These movies are full of silly coincidences, even more so than the comics.
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Marvel/DC
Viltrumite — 9 years ago(December 12, 2016 01:17 PM)
These movies are full of silly coincidences, even more so than the comics.
Harry Obsorn's best friend and father both get superpowers on the same day, in completely unrelated circumstances, on the day the two of them met for the first time, no less
Otto Octavius, Peter's idol, begins working for Oscorp. Not implausible, given the kind of work he does. A mishap takes place while Peter Parker is there. Octavius becomes 'Dr Octopus'.
Octavius robs a bank that Peter Parker and his aunt just happen to be in. Seriously?! I'm aware that certain plot-driven coincidences happen in movies, but this was taking the piss. And that looked like a pretty serious bank, not like a high street branch. Do broke old ladies often go to places like that for loans?
Otto Octavius is sent by Harry Osborn to question Peter Parker about Spider-Man in return for tritium, ignorant of the fact that Parker is Spider-Man. Why Octavius didn't simply take the tritium instead of asking for it is beyond me, but whatever. When Octavius tracks Peter down he throws a car at him, which would have killed him had he been anyone
but
Spider-Man. I suppose we could chalk that up to the man being insane, plus, it looked cool.
Mary Jane just happens to be engaged to the son of Peter Parker's boss, and seems to know him independently of Peter. Not impossible, but unlikely. This is NYC, not some hillbilly town where everyone knows each other. Where the hell would a two-bob actress meet a famous astronaut, anyway? It's been years since I've seen this movie. Now that I think about it, though, MJ's new man being Jameson's son was virtually pointless as far as the plot was concerned, unless you count the setup for that admittedly hilarious joke that showed just how stingy JJJ is. The guy could have been anyone. Jameson never even made some offhanded remark in the next movie about his son being jilted in favour of Parker.
Not a coincidence, but just plain stupid: Harry thinks Spider-Man, who is thought by most people to be a good guy, killed his father because he caught him laying Norman's body on the sofa. This might qualify as a smoking gun, if Mary-Jane, one of Harry's friends, couldn't confirm that Spider-Man had saved her from the Green Goblin on the night of Norman's death. The very same Green Goblin who killed a bunch of Harry's father's work colleagues while Harry was there! Granted, he was unconscious at the time, I think, but come on. Do the characters in these movies not talk to each other between scenes? I know Harry was grieving, but use your head, man. One need not be a deductive genius to add up the facts and arrive at a sensible conclusion.
Harry accidentally discovers his father's goblin stash by throwing something at a hallucination? I bet this confused some small children who saw this movie. They probably though that "Norman" actually was Norman's ghost, and not a figment of Harry's imagination.
In the third movie, we discover that Uncle Ben was in fact killed by some other guy, not the actual thief from the first movie. Fair enough. That guy, who has some connection to Peter Parker, ends up with superpowers. Gosh, what are the odds?
Gwen Stacy, a girl in Peter's class is coincidentally the object of Peter's professional rival's lust. She ends up in a life threatening situation at the exact time when her father and her unwanted admirer just happened to be there.
A meteor carrying an alien creature just happens to crash within metres of PETER. beep PARKER!!!!!!!!!!! Come on, guys, this is just plain lazy.
After being rejected by Parker, aforementioned alien creature happens to fall into the lap of Parker's work rival. Seconds after.
I'm sure there are more, but you get the message. -
Xaeden — 9 years ago(January 07, 2017 08:00 PM)
Why Octavius didn't simply take the tritium instead of asking for it is beyond me, but whatever.
Probably because the original experiment didn't call for that much tritium so there was no expectation that Harry just had so much more of it lying around when it was super rare and super expensive. Rather, I would assume they both understood that Harry had to buy more of it and going after Spider-man while he waited for Harry to do that fit his priorities anyway since he didn't want Spider-man around when he went to conduct the second test so Spidey could mess it up again.
Octavius' last line to Harry on the balcony was to tell him to have it ready. At the absolute bare minimum that would mean getting it from Oscorp because there's no way he'd have it at home, in his personal safe to begin with. In that scenario, what's an Octopus to do? He wouldn't know the exact location of it unless he got someone to talk and an exhaustive rampage through a complex or a series of corporate holdings, randomly looking for it wouldn't be the smartest thing in the world. At the least, he needed Harry to tell him where it was so he could make a tactical play for it but ideally he would have wanted Harry to have it brought over. Unless Octavius was so far gone that he would've resorted to prolonged torture, neither of those options may have otherwise materialized as Harry's obsession was such that threats alone didn't seem like they would have shaken his resolve over wanting Spider-man first. And, again, taking out Spider-man before starting the experiment worked for Octavius anyway.
Not a coincidence, but just plain stupid: Harry thinks Spider-Man, who is thought by most people to be a good guy, killed his father because he caught him laying Norman's body on the sofa. This might qualify as a smoking gun, if Mary-Jane, one of Harry's friends, couldn't confirm that Spider-Man had saved her from the Green Goblin on the night of Norman's death. The very same Green Goblin who killed a bunch of Harry's father's work colleagues while Harry was there! Granted, he was unconscious at the time, I think, but come on. Do the characters in these movies not talk to each other between scenes? I know Harry was grieving, but use your head, man. One need not be a deductive genius to add up the facts and arrive at a sensible conclusion.
People see what they want to see. Harry didn't want to see his father as a murderer and so he didn't. Plus, I don't see how anything you pointed out would confirm that Norman was the Green Goblin. As far as the public was concerned, the Green Goblin stole his equipment from Oscorp so there are plenty of logical reasons why an imagined third party would then come back to target Oscorp people. Also, from Harry's perspective, he almost died along with his then girlfriend in the attack. Why would he think his father would've done that?
As for talking to Mary Jane and? Spider-man had time after the battle to strip Norman of his clothes, ditch the glider and suit since otherwise he'd be leaving DNA evidence behind at the scene for the police to use in piecing together what happened, and then somehow get Norman back to his home without anyone seeing. I would guess he wasn't webbing through the streets with a dead corpse over his shoulder so it probably took him a good chunk of time to get Norman's body home without being noticed. Thus, there's no reason to think he couldn't have killed Norman after the battle.
Also, I'm sure J.J. spun the final battle as a feud between two formal criminal allies or that they were working together the whole time to help prop Spider-man up as a hero and both of them wanted to target Oscorp board members with Norman being the last person on their list. We know that's stupid, sure, but Harry wasn't at the Daily Bugle and only knows what happened from its own reporting. Yellow journalism has the power to influence global events, so I don't doubt it could convince someone with a bias that Spider-man is capable of both perceived heroics and attacks/murders. Plus, what happened to the Green Goblin? There was no body for anyone to find so, as far as everyone is concerned, he just vanished one day. That would lead credence to a conspiracy that they were working together to stage Spider-man's heroics. Secretive behavior leads to conspiracies because it allows people prone to that sort of thinking to fill in the gaps with their own fears and biases. And there are a lot of gaps for people in Spider-man's world to fill in that don't exist for us because we get to see the whole picture.