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

Posted on December 17, 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’s big themes and ideas.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sfxxjl8N3Y

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: in the frame, morality, sam raimi, scale, spider man, stakes, superhero movies, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” and What It Means to be a Good Man…

Posted on November 30, 2020 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. There’s been a lot of coverage about the new videogame Spider-Man: Miles Morales, so it seemed like a nice opportunity to go back and take a look at Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy.

In hindsight, one of the most striking things about Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy is how low the stakes are. Barring the climax of Spider-Man II, Peter Parker never faces an apocalyptic threat. Even when Peter does face down larger-than-life supervillains, Raimi is sure to ground the films in more relatable stakes. Raimi’s trilogy is fascinated with the question of whether Parker Parker will become a good man. It understands this question as it relates to a lot of young men. Peter’s dark side doesn’t build omnicidal robots or order killer drown strikes, but offers a more mundane evil.

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

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist, in the frame, sam raimi, spider man, tobey maguire | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Future of Cinemas…

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist earlier today. With the summer effectively lost, the future of cinema is a subject of much discussion.

Will cinemas open soon? If they open soon, what will they show? If they have films to show, will audiences turn up? If audience show up, how will basic safety measures like social distancing and masks impact their financial bottom line? Will cinemas be among the attractions that people are most eager to revisit when the chance presents itself? More than that, what will a visit to cinemas actually be like? To answer these questions, I actually took a trip to a recently reopened cinema in Ireland.

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

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: cinemas, coronavirus, spider man, spider-man: into the spider-verse | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On What Modern Superhero Films Could Learn From Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man”…

Posted on April 20, 2020 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at Escapist Magazine this evening. With the news that Sam Raimi is going to be directing Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, I thought it was worth taking a look back at his Spider-Man movies.

Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies helped to pave the way for the modern superhero blockbuster, arriving at a pivotal moment for mainstream blockbuster cinema. Along with Blade and X-Men, Spider-Man demonstrated that it was possible to accurately translate these heroes to screen. In the years since, the superhero genre has become the dominant form of contemporary blockbuster cinema. However, rewatching Raimi’s Spider-Man movies, it is immediately clear that the genre hasn’t always developed in the healthiest or most satisfactory directions.

What could the MCU learn from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies? You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: comic books, escapist, magazine, mcu, spider man, superheroes | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Spider-Man – Far From Home

Posted on June 28, 2019 by Darren

Spider-Man: Far From Home cannot help but exist in the shadow of Avengers: Endgame.

Indeed, one of the problems marketing Far From Home was the manner in which the entire emotional premise of the film served as a spoiler for Endgame, which meant that the film had to wait quite late in the game to release its second trailer. This sets up an interesting tension with Far From Home, which finds itself in the the seemingly contradictory position of being both the last movie in the current “phase” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and also a film actually being produced by a company other than Marvel Studios.

Masking his feelings.

This weird push-and-pull runs through Far From Home, which seems caught between existing as a coda and epilogue to Endgame and working as a Spider-Man movie in its own right. To a certain extent, this was always going to be a tension within Far From Home, even before Endgame set its sights on becoming the biggest movie of all time. Endgame was always going to exert a gravity on Far From Home, given its plot mechanics and its character decisions. Writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, along with director Jon Watts, were always going to be reacting to narrative and character choices that they never made.

As such, the most interesting thing that Far From Home can do is to literalise that tension.

Night Monkey Moves.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: comic books, elementals, Jake Gyllenhaal, jon watts, mysterio, nick fury, peter parker, spider man, spider-man: far from home, spider-man: homecoming, war on terror | 2 Comments »

114. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – This Just In (#26)

Posted on January 19, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and with special guests Graham Day, Luke Dunne and Bríd Martin, This Just In is a subset of The 250 podcast, looking at notable new arrivals on the list of the 250 best movies of all-time, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Peter Ramsey, Robert Persichetti Jr. and Rodney Rothman’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 26th best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.