Peter Parker is Broken

did you know that seahorses that they made for life could you imagine a seahorse seeing another seahorse and then making it work this might sound a little crazy but this was the moment I fell in love with Spider-Man into the spiderverse I'm being so serious like legitimately while yes the groundbreaking animation which your character work and brilant soundtrack did a whole lot to draw me in it wasn't until this moment right here that I realized I was watching one of the best Spider-Man stories ever made in addition to being a cute little reversal of our introduction to Chris Pines Peter Parker a parallel that beautifully communicates everything we need to know about Jake Johnson's comparatively schlubby Peter B Parker this moment was when I realized that the filmmakers truly understood Spider-Man in a film filled to the brim with meta commentary about what defines the web head and our relationship to him here was this delightfully subversive statement about the problem at the heart of the modern iteration of Peter Parker you see Peter Parker is broken but before that you know what isn't broken Monopoly but that doesn't mean we can't put a fresh take on a classic IP and that's certainly the case with today's sponsor Monopoly go everyone I'm sure has played the board game you know it we love it but now there's a new way to play it's always been fun to set the table and bankrupt your friends and family and lose said friends and family in the process creating an awkward energy for the rest of the evening as your uncle took the game a little too seriously and now you can create that game Dynamic anywhere you want the beach the airport a coffee shop anywhere in anytime is a great time to jump into a game of Monopoly go I play it all the time because honestly I'm a little competitive and there's no way I'm going to let my friends get ahead of me on the boards I love to crack it out as a little bit of a coping mechanism after I've lost an actual game of Monopoly so at least 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started as a young hero growing into his own both in life and crime fighting has stagnated no longer allowed to grow and develop lest he aged too far beyond the young man he had been during his initial run during the 1960s and' 7s in a desperate attempt to preserve the character's appeal to a young audience Marvel has trapped Peter Parker in a Perpetual limbo State like Peter p in Neverland cursed with eternal Youth and forced to live in suspended animation in perpetuity his life never changing in any meaningful way so what was so brilliant about the introduction of Peter B Parker in spider-verse and his entire Arc throughout the film to be honest was that it was a piece of Spider-Man media that finally seemed to recognize this fact and not only recognized it but made it a part of of the narrative he was a Peter Parker who was seemingly aware of the fact that he is living In Perpetual Arrested Development a Spider-Man who desperately longed to be a seahorse making it work with another seahorse but was unable to realize that desire out of fear of where it might take him in other words Peter B Parker personified every hesitation Marvel has ever had about letting Peter Parker Grow Up and he was miserable and directionless because of it it was a genius bit of meta commentary on the state of the character and instantly catalyzed my love for spiderverse but it begs the question if we all know that Peter Parker is kind of broken so much so that a major feature film is turning it into a plot Point how do we go about fixing him well for starters we should probably go over how we got into this mess to begin with when Stanley and Steve Deo first developed the idea that would become Spider-Man way back in the 1960s they envisioned him as an ordinary teenager despite being the primary audience for Comics at the time kids and teens had to that point been relegated to the role of sidekick the likes of Batman's Robin or Captain America's Bucky Barnes the Brilliance of Lee and Dio's idea was its Simplicity what if the main hero was someone around the age of the readers someone they could see themselves as the pitch was a Smash Hit and wound up becoming one of the most enduring characters in pop culture obviously we know this but he was never intended to be this young man Forever In fact when Stan Lee was coming up with a name for his new hero he deliberately avoided using the word boy instead opting to call him Spiderman the intention being for the character to gradually grow into a man over time and for pretty much all of Lee and Dio's time working on the character that's exactly what happened after just 28 issu Spider-Man graduated high school after which he started college made new friends and dated a rotating cast of beautiful women before getting into a serious relationship with Gwen Stacy he eventually graduated college and started working as a photographer and then things took a bit of a turn you see after a decade of publication Marvel began to worry that they might have been burning the candle a little too quickly with Spider-Man having aged Peter in near real time over the past last 10 years