Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered

Eight years into his superhero career, Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) is a lab assistant working for Dr. Octavius on the next generation of prosthetic limbs. Parker finds juggling his job, personal life and his secret identity as Spider-Man challenging, resulting in his breakup with his girlfriend Mary Jane. Parker finally succeeds in helping the NYPD (via his contact, Yuri Watanabe) take down the dreaded Kingpin, Wilson Fisk. However, the peace does not last long: Fisk's absence results in a power vacuum, which various villains and mobsters rush to fill, leading to a full workload for Parker.

Way back in 2009, Rocksteady Studios hit on the idea of making a really good Batman game, after many years of mediocre titles. They created Arkham Asylum, a superb game that featured great combat, excellent stealth, a strong storyline and outstanding use of the existing Batman canon. Insomniac Games seem to have taken a leaf out of their book in developing Marvel's Spider-Man, the first attempt in a few years to create a definitive Spider-Man video game.

The game is, as you'd expect, an open-world title set in a sort-of realistic depiction of New York City. Playing Spider-Man, you can websling between buildings, create ziplines and engage in spectacular amounts of combat against a variety of enemies, both super-powered and mundane. The storyline borrows from the entire Spider-Man canon and sees Parker teaming up with allies like Yuri, Miles Morales, MJ and Black Cat whilst fighting enemies including Mr. Negative, Kingpin, Electro, Rhino, Scorpion and Vulture. The game also mostly presents Otto Octavius as an ally, but of course even a casual Spider-Man fan will know his destiny and the game evokes some impressive tension as he drifts closer and closer to his eventual fate of becoming Doc Ock. The game even has some time for nuance, with Peter having a complex relationship with Mayor Norman Osborn and security contractor Silver Sablinova.

The game's golden feature is its depiction of webslinging. Traversing around New York City as Spider-Man is a delight and for the first time a video game evokes those dizzying memorable shots from the 2002 Spider-Man movie. The game strikes an excellent balance between making movement spectacular and giddying but also allowing you to retain control over what's going on. The PC version of the game goes further with mouse movement allowing for much greater, pinpoint accuracy in where you put your webs, when to jump and when to arrest your movement. The game features the most pointless fast travel system in existence, since just getting around New York is so much fun that you'll never want to use it (apart from the achievement it bafflingly gives you).

As well as jumping around, you'll spend an inordinate amount of time in combat. Spider-Man is not the beefiest guy in the world and can't take a lot of punishment, so combat is very movement-focused, with Spider-Man landing a few punches and then jumping away before he can be crowded. You can use your handy spider-gadgets to help in battle, and as the game continues you acquire new Spider-Suits with various abilities to help you keep up with your enemies' own escalating abilities. You can also use scenery to help in combat (flinging manhole covers into an enemy at high velocity never gets old, although curiously it never kills anyone either), and if fighting on a rooftop you can propel your opponents off the roof, to be webbed to the side for arrest later.

Combat is fun, but there's a recurring feeling that there's too much of it. Spider-Man is not Batman and although he certainly gets into fights with opponents, the massive brawls with up to several dozen enemies at a time do feel rather out of character. Whilst the game tries to keep new enemy types coming at a steady clip, it does feel like most are variations on a theme (small brawler guy, ranged attack guy, massively huge dude who needs to be weakened before being taken down, and then jetpacks!) and as you level up and get new abilities, combat becomes less challenging and more of a chore. It doesn't help that the Arkham series influence here is at its most overt: the sound effect that rings out when you knock someone one for good is identical to the one from those games. Stealth is also undercooked: although Spider-Man can use stealth in some situations to make combat easier, the game usually makes it impossible to 100% complete objectives through stealth alone, which is disappointing.

The game's central storyline is pretty good, though somewhat predictable. It makes solid use of Spider-Man's villainous roster and there's a good mix between very familiar characters and more obscure characters from the comic book. An ingame codex allows you to keep everyone straight and the game's journal system and excellent map both do a good job of keeping you up to date on what's going on. The voice acting, in particular, is superb, though Spider-Man's quips do repeat a bit more often than you'd like.

Where Spider-Man suffers a bit is how it organises its side content. To overcome the problem of a Ubisoft-style game eventually burying the map screen under quest markers, this game doles out side-activities very slowly, and seems to expect you to do all of the side-activities the second they become available. This is doable because they are relatively constrained, such as twenty new "help the police" missions popping up in one go and it being possible to polish them all off in under an hour or two. However, taking this view (and, if you don't, the map really will end up buried under icons) eventually makes you realise you're spending maybe 85% of the game on these filler tasks versus 15% on the actual story. The Arkham games had the sense to avoid this by being happy that it was possible to see off the entire game in under 20 hours by giving you much more meaningful content to enjoy. Marvel's Spider-Man lacks that confidence and keeps throwing filler content at you so it takes over 50 hours to 100% the game's story and side-missions, plus its DLC and filler. The game does risk outstaying its welcome.

But it also stays just on the right side of that gap. Swinging through New York City, stopping a jewelry shop robbery, then tracking down some rogue drones (requiring an exciting chase through midtown skyscrapers) before polishing off another story mission can be great fun. If immersion is a key goal of any game, Spider-Man certainly makes you feel like the hero in a very convincing manner.

You also can't fault this edition when it comes to content. As well as the original game, it includes the three-part City Never Sleeps DLC, which adds up to a pretty decent-sized game's worth of content (even if it does over-rely on similar enemy types to the original game). The game has spectacular graphics and the options for your suits are excellent. You can even put on the OG Spider-Man suit from the original run of the comics which also turns you into a 2D flat character (though everything else stays in 3D, which is disconcerting), or you can put on the Into the Spider-Verse suit to become a more stylised 3D animated figure. A mild disappointment might be that the Spider-Man: Miles Morales stand-alone expansion is not included (that will follow in a separate release at later date), but the package is pretty generous.

