I disagree though (with your first part, I don't really see Peter as a selfish dick.) Selling a compound that is essentially a hardened, flexible steel that is only temporary...the uses are limitless from law enforcement to construction (temporary holding while materials set or are rivited or whatever) to whatever. It wouldn't have to even look like it was tied back to Peter at all.  Besides, criminals regularly ask why would such an industrialist ever consider putting on a costume to fight crime? Aunt May would be totally safe. 

If someone did ask if it was similar to Spider-Man's webs...just point out that the formula was stolen.  Again, as you said, simple answer.

Any writer of a story can go back and forth with this or that, but it gets to the point it can detract from a movie and loses the point of what the movie was about. The first Spider-Man wasn't about web shooters or Peter beign a genius. It wouldn't have added anything to the film. The second film definitely demonstrated Peter's intelligence and did add to the film.

Brian wrote:
The second film definitely demonstrated Peter's intelligence and did add to the film.

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Close.  The second film had recognizably intelligent people (Drs Octavius and Connors) SAY that Peter was "brilliant, but lazy"...but Peter never demonstrated intelligence that I remember seeing.  Even at the end he relied on Octavius to formulate the plan and execute the plan to save the city. 

The closest we come to Peter's intelligence being "demonstrated" that I can recall is when he appears knowlegable while interviewing Octavius, but that might simply be a case of a good journalist doing his homework in a professional manner.  If a journalist interviews Stephen Hawking and asks intelligent questions, that doesn't put the journalist on Hawking's level.

Stephen wrote:
It's sort of like in the story of Peter Pan. When you no longer believe, you can no longer fly. You grow up and move on. But you don't become Captain Hook and destroy Never Land and have Wendy raped and turn Michael into a villain.

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[Applause]

••

"Move on" is the key phrase. Imagine an adult complaining that Barney the dinosaur doesn't meet his intellectual requirements. Would this be a cue to the makers of Barney to turn the show more "edgy" and "dark" -- or would it be a cue for that "adult" to seriously examine his thinking?

(And, yes, I admit that I do not know if BARNEY is even still being produced.)

(And, yes, I admit that I do not know if BARNEY is even still being produced.)

Ultimate Barney is on hiatus. Barney: Origin is only delayed, while Barney: War Zone is wrapping up in a hardcover one-shot. Barney Corps launches next month.

IMP.

Peter's webshooters require us to accept a lot: he has to have access to the materials to build the shooters themselves, as well as the cartridges, plus the raw material to produce the fluid; he has to have the means to inject the fluid into the cartridges under enormous pressure and subsequently seal the cartridge; he has quality control down to the point that in 50 years of published history he has never had a cartridge fail catastrophically, releasing all of its contents at once...

And he has to do all that on a minimal budget. 

But Mirror Master never sold his technology to make himself rich, he used it to rob banks.  Ditto pretty much the rest of Flash's Rogues Gallery, any one of whom would make more money selling their weapon designs than they ever would robbing banks.  How far does this line of thinking get you before there are no stories left to tell, or you've reduced superhero comics to the modern-day equivalent of the western, with good guys and bad using no more than readily available technology and equipment. 

Bottom line is that if Spider-Man never sold his web formula it must be because it has no value to anyone but himself IN HIS WORLD.  What value it might have in our world is moot.  He doesn't live here.

"Close.  The second film had recognizably intelligent people ..[snip]... that doesn't put the journalist on Hawking's level."

All relative points. I was sold because of the change in attitude by Octavious from the beginning of the interiew to the end where they are having dinner and Octavious is treating Peter as a contemporary. That isn't something you would expect simply because Peter is good at interviewing.

Anyway, perhaps you needed more. As a regular audience member, I was sold. But, you prove the point that some audience members do need more and can't automatically accept a concept. Civilians may not have been able to accept Peter developing and using his own web shooters as a high school student. We don't know that. But sometimes you have to take chances, but sometimes you have to play it save when dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Brian wrote:
But sometimes you have to take chances, but sometimes you have to play it save when dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars.

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And sometimes you have to embrace the source material.  Remember the ad campaign for Superman:The Movie?  "You'll believe a man can fly".  Why not expect that level of commitment from moviemakers when they take on superhero properites? 

The first movie had Peter going "Shazam!" to try to make his webshooters operate.  This didn't make him look like a genius, it made him look like an idiot.  A sequel that doesn't SHOW us he's a genius but rather implies quietly that he's brilliant (but lazy!) doesn't convince me that the moviemakers bought into the concept of his genius.  They had the villain of the piece (however sympathetic he may have been by that point) become the hero of the movie at the end, complete with realization of need, plan of action, and noble sacrifice.  At no point does Peter's intelligence come into play.  He doesn't even get to be the guy who suggests that the river might be sufficient to drown the device!  Nothing!  If he was cut from the scene and his lines were given to Mary Jane, the scene would play out almost exactly as presented. 

Yes, I would say I needed more.  Time and again in the comics (and in the old 1960s cartoons) Spider-Man defeats much more powerful opponents because he's smart enough to overcome the raw might of his opponents; he comes up with a device, a formula, a plan, a ruse, something.  In this movie he was a spectator.  I needed more than that.