so they decided to pump the brakes a little the most glaring example of this was the death of Peter's longtime girlfriend Gwen Stacy an act that not only resolved his long-standing battle with the Green Goblin but also opened up his love life again which had more or less been chugging towards marriage to that point going forward Peter kept growing and evolving but it was slowed significantly new Milestones were fewer and further between and a comfortable status quo emerged and in in a way this move to slow down life a little kind of made sense narratively after all this is what adulthood is like for most people you get through college and find a job and then kind of settle into adult life for a while so even though it had been the result of editorial trying to preserve the character's longevity this decision never felt like a betrayal of Lee and Dio's original intentions for the character but then then we got to the 9s and Marvel editorial really started to panic they' successfully delayed the inevitable for a decade or two but time was catching up to Peter Parker again and they were afraid their most popular character would simply age into irrelevance during what was shaping up to be a fairly turbulent decade for the company the marriage they had killed Gwen Stacy to avoid had instead come to pass with Mary Jane Watson Aunt May was dead and buried Having learned Peter's secret and The Parkers were expecting a child the youth that had defined Peter's initial appeal was gone so Marvel decided they needed to do something radical not just slow down or freeze the clock but winding it back entirely a complete regression perhaps the most infamous example of their attempts to fix the perceived problem of Peter's age was the clone saga a sprawling barely coherent Arc in which a seemingly dead clone of Peter Parker from the 70s returned and was suggested to be the original Peter Parker the thinking was that the Peter readers had followed since the 70s could be revealed to be the Clone so that he could go off and retire with MJ while the original Spider-Man would retake the mantle and go on spidermanning indefinitely neatly resetting the character while maintaining continuity wait did I say neatly I I meant sloppy as [ __ ] because holy [ __ ] the clone saga I mean as you can imagine people did not take kindly to the idea that the the character they had been following for the past two decades had actually been a clone Marvel editorial had become so desperate to have young Peter back that they were willing to undermine years of Storytelling to ramshackle together an in Universe reboot and look I'm not going to bother explaining the rest of the clone saga to you because I mean God just thinking about it makes my head hurt and I wouldn't even know where to begin but all you need to know is that this plan was eventually scrapped though not before ending Peter and MJ's pregnancy tragically and you'd think a backfire of this magnitude would have taught Marvel editorial an important lesson don't mess with Peter's development but alas their kyotic crusade to refresh Peter Parker was merely postponed they'd finally see it through a decade later with 2007 Spider-Man one more day a story that finally pulled the trigger on an in Universe reboot for or Spider-Man reversing his marriage to Mary Jane resurrecting Aunt May again and more or less resetting the character status quo as Marvel's then editor-in Chief Joe cassada explained in an interview with comic book resources at the time if Spidey grows old and dies off with our readership then that's it he'll be done and gone never be enjoyed by Future comic fans if we keep Spidey rejuvenated and relatable to fans on the horizon we can manage to do that and still keep him enjoyable to those that have been following his adventures for years and yeah you know that's all well and good except there was just one small problem and it's one we've already mentioned people liked adult Peter they weren't alienated by him the way Marvel editorial felt they were they were more alienated by the decision to callously rip away Decades of development just to ensure Marvel could continue to keep publishing Spider-Man stories indefinitely this was clearly a cynical business decision interfering with the natural progression of the story being told and the Damage it has done to Peter Parker as a character in the 15 or so years since one more day is significant now I know what you're thinking Griffin this is not a Comics Channel why are we going over this why does it matter well hold on I'm getting to it perhaps the most obvious way this has become an issue for the character is in the films the Ry Trilogy kind of exists outside of the problem as they were made prior to one more day and were heavily based on the original Lee and Dio run of the series so in those films Peter pretty much grows naturally over the course of the series graduating high school early into the first film falling in love with MJ to the point where he's ready to propose and just generally going through life like a real person would growing changing losing friends making new ones and so on then after the backlash to Spider-Man 3 which coincidentally