see this legendary storyline come to life.

With that in mind, it feels unusually crass when the script starts frantically setting up future sequels after Gwen's death. It illustrates the main issue with the movie, which has four different writers credited for the screenplay. It's not a story so much as a checklist. I guess when a movie has a huge nine-figure budget, the studio expects the tracks to be laid down for more content. Continuity is fun but in this case, it really got in the way. The film has such a hard time living in the moment that when a great moment like Gwen's death happens, it feels like the acting and direction working in spite of the script rather than because of it. At the beginning of the film, Spidey captures a Russian thug named Aleksei Sytsevich (a hilarious Paul Giamatti). At the very end, after two knock-down drag-out fights with Electro and the Green Goblin and Gwen's death, Sytsevich shows up again as The Rhino, a true B-list Spider-Man villain. You just want to shout "enough already!" as the movie heads towards yet another "final battle."

So what's next? Well, it's clear from the movie's ending scenes that the Rhino will eventually be part of the Sinister Six. The movie wisely kept Harry Osborn alive, so he is likely to lead the group of miscreants. Based on a few telltale shots in the laboratory scenes, it appears The Vulture and Doctor Octopus will be joining the team as well. Frankly, I'm more interested in what the series will do with Peter's personal story. With Gwen dead and Mary Jane still not introduced, it would be refreshing for the writers to explore one of his other romances. Will Felicia Hardy assume her Black Cat identity next time around? Will Electro find a way to return and menace Spidey further? There was no body and in soap operas and comics, if there's no body, they're not dead. Will we ever get to see someone play Mysterio? Man, I'd love that.

It's funny how I always have more fun speculating about what the next movie will be than I do actually watching them. I suppose when there are so many competing visions of the characters and the world, the most fun an old-school fan can have is just observing how each iteration sifts through the source material. Looking forward to more of that.

Maximum Carnage - 20 Years Later

In the summer of 1993, the various Spider-Man comic titles teamed up for a huge fourteen-part crossover featuring the massively popular villains Venom and Carnage. As a kid, I dragged my mom to comic shops all over the place to make sure I had every installment. Today, "Maximum Carnage" is remembered more for the popular beat-em-up video game it inspired and those who recall the actual comics tend to derisively refer to it as "Maximum Garbage" and present it as a brainless poster child for the excess of 1990s comics. I'd argue The Clone Saga is a much better example of the latter (plenty about that here), but I still have a bit of soft spot for "Maximum Carnage." When it first came out, my younger self thought it was the most epic and awesome thing I'd seen in comic books. My reaction to it is much more complex as an adult - there's a lot to criticize but there's also more meat to this story than it's usually given credit for. You can call it many things, but "brainless" isn't one of them.

Setting the scene for this storyline requires a ridiculous amount of explanation, but I'll try to be as concise as I can. Everything really starts with Venom, the name Eddie Brock took for himself after bonding with the sentient costume briefly worn by Spider-Man. Brock was clearly unstable, but not necessarily a danger to the public in the way that other supervillains are. He didn't want to take over the world, he just had one goal - kill Spider-Man. What made him especially dangerous was that he knew Spidey's secret identity, although he kept to himself since he didn't want other villains taking him out first. At one point, the living costume breaks Eddie Brock out of prison but leaves behind its child. This creature joined with Brock's cellmate, the certifiable Cletus Kasady, and Carnage was born. This was a vicious serial killer with the ultimate weapon and Spider-Man and Venom decided to put aside their differences and deal with him. Not long after Carnage's defeat, the two of them reconciled and Brock went to San Francisco to start over.

"Maximum Carnage" starts immediately after the death of Harry Osborn, the second Green Goblin and Peter Parker's longtime friend. It was also during the storyline where his parents, presumed dead for 20 years, suddenly reappeared. They would later be revealed as robots, but let's not get into that. It's a stressful time for the Parkers and Mary Jane manages to persuade her husband to take a break from the Spidey activities. He begins this vacation on the same day Carnage breaks out of the asylum - typical Parker luck. Perhaps he could have kept his promise if more traditional villains were on the loose, the ones who were more prone to petty theft than murder, but Carnage was far too dangerous for him not to intervene. Worse still, he begins assembling a team of other murderous villains to join him in his bloody rampage through New York. They include Shriek, a drug addict and former groupie (probably with Kiss, judging from her makeup) who can fire blasts of sound energy, Spider-Man's evil doppelganger from the "Infinity War" event, Demogoblin, the physical manifestation of a demon who had once possessed The Hobgoblin, and Carrion, a failed genetic experiment with a decaying touch. They take on a grotesque "family" relationship that's clearly meant to draw comparisons to Charles Manson.

After hearing of Carnage's return, Venom heads back to New York and stupidly takes on Carnage's posse by himself. Barely able to escape with his life, he is forced to turn to Spider-Man for help. The question of just how to deal with Carnage's gang, and the New Yorkers who are beginning to riot as the city destabilizes, forms the backbone of the story. "Maximum Carnage" is ultimately about the conflict between classic "truth and justice" heroes like Spider-Man and the new, more popular violent antiheroes represented by Venom. During an introduction for the collected saga, writer J.M. DeMatteis comments that "I'd had my fill of the pyschos and mass murderers running through the pages of half the comic books on the stands, and those were the heroes." The storyline becomes a lot more interesting with this in mind - it pushes back against the increasing popularity of lethal enforcers like The Punisher in the same way that DC's more polished "Kingdom Come" story would a few years later.