Marvel's Spider-Man (****) is a compelling, fun title that might be the definitive Spider-Man video game experience to date, with a great open world, spectacular graphics and a fun, well-acted storyline. It does have perhaps a bit too much filler side-content, resulting in issues with pacing, and some of the combat experiences go on for rather too long. It also wears its Arkham series inspiration a bit too obviously on its sleeves at times, drifting from homage to simple replication. But the game is fun and has a good heart. It is available now on PlayStation 4 and, in its remastered form, on PC and PlayStation 5.

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Sony's SPIDER-MAN games coming to PC

Sony's much-praised Spider-Man video games are making the transition to PC this year. Spider-Man launches on 12 August and will be followed by Miles Morales a couple of months later. Both will be the remastered editions designed to take advantage of superior modern hardware.

Spider-Man was released in 2018 on the PlayStation 4. Developed by Insomniac Games (best-known for the Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet & Clank and Resistance franchises), the game was a huge success. It was praised for its open-world depiction of New York City and freedom in allowing the player to go where they wanted whilst fulfilling typical Spider-Man goals like rescuing civilians and defeating villains. The game contains a main storyline revolving around the villainous Mr. Negative and various side-missions. The game was particularly praised for its web-slinging sense of movement.

Spider-Man was enormously successful, selling more than 33 million copies to become one of the biggest-selling individual games of its generation. A stand-alone expansion, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, was released in 2020. A sequel, Spider-Man 2, is in development for a planned 2023 release.

Spider-Man is the latest in a series of well-received ports of formerly PlayStation-exclusive titles to the PC, following on from Horizon: Zero Dawn, Days Gone, God of War and the forthcoming Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves collection. Sony have confirmed that income from these ports will exceed $300 million next year, making future ports to the PC platform a priority for the company. Fans are hoping that the Last of Us and earlier Uncharted games, Bloodborne, Demon's Souls and Ghost of Tsushima will follow.

SPIDER-MAN director Jon Watts leaves FANTASTIC FOUR project at Marvel

Director Jon Watts has decided to move on from the Marvel Cinematic Universe for now. The director helmed three well-received Spider-Man movies (Homecoming in 2017, Far From Home in 2019 and No Way Home in 2021) which cumulatively grossed $3.9 billion at the box office. In 2020 it was announced he would be helming a new Fantastic Four movie, which will now be handled by someone else.

The rights to Fantastic Four were acquired by Fox, who released Fantastic Four in 2005 and Rise of the Silver Surfer in 2007. A reboot, just called Fantastic Four, was released in 2015 to a poor critical reception and very poor box office.

In 2019, Marvel regained the rights to Fantastic Four as part of the sale of 21st Century Fox to Disney. Development of the new film began at that time. Watts was tipped for the role because of his success in releasing three well-received and well-performing Spider-Man films in just four years, and the fact that Fantastic Four shares some of its DNA with Spider-Man (both franchises are set in New York City and meld everyday drama with superhero shenanigans), with the characters frequently crossing over in the comics.

Marvel will now be looking for a replacement. They could bring in fresh blood or reassign one of their existing stable of directors. In particular, Peyton Reed has previously expressed an interest in a Fantastic Four project. Reed previously helmed Ant-Man (2015) and Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) and is currently shooting Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania for release in 2023. Marvel may want to get moving on the project sooner than that, however.

Third MCU SPIDER-MAN film gets a name and new release date

The third Spider-Man film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe - after Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Far From Home (2019) - has gotten a name and new release date. Spider-Man: No Way Home will be released on 17 December 2021.

The film is directed by Jon Watts, who also helmed the previous two movies in the series, and stars Tom Holland and Zendaya as Peter Park/Spider-Man and MJ. Benedict Cumberbatch reprises his role as Dr. Strange from other MCU films, whilst Jamie Foxx reprises his role as Electro from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and Alfred Molina reprises his role as Doctor Octopus from Spider-Man 2 (2004). The film has been widely-reported as a multiverse-based story, exploring parallel universes and combining characters from all three live-action iterations of the franchise (the MCU, the Amazing Spider-Man films starring Andrew Garfield and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy starring Toby Maguire).

The movie is the fourth MCU film expected to be released this year, with Black Widow currently scheduled to open on 7 May, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Five Rings on 9 July and Eternals on 5 November. However, the release schedule remains fluid because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; Black Widow's release date is particularly challenging because several countries (most notably the UK) will still have lockdown measures in place preventing cinemas from running at that time. Marvel already has five more films scheduled for 2022: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (25 March), Thor: Love and Thunder (6 May), Black Panther II (8 July), Captain Marvel 2 (11 November) and potentially Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. So far only Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is scheduled for 2023.

There is some speculation that this film might be the swansong of Tom Holland as Spider-Man in the MCU; Sony and Marvel got into a contract dispute before filming commenced, and although it was resolved, it is unclear what the terms were. Tellingly, director Jon Watts will move on from working on No Way Home to a Fantastic Four reboot in the MCU, currently tentatively scheduled for 2023. However, it might that Holland will continue in the role in future films made by Sony. There are also reports that the Sony/Marvel deal for No Way Home also included an appearance in one other MCU film, which hasn't happened so far.

Marvel's third SPIDER-MAN film will be a live-action SPIDER-VERSE movie

It looks like the forthcoming third Spider-Man film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be effectively a live-action version of the popular Into the Spider-Verse animated film.

The film, a sequel to 2017's Spider-Man: Homecoming and 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home, will reunite Tom Holland's Peter Parker with Zendaya as MJ, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, Jacob Batalon as Ned and Tony Revolori as Eugene. In addition, Benedict Cumberbatch will appear as Doctor Strange, reprising his role from several previous Marvel movies.

Where the casting gets interesting is the villains: Jamie Foxx will appear as Max Dillon, aka Electro. He last played that role in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), but that was in a different continuity. Today it was confirmed that Alfred Molina will be reprising his role a Otto Octavius, aka Doctor Octopus, from Spider-Man 2 (2004), which was set in a yet another continuity.

