YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN Producer Reveals New Story Details Including Why Ned And MJ Don't Appear

@HOTSHOT - In terms of the villains maybe, at least in terms of imagery, but not so much in terms of the supporting characters, not at all really.

@ObserverIO - In terms of the tone, theme, villains, imagery, and even the way Peter's world was treated. Many aspects of the story being told were also familiar to me from the Lee/Ditko and Lee/Romita eras.

@HOTSHOT - It's all too vague though. Does it capture the spirit? Maybe a watered down version filtered through John Hughes '80s movies. But it doesn't capture the complexities of storytelling or any of the real specifics. I feel like he just read wikipedia rather than the actual comics.

@HOTSHOT - The lesson he learns in No Way Home is that with great power comes great responsibility. This is the lesson he learns in the comics in Amazing Fantasy #15 and it's what propels him to use his powers for good, so it's ridiculous that he learns this lesson in the last movie of Watts trilogy.

The Marc Webb films weren't at all like the Stan Lee comics, except for getting those canon events in there with the death of the Stacys, but even then they changed Captain Stacy's last words to be the complete opposite of what he said in the comics. In the comics he told Peter to look after Gwen in the movie he told Peter to stay away from Gwen. Both are tragic, knowing what happens to Gwen later on, but it's weird that they flipped it.

The Sam Raimi films, however, are very much inspired by the '60s and '70s Spider-Man comics. Sam Raimi is obviously a very big fan of these comics and adapts as much as he can from them.

But Watts and his writers have obviously never read the Stan Lee run of Spider-Man. In the first movie they have Liz as his first love, like she is in the comics. You can maybe get that information from wikipedia or somewhere on the internet. But the story they craft is completely unlike the comics. It's a much more generic boy meets girl story. Whereas in the comics she was already dating Flash Thompson and doesn't like Peter at all until much later after she sees him display his strength heroically. She's quite fickle. At this point Peter is dating Betty already but he two times her for Liz, making both Betty and Flash jealous.

This is the sort of teenage drama that is true to life that Stan Lee captured perfectly that is completely replaced by a more typical boy meets girl scenario in the first two Watts films, with more traditional obstacles (an overbearing father in the first film and a romantic rival that the girl doesn't like anyway in he second film).

Betty works at the Bugle because she needs to raise money for her sick mother, her brother finds a more criminal means of raising money, falling in with gangsters. He is caught in the crossfire when Spider-Man comes to beat Doc Ock up and Betty sees it all and blames Spider-Man, which starts to eat away at Peter because he can't be intimate with her knowing that he's the person she hates. This and the Liz stuff puts their relationship on the rocks and Betty doesn't know where she stands. Then she's sent over to Europe on assignment and falls in love with reporter Ned Leeds.

But in the Jon Watts movie none of the above happens. Betty, Peter's classic high school girlfriend before the whole Gwen/MJ stuff in college, is not Peter's girlfriend at all. She's not jealous of Liz, she's Liz's best friend. She's in Peter's class rather than working at the Bugle.
Yes she falls in love with Ned Leeds on a trip to Europe, but you cam see how that might be something you read on wikipedia as a simplified version of the much more complex plot and character details above.

Ned himself is not Ned Leeds at all (Ned was a reporter at the Bugle not Peter's classmate and BFF). He's obviously based on Ganke from Ultimate Spider-Man, Miles Morales' classmate and BFF.

Flash is still a bully, but he can't be the tough high school jock anymore because Peter goes to an exclusive high school for smart kids who are all richer than him. Again this is all from the Miles Morales version of Spider-Man rather than the Peter Parker version as written by Stan Lee.

MJ was nothing like her counterparts from the comics or even movies. And Aunt May was also a reinvention. Her best friend and MJ's aunt, Anna Watson was also conspicuously absent.

I give Watts kudos for adapting elements of TASM #122 though at the end of No Way Home (which wasn't actually Stan Lee, but was not long after) and adapting more modern comics like One More Day/Brand New Day. I also give the team kudos (probably more a Feige decision than a Watts decision) to have Mysterio look like he did in the comics and to have him face some of the classic villains that he faced during the Stan Lee high school period such as Vulture, Lizard, Sandman, Doc Ock, Green Goblin, Electro, the Tinkerer, a dash of the Enforcers, a version of Chameleon that looks like Kraven and a version of Molten Man. But again, none of the stories that featured these villains in the original comics were adapted, their names and appearances were just pulled from the internet. And most of them came from previous films anyway.