Spider-Man and Venom gather a large team of heroes to help their effort, but they just can't see eye to eye. "You're too soft, too weak!" Venom snarls at one point. "You'll never be like us!" Spider-Man quips, "Best news I've heard all day." The heroes split into two groups to try and deal with the crisis in their own ways. On Team Venom is the vampire Michael Morbius, a former enemy of Spider-Man, Spidey's ex-girlfriend The Black Cat, and Marvel's Spawn rip-off Nightwatch. The vigilante Cloak fights alongside Venom for a while, but is so distraught over the death of his partner Dagger at Shriek's hands that he grieves on his own for a long time before eventually switching to Team Spider-Man. Spidey's allies include his longtime friend Firestar, the cyborg Deathlok, the mystical martial artist Iron Fist, and Captain America himself. It's a stretch to believe that he didn't bring the rest of the Avengers with him, but I guess the writers knew Carnage wouldn't last long against the likes of Thor and The Hulk.

The ethical conflict also plays out among Spider-Man's loved ones. His father, Richard Parker, was left with a dim view of humanity after his experiences during the Cold War and would certainly be sympathetic to Venom's methods. Meanwhile, saintly old Aunt May knows that Spider-Man's compassionate approach is the right one. Mary Jane, incredibly stressed and conflicted, drifts back and forth but ultimately sides with Aunt May.

So we've established that "Maximum Carnage" is surprisingly rich in its themes, but that doesn't make it perfect. It's frequently compromised by an inconsistent tone that resulted from four different writers working on the various parts. This is especially problematic when you're dealing with material as dark as mass murder and urban chaos. You can definitely tell this was made during the early 1990s, a time of relative peace and prosperity. In today's world, a story like this would be told with drop dead seriousness. As an example of how wildly the writing varies, I'll show two excerpts. The first is from DeMatteis and depicts a turning point in the saga. Click here and then here.

You have to admit...that's an awesome moment. On the other side of the spectrum is the writing from Terry Kavanagh, whose writing I knew was awful even as a 10-year-old. I had to scan this one myself, for some reason the internet's not in a hurry to share this moment. Check it out here.

So Carnage, the working class nutcase who didn't even finish middle school because he was too busy killing people, suddenly sounds like Dr. Doom. "Your pathetic arrogance, fools, will be your very downfall!" Jeez, with lines like that, it's no wonder people made fun of me for reading these comics. That groaner is a good example of the major issue with this story - some of the writers are just not taking it seriously and going on autopilot with the usual trading of punches and lame quips even though the subject matter demands more.

The ending of the story, which really stretches the suspension of disbelief, gets a lot of ridicule from Spidey-fans. First, Dagger uses her light-based powers to reconstitute herself in the depths of Cloak's huge cape. Her attempts to reach out to Shriek, who nearly killed her, inspire the others. They run off and grab a crackpot device that's described as a "biofeedback machine designed to amplify the brain's calming alpha waves." The contraption causes most of the villains to pass out, but Carnage uses the confusion to fake his own death. When most of the other heroes have gone home, he emerges one last time to confront Spider-Man and Venom. As they both battle Carnage, they have their final philosophical debate. Finally, Venom defeats Carnage by grabbing him and then throwing himself into a generator. Both survive the resulting explosion and Carnage is placed in the custody of The Avengers while Venom skulks off and begins his long trek back to San Francisco.

As for the final verdict on the dueling schools of crime-fighting thought, the story seems to arrive at something of a compromise. Venom's final act shows that even deeply flawed "heroes" are still capable of real selfless acts, but it's also clear that his rival's philosophy has left an impression. "I find myself haunted by Spider-Man's words," he admits, wondering if the insane Carnage is "an object of hatred...or pity?"

It's easy to see why this story still has so many detractors. During an era when Venom and Carnage were grievously overexposed, "Maximum Carnage" was their most famous appearance. The 14-part length can be exhausting, especially when you get the sense the story could have been told in half the time. It's also a little odd that the writers come out so strongly against the dark violence of that era's comics when they take so much time to depict Carnage's rampage. Then again, would the uplifting conclusion be effective if the readers hadn't been dragged through darkness for so long? Tough question. In the end, I think its detailed commentary on the creative trends of the time it was made in will continue to interest those who explore the history of superhero comics.

Clone Saga Revisited - Conclusion

This is the last entry for this series, so I'm going to add a few links in case you stumble upon it first. Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10 and Part 11.

We're done going through the Clone Saga itself, but its impact was felt for a number of years afterward. The "Revelations" storyline ended with Peter and Mary Jane believing that Baby May was dead, when she had actually been taken to Europe by Norman Osborn's agent Allison Mongraine. As I said last time, this is a premise that could have led to some truly epic storylines. Imagine Peter and Mary Jane getting word from some mysterious source that the baby was still alive and Spider-Man adventuring through Europe searching for her. If they ever keep a series of Spidey movies going long enough without restarting it, that idea sounds like a winner. For a while, it seemed like Tom DeFalco was patiently building up to that.

