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Riga 1:
<!-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pluc9nHZTM&list=UUQslSXjEPCqi-sv_z4C_lFA a 3 minuti parla di star wars
carrie fisher: riscrittura dialoghi a lei non piaceva perché si sentiva tagliata fuori dal processo.
kershner dice doveva muovere il più possibile al telcamera per creare azione e dove non ptoeva c'era il montaggio, ma non è il suo modo abiutale è quello di george.
kersnher studia fiabe e miti freud jung campbell
3 settimane primadell'uscit aggiunte inquadrature 2/3 nel finale per prolungarlo.
design decò e denso copiato da tutti.
inusuale: battaglia all'inizio climax emotivo alla fine
tema dei cerchi concentrici anelli di mondo orientale paradiso inforno è cloud city simbolismo
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<ref name="ReferenceA">{{cita news|titolo=|lingua=en|autore=|mese=maggio|anno=2005|pubblicazione=|accesso=17 luglio 2013}}</ref>
<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
www.woodyallenpages.com/2012/11/love-letter-to-comedy-broadway-danny-rose-the-woody-allen-pages-review/ www.film.com/movies/ranked-woody-allen-films-from-worst-to-best/2 http://www.woodyallenpages.com/2012/09/totalfilm-lists-50-greatest-woody-allen-characters/
<ref name=commentoaudiodvd/>
<ref name=bluraycomm/>
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/17/111017fa_fact_friend?currentPage=4
http://www.slashfilm.com/film-interview-katherine-sarafian-producer-pixars-brave-talks-controversy-marketing-cars-2-reactions/
http://pixartimes.com/2013/04/02/the-pixar-perspective-on-the-pixar-moment-and-ratatouille/
http://graphics.pixar.com/library/
<nowiki>
{{Film
|titolo italiano=
|titolo originale=
|immagine=
|didascalia=
|lingua originale= [[Lingua inglese|inglese]]
|paese= [[Stati Uniti d'America]]
|titolo alfabetico=
|anno uscita= 2013
|durata=
|tipo colore= colore
|tipoaudio= sonoro
|aspect ratio=
|genere= animazione
|regista= [[]]
|soggetto= [[]]
|sceneggiatore= [[]]
|produttore= [[]]
|produttore esecutivo= [[]]
|casa produzione= [[Pixar Animation Studios]]
|casa distribuzione italiana= [[The Walt Disney Company]]
|storyboard=
|art director=
|character design= [[]]
|animatore= [[]]
|doppiatori originali =
|doppiatori italiani=
|fotografo=
|montatore=
|effetti speciali= [[]]
|musicista=
|scenografo=
|costumista=
|truccatore=
|sfondo=
|cortometraggio=sì
}}
</nowiki>
'''''The Blue Umbrella''''' è un [[cortometraggio]] d'[[animazione al computer|animazione computerizzata]] del [[2013]] diretto da [[Saschka Unseld]].
Il corto racconta la storia d'amore di due ombrelli, uno rosso e l'altro blu, in una città popolata da ombrelli neri e dove piove perennemente.
Direttore tecnico della Pixar, Unseld decise di debuttare come regista dopo aver aver avuto idd.d.d..
Oltre a ricevere il plauso di critica e pubblico,<ref name=jimhill/> ''Tin Toy'' è considerato un'opera rivoluzionaria per la quantità di innovazioni e novità contenute al suo interno, tra cui
l'uso di nuove tecniche di [[rendering]],
Presentato al [[SIGGRAPH]] il 2 agosto [[1988]] in una forma incompleta, fu successivamente il primo cortometraggio d'animazione computerizzata a vincere il [[premio Oscar]].<ref name=jimhill>{{cita news|url=http://jimhillmedia.com/editor_in_chief1/b/jim_hill/archive/2008/08/01/i-can-go-to-disney-and-be-a-director-or-i-can-stay-here-and-make-history.aspx|autore=Jim Hill|pubblicazione=JimHillMedia.com|titolo="I can go to Disney and be a director, or I can stay here and make history"|giorno=31|mese=07|anno=2008|lingua=en|accesso=24 marzo 2011}}</ref><ref name=touch>{{Cita libro|autore=David A. Price|titolo=The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company|giorno=13|mese=05|anno=2008|editore=[[Random House]]|città=New York|url=http://www.amazon.com/Pixar-Touch-Making-Company/dp/0307265757|pagine=304 pp.|lingua=en|ISBN=0-307-26575-7}}</ref> L'opera gettò i semi di quello che sarebbe stato il primo lungometraggio in animazione computerizzata di sempre, ''[[Toy Story - Il mondo dei giocattoli]]''.<ref name=amidi24>{{cita|Amidi|p. 24}}.</ref>
==Trama==
==Produzione==
[[compositing|deep compositing]] (poi sposta nella pagina del compisitng se è troppo)
[[fotorealismo]]
Unseld said he conceptualized the story after finding an abandoned umbrella one day in [[San Francisco]].<ref name=WSJ/> As inspiration, Unseld and his colleagues took photographs of inanimate objects found in city streets throughout [[New York City]], San Francisco, [[Chicago]] and [[Paris, France|Paris]].<ref name=WSJ/>
Pixar's [[Rendering (computer graphics)|rendering]] system was updated to include algorithms capable of rendering new types of lighting and reflection, a technique referred to as global illumination.<ref name=WSJ/><ref>{{Cita web|cognome=Billington|nome=Alex|titolo=First Look: New Pixar Short 'The Blue Umbrella' by Saschka Unseld|url=http://www.firstshowing.net/2013/first-look-pixar-short-blue-umbrella-by-saschka-unseld/|editore=First Look.Net|accesso=7 gennaio 2013}}</ref>
So, when you thought about The Blue Umbrella, did you think about doing it as photorealistic backgrounds from the beginning?