came out the same year as one more day Sony decided it was time to start fresh with a new younger Spider-Man You could argue the web films represent a similar regression of the character bringing him back to high school but the circumstances of this reboot seem to have less to do with concerns over Peter's age and more to do with the negative reception of Spider-Man 3 and even though bringing Peter back to high school and retelling his origin instead of just starting a new series with an established adult Peter was probably not the greatest idea the film still allowed Peter to grow a little he finished high school and then started an adult life albeit one we never got to see as the series ended after the second entry which man really would have been great to see uh Peter in a post Gwen's death world that would have been yeah which then brings us to the big cohuna MCU Spider-Man the subject of a thousand Spider-Man think pieces it's no secret that I have issues with the way the MCU has handled Spider-Man from its overall Reliance on Tony Stark to his lack of time spent in New York City but I feel like the root issue with this adaptation of the character is much like his comic book counterpart this Peter is seemingly in a state of Perpetual adolescence we once got a reboot that dragged Peter Parker back to high school just as he was becoming an adult and you know what they say one his chance twice his coincidence and three times is a pattern and this time Peter was here to stay the final film in this so-called High School Trilogy starring Tom Holland didn't even let him graduate he's now apparently studying for his GED which I'm sure they won't drag out in the next entry it's a move that feels eerily reminiscent of the time Marvel editorial had Peter stay in college a little longer after Gwen's death in an attempt to slow down his development but perhaps most glaringly is his mentorship under Tony Stark as I alluded to earlier Stan Lee had deliberately avoided using the word boy in Spider-Man's name because he wanted to avoid the Trope of the teenage sidekick Spider-Man may have been a teen but he was always going to be a man and his name reflected that he was no sidekick he was the main event so what does the MCU do well naturally they make him a sidekick to Iron Man a decision that has earned him the nickname Iron Boy Jr among less contended fans while the name is a little silly I think it demonstrates the problem here MC Peter Parker is so infantilized that he has basically become the thing Stan Lee was intentionally trying to avoid not only is Spider-Man supervised by Tony he even gets his suit from him he feels more like Dick Grayson than Peter Parker in this way and even then dick eventually breaks away and becomes his own man whereas MCU Peter is kind of tepid about the whole thing right through his Trilogy sure he tries to stand up to Tony from time to time but these encounters are always framed as Peter being a belligerent child I just I just wanted to be like you and I wanted you to be better this infantilization has honestly been the most consistent part of Tom Holland's performance which has been broadly stuck in a GE shuck little boy mode since his first appearance Spider-Man doesn't just look up to other Heroes he worships them like a child would something that hasn't changed over the course of his run in Civil War he's Star Struck by Captain America in homecoming he's desperate to please or impress Tony Stark and far from home he's unable to assert himself to Nick Fury and in no way home he's intimidated by Doctor Strange speaking to him like a student talking to his Headmaster despite having known strange for some time it's just very odd and reflects the overall juvenile way Holland Peter is characterized honestly Peter's reverence for his super peers feels more like a Kamala Khan thing than Peter Parker which at least makes sense for M Marvel given she is a Legacy character who was introduced decades into the Marvel Universe and has basically patterned her whole Persona off of Captain Marvel I mean she's like her successor in a lot of ways even though she's kind of her own person it doesn't matter Kamala Khan was written to be that way the fact that Peter still acts like this after being in the MCU for years feels like a deliberate decision to emphasize his supposed inexperience in adolescence in a lot of ways Holland Spider-Man feels like Marvel editorials vision for Peter come to life a greenhorn Peter Pan stuck in Neverland forever and I know I'm being pretty hard on this version of the character but I think it's just the clearest example we have of the result of this long-standing effort to regress the character and I think it's no coincidence that we're seeing this problem most prominently in a version of the character that exists in a long form narrative that is the MCU I mean the mcu's been wanting to model their entire thing off of the comics if you do that you're going to arrive at the same problems that those Comics had as well what should be blindingly obvious by now is that the reason Marvel editorial was eager to pump the brakes on Peter Parker's development in the 9s and 2000s was because