Homem-aranha: Lotus

This is the first time I've sat down to write a review on IMDB and there is a very good reason I decided this was the film id finally review.

Spider-Man lotus frustrated me beyond belief. Not because it was horrible (it wasn't), not because of the controversy but simply because you were so close to actually making an incredible spidey fan film.

Let me start with the positives!

• Overall I am a big fan of the direction you wanted to take with this characters and the themes you wanted to explore. I can tell you truly love this character by how much time and energy you spent really trying to dig into Peters grief and guilt.

• The opening sequence was explosive, exciting and fun and really allowed me to get on board with this spidey quite quickly

• the actors did a phenomenal job and really helped elevate the film

• VFX were on point and it was easy to overlook some of the minor issues.

• Faithful to the material

on to my gripes

• 2 hours was excessive. And Gavin trust me I know how hard it is to cut scenes especially when so much work went into writing location scouting and shooting them, feeding the crew, working long long hours just for that perfect take but I firmly believe at least half of the entire movie could have been cut out. And that's not because they are bad scenes. They were just unnecessary and didnt move the plot forward in a meaningful way. It got to a point where I felt this time the credits will pop up when it cuts to black. But then it kept going. Then cuts to black. Fade it. Keep going. Cut to black. It got a little tiresome. Dont be afraid to KILL YOUR DARLINGS. If a scene doesn't push the protagonist to the next stage in the story circle CUT IT. The main reason I dont want to say that this is a bad film is that there is a really good short film in hear with an hour cut from the edit.

• This film was really really really depressing. But a depressing story doesn't need to just be about people crying and being sad. Death can be weird, awkward weirdly funny. I had a close family member pass away this year. And there was a point after the funeral that my whole entire family was so tired of crying and being depressed that we all just started laughing uncontrollably. Now im not saying that there should have been a laughing scene in the movie but my point is that grief comes in many many forms not just crying in the rain and sitting and moping around. Death in movies doesn't have to just be crying. Peter is a guy that hides fear and pain through humour. I would have liked to see at least one scene when he is maybe trying to joke to Gwen over the tape recorder try make the moment light when really he is just trying to hide his own pain. It just feels that for a 2 hour runtime I didnt really get to see Peter experience anything other that immense pain and it got boring.

You took yourself too seriously. All the flashbacks and whining from every character just deflated me. And I learnt nothing new about these characters. And it frustrated me. You had everything in place all the time and money in the world but you wasted it looping the same character beats over and over.

Now im not writing all this because I hate this film or I hate you. Im writing this because I am such a fan of your journey and the balls on you to come out with your chin up and release this to the world. I really hope you see this and can learn from this film and get right back into filmmaking. You have potential. I have to keep reminding myself that this is your first film and for that it's an accomplishment and everyone should be very proud. But dont be afraid to look back and your baby and acknowledge its issues. You can do better and im sure in the coming years you will.

3/10 next project focus on structure and pacing.

I will not, in this review, be addressing the controversy surrounding the people behind this film and their recorded racism/sexism. Because even going in to this film without any potential bias against it, it still fails.

Spider-Man: Lotus is a movie. Many dismiss criticisms of it under the pretense that it is a small student project and not an actual movie, but I adamantly reject that notion. It has a budget of $25,000. It has a runtime of two hours (meaning it's not even the shortest Spider-Man film). With the status of being a feature length indie film with a respectable indie budget, there comes expectations; it is very much within reason to expect this movie to be well-directed, well-written, well-shot, and above all, economic in its production. Spider-Man: Lotus is none of these things.

This movie is unpleasant on the eyes; the directing is deeply uninspired, shots being comprised almost always of very drab imagery that do not grab one's attention. Similarly, the movie is also unpleasant on the ears and brain; the script only shows slight potential just once or twice, and the entire runtime is a plodding chore to get through with a motionless story that numbs the senses at its best infuriates at its worst.

When Spider-Man: Lotus was first announced, the filmmakers affirmed their fans that they were going to work within the confines of their budgetary limitations by shooting a drama first and foremost; the typical hallmarks of what makes a superhero movie would not be a priority. This is not what they did. There are still two superhero-y fight/action scenes in the movie; they are both distractingly terrible. These, along with a few other severely misguided creative decisions, chew through much of the budget that should've been used in other, smarter ways.

Spider-Man: Lotus is not a good film. At best, it is still very much subpar. It had all the tools and ingredients necessary to be an incredible version of itself, but it used them either incorrectly or not at all. To those that still feel this is all too much to expect of a film of this size, here are some other movies whose budgets were at or below that of Lotus:

El Mariachi (1992) with a budget of $7,000

Primer (2004) with a budget of $7,000

Paranormal Activity (2007) with a budget of $15,000

Resolution (2012) with a budget of $20,000

Creep (2014) with a budget of $0

One Cut of the Dead (2017) with a budget of $25,000.