Unseld: Not really. It was funny. During yesterday and today that I realize I actually never thought of it being photo-real initially. I have never thought of that finally until yesterday. The idea came just from the umbrella I found and for a long time I worked on coming up with an idea, a story for an umbrella. The first thing was someone had thrown the umbrella away, and the umbrella tries to get back to its owner, someone breaks up with you and you wanna be with that person. That person just threw you away, but I could never come up with a happy ending to that story.
has nothing to do with that it’s photo-real or not, and then it was on like half a year later or something like this I had started to think of the short more as being about the rain and being a love declaration to the rain, because where I grew up it rains much more than here. And I like the rain a lot. I love cities in the rain, so it — the rain, the rain turns the city into a magical place, and that’s when the idea of city characters coming to life kind of mixed in, that not just the umbrellas come to life when it rains, but the whole city comes to life. So, that was part of a coincidence of me exploring what story I wanna tell in it that it mixed in. And it wasn’t until I actually pitched the story here. The story was kind of in the shape that it is the final film when I pitched it, but I pitched it just verbally with like four pictures to underscore certain story peaks. And then after I pitched it I showed a test I had done, which was at the time unrelated. At the time I had an idea for a music video that is “A City Sings a Song” basically.
So, on my phone I had just filmed a couple of faces I’d seen around my block, loaded them onto the computer and animated to a song. In the pitch after I told the story I said, “By the way, when I said the city comes to life, I had this test I wanted to show you just kind of to make people understand the idea of it and what I mean with it. Balloons don’t jump up. It’s just kind of like this.
So, it was kind of during that pitching process that I realized there is something unique about this thing, and we all started thinking, “What if we do the whole thing photo-real?” So, it had nothing to do with the initial story idea, but it came during the process.
Why did you feel it necessary to have happy ending?
Unseld: If it would be a European art house film it probably wouldn’t have. But ultimately I’m probably too much of a romantic to not have a happy ending. I always have these evil thoughts in the back of my head that if we show it at some old art house festival I just cut off the end and it ends when Blue is there on the side of the street and when they cut, it’s the end credits. But it’s the movies, and I feel like you wanna make people happy. And I wanna give people a good feeling when they go out of a movie and see something. Reality out there is hard enough sometimes already.
I think what you do in a film is you bring the character there. You bring the story to the harsh reality but you end on a positive note of, of hope and a good outlook on life and not a negative outlook. The important thing is just that at one point you go to the harsh reality that sometimes happens, and that’s what it does in the middle when the umbrella is on the ground and it’s nearly exactly the same thing. I saw that one day. But then you go back to happy.
Unseld: It was a kind of collaboration from me, the test I talked earlier about that I had done on my iPhone where I thought it would be a music video. That was a song from Sarah Jaffe, who’s the vocalist in the final piece.
So, here voice had been with me since the very beginning even before I had the story. But she’s a singer-songwriter. I don’t know why she’s so unknown, but she’s a small singer-songwriter from Denton in Texas. And singer-songwriters do a bit of different thing than composers, because the song is three, four minutes long and has one mood and one idea while a score needs to change kind of mood and rhythm on a dime. So, we wanted a composer composing the music, but her being the vocalist, and that ended up being Jon Brion, I love for just the stuff he did on Punch Drunk Love and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and he’s such a light tone with such catchy melodies. So, he scored the whole thing, and Sarah Jaffe is the vocalist. I don’t know, for me it’s nearly like a karma thing that her voice inspired the idea for making a music video with city faces, because I was walking around listening to her through the city and her being the final voice in the film.
You, you mentioned last night that it was hard to do the human faces and so you avoided that. What was the easier part to make look real, and I mean what are some things that you did to make things look more real as well?
Unseld: Um, the easier parts to make look real, good question. I think initially everyone thought the first shot should be easy, but then they ended up not being that easy, because you can see everything in broad daylight. I mean we had a lot of things actually working in our favor to make it look real. First, on that, it’s night [and that] helps a lot. It’s just so much stuff is in darkness. That it rains helps a lot, because it adds just a certain amount of complexity and detail that if it wouldn’t rain you wouldn’t get, and you would look more at all the details of the buildings. And then something I was really interested in using a really shallow depth of field, because for me there’s a beauty in it, and that, of course, blows out the whole background. So you don’t have to build the city into infinity.
the-blue-umbrellaSo, there were a couple of things that really worked in our favor. With– without those we wouldn’t have been able to do it. The depth of field stuff - we didn’t add it, because it’s easier that way. It was something I really wanted to explore, because I think there’s the reality and the beginning where everything is kind of evenly lit and daylight. And then it stays photo-real throughout, but I think there are so many elements of filmmaking that you can use to make something very expressionistic and very kind of lyrical. I wanted it to be more artistic and more old than normally animated movies are. And I think out of focus backgrounds do that. I think they’re nearly painterly with just some red splotch, or blue splotch, or something like this, and the same thing with the neon lights, that it’s so boldly lit. Some shots are just green, or red, or blue. These kinds of things were, I found, really important to kind of make that place magical even though it’s real.