they wanted this character to continue existing indefinitely the mainline Marvel continuity is an ongoing story that will continue going as long as people will buy comics and the biggest roadblock in the way of that goal is characters visibly growing up you can't keep telling stories forever about someone who's passing through major milestones in their life because those Milestones make it obvious that they're aging this is why they killed Gwen to stall Peter's love life and then reconed his marriage to MJ and ended their pregnancy these Milestones would have solidified Peter's maturity and committed editorial to an older Peter but if you undo those events well who's to say Peter isn't still in his 20s we can just go on writing him that way and never mention it and this is a very similar situation to the one the MCU Spider-Man finds himself in because the MCU is an ongoing narrative that Marvel wants to keep going indefinitely and because they can only work in so many Spider-Man appearances at a time there has been a deliberate effort to keep Peter in suspended animation it's why they hired the babyfaced Tom Holland to play the part and it's why they have continued to characterize him as a teen despite the fact he should have long since grown up a bit hell they even Loosely adapted one more day in no way home to end his relationship with MJ and make it harder to graduate high High School like I said I'll eat my hat if the GED is passed by the time Spider-Man 4 begins when a story is intended to run forever or at least as close to forever as the lines of Tom Holland's face will allow ensuring the longevity of the character is the top priority and that means never letting him grow too much I think Ultimate Spider-Man is kind of the exception that proves this rule set in a parallel universe outside Marvel's Mainline continuity also known as Earth 616 there was no expectation of ultimate Peter Parker staying young forever Brian Michael Bendis envisioned it as a finite story and didn't expect it to last in perpetuity Not only was this Peter allowed to grow and change over time just as his 60s and 7s counterpart in the 616 Universe had been but this story even had an ending freed from the shackles of a NeverEnding continuity ultimate Peter was able to realize Lee and Dio's vision for a young boy evolving into a spider man so at this point you might be asking who cares why does this matter stop complaining go away if people like these stories then does it really matter that the character is forced to exist in a Perpetual adolescence well yeah I think it does primarily because fans aren't happy with Peter's Arrested Development in addition to near constant discourse on Twitter and other fan spaces we're experiencing something of a Spider-Man fan film Boom the most high-profile example being the infamous Spider-Man Lotus while there is plenty to say about the numbers behind the scenes the controversies involving the director and actors and the overall lackluster quality I mean lackluster is putting it kindly but poor quality of the final product despite costing tens of thousands of dollars what I want to spot light is the rationale behind the project Lotus was a film made by Spider-Man fans who were frustrated with the direction of the MCU Spider-Man and thought they could do it better and while the hubris of that intention is hilarious and how misguided it is good art is typically not made out of spite I think it speaks to an overall frustration with the character's lack of Direction Lotus is a film that for all its flaws Longs for an adult Spider-Man one who has complicated and adult relationships with his friends and family now the film isn't able to realize these desires because the filmmakers are a bunch of privileged white guys in their early 20s who just have absolutely no frame of reference in the Life Experiences they're trying to depict but the point stands that there is a hunger to see Peter in these kinds of stories you don't raise that much money from fans if there isn't any interest that said Lotus also highlights another issue with our stagnated Peter Parker and that is the Eternal suffering of the character you see part of the issue with constantly stalling the character's growth in the comics while maintaining continuity is that you can't just reboot whenever you want to roll time back a bit you have to come up with an in Universe explanation for the regression and the easiest way to do this is to invite trauma Peter constantly suffers to reset his development he has to lose people relationships any sense of accomplishment so that his status quo remains that of a young man only just beginning to of course for his life this has led to the fan base to associate the character with constant trauma this is actually a central theme of the sequel of into the spiderverse across the spiderverse which challenges the idea that this cycle of trauma is intrinsic to the character an idea it first raised when it introduced us to Peter B Parker a man who feels the full weight of every editorial mandated setback that has been forced on the character over the years most of Peter's trauma was simply the byproduct of a business decision