How I would Write Spider-Man Homecoming

 

How I would Write Spider-Man Homecoming

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I have made it clear that I am not a fan of Spider-Man Homecoming or a fan of the MCU's take on Spider-Man in general. Instead of doing my usual complaining, I want to make a version of the movie that I think is more true to the characters while also being good movie in it's own right and being a bit in line with the plan of the MCU.

The first thing I would change right away would be the villain. I am not big on the Vulture in Homecoming and how his sole motivation is to get back at Tony Stark and shoehorning in his family at the last minute just felt like a cheap way to have Vulture and Spidey get a climatic showdown at the end.

My version will have 3 villains. The first being The Mandarin, the second being Norman Osborn and the third being Ezekiel Stane.

First, why Mandarin? Well, the Mandarin was built up since the first Iron Man movie and his organization was one of the reasons why Tony become Iron Man in the first place. A lot of people were upset over how he was treated in Iron Man 3. Now I think this movie is the time for the Real Mandarin to actually do something against Tony Stark. It's just strange as fuck how Mandarin was there since the first Iron Man and yet he never actually fought Tony in any capacity. He would mostly be planning and supplying Norman Osborn Stark tech but he would be acting through a proxy for this movie, and that proxy would be Ezekiel Stane.

Okay, now why him? Well here is the thing, Zeke Stane was supposed to make an appearance in the first Avengers movie because Joss Whedon thought Loki would not be enough of a threat but Kevin Fiege said no. I think Obadiah Stane having a son at all is pretty interesting and he would make an interesting foil to Peter. Zeke hates Tony for killing his father and robbing him of a future. And he knows about the Mandarin through past dealing with his father, and wants to get back at Tony Stark for ruining his life. Peter thinks while Tony is egotistical and pompous, he thinks there is a good side to him and he's just trying to make up for his wrong doings. His role in the movie would be him making a series of Terrorist bombings throughout New York with stolen Stark tech and framing Tony Stark for crimes he never did.

Now finally, this leaves Norman Osborn, I put Norman in the movie mainly because I felt his company Oscorp and as well as him in general as always been to me, Spidey's greatest foe. And I feel him teaming up with Iron Man's arch nemesis, The Mandarin would be an interesting team up. That and it helps give Spidey a villain to fight while not turning his rogues into glorified Iron Man villains. He's in the movie because he feels Spidey has been a great nuisance in taking over the crime underworld and Zeke Stane learns about how Oscorp is trying to get rid of Spidey, so Zeke gives the idea to the Mandarin to use his Stark tech to frame Tony. Norman's role is to give Zeke plans on how to use the tech to blow up parts of the city that would get the most attention because Norman knows New York inside and out. I probably wouldn't make the Green Goblin just yet. That'll be saved for future movies.

Now with the villains out of the way, I want to address Peter himself. I don't think Tony being a father figure is a super bad idea but like everything execution matters first, and I found the execution to be lacking.

I would make Peter in my movie conflicted about the idea of Tony being a possible mentor. Tony wants Peter to be taken under his wing, but Peter is unsure about it and still tends to think of Ben Parker a lot. Peter does respect Tony for his accomplishments and part of him thinks he is "cool" but he knows that Ben Parker will always be the father he never had. Tony thinks he can redeem himself by steering Peter down the right path.

Aunt May thinks Tony is a bad influence on Peter, and despite Tony being as nice as he can, like helping to pay bills, she still thinks he is ego maniac, and doesn't want to do anything with Peter. Aunt May just thinks all that Avengers stuff is dangerous and thinks the world could be ruled by them if they are unchecked and they leave a lot of collateral damage in their wake.

Now throughout the movie the terrorist attacks get worse and worse and eventually Aunt May refuses to see Tony anymore, Peter knows it's not him but everyone in the city is against him now. This also means you can't have the Avengers.

Then the finally track down Zeke Stane after the battle, Zeke goes to jail. And all though Tony is proven innocent by the end, people still don't trust him because after all his tech was used to kill thousands of people. Tony resorts to alcohol to deal with the stress but Peter eventually tells him to lay off and they will deal with the problems together.

And finally, no suits made by Tony in my version, screw that.

And in the sequel, Spidey goes to China and brings the fight to Mandarin to honor his mentor that he never truly had, Tony Stark. I have never seen Far From Home nor do I plan to in the near future.

 

Why I am bored of Resident Evil

 

Why I am bored of Resident Evil

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I recently just beat REmake 3 and the game is just okay to me. The Downtown section was by far the most open but after that it mostly becomes a linear trek which I didn't hate but at the same time I feel like the game is super confused.

It sort of has the open levels of old school RE while having more action stuff in the actionized REs. It throws lots of enemies at you and scripted sequences. You also get dodging and counterattacking. The Carlos Hospital level was basically the house hold off from RE4.