In the "Identity Crisis" storyline, one of the last truly great Spider-Man tales before that rancid "One More Day" crap ruined the continuity, there was a subplot about all of this. Allison Mongraine met with members of the Cult of Scrier, who told her to hand May over and unsuccessfully tried to assassinate her. The Scrier cultists were ambushed by Kaine, who presumably rescued the baby. After all, as another clone of Peter, he's basically an uncle. Later, in the "Gathering of Five" storyline, Mongraine was killed and told Peter before she died that "May is alive." It all sounds pretty good so far, right?

Well, the brass at Marvel didn't think so. They intervened and tried to convince the readers that Mongraine was actually referring to Aunt May - you know, the ancient character who had passed away peacefully in a beautiful story during the Clone Saga? The writers were forced to bring her back, using the absolutely heinous rationale that the old lady who died was actually an actress who underwent plastic surgery to resemble Peter's aunt. Yes, I'm serious. This was one of the first salvos in a noxious campaign to undo Peter Parker's character development to try and appeal to the Johnny-come-lately fans who would have been more likely to make fun of comic readers on the playground until the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man film made $400 million at the box office. This culiminated in the "One More Day" storyline (have I mentioned yet how much that one sucks?) but I was gone long before then. As an older fan, I could tell I wasn't wanted.

Years later, something caught my eye at a local pharmacy - an issue of "Spider-Girl." The cover featured a woman in the classic Spidey suit but also a visibly aged Peter Parker. I wondered to myself, "is this a series about Baby May?" There was only one way to find out, so I took a chance and bought it.

I loved it. Every panel of every page. With DeFalco at the writer's desk, this series was a lifeline to those fans who were left out in the cold and a chance for him to pursue storyline which had been wrested from him years earlier. It turns out Kaine really was the one who rescued the baby and returned her to the Parkers. He had a role too, as a mercenary working for the United States government who was often a mentor figure for May, now protecting New York City as Spider-Girl. Many readers latched onto this series as the "true" continuity. We were older and we were ready for Peter to be older as well.

I read the Spider-Girl comics faithfully for a number of years, but unfortunately a female heroine doesn't always inspire confidence in comics executives. The series was constantly canceled, un-canceled, and restarted until it finally vanished. Once again, I'm an aging Spidey fan without any Spidey comics that capture the stories I grew up with. So I wind up going back into the comics of the past, which is what I've done for the last 2+ years as part of this blog retrospective.

Since the Clone Saga ended, many of the creators have come forward with their views on why an otherwise promising storyline eventually imploded. "At its heart, the Clone Saga was a very simple story," DeFalco said. "[It] was a storyline designed to last a few months, but, for various reasons, kept getting extended and extended and extended."

J.M. Dematteis said that "it would have been a classic if the creators had been allowed to follow their original vision through to the end." Another writer, Todd Dezago, recalled when "we realized the train was being driven by indecision and sales figures." For an amazingly detailed look at what was going on behind the scenes during the entire Clone Saga, I'd suggest reading the Life of Reilly blog. It was a superb resource while I worked on this series.

In late 2009, DeFalco and fellow Spidey-writer Howard Mackie wrote a six-issue mini-series called, (what else?) Spider-Man: Clone Saga. This was an interesting attempt to do-over the Clone Saga and was likely very cathartic for the creators who watched that original storyline spin out of control. It's a fascinating, highly entertaining take on the storyline that basically fixes every wrong turn the first version made. Here's the list.

-In general, Peter Parker is much more reasonable. He does scuffle with Ben Reilly during their first meeting but is in a more sensible place by the end of the first issue. When it's "revealed" that Reilly may the original, Peter simply says "I honestly don't care if I'm the clone. The way I live is more important than the way I was born." Uh...yeah! Very refreshing indeed.

-Judas Traveller, Gaunt, Seward Trainer, and the Cult of Scrier are completely excised. The Jackal's role is also mercifully less grandiose. I'm sure Marvel got a lot of angry letters about this...maybe even one.

-Kaine defeats Doctor Octopus but doesn't kill him. This obviously means that Lady Octopus and all her "cyberwar" nonsense doesn't come up.

-The mastermind turns out not to be Norman Osborn, but Harry Osborn, who had been dead for far less time. As for Norman, he does show up as a clone. Interestingly, he winds up as one of the good guys. Perhaps because the clone was unburdened with the insanity that eventually twisted the original Norman Osborn?

-Aunt May survives her stroke and Baby May is returned to the family by Kaine shortly after her kidnapping. Ben Reilly also survives the final battle and eventually heads off to seek new adventures.

As you can see, there were many improvements but I don't think this mini-series is perfect either. If over two years worth of comics was way too much, six issues isn't quite enough. It feels a bit too breezy and there are pretty big time skips between the issues that you couldn't get away with in a main continuity. Twelve issues would have been just right...but I don't want to sound ungrateful, this was a very valuable effort!