Was Taxi Driver and influence on you?
Unseld: I looked a bit at Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver just stays dreary. There’s a lot of movies set beautifully in cities where it rains. Blade Runner is the same. Blade Runner looks gorgeous, but to certain extent they have a — the world the characters live in is not a beautiful world, but kind of a harsh world, and there’s a bit of beauty to it, but you can never have too much of it.
Well, you go to second color musicals then if you want.
Unseld: Yeah, I mean I love the early Technicolor stuff. It’s amazing. Like there’s a cinematographer called Jack Cardiff, who for me is my favorite ones actually of his is not The Red Shoes, but, Black Narcissus. A lot of the stuff I showed to the lighters was Wong Kar Wai and especially his earlier one Chungking Express, because it’s — I was thinking, “Okay, this is photo-real, but this doesn’t mean anything art direction wise.”
I feel like there’s a lot of stuff in, in especially in the last ten years in live action films. They’ve used a lot of CG that it becomes very unreal. It becomes too polished, and too clean, and it’s a reality that I don’t feel like is real, and it doesn’t feel like it has a history or it has no texture, and it’s — I don’t wanna live in there.
So, I was looking for something that is really colorful and beautiful, but still feels gritty and real, and Chungking Express has that. It’s shot handheld, and it’s shot all on ___location, all with natural light, and the neon lights that are in these Chungking mansions, but it’s beautifully otherwise. And the same thing, but more extended, and that’s what I gave as reference later on is In the Mood for Love, and even as American film, which story wise is a strange piece, but -
Unseld: My Blueberry Nights, but it was shot by the amazing Darius Khondji, and there’s beautiful stuff that I wanted everyone to look at. Where in the font out of focus there is just something on the glass window and just a bit of red, and a bit of blue, and it’s very, it’s very painterly even though it’s real. And I wanted this painterly feel at the end that it’s nearly an abstract film. I mean we still tell a story through mainstream audience, but as much as we can do in art house film within the confines of our audience. I wanted to do an art house film.
Tell us about your pitch process, because I can only imagine how scary that must be to sit there with the brain trust and pitch. Do they let you do your spiel, and then they talk, give you ideas right then and there? Or while you’re giving it do they say, “Well, wait a minute.”
Unseld: That, that would’ve been weird I think. [Laughs] So, the pitch was strange, because I — so, I mean I directed shorts before. I worked in animation for a while, so all that stuff I was used to, but pitching something — I had talks on technical things and all these types of things, so I was used to giving a talk, but telling an emotional story just with words that was something I’ve never done. I don’t work in the story department. I work in the cinematography department and we have visual things to show. That was the one part I was really kind of not scared, but — yeah, maybe a bit scared, but, but what I did then, because I realized well, I’m not good at this. Like the first tries to development I realized I’m not really good at this. So, I prewrote the whole thing and, in the way I would talk, like not really scripted, but in natural language, and I recorded myself on my computer pitching it to my computer. I was alone at home, and I watched it, and it was really embarrassing, and it was really a very intimate moment to be that kind of honest with yourself, but I did that like 50 times. And at one point I was like I still kind of look like I’m mumbling and somehow I’m not really as emotional and expressive as I imagine Pixar people to be. So, if I’m just by myself at home how about I just act really silly and really over-the-top and push it to 200 percent, because no one is watching me.
I think I wouldn’t have been able to do that like in a workshop where you try to improve that, because people would’ve been watching me. So, I did that and then watched myself and realized oh, I was kind of just slightly stronger than before, but just in my head I’m crazy, but if I look at the video it’s like a bit better, but not even as much as I thought it should be. So, that helped a lot. And then when I gave the actual pitch first to a panel of the main directors here and, and heads of story,mand then later to John it was amazing, because they’re amazing listeners.
blue-umbrella-pixar-shortIt made such a big difference pitching to a test — pitching to just people here I knew or some people in development and stuff like this, who do this a lot, but pitching to the panel or to John was amazing, because I could see how they were listening. Like they were not sitting there like this and listening. They were sitting there like this and watching me and following what, what I was talking about and emotionally following me. Suddenly there was this additional energy I had from this, which was amazing.
And then, yeah, they let me pitch the whole thing. I showed the test, and then afterwards they talked about it, but even during the pitch I could see in their faces they were following. Like the worst thing is you tell someone and everyone’s like poker face and you don’t even know, and then you spin out of control. So, just that was amazing, how actively they listened and nearly became part of, of me telling the story.
What was the best note?
Unseld: The best note? Oh, I don’t — it was funny, because there were never any story notes. It was always kind of everyone instantly dived into how fantastic it would be to have this world of umbrellas. And initially we thought maybe we have baby umbrellas and we have kind of loads of different characters there that later on we removed, because we didn’t wanna show the humans, but we wanted to have a contrast between people who hate the rain and someone who loves the rain. So, the people who hate the rain became the other umbrellas. It was relatively straight forward. We didn’t have any story changes through in the pitch process, so there were barely notes in regards to that. During the story process though there was one great note, which wasn’t part of my pitch, and that’s the nice thing about working so much on the story that here, was that the city should help Blue at one point. But that wasn’t part of my initial pitch. They were just watching him and kind of knowing him but they couldn’t do anything.