Such a slog. Utterly dragged by flashbacks and drawn-out dialogue scenes. Very little actual Spider-Man.

It strays from a conventional story structure, much to this film's detriment, even if it's what the filmmakers were going for. All I can say is, learn the rules before you break them. Very little setup and payoff in this film, resulting in extreme boredom. The group I watched it with was not invested at all in the characters or the plot. Please, learn the fundamentals of writing before starting such an ambitious project.

Glad to see fans make content like this, but sad to see it executed so poorly.

Making movies is hard.

Virtually everyone knows that, and you don't even need any experience having worked on film sets to know that. Between the numerous problems that can plague you in preproduction, production to post, it's virtually impossible for a first-time director to completely stick the landing.

Spider-Man Lotus is no exception.

Even to ignore the controversy that (reasonably) has driven away thousands of potential viewers from this project, at a fundamental level Spider-Man Lotus sought to curate some of the most iconic Spider-Man scenes across media and combine them into a single cohesive narrative. And to do so with Instagram-model non-actors and only a handful of setpieces.

To have successfully strung the true emotional weight & setup for these scenes (in their original versions being built up to episodically -- and instead presented here to viewers non-familiar with the books with virtually no context) and to have done so along their tight budget would've been daunting for even the most experienced director. So while the ambition is admirable, it comes as no surprise to casual viewers that a shoestring fan film with a huge PR campaign was... precisely that.

Additionally, it just plain suffers from a number of should've-been-solved-in-film-school-type problems. While coverage & camera-work is proficient for someone the director's age, a college level screenwriting class might've solved some glaring issues.

The plot jumps around with a non-chronological order as scenes play intermittently with flashbacks. Every scene is paced far too slowly and the editing lingers far, far too long. (Even watching on 2x speed I imagine would still feel too long.) It's a kitsch recollection of moments that are deliberately stretched to fit to resemble moments from the bronze age comics and transplanting the 90's moodiness... and as mentioned, without a nerd-level understanding of Spider-Man, casual viewers (like my viewing party) are going to be completely, and totally, bored.

And no amount of music swelling over a cross-dissolving camera panning across (presumably the director's) Spider-man memorabilia-decorated bedroom can save it from being a forced, and far too drawn out, scene.

The end result is something that felt painful to have watched. My heart truly goes out to the director who made this, as I'm sure the controversy already sucked most the wind out of his sails and likely made his passion project hard to complete to begin with. But it also just sucks because what is so obviously a hyper-emotionally-charged passion project doesn't, and will likely never, reach the audiences the director sought to give this to. Both because of a (deservedly) self-imposed downfall and because the end product just plain isn't that technically nor narratively impressive.

In the end, as mentioned, it's just another Spidey fan film and will probably be the one to dominate Youtube for the decade, as Peter's Web did the decade prior and Dan Poole's Green Goblin's Last Stand (an ironically STILL better film despite being crudely made with home-sewn costumes and filmed on VHS) did for the '90s. (Last Stand ironically also still having a better and much more tonally faithful adaptation of a crucial scene featured here.)

Konop (the director) has proven himself technically proficient enough to have done what most aspiring directors his age typically haven't mastered - actually producing something -- and he need not worry for the greater path of his career as he will easily be able to nab most any directing/ film & video production job if he opts to continue working in the industry. The actors (or models) -- I can't really say as much given the low quality of the performances and the obvious controversy being more likely to more greatly effect the film's lead (provided they become the 'face' of any production they're tied to whereas a director with some controversy generally can still slip under the radar of public scrutiny and continue to find work).

All in all, Spider-Man Lotus amounted to mostly everything it promised to be: a fan production led by an amateur director who is serious about film, helmed by instagram actor-models, and retelling transplanted scenes from the comics. Does it work? Not really. But like its now emotionally-battered protagonist who limps about its prolonged runtime in sloggish confusion, it's trying, and maybe that's what counted.

Mid writing unfortunately. It relies on one someone's death WAYYYYYY to much and has way too much out of context scenes just thrown in there. It adds tons of unresolved questions and when it builds to something, it will cut out instantly instead of actually letting it have a scene or part. Its practically 15 minutes looped for the entire movie and adds nothing too what we already knew. Theres also multiple long montages and dragged out parts just to add runtime, most of these are flashbacks. Let alone how rude peter is in this movie. Straight up savagely rude to people.

The only 2 things i can say i liked 1: the cgi is great for a fan film even though there wasn't a ton 2: the dialog flows well like an actual movies. This is easy to do but fan films can never get this right which this one did.

This movie could've easily passed as a normal movie that isn't even spider-man related.