I suppose that brings us to the end. It's been very satifying to get some additional insight by revisiting this saga and I hope these write-ups provided some of that same insight. But Oscar season is in full-swing once again, so this blog should remain busy!

Clone Saga Revisited - Part Eleven

The sixth and final "Ben Reilly Epic" collection, the eleventh in total with the five other "Clone Saga" collections, finally offers the conclusion to this storyline. Given how far this plotline had spun wildly out of control, actually ending it in a way that would satisfy frustrated readers (the ones who hadn't already left) would be challenging indeed. Did they pull it off? Well, kind of. We'll get to that soon enough, but first there are a lot of loose ends to manage.

This final collection opens with a two-part story that brings the subplot about Fortunato, a new crime boss and Jimmy Six, the thug who has been hiding out with Ben Reilly, to a climax. Turns out Jimmy is Fortunato's son, but he still can't condone his father's methods, so he works with Spider-Man (not knowing the Reilly connection) to foil his dad's plot. Daredevil helps out too. The next story's task is to get a handle on one of the saga's lamest characters, the demigod Judas Traveler. This is a much tougher problem although only one issue is devoted to it.

This story tries to convince us that Traveler isn't really all-powerful, he's actually just an X-Men-style mutant with illusionist powers. It sounds reasonable at first...unless you go back and check out the older Traveler stories - that heinous "Crossfire" story in particular. If you recall, that was the story where our buddy Judas supposedly took Peter Parker into a future where New York was destroyed but then had to be saved by Parker when he was too reckless with the space-time continuum (you really have to be careful about that!). So if we're now being told that all these incidents were illusions, why did Traveler want to fool Spider-Man into thinking he was an incompetent idiot? Oh well, the two Spider-Man save him from The Rose and in the process, they discover that his mysterious assistant, "Scrier," is actually just one member of a huge cult where they all dress like the Grim Reaper. This is kind of important later.

Next, we have to resolve the "Great Game" storyline where various super-powered folks fight each other and wealthy jerks bet on the results. Reilly's been drawn into this silliness a number of times and it's pretty satisfying to see him finally teach these guys a lesson. In a surprising twist, this story features the death of Nightwatch, Marvel's ill-fated Spawn rip-off. After this is some filler - team-up stories featuring Gambit and Howard The Duck. Yes, I'm serious. The Gambit story is actually pretty good, the Howard the Duck story is as terrible as you would expect.

However, after that is "Relevations," the four-part story that finally ended the Clone Saga. Right from the start, you know that things are dead serious. Seward Trainer, the genecticist who determined that Ben Reilly was the real deal and that the man we knew as Peter Parker was the clone, is on the run. We had found out that Trainer was in league with the mysterious Gaunt and the even more mysterious figure who they both answer to. After a lengthy chase, Trainer is killed by Gaunt, who is revealed to be Dr. Mendel Stromm, the "Robot Master" and an old foe of Spider-Man. It's up to Ben and Peter to defeat Stromm once and for all, but in the meantime the pregnant Mary Jane is in trouble. A con-artist named Allison Mongraine slips a drug into one of her meals that induces labor. Baby May was already almost full-term, so that in itself might not be a huge deal, but there's more trouble ahead.

Peter leaves to try and be with Mary Jane, while Ben is confronted by Stromm's boss. It's none other than Norman Osborn, the original Green Goblin, who had been presumed dead for 20 years worth of Spidey comics. Osborn kills Stromm and defeats Reilly without much trouble. In the meantime, newborn baby May is taken from the hospital by Allison Mongraine. It turns out Osborn engineered this whole situation and tells her to hide the baby in Europe. For whatever else he's capable of, Osborn isn't willing to kill a newborn. He's perfectly content just to let Peter and Mary Jane believe she was stillborn. It's brutal- any Spidey fan's heart will break for the two of them when reading these scenes.

"Relevations" concludes with "Night of the Goblin," which is a pretty great comic on its own. The art is superb and full of atmosphere, and however you might feel about Norman coming back, seeing his return is epic. He confronts Peter and explains everything - how he survived being impaled by his own glider years ago and has been plotting his revenge for years while hiding overseas. With Trainer's help, he made Peter believe he was a clone in a scheme designed to destroy his very identity. If that wasn't enough, he's also manipulated a group of Peter's friends and family into the Daily Bugle building, which he plans to destroy. Ben recovers from the beating Osborn gave him and the two Spider-Men are able to save the others and subdue him. However, the Goblin once again sends his razor-sharp glider at Peter while his back is turned. This time, it's Ben who intervenes and takes a fatal hit. He still believed he was the real Peter but was still willing to sacrifice himself for his "brother."

Peter hits the Goblin with a bag full of pumpkin bombs and he vanishes in a fiery explosion...but he just got back, so we know he'll be sticking around for a while now. Peter tends to the dying Ben, whose body suddenly undergoes the "degeneration" process, revealing beyond all doubt that he had always been the clone. One loss leads to another - the battered Peter finally arrives at the hospital only to hear that baby May is apparently dead. There's another issue after this where Peter and Mary Jane try to cope with the horrible loss of both Ben and the baby. The writers try to get some uplift in there, but it doesn't work. It's brutally sad. There's also a little subplot about the Chameleon, but that doesn't really matter because the Clone Saga is officially over!