That was part of your test though, wasn’t it?
Unseld: My test was just the city singing.
Unseld: Actually my pitch was the city being a glee chorus. So, the city was actually singing and changing its song when they meet into a love song. When they get separated the song would change. So, the city was always just a glee chorus, but they were sitting in the back seat. And then during the story process we were like they should do something. Otherwise, I mean, it may be being creepy, it’s kind of … you’re like, “Do something!” And then we needed to figure out ways how they could believably do something.
Since it’s photo-realistic, did you think about that when you did your camera that you wanted to, to take from live action, some of the camera?
Unseld: Yeah, the photo-real thing I realized is not just how it looks, it’s how you shoot it. It’s how you move the camera. I was thinking more of it to a certain extent like a documentary where it feels like the set exists beyond what I shoot. There’s even shots in there or editing in there where we do a jump cut, where it’s — or not a jump cut — where kind of it’s as if you were to do a documentary, but the shot is like ten seconds long and you only want the beginning or the end, and in a documentary you would just cut out the middle. And there’s a shot when they cross the street where we do that. It influences the editing and influences how you shoot it. We only wanted to shoot it from places where you could actually stand with a camera and use long lenses, so it doesn’t feel weird that you stand next to two people just meeting. So, it influenced a lot of cinematography and editing decisions that it feels real and not just that it looks real.
<ref name=collider>{{cita news|url=http://collider.com/saschka-unseld-blue-umbrella-interview/|titolo=Director Saschka Unseld Talks THE BLUE UMBRELLA, Photo-Realistic Animation, Writing a Happy Ending, the Importance of Music in the Piece and Influential Films|autore=Dave Trumbore|lingua=en|pubblicazione=Collider|giorno=30|mese=aprile|anno=2013|accesso=8 maggio 2013}}</ref>
<ref name=collider/>
http://www.comicus.it/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=54737:pixar-nuovi-dettagli-per-the-blue-umbrella&Itemid=101
http://www.comicus.it/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=54499:rivoluzione-alla-pixar-con-the-blue-umbrella&Itemid=101
http://blogs.indiewire.com/animationscoop/immersed-in-movies-pixar-goes-photoreal-for-blue-umbrella-short
http://www.pixarpost.com/2013/03/interview-with-saschka-unseld-director.html
www.pixarpost.com/2013/04/mueventday2.html
http://www.pixarpost.com/2013/04/mueventday1.html
==Distribuzione==
==Accoglienza==
==Riconoscimenti==
* [[Premi Oscar]]: [[Oscar al miglior cortometraggio d'animazione|Miglior cortometraggio d'animazione]]
==Edizioni home video==
==Citazioni e riferimenti==
===Citazioni e parodie===
== Note ==
<references />
==Bibliografia==
* {{Cita libro|autore=Amid Amidi|altri=John Lasseter (prefazione)|titolo=The Art of Pixar Short Films|giorno=25|mese=02|anno=2009|editore=Chronicle Books|città=New York|pagine=160 pp|lingua=en|ISBN=0-8118-6606-4|cid=Amidi}}
* {{Cita libro|autore=David A. Price|titolo=The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company|giorno=13|mese=05|anno=2008|editore=[[Random House]]|città=New York|pagine=304 pp|lingua=en|ISBN=0-307-26575-7}}
* {{Cita libro|autore=Anthony A. Apodaca, Larry Gritz|titolo=Advanced RenderMan: Creating CGI for Motion Pictures|giorno=22|mese=12|anno=1999|editore=Morgan Kaufmann Publishers|città=New York|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=3jM5EZC1rs4C&pg=PA509&lpg=PA509&dq=tin+toy+pixar+%22rm-1%22+machine&source=bl&ots=Tkf9VoN8FT&sig=gCwg7wXi_yPg3WcJKix5ae2f_fE&hl=en&ei=73tfTLKUEt6gOPef9LwJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false|pagine=560 pp|lingua=en|ISBN=1-55860-618-1|cid=Apodaca, Gritz}}
==Voci correlate==
* [[Lista dei cortometraggi Pixar]]
* [[Oscar al miglior cortometraggio d'animazione]]
* [[
== Collegamenti esterni ==
* {{en}} [http://www.pixar.com/short_films/Theatrical-Shorts/Tin-Toy ''Tin Toy'' - Sito ufficiale]
* {{Imdb|film|0096273}}
{{Pixar}}
{{Portale|Animazione|Cinema|Disney}}
<pre>[[Categoria:Cortometraggi Pixar]]
[[Categoria:Cortometraggi statunitensi]]
[[Categoria:Film privi di dialoghi]]</pre>
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E ora che si fa?
Si fa la coppia spostata.
Sposata da quanto?
Non lo so, abbastanza da essere stanchi delle rispettive compagnie. Di solito gli sposi giovani stanno sempre per i fatti loro; per quelli scafati è diverso. Lei mantiene le relazioni sociali, lui va in avanscoperta al tavolo dei salatini.
Non possiamo scambiarci?
Non mi piace parlare con gli estranei. Tu sei più brava in questa cose.
Nel parlare di aria fritta dici?
No, nella conversazione casuale.
Ah, si dice così adesso?
Dilla come ti pare, io vado. Si stanno già finendo i cracker al formaggio.
Preferivo i salatini.