According to Collider, the film will go further and will also incorporate appearances by Andrew Garfield, who played Spider-Man/Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) and its sequel; and Kirsten Dunst as MJ from the Sam Raimi trilogy: Spider-Man (2002), Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007). They also claim that Tobey Maguire is in talks to reprise his role as Peter Parker/Spider-Man from the Raimi trilogy, and Emma Stone is being considered for a return as Gwen Stacey from the Garfield duology.

To be clear, it's unknown if this latter casting is for a barrage of cameos or for meatier roles in the movie. It's also unclear if CG or effects will be used to make the returning actors appear the same way they did in their films (in Maguire and Dunst's case, almost twenty years ago, somehow) or if they will be playing older versions of their characters in a similar vein to the animated movie Into the Spider-Verse (2018), which was surprise hit with its story of interdimensional Peter Parkers teaming up with Miles Morales and a number of other variations on the Spider-Man archetype to fight Kingpin.

The film is currently scheduled to open on 17 December 2021. Into the Spider-Verse 2 is also in production and currently targeting an October 2022 release date.

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Eight months after the defeat of Thanos, the world is still getting used to the idea that half of the human race, presumed dead for five years, has now returned. The Midtown School of Science and Technology has restarted its academic year to account for those students who disappeared, including Peter Parker and his friends MJ, Ned, Flash and Betty. Parker is overwhelmed by grief for those who perished in the battle against Thanos and looking forward to a school trip to Europe, which he plans to treat as a vacation. When powerful monsters arise, targeting cities across Europe, and Nick Fury and a new superhero named Mysterio join the fight, Parker has to decided whether to reprise his role as Spider-Man or give it up to have a normal life.

Far From Home is the (count 'em!) eighth Spider-Man solo movie this century, the eleventh in which the character appears at all, and the third to be released in the last two years, after 2017's Homecoming and 2018's Into the Spider-Verse. It's also the twenty-third movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the fifth to feature Tom Holland as the MCU's version of Spider-Man. It's also the first MCU movie released since the explosive Avengers: Endgame and partially deals with the fallout of the epic events of that film. It's a movie that's wearing an awful lot of hats and, unfortunately, isn't as adept at swapping between them as may be wished.

The first part of the movie is dedicated to picking up the pieces after Endgame. The heroes who fell against Thanos are being mourned and Parker is trying to work out if he is ready to step up as part of the next generation. Nick Fury and Mariah Hill are also back in the fight, but are off-balance since they are five years out of date on the latest intel. The arrival of new hero Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) bolsters the ranks of the fallen heroes and gives Parker the opportunity to retire Spider-Man. There's a lot of emotional depth riding on this story, but it has to be said that the "Spider-Man struggling with the responsibility of being Spider-Man" trope is so worn that it's effectively no longer usable, and seeing Peter Parker agonising over his choices of being a normal young guy or a superhero is so rote that the experienced superhero viewer's eyes may glaze over. We've been here so many times before that it's gotten stale.

One Parker works out his confidence issues, the movie stops being a (rather ineffective, it has to be said) epilogue to Endgame and instead it relaxes and starts having fun, so does the audience. A bunch of monsters are causing havoc and Spider-Man has to stop them. The trick is that Parker's friends will catch on instantly that he is Spider-Man if Spider-Man shows up all the time to save them on the wrong side of the Atlantic, forcing him to go undercover as European knock-off hero "Night Monkey" instead. We get several major battles in European cities, namely Venice, Prague and London, and again it's laudable to see a lot of time being spent on evacuating and protecting civilians, and trying not to destroy major landmarks. There's a lot of fun stunts and explosions and reasonably well-judged use of CGI.

This is all fine, and Far From Home (***½) never really rises above being fine. The performances are all pretty solid, the tie-ins with the rest of the MCU are intriguing and there's some setup work for future movies here which makes them potentially very interesting indeed. But Far From Home itself never really rises above being okay, watchable and possibly a bit forgettable in the long run. It does feel a little too ordinary after Homecoming gave us a terrific battle of wills between Holland's Spider-Man and Michael Keaton's Vulture, and Into the Spider-Verse's dazzling descent through the multiverse. It's a fun two hours with lots of spectacle and some good performances, but ultimately does not rise above that.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Miles Morales is navigating high school and the expectations of his parents, including his police officer father. When he is bitten by a radioactive spider, Morales gains powers similar to those of his idol, Spider-Man, and he decides to seek out the web-slinging superhero and ask him to be his mentor. However, archvillain Kingpin is unleashing havoc on New York City. As part of his plan, the walls between realities is breached and multiple "spider-people" from different timelines arrive. Morales has to negotiate an alliance between the dimensionally-maladjusted group if Kingpin is to be stopped.

Into the Spider-Verse is the (count 'em!) seventh Spider-Man movie to be released this century, and, as with the character's addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which is giving us a second live-action Spider-movie, Far From Home, just next month), some may be feeling a bit Spidered-out by this point. However, Into the Spider-Verse overcomes the danger of franchise fatigue to emerge as one of the best movies featuring the character to date.

Of course, it helps in keeping things fresh that Into the Spider-Verse isn't really about Peter Parker, who here is an experienced, veteran superhero who's been saving people for many years. Instead, our protagonist is Miles Morales. Morales had previously appeared in both comics and animation, but this is arguably his most significant moment as he is introduced to a much wider audience. Unlike Parker, whose status as an orphan with only one living relative is a key part of his motivation, Morales has much more of a traditional family background, even an extended one as his rebellious, graffiti artist uncle is a role model of his (to the disapproval of Morales' more straight-laced cop dad). However, Morales is struggling with making friends and getting a girlfriend, as is traditional in these types of coming-of-age stories.

In fact, Into the Spider-Verse does relatively little that drifts from the archetypal norm (save a willingness to perhaps kill a few more sacred cows than you'd expect, as the film revels in the fact it is not part of any previous continuity or canon) and many of the story beats are fairly predictable. Why that doesn't matter is because the film is a stunning, vivid and at times breathtaking piece of animation.