Let's take a detailed look at the ending - what was done right and what didn't work?

The Good
-Obviously, the most important accomplishment of the finale was that it reinstated Peter Parker as the true Spider-Man. The Revelation that Nobody Wanted was finally undone.

-Bringing Norman Osborn back was actually pretty awesome. The Clone Saga had gotten so convoluted that there were precious few characters devious enough to pull off a scheme like that. In fact, Spider-Man himself had been lacking a real arch-enemy for a while. It's not like Venom has the intellect to manage something like this.

-The presumed death of Baby May would have been a truly epic story premise...

The Bad
...if Marvel hadn't completely botched it in the coming years. Despite the best efforts of the great Spidey-writer Tom DeFalco, the editorial staff squelched this subplot and then the absolutely terrible "One More Day" thing made it irrelevant. But more on that next time. Yeah, there's gonna be one more entry, we gotta talk about the legacy of this saga and how it has been perceived over the years.

-Actually killing Ben Reilly was a step too far. The fans didn't want him dead, we just didn't want him to replace Peter. We still liked the guy, he'd been in the comics for over two years at this point! One of the main problems with 90s Spider-Man was that the writers kept killing off longtime supporting characters to create "events" and sell more comics. The problem was that Spidey's world was a lot less interesting without all these folks. Ben could have helped turn that around, but now he was gone too. I suppose the rationale was that the writers wanted to assure the readers that under no circumstances would Ben be declared the original Parker again, but there were other ways to do that. Just another genetic test by someone of unimpeachable moral character - Reed Richards, maybe?

This collection has a few more goodies before it ends. The "Osborn Journal" attempts, with mostly success, to explain just how Norman Osborn planned the entire scheme. After that is "101 Ways to End the Clone Saga," an in-house parody of the difficulty Marvel writers had with the storyline. The final story is "Dead Man's Hand," a convoluted tale of the villain Carrion, whose continuity was in conflict with the events of the Clone Saga. This story was an effort to set things straight, but I think very few fans even thought about it with everything else going on during the saga.

It would be nice to say that the Spider-Man comics got back on track once the Clone Saga was finally over. Unfortunately, things eventually got much worse...but that's a story for another day. In the final entry of this series, I'll go into the saga's legacy and some of the important storylines that came in its aftermath.

Clone Saga Revisited, Part Ten

I was just about certain this tenth volume of the Clone Saga would be the last, but I've finished it and the storyline remains unresolved. The pieces seem to be in place, but the storyline keeps spinning its wheels. Like many of the past volumnes, there's a lot of filler here but that's not the chief reason. I suspect that Marvel made the decision to end the Clone Saga in No Adjective Spider-Man #75, which is still a few months off from the comics in this installment.

The stories are less tightly connected than they have been, with only subplots tying the various comics together. In the early issues of this collection, Ben as Spider-Man fights a handful of old-timey villains like Dragon Man, the Will O'The Wisp and Dr. Jonas Harrow. He's also in the middle of an ongoing gang war between Hammerhead, the mysterious Fortunato, The Rose and the wacky Delilah, an assassin who speaks in large, multi-colored letters. It's weird. But what of Peter Parker, who collapsed at the end of the last volume and suffers from a mysterious ailment? He's rushed to the hospital and the doctors aren't sure what to do about his deteriorating physical state. Even Dr. Curt Connors flies in from Florida to lend a hand, but he's just as stumped.

One of these issues actually ends with Peter Parker flat-lining and apparently dead. This was brutal. Fans at the time thought, "it finally happened. Peter Parker is dead. Now Ben is Spider-Man and that's the end of it." A comic released one week later revealed that wasn't the case at all. Parker springs back to life almost immediately, and he has his Spidey powers back. So they weren't trying to get rid of Peter...they were undoing the revelation at the end of Spider-Man: The Final Adventure (mere months afterwards, by the way). Not long after that, The Lizard is sighted on a nearby rooftop. No surprise, right? After all, Dr. Connors was in town. But wait, Peter is talking with Dr. Connors at the same time Ben is battling with The Lizard outside! How is that possible?

It's a genuinely gripping cliffhanger, but it will be some time before it's resolved in this collection. There's a massive filler story where Spider-Man fights The Scorption with the help of Nick Cage and Iron Fist. Then there's a god-awful team-up with Spider-Man and the Avengers that involves a lot of time travel chicanery. It's very confusing and very dull. After that is a fun story pitting Spider-Man against The Looter, an egomaniac who has stolen equipment from various B-list villains like The Shocker, The Ringer and The Trapster, and made his own armor suit that uses all of them.

After that, the entire Clone Saga is derailed by the massive "Onslaught" event that was going on in all the Marvel comics at that time. Spidey was only on the periphery of this gimmick, but there are still a few issues featuring him battling Sentinels, the giant robots that usually menace the X-Men. It makes very little sense out of the context of the entire storyline, but seeing Ben in an underdog battle against such fearsome enemies is pretty damn epic.