made by Marvel editorial to keep the character young but it has become so ingrained in fans that they cannot conceive of the character without it Lotus is a film that wants to break free of the childlike Peter Parker of the MCU but it indulges in the same trauma porn that created this version of the character wallowing in misery for almost its entire runtime seriously this is an abysmal film even by the shaky standards of superhero fan films even the MCU itself caught Flack for not having its Peter suffer enough so much so that they ran the character through the ringer in no way home even though it was entirely unnecessary to maintain the Youth of their Peter the way it had been in the comic they adapted I mean look at what he just went through in Infinity war and endgame was that trauma not enough was that suffering not enough no we have to tack on to that like come on now they just did did it because people expected it we've not only broken Peter Parker we've tortured him too I was originally inspired to make this video after replaying the older Spider-Man game for Playstation 1 man you guys remember that game maybe it was because of the horrendous taste Spider-Man Lotus left in my mouth but I felt compelled to revisit it recently and for as insanely dated as the original PS1 Graphics are the game still holds up the Jade Syndicate bank heist fading NYPD missiles chasing Venom all across New York and into the sewers the Symbiotes monster o i mean man what a great time there's something so quintessential about the game from the lived in World it created to spidey's relationships with other Marvel heroes and his roges but what most stood out to me this playthrough was how casually it features an adult Peter Parker it captured an era of Spider-Man where he had grown known as a character he still struggles to juggle his responsibility with his superh heroics but there is a maturity to the way he handled them he wasn't completely overwhelmed by his problems because he already faced some trials and overcome them I feel like that more than anything is what I miss most look I'm not saying that Spider-Man was better back in my day I just think stalling the character's growth robs us of the core appeal of the character a little the thing about stories about adolescence is that they are inherently about growing up that change is inherent to them because the change is inherent to the experience of being an adolescent it's right there in the name adolescent a word derived from the Latin adol which literally means to grow into maturity when you try to tell a story about a Perpetual adolescent it defeats the whole point of telling a story about adolescent in the first place that's kind of the whole moral lesson of Peter Pan to Never Grow Up is to miss life's best adventure it's hard to not see a certain irony in all of this Peter Parker was created to be wish fulfillment for younger readers someone young enough they could relate to but as he grew up with those readers he became something else a role model a hero who we have watched face the trials of growing up only to come out the other side more mature and responsible but in recent years this has changed he's become wish fulfillment for adults who want to cling to their youth someone who never has to grow old but like Wendy we need to realize we shouldn't stay in Neverland it's unnatural it's not right and neither should Peter so maybe this is one long way of saying please for the love of God let Peter Parker grow up again it doesn't make him less relatable in fact it does the exact opposite growing up is the most universal Human Experience of all and when you deny a character built around this experience that growth you deny the very thing that made him work to begin with I'm not saying you have to let Spider-Man grow old and die although there would be heroes like Miles Morales to take up the mantle after him but we should probably stop putting him through endless trauma just to keep him young a little long longer let him finally be the adult he's been trying to be since at least the late 80s this isn't exclusively a Spider-Man problem Batman and Superman went through similar ordeals during the New 52 but whereas DC finally relented and allowed those characters to age a little and become fathers there hasn't been any indication that Spider-Man will have that luxury anytime soon fans have proven time and time again that they would love to see Peter evolve again Marvel just needs to trust them it's a leap of faith that's all it is Miles a leap of [Music] faith

Channel: FilmSpeak

Views: 295,768

Keywords: filmspeak, video essay, ending explained, explained, peter parker is broken, spider-man is broken, the problem with spider-man, spider-man, spiderman, spider man, the problem with mcu spider man, across the spider-verse, why no way home is bad, why spider-verse worked, spiderman video essay, spider man video essay, spider man 2 ps5, spider man 2, the problem with peter parker, mcu video essay, across the spider-verse is a masterpiece, spider man lotus, why no way home failed

Id: KrdkM_YsDec

Length: 28min 29sec (1709 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 12 2023