Into the Spider-Verse is a colourful, inventive and wild explosion of colour and form, the film fairly exploding off the screen with constant visual experimentation. The film's not quite so wild as to induce headaches, but for a film focusing on one of Sony's most lucrative characters, it's amazing how much freedom they allow the artists. You can pause the movie on almost any frame and it'd be a desktop-worthy masterpiece of an image. The visual splendour of the movie cannot be overstated.

This extends to the action, which is visceral and convincing, and is matched by the voice acting, which is uniformly outstanding. This is a film where every department gives 110% and it ends up on screen.

It is not a flawless, masterpiece, though. The film has no less than six different spider-protagonists, but really only gives three of them (Morales, Parker and Spider-Gwen) a lot to do; the other three characters have some funny moments and a few nice scenes, but otherwise feel like they're there to make up the numbers, and receive much less development as a result. The film may have been stronger by holding off on featuring a couple of the other characters until the inevitable sequel. Also, the film's fairly standard plot trajectory is on one hand a boon (the visual richness of the film applied to a convoluted plot may have ended up being a bit too much) but on the other does mean that the ending can mostly be spotted a mile away.

These should not detract from the fact that Into the Spider-Verse (****½) is exceptional fun, the closest we've come yet to seeing the spirit and ferocious energy of a comic book in motion, and arguably the strongest Spider-movie to date. It is available now in the UK and USA.

The Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Back in 2014, head of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige laid down his vision for the next five years of Marvel movies. As of the release of Avengers: Endgame, that vision is now complete. Some projects fell by the wayside - an Inhumans movie was dropped and was changed into a TV series (which flopped, badly) - and others have stepped up, with the addition of the Spider-Man character resulting in several new solo movies for him added to the roster.

Spider-Man and Black Panther are expected to be key characters in Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Feige is expected to unveil a master plan for the next generation of Marvel movies - "Phase 4" - at the San Diego Comic-Con in July. It sounds like the plan is for a series of new movies that will take us up to the end of 2023, and will lean heavily on the newer generations of Marvel heroes such as Black Panther and Captain Marvel. However, this Phase will also feature a twist, as it will also incorporate a number of TV mini-series for the new Disney streaming platform, Disney+. These short series (estimated at 6-10 episodes apiece) will expand on some characters and will also introduce new characters, possibly setting them up to appear in new movies further down the road. Unlike previous Marvel TV shows (such as the Netflix series, Agents of SHIELD and The Inhumans), whose canonical status with regards to the movies is debatable, these Disney+ series are being made by Marvel Studios under Feige's direct supervision, and will be definitively be canon with regards to the films.

The roster of upcoming TV shows and films is as follows.

Please note that this article will contain spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.


Movies

Spider-Man: Far from Home
Directed by Jon Watts
Filming Dates: July-October 2018
Release Date: 2 July 2019

Already in the can, this is a sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and will pick up with the character of Spider-Man/Peter Parker shortly after the events of Endgame. The film will see Spider-Man being recruited by Nick Fury to look into a series of strange events during a school trip to Europe. Marvel originally hoped to release this film much later, so marketing would not interfere with promotions for Endgame, but Sony's contract with Marvel requited them to start marketing the movie earlier.


Black Widow
Directed by Cate Shortland
Filming Dates: "soon"
Release Date: late 2020?

A solo Black Widow movie has been under discussion since Scarlett Johansson debuted in the role in Iron Man 2 (2010). Shortland signed on to direct in July 2018 and reportedly the film is due to start shooting "soon." The events of Endgame leave the focus and story of the film a mystery, but reportedly the film is a prequel which will explain some of Natasha's backstory. As far as is known, Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) is not expected to appear, which is unusual as their shared backstory is an obvious place for a film to pick up.


The Eternals
Directed by Chloé Zhao
Filming Dates: August-Late 2018
Release Date: late 2020/early 2021?

Chloé Zhao signed on to direct a movie based on Jack Kirby's immortal heroes in September 2018, and production is due to start in August. Angelina Jolie is playing Sersi whilst Kumail Nanjiani is also in talks to star.


Black Panther 2
Directed by Ryan Coogler
Filming Dates: unknown
Release Date: 2021?

Ryan Coogler has agreed to return to direct and write a sequel to his 2018 mega-hit. The entire (surviving) main cast is expected to return.


Doctor Strange 2
Directed by Scott Derrickson
Release Date: 2021?

Scott Derrickson has agreed to return to direct and co-write a sequel to the 2017 original. The original main cast is expected to return. Apparently the film will be "weirder" than the first one.


Spider-Man 3
Release Date: 2021?

Sony's contract with Marvel is believed to require a sequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home to be released two years after that movie, if Far From Home is financially successful. The cast's contracts are believed to include three-film options, but it's unclear if Jon Watts would return for a third movie.


Shang-Chi
Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
Release Date: 2022?

Scriptwriter David Callaham and director Destin Daniel Cretton signed on in early 2019 to bring Marvel's crimefighting kung fu star (well, one of them, along with Iron Fist) to the big screen.


Captain Marvel 2
Release Date: 2022?

Not formally greenlit yet, although Captain Marvel's $1.1 billion take-home makes that a formality at this point. According to Kevin Feige, the sequel may actually be an "interquel", bridging Captain Marvel to Avengers: Endgame and exploring what Carol was up to in space during that time.


The Avengers 5
Release Date: 2022?

After Infinity War and Endgame blew up the box office between them, a further Avengers movie is of course a no-brainer. The film would likely see at least Falcon, Winter Soldier, War Machine, Scarlet Witch, Black Panther and Captain Marvel reunite to face off against some kind of threat, potentially to be joined by Thor, the "new" Hawkeye and She-Hulk (see the TV section). Alternatively the film could also act as a last hurrah for the old Hawkeye and Hulk (and Thor, depending on the timeline, see below) before their retirement.


Ant-Man 3
Directed by Peyton Reed
Release Date: unknown

Proposed but not yet formally greenlit. Director Peyton Reed has been discussing the project with Marvel, and actor Michael Douglas is reportedly keen to return as Hank Pym. It's also believed that most of the cast from the first two movies would return.


Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Directed by James Gunn
Release Date: unknown

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was greenlit shortly after the success of Vol. 2 in 2017. However, director James Gunn was fired from the project in July 2018 after controversial tweets he'd made many years earlier resurfaced. Gunn signed on to direct The Suicide Squad for DC instead. After discussions with the cast, who were extremely unhappy with Gunn's firing, Disney reinstated him in March 2019. This now means that Gunn can't start production on Vol. 3 until work on The Suicide Squad is completed before its release in August 2021. This puts Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 potentially off until late 2022 at the earliest, and possibly later.


Thor 4
Release Date: unknown

Based on Chris Hemsworth's statements, it was expected that he would be retiring from the role following Endgame. However, both Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and the Infinity War two-parter revitalised his interest in the character and he has since committed to returning. The timeline for Thor 4 is heavily dependent on the availability of Ragnarok director Taika Waititi, who has been in talks to shoot the live-action version of Akira but still hasn't fully committed, and also on the scheduling for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, as Thor is believed to play a role in that movie. Some have suggested that if Waititi passes on Akira, Thor 4 could shoot much sooner and work as an interim Guardians side-movie until the Gunn-directed Guardians 3 hits production, but this is unconfirmed.


The Thunderbolts
Release Date: unknown

Not greenlit, but apparently discussed, is a movie teaming up the Marvel supervillains who have survived this far. Apparently the roster could consist of Zemo (Captain America: Civil War), Vulture (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Abomination (The Incredible Hulk) and Ghost (Ant-Man and the Wasp), along potentially with new characters. This is a very speculative project until a director and writer can be found with passion for the project.

Disney+ Shows

Falcon & Winter Soldier
Release Date: 2020

Greenlit and already in pre-production, with shooting due to start soon. Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan reprise their roles from the movies. The actors and Marvel had apparently discussed a range of options for the series, including a "buddy cop" dynamic similar to 1980s movies like 48 Hours. However, reportedly the tone for the series is going to be a ground-level thriller similar to The Winter Soldier, with a focus on stealth and espionage.


WandaVision
Release Date: 2020-21

Greenlit and in the writing stage. Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany will reprise their roles as Scarlet Witch and Vision from the films. The series will apparently be an interquel, exploring how the characters' relationship evolved between Civil War to Infinity War. Some reports have suggested that there may be scenes set in the 1950s, hinting possibly at hallucinations or even outright time travel.


Loki
Release Date: 2020-21

Greenlit and in the writing stage. Tom Hiddleson will reprise his role from the films as Loki. The TV series will be anthology-like, with major events from Earth's history over the last thousand years being revealed to have been orchestrated by Loki for his own amusement.


Hawkeye
Release Date: unknown

Not formally greenlit, but negotiations are at an advanced stage for a limited series starring Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye. The series would see Barton meeting and training up Kate Bishop, a skilled archer who (in the comics) becomes a later incarnation of Hawkeye.


Hulk/She-Hulk
Release Date: unknown

Not formally greenlit, but negotiations are at an early stage for a limited series that would see Mark Ruffalo return as Bruce Banner/Hulk. The series would see Banner meeting his cousin Jennifer Walters, who in the comics is destined to become She-Hulk. The film would act as a passing-the-baton story, allowing She-Hulk to potentially appear in later Avengers movies.


Power Pack
Release Date: unknown

Not formally greenlit and apparently talks are only in the very earliest stages, but there has been some discussion about adapting Power Pack as an ongoing, multi-season TV show. Power Pack is a more children's oriented Marvel Comic series about four children who gain superpowers from a dying alien trying to protect their father, who has perfected a limitless source of energy. Other aliens arrive trying to seize the device, resulting in a running, desperate battle. This is a better fit for television than for film. Intriguingly, Power Pack crosses over a lot with Fantastic Four (Reed Richards' son Franklin becomes a recurring member later on), which means that Marvel might get to use its new rights to that franchise sooner than expected.


Ms. Marvel
Release Date: unknown

Marvel and Disney+ are exploring using the streaming service to set up the character of Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel. However, this may depend on the direction of Captain Marvel 2, where it has been suggested that Ms. Marvel could be introduced instead.

The X-Verse

At the current time, there are no plans to incorporate characters from Fox's "X-Verse" (plus the Fantastic Four franchise) into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, following Disney's acquisition of Fox. As of now, the Fox X-Verse is expected to come to an end with the release of X-Men: Dark Phoenix in June and New Mutants in August. Films under discussion or in the planning stages, including Deadpool 3, X-Force, Gambit and a sequel to X-Men: Apocalypse have been cancelled.

According to Kevin Feige, the planning for Phase 4 was already at an advanced stage when the deal was confirmed, putting off the introduction of those characters until the advent of Phase 5 in 2023 or 2024 at the earliest. However, some fans have speculated that whilst dumping the entire X-Verse roster of characters into the MCU in Phase 4 might be untenable, it might be possible to use individual characters and villains, with Galactus cited as a worthy opponent for the possible next Avengers film or films.

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The Great Marvel Rewatch: Spider-Man - Homecoming

Peter Parker is a New York school kid who has been bitten by a radioactive spider, developed powers and been recruited by Tony Stark to help out the Avengers with an internal dispute. Promised big things by Stark, Parker is soon dumped back in Queens with a badass spider suit but not much clue about what to do. Investigating an ATM robbery gone wrong, Parker uncovers evidence of a criminal gang selling weapons on the black market. With Stark busy with other projects, it falls to Parker - and Spider-Man - to tackle this threat on the streets of the city.

On release, it was easy to be wary of Homecoming. Oh yay, a new Spider-Man movie. We'd had six Spider-Man movies in fifteen years - and sixteen Marvel movies in nine years - and this was the third Spider-Man reboot in that time, which felt a bit extreme. If there was ever a superhero movie which seemed utterly redundant before it even launched, it was this one.

