Game Review: Spider-Man PS4

Fans of Spider-Man will be happy to know that the new PS4 game does for their favorite wall-crawler what the Arkham series did for Batman, but hardcore gamers may be disappointed that in terms of groundbreaking gameplay Spider-Man on PS4 doesn’t swing too high above the watermark that Arkham set. The open world gameplay is heavily indebted to open worlds past, specifically those inhabited by Batman, Ubisoft’s many Assassins, and the Infamous gang. Spider-Man‘s Manhattan is littered with colorful icons indicating side missions to delight, distract, and occasionally bore the player. Of course this is all par for the course for the modern open world gamer. What sets Spider-Man apart is the sweet sublime feeling of swinging through the city streets, a kind of divinely relaxing routine that allows the player to forget their worries and get lost in the fun.

The story will be hard to discuss without spoilers, but I’ll try my hardest to keep this review spoiler-free. Suffice it to say that in general, the narrative takes an awfully long time to reach some familiar places, pitting Spidey against supervillains while his alter ego Peter Parker is dealing with guilt, grief and relationship woes. The game opens with Spidey on the verge of a criminal bust after eight years of work. Once a renowned mob boss is in jail, Spider-Man is forced to deal with the power vortex he’s created. A new supervillain rises to power, Mr. Negative, a photo-negative look-alike who can zombify people by unleashing their inherent darkness. This darkness idea isn’t really explored so much as it is shoehorned in amongst all the other madcap nonsense involving Dr. Otto Octavius and Norman Osborne, characters so thoroughly established that they feel like an odd mix of nostalgia and redundancy here. The story isn’t as artfully crafted as the dialogue, and eventually the crime narrative rubber-bands to a rapid conclusion, one feeling a bit short and sluggish. Thankfully the character moments are charming and nuanced enough to counter-balance these flaws.

Underwhelmed by is offerings, I rushed through the story so I could dig into what I cared about the most, swinging around the city and stopping crimes. Once the story is complete you’ll have plenty of time to explore, collect backpacks, try on new super-powered suits, and do whatever a spider can, even though sometimes ‘whatever a spider can’ feels oddly familiar to ‘whatever a bat did yesterday.’ The stealth mechanics aren’t quite as polished as Arkham‘s, but they get the job done. Combat is a bit looser and doesn’t feel as much like a rhythm/puzzle game as Arkham. Once you get a hang of the many different mechanics and how they can be hybridized to create your own natural rhythm, things get fun and fluid. Sometimes you’ll find yourself scrambling for that perfect swing or shot and inadvertently doing something more spectacular than you could have imagined. That moment of discovery and the glee that comes with it is enough to make any comic book fan feel like a kid again.

For the Spidey Squad this game is a clear no-brainer, but for everyone else I’d offer a caveat. Spider-Man feels more like a game that might have been released prior to Breath of the Wild or The Phantom Pain in terms of its workhorse aplomb. It never tries to push any boundaries or exceed expectations. It merely tries to match them and provide a game worthy of the name Spider-Man. By that metric it succeeds, and likely will pave the way for DLC and sequels that push the game engine to exciting new heights.

Movie Review: Spider-Man: Homecoming

Like Wonder Woman before it, Spider-Man: Homecoming is a fun-filled adventure that falls apart under scrutiny, more a movie theater equivalent of a Disneyland ride than a fully formed story. What keeps the action piping along is the charismatic acting and winsome dialogue that manages to genuinely capture the quippy character of Spider-Man. Star Tom Holland works well, but baddie Michael Keaton shines especially brightly in this flick. It’s just that- as the third film incarnation of Spider-Man in the past fifteen years, and the umpteenth film under the Marvel Cinematic Universe umbrella, certain aspects of the movie feel tired, if not wholly redundant.

Much was said about how Homecoming wouldn’t be an origin story, but in terms of how adept the web-slinger is with his abilities, it might as well be. Spidey stumbles, slips, slides and argues his way out of jams so consistently that he feels more like Spider-Twerp than Man. Again, Keaton is the real star of the show here. Not to disparage Holland’s performance, which is wonderful in its own right, but Keaton pushes the MCU into Oscar-worthy acting, a feat previous performers have failed to accomplish. His sinister sneer and hard-luck, working-class-hero routine alternate keenly to give the MCU something it’s been sorely lacking- a villain with some measure of depth. Keaton has the skill of taking even the most generic dialogue and infusing it with real, relatable character. Holland’s performance, for all its charm, never exceeds the bounds set in Captain America: Civil War.

