Spider-Man: Lotus
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 With great budget, came out a boring superhero movie, which also happens to be the Sonic Omens of superhero movies.
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Spider-Man: Lotus is a 2023 fan-film created by indie director, Gavin Konop.
Based on both the "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man: Blue" comics, the film follows Peter Parker as he struggles to maintain his superhero persona following the death of Gwen Stacy, until learning of a dying boy who wants to see him before he passes. The film garnered over $100,000 during production and took two years in the making, earning it the reputation of being one of the most anticipated fan projects in the 2020s. Sadly, it released to negative reviews.
Why It Can't Do Whatever a Spider Can
- The main problem with the film is that it takes itself way too seriously for a Spider-Man film, as it mainly consists of the characters grieving over Gwen Stacy, who the audience didn't have time to connect with due to her only appearing for a short while before dying.
- The acting is very poor and the dialogue spoken is very wooden and cringe-worthy, with the characters sounding bored and embarrassed all at the same time.
- Spider-Man is very out of character, as he not only puts criminals in life-threatening conditions, but also spends the entire movie being a jerk to his friends and actually considering ghosting a boy with cancer.
- The film is filled to the brim with filler scenes, such as the reusing of establishing shots of New York, or the infamous 2-minute-long of Harry walking around New York being sad. This causes the film to reach 2 hours, which feels pretty long, even for a superhero movie.
- While superhero movies are no stranger to the 2 hour mark, with some of them going even longer than that in some cases, at least none of them were filled to the brim with this much filler, which is exactly what this movie has.
- A majority of the scenes don't do much for the plot aside from establish that the characters are sad, which the audience already knows.
- The costumes for Spider-Man along with his enemies are extremely cheap to some, with Green Goblin being the worst offender, with his mask looking like it was taken from Party City.
- Speaking of which, Peter only wears his Spider-Man suit a small handful of times.
- The editing is lazy, mostly adding to the aforementioned filler scenes, and also Shocker attacking with electric blasts rather than the shock-waves that he uses in other forms of media.
- The film only has two action scenes, one with Shocker, and one with the Green Goblin, and they are both poorly choreographed and the one with Green Goblin is very hard to see what is happening.
- There is a moment of inconsistency where Tim states that he is 10 years old, but his gravestone reveals that he is, at most, 8.
- The title sequence is odd-looking and feels distracting, as it consists of comic panels flying around a blue background and sad music playing.
- There is only humor in the beginning of the film and it's not only awkward and corny, but also feels out of place with the rest of the film.
- Many characters from the comics and movies are barely even mentioned, such as Aunt May and J. Jonah Jameson, despite those characters being fan-favorites.
Redeeming Qualities
- The VFX are pretty impressive for a fan-film.
- The movie is for the most part faithful to the source material, which makes sense considering the makers are big fans of the Spider-Man franchise.
- The beginning, while corny and awkward, does feel like a typical Spider-Man moment.
- The scenes with Tim (the kid) are pretty sympathetic and heart-warming.
- The idea of adapting more dramatic moments in Spider-Man's history is a unique idea, despite their poor execution.
- The costumes for Spider-Man and Shocker despite being cheap are still passable with Spidey being the most comic book accurate.
Reception
Despite being initially hyped up during production, the film received very negative reactions before release before release due to racism accusations against many members of the team, including Gavin and Wayne, as well as the actor for Green Goblin being a suspected groomer. The film then gained negative reception from audiences, critics, and Spider-Man fans alike for its gloomy tone, slow pacing, and jumbled structure. The film currently has a 3.2 on IMDb and is labeled by many as the worst Spider-Man film to ever be made, despite being a fan-film.