At the end of Onslaught, The Avengers and The Fantasic Four were all presumed dead. There's an issue devoted mostly to Spider-Man coming to terms with their deaths, but given that they were all resurrected not long after this, the whole thing rings a little hollow. The event also woke up a mass of evil bees named Swarm that Ben has to deal with for a couple of issues. Yeah, I don't know. Don't ask. Honestly, the Peter Parker subplots are far more interesting at this point. The Daily Bugle has a round of layoffs, meaning that Peter is demoted from his full-time position back to freelance. Not good when a baby's on the way. What follows is a beautiful scene where Mary Jane reveals she wants to name the baby May, after Peter's aunt. She also has a nice zinger - "This is the 90s. Job security is as dead as disco." You haven't seen ANYTHING yet, Parkers. What if I were to tell them that these days the 90s are regarded as a time of prosperity? Yeah, our standards have come down a bit.

So, remember that plotline about The Lizard? Next, we finally get back to it. The story shifts to the point of view of Dr. Connors, and we learn that this new Lizard was created during a botched attempt to cure the good doctor of this tendency to become evil and scaly every so often. The creature follows him all the way back to his home in Florida. To save his family, Connors willingly allows his lizard personality to regain control. Spidey arrives just in time to see the original Lizard curb stomb the new one. After an intense battle, Connors regains control. This story is flat-out excellent and a highlight of this particular volume.

In the midst of these somewhat standalone tales, we've seen glimpses of some of the most important players of the Clone Saga, such as Scrier, Judas Traveler (oy vey) and the mysterious Gaunt. Should be wrapping up soon, but this volume ends with an odd distraction - a tale set in Spider-Man's past featuring a lot of characters who are now dead - George and Gwen Stacy, Norman and Harry Osborn, Aunt May and Kraven the Hunter. The high point is the art, which was done in part by John Romita, Sr, who may be the definitive Spider-Man artist. Still, in a collection full of odd detours, this is the most random. Perhaps we'll get our resolution next time?

New Decade, New Spider-Man

Spidey, what am I going to do with you? (Spoiler Warning for both the movies and the comics)

When The Amazing Spider-Man was first announced, it felt like a new milestone in Hollywood shamelessness. Another movie five years after Spider-Man 3 and only ten years after that trilogy first hit theaters? The idea brought exasperation, not excitement. Superheroes are supposed to have a long time out when their films ran out of gas, not just come right back with a different cast and crew. Disappointing me must be met with consequences! So why did they reboot the series so soon? Well, there's a fairly simple explanation for that. The rights for the character were set to revert back to Marvel Studios in 2013 unless Sony made another Spidey film. Just think, ole Webhead would probably be joining the Avengers and Sony would be missing out on beautiful money!

The scenario actually presents a tough question to film critics - should a movie's annoying real-life origin influence the assessment of its content? All the bad reviews I've read don't make any secret that they intend to punish this one for jumping the gun. But is that really fair? Is it fair to the new director, Mark Webb? (Yeah, that's his name. Hopefully that wasn't the only reason he got picked!) How would I have felt about this movie if it were the one that came out in 2002? Let's face it, the timing of this compared to the Raimi trilogy will matter less the more time passes, and this movie turned out to be a lot better than you would expect from a premature reboot.

But let's talk about those other movies first. Sam Raimi is a devoted fan of the original Stan Lee/Steve Ditko comics of the 1960s and he brought that old-school cheesy sincerity to the material. That first movie was unapologetically corny and less than a year after the horrors of 9/11, that was just the kind of comfort people were looking for. Spider-Man 2 was even better and perfectly captured the pathos at the heart of the source material (this new film clearly wants that too, but it's not there yet). What's interesting is that while I feel it's the better film (not exactly a controversial stance, there goes precious hipster cred), I've seen it much less times than the first film despite owning both on DVD. I think the reason for that is that the anguish Peter Parker goes through in that movie is just too powerful, too raw. I've always felt a lot of empathy towards the character and parts of Spider-Man 2 are just painful. An odd compliment, but it is one.

Then came Spider-Man 3, one of those movie disappointments that is so crushing that it doesn't sink in right away. You're trying to convince yourself "no, it wasn't THAT bad" because the thought of your wasted anticipation is too awful...but it was that bad and it's not hard to figure out why things went so wrong. There was just too much STUFF and too many conflicting agendas. The Green Goblin/Osborn dynasty story arc was in full swing and Harry Osborn needed to cause trouble with his dad's goblin gear. Raimi wanted The Sandman, another classic Lee-Ditko adversary. The studio wanted Venom, Spider-Man's black-suited doppelganger who helped sell a lot of comics back in the 1990s. So rather than save one for a fourth movie (Venom would have been perfect for that), they tried to get them all in at once. Only Sandman emerged with anything closely resembling dignity and that was mostly because of Thomas Haden Church's solid performance. Harry Osborn's storyline was truncated and unsastifying. Venom was completely butchered. Topher Grace was completely miscast as Eddie Brock (seriously, that's almost as bad as Charlton Heston playing a Mexican in Touch of Evil. It's just that incomprehensible). And given Venom's origin, the movie also had to play out the famous "alien black costume" storyline. Raimi obviously had little regard for this arc and decided to just mess around instead - the scene where Parker adopts an emo combover, buys some cheap suits and proceeds to thrust his crotch at innocent bystanders is already infamous. Despite how much money that third film made, it was clear that the storytelling had hit a brick wall.

