Spider-Man 3 villain announced

[Occhidiangela]

I had heard it was going to be Venom and Carnage - which if they do it right would rule.  Much agreement with jahcs, though, less whining this go around would be nice.  I wasn't much of a fan of either of the first two movies.
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I regret to report that the target audience for Spiderman is most likely Generation Whine. (The alleged generation after 'Generation X.') Parker's whining, which put me off of Spiderman I quite a bit, is I think an appeal for connection to the Whiners.

My sentiments seem to be in harmony with yours: whining is a way to screw up a good character, a path down which both Movie I and Movie II wandered. It strikes me as a cheap way to make the protagonist more human, akin to the lines of the emasculated male role popular with certain sectors of Hollywood. It is one thing to be fallible, imperfect, or per the style that Michael Douglas often presents, morally flawed. Whining is simply lame.

This same thread is seen in a variety of films. I was disappointed with the watering down of Aragorn in the LoTR trilogy, and the abuse done to the character of Faramir.

The humble, reserved, yet august and heroic Aragorn of the books would not recognize the self doubting wimp who whines of "having the same blood, the same weakness" in the first film. Nor would he recognize a man who failed to embrace his and Arwen's doom as a bittersweet love. Bah. If one reads the tale of Arwen and Aragorn, one sees a man who faces a nearly impossible task in pursuit of his true love. A man who bites the bullet, who travels to the ends of the earth battling evil, patientlly and persistently working -- virtually against hope -- to achieve the standard the Elrond sets for him in an eerie echo of Thingol's challenge to Beren.

Faramir, the combination of wisdom, empathy, and bravery who Tolkein crafted, is whined down to a brooder whose inconsistent flashes of character leave him a cypher. He too fights, against hope, against the Shadow. But he doesn't whine about it in the books.

The "reluctant hero" is a well established archetype. Whining is not heroic behaviour. See also Shadow's thread recently on the dilution of the term "hero" in our language. ;)

Occhi