ASM
Origini segrete - La genesi
Crescita esponenziale - La storia
Resti della tela - L'eredità
All'alba del nuovo millienno, il personaggio Marvel che sembrava più idoneo a traghettare la casa delle idee nel nuovo secolo sembrava proprio l'Uomo Ragno.
E proprio quando, dopo decenni di magagne legali che avevano impedito a registi come James Cameron di trarne un adattamento, il film è in procinto di portare a casa tanti nuovi amichetti con cui giocare, il padrone di casa non può farli entrare perché il salotto buono è in condizioni pietose: sottotrame che si trascinano mollemente da anni e personaggi ormai fuori dalla loro caratterizzazione originaria. Insomma, gli anni novanta. L'unica soluzione è chiamare la colf, possibilmente dell'est, che si sa che puliscono meglio.
Ai boss Marvel viene in mente un nome: Joseph Michael Straczynski (sì, ho guardato su wikipedia come si scrive), prolifico sceneggiatore televisivo - sua la serie fantascientifica [i]Babylon 5[/i] - con un passato da giornalista e da poco debuttato nel mondo dei fumetti con l'acclamato [i]Rising Stars[/i]. Un volto inedito, a suo agio con i meccanismi del fantastico e con idee nuove, in grado di rassettare il salotto buono in tempo per l'arrivo degli ospiti. E ha pure un cognome dell'est. La scelta perfetta.
Superpoteri - Perché è importante
Il numero 500 e lo splendido dittico sul futuro
il numero sull'11 sett.
realizzato con affetto sincero e un po' troppa retorica - giustificata dalla vicinanza temporale all'evento - il fumetto è stato accusato di aver snaturato la natura di alcuni personaggi: a molti è sembrato illogico che un personaggio come il dottor Destino - dittatore e genocida - potesse venire a piangere sulle macerie delle torri. In una intervista del 2008, lo scrittore si sarebbe poi discolpato dalla scelta dei cattivi: "Io avevo dato alla Marvel una lunga lista di supercattivi, sono stati loro a scegliere quelli che appaiono nell'albo".
Al di là delle considerazioni basate sul gusto personale
È tra la fine della tenuta di Romita e l'arrivo di Deodato che Straczynski ha cominciato a perdere smalto e le trame gettate all'inizio della sua gestione si sono ingarbugliate in storie faragionose e presuntuosette come neanche un Recchioni a caso.
Creatore di cattivi risibili e poco a suo agio nel gestire il grande bagaglio dei personaggio ragneschi, lo scrittore si focalizza sui protagonisti ed è proprio sulla parte umana che la cura Straczynski ha sortito gli effetti più benefici e per la quale l'autore è ricordato:
la relazione con Mary Jane, costruita come pochi altri erano riusciti a fare prima, attraverso realisti alti e bassi, e il grande, immenso lavoro fatto sul personaggio di zia May
Sì, non era un periodo sincopato come lo è oggi e quella di Romita Jr. è sempre stata una matita veloce, ma la resistenza dell'italo-americano è nondimeno invidiabile e crea continuità, coesione e un senso di "quadro generale" che difficilmente si vede nell'industria statunitense.
Se si pensa che nello stesso periodo Frank Quietly, all'opera sugli X-Men di Grant Morrison, non reggeva più di tre numeri di seguito e le sceneggiature di Grant Morrison vennero disegnate a turno dai più disparati artisti,
A differenza di altri disegnatori dal fiato lungo, il tratto di Romita non è mai stato depauperato o svilito dalle scadenze imminenti, come accadde per il Bagley di Ultimate Spider-Man.
una costruzione della relazione tra Peter e MJ che lo stesso autore contribuirà a disfare nella saga Ancora un altro giorno. (eredità)
Zia May è tornata a essere l'imbarazzante vecchia nel mirino del reparto di geriatria
Tutte cose che non sono più presenti nelle attuali storie del personaggio. E forse proprio per questo la gestione S-R è così importante.
I honestly believe that had J. Michael Straczynski’s Amazing Spider-Man run ended with his collaborator John Romita Jr., his time on Marvel’s iconic web-crawler would have gone down as one of the great runs. Sure, it is flawed – sometimes significantly so. However, if you divorce it from Sins Past and the mess of crisis crossover tie-in issues and awkward continuity reboots that followed, Straczynski’s early run was bold, exciting and entertaining enough to get away with doing something relatively new to Peter Parker. Given that the run includes the five hundredth issue headlined by the hero, that’s quite an accomplishment in-and-of itself. It’s not perfect, and I don’t think it’s as strong as many of the runs happening simultaneously at Marvel, but it is an intriguing direction for the pop culture icon.
How many iconic villains do you spy dere?
Note: The fourth hardcover also includes the start of Mike Deodato’s run. I am going to cover those issues separately. This review or retrospective is going to be concerned with the second half of the collaboration between John Romita and J. Michael Straczynski, culminating in The Amazing Spider-Man #508.
You can tell that Straczynski was consciously trying to do something new. Outside of a short storyline featuring a usurper hijacking Doctor Octopus’ gimmick, the familiar villains are largely absent from Straczynski’s run, reduced to a series of on-panel cameos during Spidey’s time-travelling adventures in the five hundredth issue. I have to say that I don’t mind this approach. After all, there are plenty of great stories featuring these characters, so it’s refreshing to see a writer resolving to create his own characters and tell his own story relatively free of these characters. (Indeed, when Straczynski did stories featuring iconic characters like Norman Osborn or the Kingpin, his run became a lot more awkward and convoluted.)