Perhaps perversely, the film refuses to follow expectations and fall flat on its face. Instead, Spider-Man: Homecoming was, on release, comfortably the best Spider-Man movie ever made (a title which came into dispute more quickly than expected) and is one of the better Marvel movies. A mixture of the impressive quality of the films that came after it and the high quality of Into the Spider-Verse means that Homecoming has gotten lost a little in the mix, but on a review it reasserts itself as a very strong superhero movie.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is made with a surprisingly light touch, it blends genuine laughs with a superbly-executed plot twist and, in Tom Holland, it finally finds an actor who can play both Spider-Man and Peter Parker excellently: Tobey Maguire was a fine Peter Parker but a subdued Spider-Man, whilst Andrew Garfield was a great Spider-Man but a firmly unconvincing (and way too old) Parker. Holland straddles both worlds, giving us the wise-cracking Spider-Man that cinema has been looking for but also playing the awkward, shy, teenage Parker to the hilt.

The film also gives us - in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for the first time since Tom Hiddleston's Loki - a genuinely outstanding villain. Michael Keaton plays Adrian Toomes as an ordinary hard worker who snaps for a pretty damn good reason: being driven out of business as the head of a clean-up crew picking up the debris of the Avengers' big fight scenes after Tony Stark muscles in (and thus getting paid to clean up the mess he himself is responsible for). Toomes becomes an arms dealer, selling alien equipment (or left-over bits of Ultron) for profit, but it takes quite a while for himself to cross the line into more overt, lethal villainy and become the Vulture, one of Spider-Man's more familiar enemies. Keaton also gets the best scene in the film, a conversation in a car in which he very gradually pieces together clues to uncover Spider-Man's true identity, and it's a masterclass of acting and writing.

Some reviewers have drawn comparisons between the movie and the work of John Hughes, which is a bit of an exaggeration: the move nods to high school/teenage issues but doesn't spend huge amounts of time in that milieu. Instead, Parker's struggles to impress Stark and the Avengers, and vindicate himself as a hero (at one point near-breaking down as he claims - somewhat histrionically - that he has nothing else going on in his life), take centre stage, with nods at his love life, which is more hypothetical than real. However, the high school scenes are quite funny and there's some nice inversion of tropes. An attempt by classmate Flash Thompson to embarrass and bully Parker falls flat because Parker simply doesn't give him the time of day, whilst Ned (a memorable debut performance by Jacob Batalon), Parker's best friend, is quite funny in his quest to be Parker's "chair man" who helps him out from behind the scenes.

The biggest weakness is the typical Marvel one: a slightly muddled concluding fight sequence that is overly reliant on CGI and also a lot of CG stunts and moves which feel out of keeping with the more grounded, realistic feeling the movie is going for elsewhere. This is particularly notable as the film avoids replicating the soaring but obviously fake CG NYC transition scenes from the Sam Raimi movies (highlighting that Parker isn't there yet in his skill set), but in the finale has no trouble suddenly throwing the character around a ludicrously fake CG situation that should have kill him five times over.

If you can overlook that brief dip in form, Spider-Man: Homecoming (****½) emerges as a terrific slice of entertaining, being funny, emotional and well-judged on just about every level.

Note: the original version of this review was published in 2017.

The Avengers: Infinity War

The Titan Thanos has begun his plan to unite the Infinity Stones and wipe out half of the life the universe. His plan involves seizing the Stones from remote planets, the Collector of Knowhere and from Xandar, and the several Stones that have come to rest on Earth. In deep space the Guardians of the Galaxy join forces with Thor to defeat Thanos, whilst on Earth the fractured Avengers have to overcome their differences and unite again to fight his armies.

It's entirely possible that no movie in history has had a build-up like Infinity War. Almost every one of the eighteen preceding movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been laying pipe and groundwork for this film, from introducing the Infinity Stones one-by-one to brief appearances by Thanos to the introduction of both the extravagant space opera and mystical sides of the universe through Guardians of the Galaxy and Doctor Strange. Marvel and Disney have shown tremendous restraint and forbearance in not pulling the triggers on those stories too early and making sure they have their ducks lined up in just the right row before finally committing.

Infinity War is an insanely massive movie. Starting as it means to go on - with a massacre which leaves several established characters dead and one MIA (which weirdly goes unmentioned for the whole movie) - the film barely lets up. Characters big and small going right back to the start of the MCU ten years ago (including some you thought you'd never see again) show up, some with large roles to play, some for an extended cameo. Despite the weight of the massive cast, directors Anthony and Joe Russo and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely somehow create a very coherent film with four distinct acts and the kind of tension filled, multi-pronged final battle on two separate fronts that we haven't seen since Return of the Jedi.

It also helps that although the movie is filled to the brim with heroes and big personalities, the film keeps its focus firmly on a central quintet. Thanos himself dominates proceedings, Josh Brolin (somehow) investing this big purple dude with some real pathos in scenes where we learn more about his backstory, his family and his homeworld. Gamora (Zoe Saldana) also has a major role to play, her family issues with both Thanos and Nebula proving a key emotional motivation for the film. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) also has a lot of screentime, clearly having feeling annoyed after the events of Thor: Ragnarok and determined to kick someone's backside. Scenes pairing him and Bradley Cooper's Rocket Raccoon (or "Rabbit" as Thor insists) are excellent, and then get better when they join forces with a giant space dwarf played by Peter Dinklage. Dinklage's screentime is limited but extraordinarily effective (he also gets arguably the best line of the movie, but it's a really tough choice). Rounding off the central focus is Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), two extremely different people who prove to be an effective team.

Lots of other characters get their moments in the sun (although Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner seems to be reduced to a harbinger of doom whilst he's dealing with, er, "performance" problems as Hulk), although the role of Captain America (Chris Evans) in the movie is surprisingly small. The directors know how to deliver a great superhero arrival scene just as all hope seems lost and also how to frame an action sequence. There's a lot of explosions, CG people being flung around and strange creatures and it all flows mostly well, with only a couple of moments where CG fatigue threatens to set in. Infinity War is not a movie any sane person can call restrained, but it's a movie that knows when and where to deploy its monstrous resources (adjusted for inflation, Infinity War is the most expensive movie ever made) to maximum effect.

