Marvel Meanderings
Aug. 6th, 2025 06:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
setsuledI was watching Spider-Man: Homecoming a couple weeks ago but I found myself jonsing too much for a better Spider-Man movie. So I went back to the 2002 Sam Raimi movie again. It's flawed, it some ways it hasn't aged well. It's great how the costume's eyes express emotion in the new movies. In general, the special effects in the Raimi films only just barely seemed adequate to the task.
What makes it superior is its unfettered artistic voice. Sam Raimi was unafraid to be downright weird. And Peter Parker's experience would be strange. He achieves this weirdness mostly with just good old fashioned direction; composition and sequence. Danny Elfman's score helps a lot, too. Those dizzying shots among the skyscrapers get a lot of their power from those pulsating string sections that sound like "Ride of the Valkyries".
Danny Elfman's theme ought to be used for all incarnations of the character in film, just like John Williams' Superman theme ought to be for Superman. Or Danny Elfman's for Batman. Is there any composer who's made as many memorable movie scores as Williams and Elfman? I can't think of anyone who even comes close. Jerry Goldsmith made a few, James Horner kind of did the same score again and again.
I am excited for the next MCU Spider-Man film. The inclusion of Hulk and Punisher in the story sounds good to me. I'm not sure I can hope for it to pull the MCU out of the terminal banality that plagues it these days. I didn't see the new Fantastic Four movie. I was going to see it last weekend, its second weekend, but the theatre near me had switched to only showing the dubbed version. The next closest theatres are in other towns which I could've gotten to by train in thirty to forty minutes but it just didn't seem worth it. The casting seems bad. I don't know why Hollywood is so in love with Pedro Pascal. There's nothing about him that says Reed Richards to me. All the actors are talented, though, so maybe I'll enjoy what they made when I eventually see it. It's a shame so few people saw Thunderbolts, that one was pretty good.
What makes it superior is its unfettered artistic voice. Sam Raimi was unafraid to be downright weird. And Peter Parker's experience would be strange. He achieves this weirdness mostly with just good old fashioned direction; composition and sequence. Danny Elfman's score helps a lot, too. Those dizzying shots among the skyscrapers get a lot of their power from those pulsating string sections that sound like "Ride of the Valkyries".
Danny Elfman's theme ought to be used for all incarnations of the character in film, just like John Williams' Superman theme ought to be for Superman. Or Danny Elfman's for Batman. Is there any composer who's made as many memorable movie scores as Williams and Elfman? I can't think of anyone who even comes close. Jerry Goldsmith made a few, James Horner kind of did the same score again and again.
I am excited for the next MCU Spider-Man film. The inclusion of Hulk and Punisher in the story sounds good to me. I'm not sure I can hope for it to pull the MCU out of the terminal banality that plagues it these days. I didn't see the new Fantastic Four movie. I was going to see it last weekend, its second weekend, but the theatre near me had switched to only showing the dubbed version. The next closest theatres are in other towns which I could've gotten to by train in thirty to forty minutes but it just didn't seem worth it. The casting seems bad. I don't know why Hollywood is so in love with Pedro Pascal. There's nothing about him that says Reed Richards to me. All the actors are talented, though, so maybe I'll enjoy what they made when I eventually see it. It's a shame so few people saw Thunderbolts, that one was pretty good.