A tangled web…
Straczynski seems to relish moving Peter out of his element, so to speak. One story even has the hero visiting the desert, which is quite literally outside of his comfort zone. “The problem with the desert is that there’s nothing to swing from,” he explains. While the rest of the fish-out-of-water moments are arguable more metaphorical than literal, there’s still a sense that Straczynski is pulling the hero quite far outside of his comfort zone.
The story arc Digger is perhaps the closest to a “traditional” story in The Amazing Spider-Man. It features a cookie-cutter villain with an origin so stereotypical that it’s handled in the space of a few pages. (Dead bodies + “mass grave for illegally dumping chemicals from several nearby factories” + gamma bomb = instant villain.) It also allows Spider-Man to mess with mobsters rather than demi-gods. However, the bulk of the story seems built around how outmoded everything is.
Mirroring one another…
The villain was murdered in 1957, and so is actually older than Spider-Man, and he spends most of the issue as a grumpy old man complaining about how things used to be. “Has the whole freaking world gone nuts?” the villain demands. “Now whaddya got? Crap music about kids shooting kids like it was a good thing, stupid-looking baggy pants, lousy service, nobody thinks the world’s gonna get any better and there’s no way out.”
It’s no coincidence that the character comes from years before Spider-Man was created. His backwards-looking nostalgia is, to Straczynski, the antithesis of what The Amazing Spider-Man needs. Spider-Man is positioned against Digger, perhaps allowing Straczynski to justify his attempts to update the character and to pull Spider-Man into the twenty-first century by updating concepts and refusing to adhere to archaic models like Digger.
Don’t say they never do things as a couple…
Instead, Straczynski seems to focus on Peter’s place within the wider tapestry of the Marvel Universe. There’s a lot of rather strange and wonderful overlaps between Peter and other random heroes, many of which seem quite surreal whether inside or outside of context. The time-travel adventure of the anniversary issue isn’t brought around by the machinations of Doctor Octopus or the Kingpin. Instead, it’s the Faceless Ones (traditionally Thor bad guys) and Dormannu (Dr. Strange’s arch foe). At an airport, Spidey doesn’t cross paths with the Green Goblin, but Doctor Doom. When a strange new threat forces him into an enemy mine, it isn’t with Venom – but with Loki, Thor’s brother.
In fact, the lead up to the five hundredth issue – a pretty major milestone for any comic book – is tellingly not focused around Peter Parker. The issue just before the big event has Peter responding to a massive mystical attack on New York that manages to draw in the Avengers, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. The big hero of the fight isn’t Peter Parker. It’s Stephen Strange. “Protect the city,” Strange advises his allies. “But leave Dormannu to me.”In any other book, having a guest star step in to hijack the issue directly before a major anniversary would seem weird, but Straczynski actually makes it make sense.
Strange times…
That issue, despite not featuring an event revolving around Peter, tells us a lot about him. In a way, it reminds me of those great event tie-ins Ann Nocenti and John Romita used to do on Daredevil during the eighties, where the character would try to help face the big event in his own way – rather than tying into another book or anything. Here, this fight reaffirms something that we always knew about Peter’s character. “No one fights a lone battle in my town,” he vows. And, somehow, that seems like the perfect Spider-Man moment amidst a massive amount of carnage.
Even the most conventional bad guy of the run, the time-displaced zombie monster gangster Digger, doesn’t necessarily trace his roots to the traditional Spider-Man bad guys. He’s created in the most mundane manner possible by weapon testing a gamma bomb, the corner stone of the Hulk’s mythology. In fact, the entire Digger storyline seems to exist to pit Spider-Man against a stand-in for the Hulk, the archetypes of unstoppable force and implacable man in the mythical Marvel Universe. In fact, Mary Jane and Peter discuss the green goliath explicitly. “Could you really beat the Hulk?” she asks. “Yeah,” he replies. “Yeah, I could. But the only way to do it, to really stop him, would be to kill him.”
A lean, green fighting machine…
(As a side note, Straczynski returns again to the theme of the hero killing. It’s something the writer also handled in his short run on The Brave and the Bold, with Barry Allen taking up a gun to kill for his country. Throughout his Amazing Spider-Man run, Straczynski seems to refuse to explicitly rule out the idea that Spidey could kill. Dex stops him from making the decision with Morlun. He feeds Shathra to the angry spiders. Digger doesn’t count as alive. They are all technicalities, but Straczynski is careful never to explicitly state that Spidey must save the villain. It’s an interesting take, and one I’m surprised isn’t discussed more often.)
Straczynzki seems to quite like the idea of contextualising Spider-Man in the shared Marvel Universe, as if to outline his place in the pantheon. Straczynski is not concerned with Spider-Man as the centre of his own universe, but really where he fits within the grand scheme of things. By comparing and contrasting the hero, Straczynski hopes to really define him, and to articulate his role in this impressively vast fictional universe.
Of gods and men…
Some of these ideas are quite ingenious, despite how bizarre they might seem. Teaming up Spider-Man and Loki seems quite surreal on the surface. Spider-Man is, after all, a vigilante who deals with street crime. Loki is a literal god. However, Straczynski brings the two together to inform and colour one another. As Spider-Man himself concedes, “I hate admitting that I can relate to him. We both share the burden of having great power and using it on the periphery.” It’s a thematic idea that feels quite strange… and yet works very well. In fact, Straczynski even has the villain Morwen identify Spider-Man as a far more mischievous trickster than Loki. “Spider-Man is a born agent of chaos,” Morwen advises the Asgardian, who looks quite dejected.