It's also a surprisingly emotional movie. The weakness of films - and the reason we've seen television explode in comparison recently - is that it's very hard to introduce characters, establish motivation, emotionally invest the audience and then deliver a payoff in under two hours. Infinity War is instead able to draw on almost forty hours of previous character development in the MCU, so even when a fairly minor character bites the dust it hurts a little. When more major characters bite it, things get real (and at least some of these characters aren't coming back).

When the movie runs aground is in its ending, which is impossible to talk about without major spoilers. Suffice to say that the Chekhov's Gun maxim is employed by full force in the film and when you walk out of the cinema - especially if you know the significance of the post-credit sequence and what movie will immediately precede Infinity War II next year - you'll probably be able to immediately pen a fairly close outline of what happens. I mean, if they completely wrong-foot us, fair enough, but some of the choices made in the ending are completely nonsensical if you have any knowledge of what's coming and what's not coming down the Marvel production pipe later on.

Another major weakness is that the film undersells its new team of villains, the Black Order (servants of Thanos). Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Ebony Maw and Carrie Coon as Proxima Midnight are particularly excellent, but both get limited screen time (especially Carrie Coon, one of the best actresses on TV, who is almost unrecognisable).

Finally, Marvel has gone to some lengths to say that Infinity War is a stand-alone movie and it's as-yet untitled sequel next year (which has already been shot) is a movie in its own right and not just the second half of one bigger story. That's quite frankly untrue, and a lot of the more dramatic and emotional moments from Infinity War will live or die depending on what happens in the sequel.

If you can step out of the meta-knowledge, The Avengers: Infinity War (****) is a very effective action movie with lots of solid action scenes, some real dramatic moments of power and a refreshingly ruthless attitude to its cast of massive stars. It lacks the pacing, focus and character interplay of, say, Guardians of the Galaxy or Black Panther (or even the first Avengers), but's in the upper tier of Marvel Cinematic Universe films and in balancing an unprecedentedly vast cast with solid storytelling, it's almost achieves the impossible.

The film is on general release worldwide from today.

Slugfest: Inside the Epic 50-Year Battle between Marvel & DC by Reed Tucker

In 1961 DC Comics was the biggest comic company in the United States. Its superhero comics - Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman - were the most popular in the world and it had absolutely no competition of note. But that same year Atlas Comics was branded Marvel and its editor Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby released a new comic called The Fantastic Four. Within a decade Marvel had displaced DC as the biggest comics company in the US and snatched away a lot of talent and critical acclaim that had gone to DC. DC fought back, starting formidable Superman and Batman movie franchises and releasing a series of artistic, critically-acclaimed comic books in the 1980s and 1990s from the likes of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. But in the early 2000s Marvel finally entered the movie scene in force with X-Men and Spider-Man, and never looked back.

This non-fiction book looks into the 50-year competition between DC and Marvel, the two titans of comic book publishing. Reed Tucker has exhaustively interviewed many key players involved and scoured the archives for interviews with those who are no longer with us. The result is a potential interesting book that examines the corporate battle between the venerable establishment figure and the plucky upstart newbie.

Or at least it's a potentially interesting book that tries to do that. The opening chapters expand on this, detailing how Stan Lee took over a moribund company and injected some 1960s inventiveness, irreverence and character development to win over young fans from the older, more moribund publisher. We're told that Marvel focused more on the characters' internal lives, on the distrust with which they are treated by the government (helping young readers identify with similarly confused and mistrusted characters) and gave their writers and artists much greater freedom to express themselves, throwing away the style guides DC saddled their readers with. Marvel also used real locations, particularly in and around New York, which excited readers more than stories set in completely fictional locales like Gotham and Metropolis.

All of this stuff is great, but Reed never really moves on from this basic assumption: Marvel was the plucky underdog with greater creative energy and freedom, and DC was the staid old man taken by surprise by what the youngster was doing and whose attempts to replicate it by "getting down with the kids" were embarrassing. That applies very well to the 1960s and the early 1970s. However, some of Reed's conclusions and anecdotage are questionable: he challenges the wisdom of DC poaching Jack Kirby from Marvel and putting them on the Jimmy Olsen comic book, but this was both Kirby's own choice (so he wouldn't cost anyone a job on another comic, as the Jimmy Olsen book didn't have a permanent artist at the time) and also allowed him to set up his own, more original books later on by introducing characters like Darkseid.

By the time the 1980s have rolled around, Reed is still expanding on Marvel being the plucky underdog beating the boring old figure of DC, but seems to contradict himself by then talking about DC's artistic achievements with books like Swamp Thing, Watchmen and Sandman, as well as how Marvel had become the biggest-selling comic book company, making DC the underdogs. Aware that this is getting repetitive, he switches to studying the film business and how DC got some great movies made whilst Marvel flirted with moderately successful TV shows but otherwise couldn't get a decent movie on screen until twenty-two years later. This is interesting, with some great stories of bizarre behind-the-scenes battles and the film companies not "getting" comic books at all, but again it lacks depth.

The book is ultimately a bit constrained by its premise, and it's to Tucker's credit that he remains laser-focused on the interrelationship between Marvel and DC. It would have been very easy to get sidetracked in the internal history of the two companies and discuss more creative decisions, but Tucker stays on point throughout. This does mean the book veers towards the more corporate side of things rather than the creative one, which I think will be of less interest to those keen to learn more about the origins of superhero characters or how the books developed. But it has some value: this is an under-told aspect of the comic book story and Tucker keeps the story ticking over nicely.

Slugfest (***½) is a readable and intriguing book about the titanic competition between the two biggest comic book companies in the United States. It's also a bit on the repetitive side, with not as much depth as perhaps might be wished, and a lack of information on the creative choices as opposed to business ones. It's still a good story, well-told and interesting, but one for hardcore comic book fans only. The book is available now in the UK and USA.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Peter Parker is a New York school kid who has been bitten by a radioactive spider, developed powers and been recruited by Tony Stark to help out the Avengers with an internal dispute. Promised big things by Stark, Parker is soon dumped back in Queens with a badass spider suit but not much clue about what to do. Investigating an ATM robbery gone wrong, Parker uncovers evidence of a criminal gang selling weapons on the black market. With Stark busy with other projects, it falls to Parker - and Spider-Man - to tackle this threat on the streets of the city.

