spider-man

What did you see this weekend? Was it the dour World War II epic? The raunchy New Orleans sex comedy? Or the movie where Cara Delevingne shoves her head into a telepathic jellyfish’s butt? Truly, with options like this, anyone who complains about the death of cinema has no idea what they’re talking about. Anyways, here’s the box office numbers through Sunday afternoon:

Did any new releases come out this weekend? I honestly can’t remember. Someone mentioned that there was a new Marvel movie in theaters - one featuring some sort of Spider-Person - but that can’t be right. I feel like I would’ve seen that, perhaps promoted on an unprecedented level for any superhero movie? Hmm. Well, anyways, here’s the weekend box office estimates as of Sunday afternoon:

Here’s the Wall-Crawler’s entire movie history, told in the sometimes amazing (and sometimes craptacular) posters from his movies.

Gather ’round, children, and let me tell you of the time before post-credits sequences. You see, in those days, we didn’t even know that a movie could continue after the words ‘The End’ flashed on the screen. Once a film was done, it was done, no more movie, and we’d have to have to find ways to entertain ourselves. We’d turn to the person next to us and strike up a con-ver-sation about the movie we just finished, or we’d quietly gather our belongings and head to the exit. But you know what we didn’t do? Watch more movie. Yessiree, we made our own fun back in those days. You kids have it soft.

There are a few set staples of any high school movie: the scene where one character tours another character around the cafeteria and shows them who the jocks and the nerds are; the scene where one character has something mortifying happen to them and everyone laughs, preferably in a public space like the classroom or the gym; and, of course, a house party scene. Spider-Man: Homecoming, being a high school movie, obviously has at least the third option.

Spider-Man’s a true New Yorker: he understands when to take the 6 train versus rolling the dice on the 2nd Avenue subway, he knows where to get the Bronx’s best chopped cheese, and when he needs a snack in a pinch, he hits up his friendly neighborhood bodega. In the latest promotional spot for the umpteenth reboot Spider-Man: Homecoming, the web-head is late to a big NBA Finals watching party at Tony Stark’s place. (The commercial was written to air specifically during the basketball playoffs this year.) But when he ducks into a nearby bodega — for those uninitiated, it’s really just a corner convenience store, but immeasurably better in every way — he has a chance encounter.

Stan Lee shows up in just about every Marvel movie. Now he’s starting to show up in commercials too.

Marvel has adopted a practice first used by the producers of the James Bond franchise, who’ve ended every 007 adventure for decades with the phrase “James Bond Will Return” in the credits. (For many years, they even specified which novel the series would adapt next; when they ran out of Ian Fleming books and stories, they shortened it.) Just last night I saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, and sure enough it concludes with the words “The Guardians of the Galaxy Will Return. (I think we can all agree this is not a spoiler.)

The suit makes the man, and that’s seldom more true than for the superhero set. Batman would be another joe-schmo billionaire industrialist without the arsenal of weaponry built into his armor, Iron Man would literally die without his hardware, and now we can add Peter Parker to the list of superheroes whose own clothes act as unofficial sidekick. In the latest trailer for upcoming threeboot Spider-Man: Homecoming, we get a glimpse of some nifty new modifications (courtesy of Stark Industries) to Spidey’s trademark red-and-blue spandex. A new generation’s Spider-Man needs some modern upgrades, and the latest iteration of the suit includes a detachable mini-drone and what I can only describe as “skintight suction technology.”

You feel that? That tingling Spidey sense? That can only mean one thing: The very first Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer has finally arrived. Two trailers, actually — the official domestic trailer and an international trailer with even more footage, featuring our first look at Michael Keaton’s Vulture, helpful life advice from Tony Stark, some fake Avengers, and all the awkward pain of high school.

For a fresh start with Spider-Man, Sony had to give him something distinctive. To set Tom Holland’s take on the webslinger apart from Tobey Maguire’s (and way, way apart from Andrew Garfield’s), the studio sent the hero back to high school and returned him to his teenage roots. Spider-Man: Homecoming aims to be a new take on the comic-book mythos all over, in fact — a new girlfriend in pop star Zendaya, the first onscreen appearance of the villainous Vulture, and with a new teaser unearthed today, we learned that a key piece of latter-day Spidey tech will make it movie debut as well.

San Diego Comic-Con saved the biggest news for last. Marvel’s panel is the last big film panel in Hall H this year, and we’re bound to get some huge news on everything from ‘Doctor Strange’ to ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ to ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.’