At this point, even people who have never read the comics are probably sick of Spider-Man's origin story. The new film is determined to do it justice and the results are hit or miss. One thing I like is the addition of Peter Parker's missing parents to the storyline. In the comic, they were Cold War-era spies whose plane was shot down over enemy territory. That's obviously too dated for a contemporary movie, so The Amazing Spider-Man has them involved in some sort of high-risk scientific research. It isn't fully explained, so I'm thinking it will also play a role in the sequel (based on early box office reports, that seems very likely).

One of the movie's strengths is the casting. It's easy to buy the lanky Andrew Garfield as a shy, bookish teen. Martin Sheen is awesome as Uncle Ben, so it's a shame that his actual demise is rushed and somewhat sloppy. It's nowhere near as wrenching as when Cliff Robertson bit the bullet. As for Aunt May, this time she's played by Sally Field, who does well with the little material she has. Parker's freelance photography gig at the Daily Bugle is completely excised, probably cause everyone knew nobody could top J.K. Simmons, who had audiences howling with laughter in Raimi's films with his performances as publisher J. Jonah Jameson.

The Stacy family is also given key roles this time around (okay, Gwen showed up in Spider-Man 3 but that might as well not have counted because it was a total waste). Emma Stone plays Gwen this time and brings her natural charm to the part. Denis Leary plays her father, police captain George Stacy. Mary Jane and Harry Osborn simply don't appear. However, Norman Osborn does...in a very brief cameo during the credits.

This suggests that this new series has paid close attention to how Christopher Nolan's Batman series handled that character's return to the screen. In your first movie, you start with villains who haven't yet gotten the proper screen treatment. For Batman Begins, that was The Scarecrow and Ra's Al Ghul. For The Amazing Spider-Man, it's The Lizard. He and his alter ego, Dr. Curt Connors, are played by Rhys Ivans. He's fine, but all I could think about was how badly Dylan Baker got screwed. He played Dr. Connors in the last two Spider-Man movies and had to have been told at some point he would get to be The Lizard. Owch.

I didn't love the movie's treatment of the character. His plight should have been compelling and something was just missing. I think it was his family. In the comics, Martha and Billy Connors had to live in fear of Curt becoming The Lizard again even though he thought the evil reptilian personality was repressed. The family became quite close with Spider-Man over the years, despite never learning who he really was. But that's the kind of rewarding continuity you just can't get when the movies keep starting themselves over.

Dedicated fans of the comic know that both George and Gwen Stacy are eventually killed. At the end of this film, George meets his heroic end at the hands of The Lizard (in the comics, it was Dr. Octopus). Those who are just getting introduced to Gwen Stacy in this movie are in for a brutal surprise in the sequel if the producers decide to go for it. Hopefully, Spidey-fans will behave as well as Game of Thrones viewers who have read the books and know about the shocking character deaths ahead on the TV series. They have shown remarkable restraint out of a selfless desire for the viewers to have the optimal experience. So...they'll have to be much more careful than I just was...but hey, there was a spoiler warning!

According to the Nolan formula, once the franchise is established the second film brings back the arch-enemy. But as important to the Spider-Man lore as he is, the Green Goblin is just not as compelling as The Joker. Not even close. But here are some predictions. The second film will be called either "The Spectacular Spider-Man" or "The Sensational Spider-Man." Some kind of twist will added to Norman Osborn's supervillain debut. Perhaps he'll adopt the identity of The Hobgoblin instead. Another villain may be added to spice things up more. Ben Kingsley as The Vulture? Bruce Campbell as Mysterio? (You know that would be awesome). The third film may even take another shot at Venom, the same way The Dark Knight Rises seems poised to make up for Bane's laughable last appearance in Batman and Robin.

But here's the thing...I had an important realization. With Batman, the "definitive" version of the character to me is the one in Batman: The Animated Series. Kevin Conroy's voice and Bruce Timm's design always comes to mind first when I imagine the character. So Christian Bale's silly growling in otherwise great movies isn't something worth getting too worked up over...I can watch those cartoons any time I want. With Spider-Man, the definitive version isn't Andrew Garfield, Tobey Maguire, or even Christopher Daniel Barnes's voice from the 90s cartoon. It's John Romita's drawing of Peter Parker. With that in mind, it probably doesn't matter what the movies do. And in this case, it's clear the people who helped create this new film did care about doing it well regardless of the money-grubbing Sony execs. I suppose that's about all you can ask for.

Clone Saga Revisited, Part Nine

With the newest volume of the Clone Saga collections (Complete Ben Reilly Epic Book 4), we've now arrived at the point where Marvel has realized that the fans are unlikely to warm to the radical changes to the Spidey mythos regardless of the amount of manipulative tricks the writers pull. This particular collection has a lot of content I had never read before, suggesting that I've reached the point where I gave up on the comics back in the 90s. What I didn't realize then is that this is the point where the writers are starting to reverse course.

