Many in the city are looking forward to catching the latest film in the Spider-Man series, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
“From the origins of Spider-Man in 1962 to 2018, the webbed superhero has always introspectively grown to enrich our lives. Over the years, Peter Parker developed from a shy, nerdy high school student to a troubled but outgoing college student, searching for answers that took us to places and adventures,” says Sachin K, a fan.
In 2010, Spider-Man became an Avenger, joining the 'Earth’s Mightiest Heroes', he recalls.
Spider-Man is everybody’s favourite childhood cartoon character, says Lalit Kumar, a 23-year-old fan. “Spider-Man is the first superhero character that I remember from my childhood. From that era to the present, the transition from cartoons to a motion picture has been tremendous,” he says. For him, the excitement soars every time a new movie releases.
In tech terms...
Jai Mangal Sharma, a Bengaluru film-maker who works with 3D animation, shares his views on the film:
- It is based on motion capture with key frames. It is a sort of hybrid animation, which helps make it cinematic.
- Visual effects have a very realistic feel with comic timing. All six Spider-Man characters and their world look stylised with dynamic camera motion.
- Spider-Man versions are 2D toon rendered with 3D modelled characters.
'Spider-Man is about real dilemmas; he is morally right'
Well-known movie critic M K Raghavendra on why a working class hero is a welcome relief in a world where wealth and power are worshipped.
Has Spider-Man as a character really influenced people and captured their imagination?
Spider-Man is a character different from the others in that he is neither superhuman (Superman) nor super-rich (Batman). He is, in fact, a working-class superhero whose uncle is unemployed because he is too old to be tech-savvy. This makes him morally right for a world in which wealth and power are worshiped for their own sake. Even his girlfriend comes from the same working class background and I relish the fact that his friend-turned-enemy is the son of a millionaire. The moral dilemmas unfolding in it involve those of ordinary people and situations and not fantastic situations like rogue generals from a distant planet (Superman). It should be a better moral influence than most other superhero films and should influence ordinary people. But how it actually affects young people would perhaps need a survey to establish.
Is Rajini’s 2.0 inspired by Spider-Man? (The negative protagonist, played by Akshay Kumar, is a birdman.)
No, 2.0 is not a spin-off or tribute since the public watching Rajini has, by and large, no way of handling Hollywood references. Stars like Rajini are always looking for new avatars to appear in, and Hollywood is the obvious first choice, although it would need Indianising. Stars like Rajini have an almost godlike appeal to their fan following (there are even temples to him with his friends as priests), and it is possible that the word ‘avatar’ I have used is literally true, although fan devotion is also make-believe devotion, also ‘theatre’. I doubt a fan would undertake severe penance on behalf of a film idol if s/he was not aware of someone watching and reporting to someone else.
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