Beyond the leads, Homecoming’s supporting cast is packed with lovable character actors and comedians. The casting and referential writing do a good job of playing bait-and-switch with the audience, hinting at the potential for certain players to take other forms in future films, but never revealing more than they need to. Most of these players inhabit Peter Parker’s school life, making the movie more coming-of-age comedy than superhero adventure. Compared to other Spider-flicks there’s less time slinging webs, and more time slinging one-liners.

The action is well-conceived, fairly inventive and occasionally well-shot, but never so iconic as the train sequence in Spider-Man 2. The movie is light on melodrama, choosing cerebral comedy and a few brief moments of visceral tension instead. A better Spider-Man movie might have borrowed some of the physical humor of Raimi’s films to fit more snugly into the same vibe as the raw physicality of Keaton’s drama, but that’s more of a nitpick than a glaring error.

The real glaring error is the hovering parental supervision of Tony Stark. The gag here is that Tony has Spidey on “training wheels” protocol, and the storytelling reiterates this fact constantly. Whenever there’s an opportunity for Spidey to be- dare I say, spectacular?- Tony swoops in and provides his trademark brand of ‘do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do’ lecturing. For a hero who was totally okay throwing Spidey against Captain America last time, (not to mention having a ten-year old rebuild his suit in Iron Man 3) this new, sterner Stark is more a deus-ex-killjoy than a wise-cracking mentor. Those hoping for scenes of Tony and Peter soaring through skyscrapers after a winged foe (and solving their differences) will be sorely disappointed.

The messaging of the movie is kind of corrupted by the randomness of Tony’s intrusions and the fact that character motivations stop mattering by the three-quarter mark. Keaton’s Vulture vows to kill Spider-Man around the same time a twist provides reason for him not to, but due to the necessity of a surprisingly sinister car ride scene, this logicality is ignored. Who needs to make sense when you have Keaton acting his ass off? A friend once criticized my writing by saying, “I guess nothing else matters so long as it’s funny,” and I see the point of his sarcasm here. Sometimes an acrobatic hero like Spidey bends so far backwards to get a reaction, the reasoning for it suffers.

This is not to say you will not enjoy Spider-Man. You’ll likely have a blast, as I did, for the most part. This just isn’t that perfect Spider-Man movie fans have been waiting for, in the sense that The Dark Knight is the perfect Batman film for many Bat-fans. Nothing in this movie sings as loudly or as memorably as that great airport fight in Civil War, though overall this story is more consistently enjoyable. And certainly this is leaps and bounds above the travesties of Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. This is more of an improvement on Amazing Spider-Man 1, a fun, watchable entry mostly distinguishable by its villain. But like many a Marvel movie, I was left hoping they’d get to the “really good part” in the next one. Knowing Marvel, there’ll be no short supply of “next ones” to keep that hope alive.

Spider-Man Comedy Podcast!

Do you have Netflix Streaming? Want to try something new? Download my new comedy podcast and commentary track! Simply download the m4a audio file, play it in iTunes or your audio player of choice, and follow the directions. If you’ve ever seen Mystery Science Theater 3000 or listened to RiffTrax, this should be right up your alley. For those poor uninformed masses, here’s the rundown:

• This Spider-Man Comedy Podcast mocks the first episode of the 90’s Spider-Man animated series, available streaming on Netflix.
• The audio file functions as a DVD commentary track to be played while watching the episode of Spider-Man.
• The podcast begins and ends with a sketch. All jokes are written and performed by yours truly, Matt Shore. The podcast was also edited by me. I do not own the rights to anything Spider-related aside from my bug bites.
• In order to ensure that the commentary matches up with the episode, you will have to sync the audio to the video. Lucky for you, I have made the process as simple as possible. Listen to my instructions and wait for me to say “5, 4, 3, 2, 1 – Go!” then press play on Netflix and let the commentary roll.

If you’re interested in more thwips and quips or commentary tracks for any other shows on Netflix streaming or otherwise, feel free to leave a question or a comment below. Thanks, and let me know what you think! Hope it’s funny!

Download the Spider-Man Comedy Podcast Here.

Movie Review: The Social Network

We are entering a new plastic age of cinema. Not only are amusement park rides becoming full-fledged franchises (e.g., Pirates of the Caribbean, the soon-to-be remade Haunted Mansion), Battleship and Monopoly movies loom on the horizon. It is clear that brand reigns supreme in new Hollywood, meaning it is only a matter of time before the epic Clorox and Miracle Whip franchises duke it out on the big screen. The Social Network is a movie based on a website. A website. I can’t stress that enough. But beyond its obvious marketing tie-ins and greedy capitalization on a highly addictive, popular yet soulless service, The Social Network strives to do the impossible: To be a quality film with substance and heart in spite of its mediocre subject matter.