The massive, six-part "Blood Brothers" storyline is one of the most important stories in the Clone Saga. This is where the writers start to tear down everything they have tried to build for the last two years. If you recall from the "Web of Carnage" storyline, Ben Reilly's trusted friend Seward Trainer, who ran the test that concluded Reilly was the original Peter Parker, is acting very suspiciously. Peter suspects something is amiss, but Ben doesn't buy it and just assumes Peter is hoping to find new evidence that he's the real deal. Well, Peter is right. Trainer is working with a mysterious new villain named Gaunt and The Hobgoblin, who is now a cyborg or something. This is the Jason Macendale Hobgoblin, who was never as awesome as the Roderick Kingsley Hobgoblin who put Spidey through the wringer in the 80s, even though Marvel tried to make him cool with various silly gimmicks like this.

Gaunt is far more interesting because a lot of mystery is built around his identity. He taunts Spider-Man by saying "We've met before, but I'm not surprised you don't recognize me in this form." Who is this guy? Whoever he is, he's a serious threat because he's figured out that Ben has been the one wearing the Spidey suit and systematically starts to destroy his life. His apartment is ransacked, the Daily Grind coffeehouse where he works is torched, and even Peter and Mary Jane are targeted by a group of vicious mercenaries. Ben and Peter discover that all this madness is somehow linked to Osborn Industries, currently run by Liz Osborn's brother Mark Raxton (aka the former supervillain The Molten Man). Raxton is also out to figure out what's going on and this story ends with him, Ben and Peter (still without his powers) battling Gaunt and a horde of armed guards. Seward and Gaunt appear to die in an explosion, but the reader soon finds out they are still alive...and are being scolded by yet another mysterious villain.

Next is "Who did Spider-Man Murder?" which is the closest we're going to get to a resolution to the skeleton-in-the-smokestack subplot. Upon its initial discovery, both Spider-Men were concerned that this corpse undermined everything they thought they knew about their identities. A more immediate concern is that J. Jonah Jameson is so determined to solve this mystery that he's put a $100,000 reward out for anyone who can find out the whole story. This story is entertaining mostly because of the numerous C-list villains, like Beetle, Boomerang and the Shocker, who show up to try and grab that reward. Peter and Ben come up with a clever ruse to throw Jameson off the trail, but the actual truth about the skeleton is not revealed. I'm not sure if the writers even knew what was going on with that.

The next story, "It Begins with a Bang, not a Whimper," is a rare one-off tale where Ben hunts down The Hobgoblin and beats the ever-loving crap out of him for all the trouble he caused in "Blood Brothers." After that is some filler, a tale of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four going to an alternate universe of something. It's sometimes funny but utterly ridiculous. Next up is "Ultimate Responsibility," starring Jessica Carradine. As we found out last time, she is the daughter of the Burglar who shot Uncle Ben and has become a love interest for Ben. In "Blood Brothers," she found out Ben was Spider-Man, who she blames for her father's death. Armed with a photo of Ben in the suit with his mask off, she has the power to completely expose Reilly to the public. But after she sees Spidey perform an amazing rescue of people in a burning building, she decides to give him the photo and give up her revenge and walks out of the mythos. Too bad, she was a fairly interesting character.

After that is the four-part "Redemption" mini-series, a sequel to "The Lost Years" that brings together Ben, Kaine and the long-missing Janine. Writer J.M. Dematteis returns and is reunitied with his team from the legendary "Kraven's Last Hunt" storyline - artist Mike Zeck and inker Bob McLeod. Zeck's depiction of Kaine is totally unique, other artists had tried to convey some handsomeness behind all the scars, but here he looks more like Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera. As for the story, it's as intense as you would expect from DeMatteis and finally gives a peaceful resolution to Kaine's storyline. After trying to destroy Ben for years, the two come to an understanding and he surrenders peacefully to the police. There are also some revelations about Janine - her real name is Elizabeth Tyne and she's been on the run for years after murdering her abusive father. Her relationship with Ben inspires her to find some closure and she also surrenders to the police. It's a bittersweet ending, but it is still satisfying to have some of those loose ends from Reilly's backstory finally resolved.

Next is a single issue story called "Toy Wars," where Spider-Man appears to have been shrunk to the size of a bug and must battle some malevolent toys. Veteran Spidey fans will be able to figure out pretty quickly which villain is behind this. The best part of this issue is the references to various popular 1990s toys and cartoons. Spidey fights Stretch Armstrong, Buzz Lightyear and Goliath from Gargoyles, among others. Then we have some filler where Spidey guest-stars in a Daredevil comic. The final story in this collection is "Above It All," which introduces the crime lord Fortunato. He doesn't seem connected to the Clone Saga at large, but it gives Ben and Peter something to deal with while the writers work out how they are going to resolve the saga once and for all. At the end of this one, Peter has a violent seizure and collapses. What's going on?

That's all for now, but I suspect the next Clone Saga collection (set for a July release) will be the last. That means this series, which has been going since 2010, will soon be wrapping up as well. Not only that, we have a new Spider-Man movie coming out within weeks! So expect lots of Spidey on this blog this summer.