@ObserverIO - The lesson he learns in Amazing Fantasy 15 is that he should use his powers to help people after his inaction causes something bad to happened. That is something he'd already learned by the time we met him in Civil War "when you can do the things that I can."

The line about responsibility in NWH is not about that. It's about continuing to do the right thing after the worst happens because of you being a hero. So not the same lesson.

While Sam Raimi adapted many visual elements and story beats from the comics (and I love his films), he also missed the point of several of the stories he adapated. This was because he wanted to do his own take on them and that's fine, but I'm not gonna pretend they were more faithful because of surface level similarities. Hell Peter's reason for giving up his responsibilities was adapted more faithfully in FFH than in Spider-Man 2.

In the comics, Betty Brant was actually Peter's first love interest as far as I recall. Liz was INTO Peter but Peter never dated her. Yet, both Homecoming and Spectacular had them date. That doesn't mean they didn't understand Stan's era. Just that they told their own story. It's still true to the spirit of the book because Liz was just a high school crush in the Lee/Ditko era, so you saying it's a "boy meets girl story" is actually showing that they were faithful to the core of who Liz was in Peter's life.

Also the love triangle was extremely comedic with no real consequences. I'm personally sick of love triangles so I'm glad they didn't go that route. They had a girl Peter liked and another girl who secretly liked him. That's fine.


Perhaps they could've covered those stories for Betty if they had made this a TV series, but since they had to make a focused movie, they went another route. Just like the Raimi films did with her. Just like the Ultimate comics did too. None of which had Peter really date her.

Even then, it's still nice that we got stuff Betty starting her career at the Bugle and her dating Ned after travelling to Europe. So they're already paying more tribute to that era than what came before.

While Ned has similarities to Ganke, they end at them both being asian kids who like LEGO. Ned is also Peter's guy in the chair while Ganke is not, and fulfills a different role overall. This isn't the first time that any of the movies have given traits of one character to another. MJ in the Raimi films has more in common with Betty Brant. Gwen in the Webb films is just blonde Ultimate MJ.

It's fine. As long as I like the character. I like Ned. He's ride or die bro. I certainly like him more than Franco or Dehaan's Harry.

Flash being more of an annoying bully than a jock one has been done before to in USM (and not for Miles). I have my issues with this adaptation of him ngl, and I hope they give him more character development in the college years, but so far he's fulfilled the purpose he was meant to. Being an annoyance to Peter in high school.

MJ has continuosly evolved in the comics and media. Generally the point of MJ is to be a counter culture girl. In the 60s/70s, that was the swinger partygirl. In the 2000s, it was the humble nerdy girl.In the 2010s, it was the outcast girl. So the counter culture girl who forms a bond with Peter and becomes a source of comfort for him? MCU MJ fills that role. Definitely better than the one in the Raimi films.

Aunt May had plenty in common with her Ultimate universe, Insomniac-verse, and Raimi-verse counterparts.

A lot of these just feel like a complaint about Watts not doing a 1-1 adaptation of every character and plot point from that era. Which was inevitable because movies are a limited time-frame. So instead, he paid tribute to that era with the tone, types of conflict, and characterization of Peter. Which is why I love it.

Most films don't do 1-1 adaptations anyway, so this hardly a new issue.

Even him lifting the rubble, while being in a different context, captures the spirit of that moment from the book: Spider-Man overcoming adversity by believing in his ability to get through it.

Overall: I'd say the Watts trilogy is the closest we've gotten to that era being treated with any kind of reverence, even if it's not a 1-1. The core is there, which I feel people overlook.

Heck I know I did when I first saw Homecoming. Then I decided to revisit that era and went "oh shit. This was actually great."

@HOTSHOT - I really don't see it. I have to disagree, I think Raimi got the spirit of it moreso. The Russos got it also and that great power line is literally the same line from the book and means the same thing.