It’s also great fun to see Straczynski write Loki. The writer is responsible for one of the truly great Thor runs in recent memory, and he seems to understand the trickster god wonderfully well. “Loki, whose side are you on, anyway?” Spidey demands at one point. “My side,” the god responds. Later on, he takes exception to being called a bad guy. “I’m not evil, you vile little creature, I’m… complicated.” It’s great characterisation, and it makes me want to crack open Straczynski’s Thoromnibus again.
A Bruce Campbell cameo waiting to happen…
And then there’s Doctor Strange, who serves as the spiritual touchstone for Peter here, literally guiding him through a magical mystery tour of Peter’s life. While Ezekiel is teased as a trickster mentor to Peter, Straczynski seems to suggest that Doctor Stephen Strange is Peter’s true spiritual guide. The character turns up repeatedly in this short run, and it’s clear that Straczynski has a fondness for him. In fact, the writer was supposed to write a miniseries featuring the character, teased within these pages, that took quite some time to eventually happen. Still, he did go on to play a significant role in Straczynski’s Thor.
It still feels strangely appropriate to use Strange in this way as part of the Amazing Spider-Man mythos. After all, Strange was the other major Marvel creation of artist Steve Ditko, the artist who helped create and define everyone’s favourite wall-crawler. With it’s interest in Strange, Straczynski’s Amazing Spider-Manfeels like something of an attempt to strengthen the bond between the two characters who are children of the same father.
A tangled web, eh?
Of course, this emphasis on the strange and mystical part of the shared universe serves a purpose. One of the things I do really admire about Straczynski’s run is that – five hundred issues in – he’s not afraid to question one of the most iconic origins in pop culture. I noted last time that part of the reason this works so well is because Straczynski is very careful not to bulldoze over every writer who came before him. Instead, he simply opens the door to the possibility that Spider-Man’s origin might include a mystical element.
Ezekiel, the broken mentor figure from the run, even explicitly states that it’s not an exclusive option – that this new suggested alternative origin doesn’t diminish what came before or invalidate it. “Consider it like having an eccentric uncle who visits from time to time and gives you a quarter each time,” he suggests. “Maybe he’s nuts, but that doesn’t mean you can’t spend the money.” Ezekiel acknowledges it’s a hard sell, telling Peter, “I know you’re scientifically inclined, and I known you don’t want to believe that your powers are in any way totemistic in nature or origin. I get that.”
Anansi boys…
There are mystical forces at play here, but Stracznski doesn’t force the issue. Ezekiel is revealed to more than just a kindly old man, but instead a cynical individual with his own agenda – something that throws everything he says into doubt. He talks a good game, but the character has a knack for manipulation – notice how we see him carefully play Mary Jane using his observational skills. It’s quite possible that he’s doing something similar to Peter. At the same time, there’s too much supporting evidence – from mystical visions to talking spiders – to completely dismiss everything he says.
Peter even flat-out asks, “What’s the truth? The magic, or the science?” He gets an answer that suggests bothare, to an extent – the truth is whatever one chooses to believe. It’s a nice way of toying with an established cornerstone of the mythos without upsetting the apple cart too much. I also think it’s a wry meta-fictional comment on the nature of comic book characters. Written and illustrated by countless writers and artists over the years, with multiple conflicting portrayals, which version of the character is the real one? All of them, or none of them, or some of them? I think that it’s in the eye of the beholder – which interpretation a given fan allows to influence their own internalised version of the character.
Eze does it…
That said, I do think that Straczynski goes a little too far here when he ties Spider-Man to the African spider god Anansi. It’s a nice touch – one foreshadowing the bond between Spider-Man and Loki – but it feels perhaps too much. One of the better aspects of Peter Parker is the fact that he’s not a god or a billionaire or a super soldier. He’s just a kid with some spider powers, rather than some body who inherited the power of an ancient god. As Loki notes when he’s approached by Morwen, “Odd that she should be drawn to you. You are inconsequential. Powerless. A mere mortal.” After all, the idea that Peter is the host to an ancient god a little too similar to the character of Donald Blake, isn’t it?
Still, I like some of the observations and logic here. In particular, I like the idea of the spider as a predator, even if it might seem a little counter-intuitive at first. Ezekiel states, “We’re both children of the spider, Peter. Both hunters.” If you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense, with Spider-Man “patrolling”the city like an apex predator, hunting down criminals through the urban jungle. It’s a nice and inventive interpretation of a classic idea that works really well – and I think it’s touches like this that make Straczynski’s run so interesting, even when it is flawed.
Whatever happened to the Spider-Man of tomorrow?
I am also fond of the idea that Peter was given power (or chosen to receive it) because he understands weakness, “because having once been prey, he would never allow himself to become such again.” It’s a nice idea that was cleverly worked into Captain America: The First Avenger, that the weak man knows the true value of strength. It also explains why Peter is still focused on relatively mundane street crime – he chooses to be, because he knows what the people living in the urban environment have to live with. He’s more rooted in the everyday reality of New York life than Thor or Tony Stark.
