spider man | the m0vie blog

New Podcast! Your Feature Presentation – “What Worked and Didn’t Work in Spider-Man: No Way Home”

Posted on December 26, 2021 by Darren

The Escapist have launched a new pop culture podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard and KC Nwosu or the first episode. With the recent release of Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about the recent Marvel Studios productions.

Filed under: On Second Thought, Podcasts! | Tagged: a marvellous escape, a marvelous escape, escapist, escapist magazine, hawkeye, jack packard, kc nwosu, spider man, the escapist, your featrue presentation | Leave a comment »

266. Spider-Man: No Way Home – This Just In (#8)

Posted on December 22, 2021 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, this week joined by special guests Graham Day, Luke Dunne and Bríd Martin, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This time, Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Peter Parker returns home from a school trip to discover that his deepest secret has been revealed to the world: thanks to the villain Mysterio, now everybody knows that the teenage is the vigilante known as Spider-Man. Peter races to put the genie back in the bottle, but discovers that his plans might have unforeseen consequences.

At time of recording, it was ranked 8th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: brid martin, culture, fandom, graham day, jon watts, luke dunne, marvel, Marvel Studios, Movies, podcast, spider man, spoilers, The 250, Tom Holland | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On Willem Dafoe as the Stealth MVP of “Spider-Man: No Way Home”…

Posted on December 20, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. This weekend marks the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, so it seemed like a good idea to take a look at the movie. In particular, its best and most interesting performance.

No Way Home marks the return of several classic villains from early franchise iterations. Among them is Willem Dafoe, returning as Norman Osborn from Spider-Man and Spider-Man II. It’s a wonderful reminder of how Dafoe codified a lot of the modern comic book movie supervillain, establishing a template that has rarely been equalled in terms of quality across the ensuing decades. However, it’s to the credit of No Way Home that the film manages to use the character of Norman Osborn in a way that enriches and explores the villain.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: green goblin, in the frame, peter parker, power, responsibility, spider man, spider-man: no way home, the escapist, willem dafoe | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Spider-Man: No Way Home” As An Unlikely Divorce Movie…

Posted on December 19, 2021 by Darren

I published a new column at The Escapist yesterday. With the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the film.

No Way Home is technically Tom Holland’s sixth film the role of Peter Parker. So it’s interesting that No Way Home effectively puts his version of the character through the standard narrative beats of a Spider-Man origin story. In many ways, No Way Home feels like it’s a movie that is aiming for a clean start and fresh break. It also feels like something of a divorce movie between Sony and Marvel Studios. The movie opens with Aunt May dumping the director of Iron Man, and the film seems eager to announce that it is living its best life. The first thing that it does is to hit up some of its exes.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: comic books, continuity, escapist, marvel, sony, spider man, spider-man: no way home, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “Spider-Man: No Way Home Is the Year’s Best Nostalgia Play – Review”

Posted on December 17, 2021 by Darren

I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute film review of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is in cinemas now.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist, films, Movies, nostalgia, spider man, spider-man: no way home, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Tangled Ethics of “Spider-Man: No Way Home”…

Posted on December 17, 2021 by Darren

On the surface, No Way Home feels a lot like recent nostalgia plays like Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, in that it’s very much an appeal to the memory of a pop culture object. However, No Way Home has certain advantages over these movies, in that it’s a film that seems to be trying to be about more than just recycled imagery. However, it never seems like No Way Home is entirely sure what exactly it is about and what exactly it is trying to say about that.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: comic books, immigration, in the frame, jon watts, metaphor, no kill, spider man, spider-man: no way home, superheroes, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On What Three More “Spider-Man” Movies Might Mean For the MCU…

Posted on December 7, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With reports that Sony have plans for another trilogy of movies built around Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, it felt like a good time to reflect on what that might mean.

After all, most Marvel Cinematic Universe properties seem to be content with trilogies. Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans tapped out after three films. There is some suggestion that directors James Gunn and Peyton Reed may be done with their properties after completing their third films. So it’s interesting to imagine a world where Tom Holland has headlined six solo Spider-Man movies. What challenges might this pose for the Marvel Cinematic Universe? What opportunities?

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist, in the frame, sony, spider man, Tom Holland | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “The Animatrix”, “Into the Spider-Verse”, “Star Wars: Visions” and “What If…?” and the Potential of Animated Spin-Offs…

Posted on August 20, 2021 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of What If…? on Disney+ and the trailer for the anime series Star Wars: Vision, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at how best to approach the idea of an animated spin-off.

Animation is a unique medium, with its own particular strengths and weaknesses that distinguish it from live action filmmaking. The best animated films and shows understand and exploit this distinction, and it’s frustrating how committed What If…? is to trying to emulate live action rather to take advantage of the opportunities that animation provides like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or The Animatrix.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: animation, animatrix, spider man, spider-man: into the spider-verse, star wars, star wars: vision, the animatrix, the matrix, what if | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On Why Tom Holland Not Knowing What’s Happening in “Spider-Man 3” Would Be a Bad Thing…

Posted on February 18, 2021 by Darren

I published a new column at The Escapist this evening. With all the debate about what Tom Holland does or doesn’t know about Spider-Man 3, I thought it was worth unpacking what that says about modern movie production.

It seems likely that Holland is just playing with the press, riffing on his familiar goofy persona. However, it’s also entirely possible that Holland doesn’t actually know what the movie he’s been shooting for eight weeks is about. Given the way in which actors have talked about working with Marvel, a lot of that material is handled in post-production, so it’s possible for an actor to have no idea of the context of the scene they’re shooting, who they’ll be appearing with, and what will actually be happening on screen. That is a problem.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: film production, spider man, spider-man 3, spoilers, Tom Holland | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On Sam Raimi and What it Means to be a Good (Spider-)Man…

Posted on December 7, 2020 by Darren

So, as I have mentioned before, I am launching a new video series as a companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch with the Monday article, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel the following week. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film channel – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.

With that in mind, here is last week’s episode. With the release of Spider-Man: Miles Morales, we thought it might be fun to take a look back at Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, and the central stakes of the film: the question of what it means to be a good man, Spider- or otherwise.