I'll just be get to the point and say it, I am BORED as fuck of Resident Evil. Or at least these "horror" oriented RE games. I would rather just have another balls to the walls action RE at this point.

The guns in both REmakes 2 and 3 both don't feel that great at all. I'll give REmake 3 some credit for improving the weapon feel to varying degrees but it has the same issues, but just to a less noticeable degree. You will still put in a lots pistol and shotgun rounds into the zombies and they will still get up after a lot of shots. I just don't get the point in having a Resident Evil game where the guns just feel don't feel that great to use. Also, the amount of times I got jumped by random zombies in REmakes 2 and 3 are so numerous it's not even funny. I always go like, "what" every time I get jumped from behind. Resident Evils of old at least gave you various audio cues is to when an enemy was near by but in these modern REmake games I have no idea when enemies are near by or when they are actually dead. When a zombie grabbed you on the ground in older REs at least they die after mashing a few buttons, in the modern REmakes you STILL have to shoot them and hope they actually go down.

I can at least forgive the weaker weapons in RE6 to varying degrees because you had to use the melee along with the guns. But these newer REmake games, it's even hard to run away from zombies due to the third person camera. In the fixed camera REs, whenever you got grabbed or punched the static camera at least gave you an idea of what position you were in but since a third person camera follows the player, getting grabbed or punched gives you a harder idea of where your last position was thus giving you a window to be attacked again. So now, the weapons are weaker, and the third person camera makes enemy evading harder than it needs to be.

And now this just leads into more next point, if Capcom wants to continue RE either they should mix up releases of Action and Horror RE games to avoid staleness. I really feel like with these newer REmake games that Capcom, deep down wants to make an action RE but the backlash that 6 just made them afraid of making another. These third person REmakes really, to me, in some ways feels like an awkward blend of action and horror. It has the third person camera of the later REs and the level design of classic but since the weapons feel terrible and the third person camera is better for action games, it feels like the games are in awkward frankensteined position.

Let's be honest here, Resident Evil 4 as much as you love it or hate at least when it came out, put the series in an interesting position. It was no longer a game that was inventory management and saving ammo when it counts but more about using a variety of weapons to kill enemies with the occasional backtracking. My point is, it at least brought genuine freshness to the series where these REmake games just feel like an awkward combination of fixed camera RE and 4. It just feels like the games aren't even making any major innovations anymore and is just frankensteining old school RE and action RE.

I mean you can feel Capcom wanting to make an action RE again when Jill literally lifts a railgun over half her size to kill Nemesis and the Carlos levels.

Either I want an action RE or make a new Dino Crisis or Lost Planet game because RE is just a a weird position now.

 

Why Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided do not work as Prequels

 

Why Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided do not work as Prequels

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I'll be honest and say that Human Revolution was my first introduction to the series and I didn't start PC gaming until late 2013. I didn't even play the first Deus Ex game until 2016 and it's sequel Invisible War until 2018. I'll admit that I did kind of like the story of Human Revolution when I first played, I thought Adam was an interesting character to some degree and I did kind of like the conspiracies it had in it's story or at least from what I remember. It came around a time where so many franchises had prequels and you couldn't go a year without there having at least one.

Now after playing Deus Ex 1 and IW, I have to say that as prequels, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided don't work at all. It adds in more retcons to the overarching narrative of it's series than the whole Big Boss saga of Metal Gear Solid. And none of these retcons are particularly compelling either.

For me while prequels tend to be hit or miss a lot of the time, I think 2 aspects of what makes one work are this: the first being that it should answer questions that the lore or the media property of that it's a prequel of has or it can recontextualize how you first saw see the said media property.

Does the Deus Ex prequels do either of these things? Well no. First of all, the character of Adam Jensen was never once mentioned in Deus Ex or IW. The closest thing to a possible mention is when Illumanted Saman mentions an "ideal individual" when talking to Alex D in IW and even then that is a vague detail at best. Is he clone of JC or Paul? Is he prototype for the augs that characters like Gunther Herman and Walton Simmons uses? Well I am not even sure. Then there is fact that his blood is supposed to be immune to the drug augmentations requires. If he has that why was this never mentioned in the other games? Why are the villains in HR or MD never mentioned in the games after? Or Janus? Or Sarif Industries? Okay yeah it has FEMA in it but the game never makes you think of them in a new light, they just a generic evil bad guy group to oppose the player. The only important details you get from these games are the scenes involving Bob Page and the Illumanti and even then they are short and brief and don't and a whole lot. Cliff Stephens is great in the role as he always is so I'll give Edios Montreal that they never recasted him. And the funny thing is, Bob Page is the only thing that really links these prequels to the original game(it's sequel was mostly ignored due to the hate it got). Also Megan Reed creating the Gray Death but once again the previous games never mention her either. Take out Bob Page, the Illumanti and to some degree Megan Reed and there's hardly anything that links HR and MD to the overarching series.