I think taking out the relationship complexities and character flaws actually dilutes the material. A TV series wouldn't be necessary, these beats were fairly simple and could be adapted faithfully into a film or trilogy of films.

What you're basically saying is that there has never been a truly faithful adaptation of this material and you're fine with it.
I agree with the first half of that.

However when you say him lifting the rubble captures the spirit of that moment because it's Peter "Overcoming adversity by believing in his ability to get through it"? No sorry, that does not capture the spirit of that moment. The spirit of that moment is intense. He gets through it not because of "C'mon Peter you can do it" but because he needs to. It's an all or nothing, balls to the wall intense action moment in a sea of intense action moments. It's not just one moment it's the culmination of a massive sequence that builds in intensity. He does it because his aunt is dying and needs him. Watts reduces it to a PSA at the end of a Masters of the Universe or something, "You can do it if you just believe in yourself".

@HOTSHOT - I think the reason we don't get more faithful adaptations of Marvel/DC superheroes in movies compared to the more faithful adaptations of novels, graphic novels, plays and just about everything else is because there's just so much material.
I think filmmakers look at all the material there, decades of continuity and hundreds if not thousands of comics for each individual superhero and are just overwhelmed.

The best way of looking at it would be to look at exactly what part you are adapting. Every superhero franchise starts with the original authors and they at some point stop writing or drawing or editing the stories. That's the original material. That's your Shakespeare play or your Jane Austen novel. But maybe you want to adapt a specific storyline or run, etc. You can do that as well by condensing all the information needed to catch the viewer up on where those storylines start.

There are ways of understanding the material, even if it looks overwhelming at first glance.

Another problem comes with the fact that these superhero comics were usually episodic self-contained stories every issue, usually with different villains, so you have to either expand those issues to fit a 120 minute feature or skip over large chunks of storylines and issues, picking out only the relevant beats to your overall story. Many cbms actually do a good job of this and Raimi's original Spider-Man movie is one of them. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) and Iron Man (2008) are a couple of other examples I can think of right now.

I think my problem with Jon Watts Spider-Man trilogy and this Freshman Year TV show is that they are specifically set in Peter's high school years and so there's an opportunity to more faithfully adapt those stories (especially in a TV series like this) and it would be very easy to do so. There's not that many of those comics and they could easily skip over a lot of things, so it's not at all overwhelming. But they choose to do something completely different and that just comes across as lazy (although they are maybe just not realising that what they are adapting is a much smaller amount of source material than many decades of comics).

It's disappointing to me, because it's made so much easier to be the thing that I want to see adapted. I don't care about rando TV creatives and what good or bad stories they have in their head, I care about the historically renowned classic story material that a lot of other people care about. That's why they call it 'Spider-Man'. I guarantee if this was just something completely whole cloth original of theirs nobody would even be talking about it.
Jon Watts Spider-Man movies are way more popular than that Cop Car movie he did, for example.

@McMurdo - I don't mind. All I wonder now is that, since it's still vaguely connected to the MCU, is he black in the MCU as well. I wanted Norman with cornrows, but I meant the redhead cornrows.

@BlackStar25 - didn't he say he couldn't find an Oscorp? Don't remember something about Norman himself.

And I honestly don't mind it. With how Secret Invasion ended, I could see Norman as Iron Patriot and HAMMER be brought in to hunt aliens.

@bkmeijer1 - ehhh , I havent lost interest.

Honestly them being given more freedom increased my interest

Unless they bring special attention to it , I am just gonna treat it as more or less its own thing.

@bkmeijer1 - yeah

To be fair , maybe she’s not explaining it the best and it’ll make more sense in the show itself

@supermanrex - They already had a new actor doing Peter in What If, so seems they ain't afraid with recasting the character, it seems more that they realized they were limited on what kind of villains and stories they could tell and want to liberate the Spider-Man crew from the hanfcuffs they would be confined if they kept this in continuity

@bkmeijer1 - yeah , that doesn’t make sense to me

Feels like that should be the branch instead of Peter not going to Midtown

Plus , it seems he gets his powers early on in freshman year which could be the branch that causes him not to go to Midtown unless he got his powers before that which would be weird

@bkmeijer1 - yeah perhaps