Thread:Godzillafan93/@comment-6052796-20141004121045/@comment-397235-20141004160059

Like I said, Yumi's not really jerk...she's sympathetic.

I really enjoyed the Raimi films (they're what exposed me to Spider-Man in the first place)...then I actually started reading the comics, and realized how much they messed up. Granted, some scenes and casting are absolutely brilliant (Doctor Octopus will always be Alfred Molina for me, for instance; Spider-Man 2 is probably the best in the series just for him alone), but the plot points themselves are goofy (Peter Parker's defining characteristic is his genius; Raimi specifically said he could never identify with that aspect of the character...that's like Christopher Nolan not making Bruce Wayne an orphan!).

Of course, I'm really not a huge fan of Earth-616 anyway (it's slid really far down hill in a hurry). I read the novelization (yes, you read that correctly) of Civil War and in addition to the writer have very little talent (magazine titles, like Vanity Fair are italicized) or basic research skills (BLACK WIDOW sees Spider-Man atop the Baxter Building and tells him dasvidania which means "good bye"...Michael Bay knows this!), there were also some of the cringe worthy bits of dialogue. I remember one scene wherein Cap, Daredevil, and another character whose name escapes me are all sitting around at a dinner looking over their new fake identities, where the nameless hero bemoans he's a community organizer. Murdock looks him in the eye (quite the trick for a blind man) and says "Bigger men than you have started off as community organizers." Seriously? A man who risks his life every day protecting the innocent is lower than a career politician? Wow, Marvel. Wow.

I was always a fan of Earth-1610 (aka "Ultimate Marvel") both because of the modernized versions of everyone and that's really and truly what I grew up with. I have a lot of respect for Brian Michael Bendis for this very reason (some day I hope I'm as good at writing dialogue as he is). Mostly I stuck to Spidey, though I did read the part of Ultimate Fantastic Four which leads into Marvel Zombies (and God was that depressing). However, a lot of the plot points Bendis didn't write (Ultimatum immediately comes to mind) were attrocious...in fact, after Grand Theft America the entire universe was starting to slide off the rails, which is why now the only series still being carried therein are Spider-Man, The Ultimates, and The X-Men. And of course, they killed Peter Parker-1610 as well (and unlike his 616 counterpart he'll stay dead). Still, I don't disagree with the way they went about doing it...it still sucks, you know?

I really didn't like Modern Warfare either (the only Call of Duty games whose campaigns I've 100% enjoyed have been the Treyarch ones because they can actually tell a story and they manage to not be so ridiculous [you also don't have John "I am a Mary Sue" Price following you around being an asshole; there is a fan theory he shows up during one of Mason's missions in South America during Black Ops II and royally fucks you over]). Still, Shepherd is a fairly well written antagonist (just...none of his backstory, or the backstory for Victor Makarov, the other main antagonist, actually works within the context of the games; this is just poor planning).

The two Resident Evil characters I mentioned are from the canon, CGI films (i.e., the ones the fandom actually likes because they tie into the games). If you want petty revenge, however, look at the backstory of Resident Evil Zero:

James Marcus, Oswell Spencer, and Alfred Ashford were college buddies (and given how effeminate Marcus is, I've always assumed he and Spencer were lovers; Ashford at least had children...who proceeded to turn him into a monster; he at least is fairly sympathetic, and leaves a video recording the Redfields find begging whoever hears it to kill his daughter and release her from her madness).

Marcus is the one who created the Progenitor virus, the main catalyst behind Resident Evil 5 and the virus the Tyrant and Gene viruses (Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2) are derived from. Because Spencer is an idiot, however, he has Marcus assassinated by Albert Wesker and William Birkin who then proceed to steal his research for themselves. Marcus, however, bonded (somehow) with a group of leeches he'd been experimenting on, and a few years later was strong enough to attack and infect the Umbrella team sent into his old laboratories, before furthermore attacking the old Spencer Estates and setting in motion the events of the first game, in a rather half-assed attempt to kill Spencer (who lives in Europe...that doesn't work very well).

What keeps Marcus from being sympathetic is that he's just as big a monster as the others (Rebecca Chambers finds evidence he was torturing several of his BOWs and there are also files hinting he was experimenting on his own interns); he just happens to not have been as big a psychopath as Spencer, Wesker, or Birkin. It's also not aided by Zero being the worst game in the series, making little to no sense whatsoever, and Marcus's younger form being played by one of the worst actors in video game history. But yes, essentially the entire central conflict got kicked off because of a spurned lover.

of course, back to comic books, there's also Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight who's been a wonderful, upstanding citizen but who's never actually lost anything. Then his girlfriend dies and he decides this is justification to become a murderer. Whatever sympathy the character had up until that point is completely destroyed because you realize it was all just an act.

Likewise, there's James Gordon in the same film, who's been desperately trying to do the right thing, and mostly succeeding...he just made the mistake of relying too much on Batman and trusted his own subordinates more than he should have. My favorite scene for his character in the series is when he's yelling after Batman, who's rushed into the construction site ahead of the GPD SWAT team.

"Dent is in there with them! We have to save Dent! I have to save Dent!"

You get the idea that he's starting to slip too. He's so blinded by doing what he thinks is best, by the ends justifying the means, that over the course of the film he's lied repeatedly and only dug himself in deeper, and by the end tells an even bigger lie, which comes back to bite him when Bane tells everyone about it in the next film. On the other hand, in a cast as fantastic as all three films had, Gary Oldman is still one of the my favorite actors specifically because of scenes like that.

In an unrelated note and a bit of a spoiler, Isabel Castille gets a very, very similar scene to this one when she's trying to kill Holly Jordan at the Inn, as an homage to that line.