Still, there are some problems with Straczynski’s run. He falls back on some of the same crutches here as he did in the first half – including overplaying the importance and threat of a new foe. Much like Morlun, Shathra succeeds in provoking a rage in the normally flippant hero. “Normally I’d be making wisecracks right now,” he states, as takes her on. “But I don’t.” It feels a little convenient that she seems to take on the same core attributes as Morlun – we’re told she “does not tire, does not stop.” It feels like Straczynski just copied and pasted the character over.
Shathra Khan’t!
There are other awkward moments and touches. While the first half of the run was filled with over-earnest “after school” specials about social problems that Spider-Man couldn’t solve by punching in the face, the second volume isn’t immune to the problem. It feels a little better, because at least the idea is a bit more nuanced than “drugs are bad” and “homelessness is also bad.” Spider-Man learns first-hand about “the Doctrine of Unintended Consequences”, the idea that that his actions can have unforeseen long-term effects. It’s hardly a novel idea, but it fits well with some of the ideas that Straczynski toys with - what happens next, after you accept the basic tenants of Spider-Man?
Ezekiel teased Spider-Man about what came after “with great power comes great responsibility”, and here we see the character teasing Spider-Man about the limits of his approach to justice. “To protect the public is to not abandon anyone, you know,” the old man tells him – and it’s a valid statement. The problem is that it’s never really followed up. Ezekiel is running this scheme to help people out of prison, and yet he still feels like he has done nothingwith his life towards the climax of the character arc. It feels like mixed messages.
Goddamn it!
It doesn’t help that Straczynski writes the most cringe-worthy “smart people” dialogue that I have ever read. Ezekiel is supposed to be helping prisoners who used their time in prison to educate and improve themselves. Unfortunately, the only way that Straczynski can illustrate that a character is literate is by giving them ridiculously pretentious nonsensical dialogue, as if they swallowed a thesaurus. Knowledge and comprehension are two different skill sets, and self-improvement has to be more than simply regurgitating the dictionary. Straczynski doesn’t show us anything more substantial.
Still, these are somewhat less severe this time around, if only because they are tempered. His stories featuring children seem a bit more genuine this time around, rather than the shallow cliché-fests in the first half of the run. It’s still hard to suppress a groan whenever we spend an extended amount of time with Peter Parker as a teacher, because we know that Straczynski is liable to teach us about some “very important issue.”
They’ve made their bed…
There’s also the issue of Mary Jane. Straczynski brings Mary Jane back into Peter’s life, after spending a significant portion of his run making meta-textual criticisms of how the character is frequently used. Don’t get me wrong, he creates a wonderful sense of Peter and Mary Jane as a couple, but Mary Jane never feels quite as well realised as, for example, Straczynski’s Autn May. Straczynski seems to make some astute criticisms of the way some writers handle the character, but doesn’t make any real attempt to fix them.
Aunt May observes, “You haven’t played a character, MJ, you’ve only played things that move the story ahead.” It’s a valid criticism of how some writers have used Mary Jane, but the problem is that Straczynski doesn’t quite fix that problem. Maybe the best is yet to come, though. He shifts Mary Jane’s goals from the shallow “I wanna be a star” to the more sincere “I wanna be an actress”, so maybe the true development for the character is all being seeded here and will pay off down the line.
Then and now…
I also think it’s worth pausing to reflect on how well Straczynski writes Peter Parker’s inner voice. His monologues and his dialogue are all wonderfully cheeky and witty. The writer has a great grasp of Peter as a character, particularly his wandering mind. Highlights include Peter wondering about superhero insurance cover, and even worrying about worrying too much. He even takes the time to help his foes correctly spell his name. “Note the hyphenated form,” he advises Digger.
There’s a wonderful sense of fun in these issues, and it’s something that would fade from the series with the tie-ins to Civil War and everything else going on. “How do you do that?” an airport security guard asks Doctor Doom at one point. “Speak in all capitals like that?” At another point, we pause to join Loki and Spider-Man eating some hotdogs on the rooftops of New York, a rather absurd and yet cheerful sight.
She’s got Loki pinned down…
I remarked earlier that – had the run ended here – I think it would be regarded as one of the truly great Amazing Spider-Man runs. Sure, there are dangling plot threads left (Mary Jane’s career, the bad future), but most of the balls set in motion by Straczynski’s opening arc have been neatly tidied up. So neatly tidied up that they’ve have to be messily resurrected for the upcoming The Other crossover. In fact, I am still hugely fond of these issues, even knowing the creative turmoil lying ahead.
John Romita Jr. continues to be the perfect penciller for this run. Although the decline in quality after his departure would arguably be down to a host of other factors, I still think that Romita’s artwork really made the title what it was, effortless blending the fantastic with the relatively mundane with tremendous skill. Nobody goes from illustrating Asgard to the Bronx with as much ease as Romita. I know his artwork is divisive, but I am a massive fan.
Till the end…
And so, this section of the run is over. After this point, things get a bit messy. Then they get a lot messy. Still, Straczynski and Romita Jr. delivered a rather nice (albeit flawed) run on The Amazing Spider-Man. It doesn’t quite measure up to other series at the same time (like Morrison’s New X-Men or Milligan’s X-Statix), but it is very engaging and very interesting stuff. I’m not sure it would rank as my favourite Spider-Man run, but it is perhaps the most ambitious. And I think that’s really something.
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