And then there is the overarching narrative of Adam trying to stop Bob Page and the Illumanti. Well, being spoiled is a topic that is much of for debate, I think playing Deus Ex 1 already makes the conflict of Adam trying to stop them already boring because if you beat that game, you know Bob Page and Majestic 12 were the ones to disband the Illumanti. Adam has nothing to do with it. So now Edios Montreal has put themselves in a weird situation, give an ending that everyone who played Deus Ex 1 sees coming and lacks dramatic force due to knowing how it's going to end or add further and more uninteresting retcons to the Deus Ex story just to create some degree of actual tension and to create actual consequences in these games but who knows now. Edios is too busy helping Crystal Dynamics making a cash in Avengers game.

Now I want to compare this to two game stories that I feel does the idea of the prequel correctly and also to much derided Star Wars prequels.

First I will compare this to Halo Reach, while Halo in it's games have never told an amazing story. I feel Reach does it's job as a prequel mostly well. It's mostly very consistent with the timeline of the Bungie games minus the armor powerups. First of all, let's start with how it's introduced(I know Halo the Fall of Reach book came out before the game but I am talking about how Reach is introduced into the series of games). In Halo 2, the Covenant are attacking earth and Commander Boone mentions that "this isn't even as big as half the force that wiped out Reach". With that line, it now steps up a possible prequel in the Halo universe dedicated to the Fall of Reach and how it happened and it's introduced organically into the lore. Then there is the greater implications of the game's events itself, while Halo Reach's story is far from amazing due to mostly dull characters outside of Jorge, the events of that game does make you view Halo CE in a new light. When you play Halo CE, it's basically just a crew of marines, an AI and supersolider finding a ring world that just so happens to be a doomsday weapon, and they have to stop it from being fired by the covenant and 343 Guilty Spark. It's a pretty basic step up. With Reach now added you know the sacrifices that were made to get Pillar of Autumn running into space and the amount of hardships that were done to make sure the Covenant does not wipe out humanity. How Noble Team and everyone on Reach sacrificed themselves to get the Cortana AI out and make sure there can be some warning to Earth. The whole game gives you the feel that Noble 6 is basically in a mission where they won't come out alive. And makes you view CE in a new light. This could be a lot more dramatic if the characters were more interestingly written but as a prequel it's surprisingly effective.

Now let's look at a game where it's consistent with it's a game and has good characters to boot, Call of Juarez in particular, Call of Juarez Bound in Blood. In the first game, there is a monologue by one of the playable characters, Ray McCall, on how he used to be a hard headed cowboy and how his rashness during a heated situation caused him to shoot one of his brothers while he bringing out a bible. This perfectly sets up the prequel that is Bound in Blood because it not only organically introduces an event that is established in the lore but also it makes you curious on what on earth could've gotten a man who is a preacher and shouts the name of god to do such a horrible thing. I played Bound in Blood first because I had a PS3 and when I played the first game afterwards, it made me appreciate that game greatly like a good prequel should.

Now, I am might get shit for this since back a decade ago, the Star Wars prequels were the most derided movies around. But a sub par movie trilogy and other questionable Star Wars media later, I think the prequels work as prequels quite well for the most part. I think it's mainly due to how George Lucas kept things intentionally vague in the original trilogy. Like for example, how did the jedi get wiped out? How did the Emperor get to power? How did Anakin fall to the dark side? What were the clones wars? How did the Emperor gain so much power to the point where he could dissolve the Imperial Senate? How did the Empire form? With all these questions in mind, saying the prequels were "pointless" is stupid because Lucas deliberately planned the idea of possibly making prequels as early as a New Hope. This isn't what Edios Montreal where they introduced retcons on and plot threads because they knew they appealing to an audience who don't PC game. Lucas at least knew he wanted to make prequels. And the thing with the prequels that I think really work if you just view the movies is that that all these questions get answered and there are no characters that get introduced that serve no purpose in the timeline later. Darth Maul(back in the Phantom Menace days), Count Dooku, General Grievous, and the rest of CIS are just pawns for the Emperor and nothing more. There's no character retcons like Adam Jensen and Megan Reed here. They are pawns to be disposed of and nothing more. There is one retcon of Boba Fett being a clone but I argue it made a character that is super overhyped more interesting but that is a topic for a different time.

All in all, I have rambled enough and I say this, Edios Montreal should've went with Crystal Dynamics' route with the Tomb Raider series because I tend to think of Deus Ex HR and MD as reboots in disguise more than prequels.