Oh yay, a new Spider-Man movie. We've had six Spider-Man movies in fifteen years - and sixteen Marvel movies in nine years - and this is the third reboot in that time, which feels a bit extreme. If there was ever a superhero movie which seemed utterly redundant before it even launched, it was this one.

Perhaps perversely, the film refuses to follow expectations and fall flat on its face. Instead, Spider-Man: Homecoming is comfortably the best Spider-Man movie ever made and is easily one of the very best Marvel movies. It's made with a surprisingly light touch, it blends genuine laughs (including the biggest belly laugh I've ever had during a Marvel movie) with a superbly-executed plot twist and, in Tom Holland, it finally finds an actor who can play both Spider-Man and Peter Parker excellently: Tobey Maguire was a fine Peter Parker but a subdued Spider-Man, whilst Andrew Garfield was a great Spider-Man but a firmly unconvincing (and way too old) Parker. Holland straddles both worlds, giving us the wise-cracking Spider-Man that cinema has been looking for but also playing the awkward, shy, teenage Parker to the hilt.

The film also gives us - in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for the first time since Tom Hiddleston's Loki - a genuinely outstanding villain. Michael Keaton plays Adrian Toomes as an ordinary hard worker who snaps for a pretty damn good reason: being driven out of business as the head of a clean-up crew picking up the debris of the Avengers' big fight scenes after Tony Stark muscles in (and thus getting paid to clean up the mess he himself is responsible for). Toomes becomes an arms dealer, selling alien equipment (or left-over bits of Ultron) for profit, but it takes quite a while for himself to cross the line into more overt, lethal villainy and become the Vulture, one of Spider-Man's more familiar enemies. Keaton also gets the best scene in the film, a conversation in a car in which he very gradually pieces together clues to uncover Spider-Man's true identity, and it's a masterclass of acting and writing.

Some reviewers have drawn comparisons between the movie and the work of John Hughes, which is a bit of an exaggeration: the move nods to high school/teenage issues but doesn't spend huge amounts of time in that milieu. Instead, Parker's struggles to impress Stark and the Avengers, and vindicate himself as a hero (at one point near-breaking down as he claims - somewhat histrionically - that he has nothing else going on in his life), take centre stage, with nods at his love life, which is more hypothetical than real. However, the high school scenes are quite funny and there's some nice inversion of tropes. An attempt by classmate Flash Thompson to embarrass and bully Parker falls flat because Parker simply doesn't give him the time of time, whilst Ned (a memorable debut performance by Jacob Batalon), Parker's best friend, is quite funny in his quest to be Parker's "chair man" who helps him out from behind the scenes.

The biggest weakness is the typical Marvel one: a slightly muddled concluding fight sequence that is overly reliant on CGI and also a lot of CG stunts and moves which feel out of keeping with the more grounded, realistic feeling the movie is going for elsewhere. This is particularly notable as the film avoids replicating the soaring but obviously fake CG NYC transition scenes from the Sam Raimi movies (highlighting that Parker isn't there yet in his skill set), but in the finale has no trouble suddenly throwing the character around a ludicrously fake situation that should have kill him five times over.

If you can overlook that brief dip in form, Spider-Man: Homecoming (****½) emerges as a terrific slice of entertaining, being funny, emotional and well-judged on just about every level. It is on general release in the UK and USA now.

Spider-Man 4 cancelled, Maguire & Raimi walk, reboot planned

Unexpectedly dramatic developments in Hollywood. Sam Raimi and his team who had been behind three very successful Spider-Man movies had been all set for a return for a fourth and potentially fifth and sixth films in the franchise, with the fourth movie set for a 2011 release. However, a series of behind-the-scenes problems seem to have unfolded, resulting in production being rolled back a year and the original plan to make the next two films back-to-back being dropped.


Sony Pictures announced today that they were parting ways with Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire (and presumably the other recurring actors and crew), but have retained Spider-Man 4 scriptwriter James Vanderbilt to instead pen a remake. The new film, now planned for release in 2012, will apparently return to the classic origin story and begin the story again from scratch with a new cast. In a positive-sounding statement, Raimi wished the new team good luck.

I have to admit that I did not enjoy the original Spider-Man (2002) very much, finding Maguire to be an effective Peter Parker but the movie overall lacked sparkle and was overloaded with dissatisfying CGI, not to mention the Green Goblin's ridiculous Power Rangers-style appearance. Spider-Man 2 (2004), on the other hand, I thought was a very strong movie with Alfred Molina making for a much more formidable antagonist and the story was more interesting. Spider-Man 3 (2007) was a confused, incoherent and plain ridiculous mess with too many villains and too many ideas clamouring for screentime.

Whilst the third film was poor, it wasn't a franchise-destroying travesty on the scale of Joel Schumacher's Batman movies (which were so bad they effectively forced a reboot of the franchise eight years later), and the new movie will arrive only five years after the previous film, a rather short span of time before a reboot takes place. This would be the equivalent of a remake of King Kong, War of the Worlds or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe coming out this year. I think most people would agree that this is simply too short a space of time to warrant a new take on the concept.

The reasons for the split are unclear, but it is possible that since Marvel Studios are taking a closer involvement with the new reboot, it may be that they want to tie their flagship superhero in with their 'family' of other superhero movies set in a shared continuity that they are developing (including the two Iron Man movies, the new Hulk, the new Thor movie out next year and The Avengers film which will unite them all in 2012). However, it is a big risk. Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire have made this franchise very successful indeed, and it is possible that public interest in the character and series will simply drop off rather than being transferred to the new cast and production team. Interesting to see how this pans out, as it may be the biggest test of the public's tolerance for remakes and reboots to date.

In the meantime, this leaves Sam Raimi free to look at a new, fresh project - which may or may not be the long-gestating World of WarCraft movie - and Maguire to pursue other work (such as the Robotech movie he's been bigging up for years).