The Social Network is a labor of love from writer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing). Deeply fascinating, complicated and flawed, this film is the result of a calculated and concerted effort from a very skillful wordsmith. Even acclaimed director David Fincher’s normally assertive visual style is shockingly muted in this picture, serving as the vessel for Sorkin’s staggering humor and wit. I would be remiss not to mention that this screenplay contains some of Sorkin’s most brilliant comic dialog, purveyed in a quieter and more lambent form than his trademark snark and walk-and-talks. Given the humble beginnings of our hero, morally ambiguous Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and the hero’s relatively exponential leaps to success, there is something wonderful about watching Sorkin shift from small-stakes social networking to make-or-break business deals on a casual basis, the intensity of Zuckerberg’s focus being his only constant. Much like his characterization of Zuckerberg, Sorkin seems unconcerned with the things that average people admire, focusing his efforts on wholly original, unique and creative goals. After all, his script reads like a theatrical play, and  how often can a screenwriter claim that?

There’s something Shakespearean and tragic about The Social Network, especially since it records a history yet unfinished. (It might be nice to see an aged Sorkin revisit Zuckerberg in his autumn years for Henry the IV, Part 2.) The basic thrust of the narrative takes place during Zuckerberg’s time at Harvard. He wishes to be admired by the public but on his own terms. After a nasty (yet smoothly written) break-up scene, Zuckerberg lashes out at the female university community on the internet- and thus, The Facebook is born. Zuckerberg’s ambition and myopic (read: robotic) focus on personal gain alienate him from the people that helped him achieve his first few steps toward stardom. The story intercuts between Zuckerberg’s rise to power and the legal proceedings that bookend his social life. Like a true tragic figure, Zuckerberg is left to wallow in the wake of his own creation, not as its king, but with the same dependent loneliness of the average person.

Hopping from scene to scene is a real treat as each story event provides palpable drama and a backdrop for hilarious, taut dialog. The only flaws stem from the natural inadequacy of the film’s story structure. How can Sorkin sculpt a proper dramatic ending for a young and still-living public figure? He attempts something subtle and dramatic on his audience in the end, but after a long and emotional narrative, the subtlety may be lost on a crowd expecting more bang for their buck. Sex and hedonism abound in this tale of self-deprecation, indulgence and promiscuity, but don’t be mistaken: this is a thinking man’s frat party. Few characters, including the villains, are allotted few enough traits as to be flat or one-note, save for one deceivingly shallow girlfriend who makes a bizarrely cornball switch from sanity to pyromania in the second half. My personal favorites were the Winklevoss twins, two preppy yet believable douchebags who incite the fire for Facebook in Zuckerberg’s belly only to double over in agony when they realize that the ‘berg stole their idea and made millions. Both played by the same oddly named actor, Armie Hammer, the twins’ Parent Trap-style doubling is one of Fincher’s few masterfully executed visual gags. For the man who flew his camera through a coffee pot in Panic Room, I expected more tricks outside of the few stray beer bottles, but maybe the director intentionally reeled back his cinematographic enthusiasm to draw reverence to Sorkin’s story. In any case, the tone and execution work on a massive scale, and aside from the necessarily muddy nature of the ending, this is an enjoyable film and clearly one of the year’s best.

Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg is without a doubt his finest performance to date, leaps and bounds beyond the average joe schtick that made him famous in Zombieland. His acting is refined, nuanced and another great example of why Fincher is an ace in the hole when it comes to direction. Even as the director’s love for CGI and camera-movement is restrained, his skill as an acting coach pays off in a big way. Rooney Mara’s all-too-brief screentime is populated by a deeply human and relatable performance as Zuckerberg’s first college girlfriend. Her teary-eyes are heartbreaking. Justin Timberlake manages to play a hateworthy dick convincingly (somehow), a true shame considering his abilities as an actor have greatly improved over the years. (I was really disappointed he didn’t get Green Lantern. His knack for physical comedy would have sold the character for me. After all, how many superheroes can Ryan Reynolds play?) The best and most surprising performance might belong to Andrew Garfield, last seen pissing me off in Dr. Parnassus, and soon to be the latest actor to take up the red pajamas of Spider-Man. After his empathetic and dweeby turn in Social Network as Zuckerberg’s socially maligned and malnourished best friend, it’s clear that this boy can fill the shoes of a superhero as well as many more challenging roles to come.

The Social Network is a triumph of character-based dialog but a few notes stray of a perfect symphony. Maybe it’s the nature of the story being told (it’s about a goddamned website, people) but the partnerships at work here are masterfully executed, and I think it would be a mistake not to team Fincher with Sorkin again in the future, perhaps on subject matter that didn’t beat out Lycos or Dogpile for the fast-track. A cerebral and interesting ride, The Social Network proves that even brand-based filmmaking can result in quality entertainment and palpable drama, so long as there’s a foundation of talent to keep everything grounded.