March looks set to be the month of hand-crafted adventures for cutesy Nintendo characters, with the games giant confirming that Yoshi’s Crafted World and Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn are both set for release in the third month of 2019. 

Yoshi’s Crafted World will arrive on March 29th for the Switch, Nintendo announced on its official site, promising to let you “play as an adorable Yoshi exploring a big world crafted from household items like boxes and paper cups, journeying through each themed stage to solve puzzles and find hidden treasures.”

As well as a sweet visual style and some nice homely fun, Yoshi’s Crafted World also has some pretty cool features: for instance, stages can be played backwards, increasing the game’s replay value and allowing gamers to experience different perspectives and challenges along the way.

In the same blog post, Nintendo confirmed that Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn will release for its family of 3DS devices on March 8th. This game is an enhanced edition of the Wii title Kirby’s Epic Yarn, in which Kirby will be “transported into a world made of cloth and yarn to unravel enemies, unzip secret passageways and transform into powerful vehicles.” 

Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn will include all the stages from the Wii version, as well as some fun new features. These include new Ravel Abilities to power up Kirby and some new minigames to bulk out the experience. It will also be compatible with Kirby amiibo figures.

Those dates to mark in your diary again are March 8th (for Kirby’s Extra Epic Yarn) and March 29th (for Yoshi’s Crafted World). We’ll be sure to let you know our thoughts on the games as and when we play them.

Sony and Santa Monica Studio’s God Of War was one of the biggest games of last year, garnering glowing reviews and massive sales as well as pleasing fans in a big way. Rejigging Kratos into a struggling father was a masterstroke from a storytelling standpoint, and the graphics and gameplay didn’t disappoint in bringing that idea to life. But one thing the game didn’t have was a big post-release DLC.

Although there has been a decent amount of surrounding materials for the game’s legions of loyal fans – including a Deluxe Edition, extra skins, a novelisation, an audiobook, some Dark Horse comics, a Photo Mode and New Game Plus – the lack of DLC didn’t go unnoticed.

Now, director Cory Barlog has explained why there wasn’t any God Of War DLC. Speaking to The GameOverGreggy Show on YouTube, Barlog admitted that he did have a “really fun” idea for some extra story content, but it was ultimately deemed to be “too ambitious” to actually produce. 

Barlog explained, “There was a time when I wrote a couple of DLCs that we were talking about, ‘Ok, what if we did release some other stuff after?’ You know, there are interesting ideas but I think the amount of time we’d have to put into it, it would start to end up kinda like a [The Last Of Us] Left Behind or a [InFamous] First Light kinda thing where it’s just so big… like [Uncharted] Lost Legacy or something like that.”

Barlog refers to some very hefty DLC releases from other games in that little quote, making it clear that his idea for expanding on God Of War was fairly massive. Rather than just a couple of extra hours of gameplay, it’s easy to assume he was plotting out something sprawling and epic. 

“It would [have] ended up being its own thing,” Barlog added. “Rightfully so, everybody said, ‘Dude, this is crazy, this isn’t DLC, this is a little too big.'” It’s something of a shame that these ambitious plans weren’t progressed with, as there are loads of fans that would’ve loved to play a massive new chunk of God Of War.

Cory Barlog and Santa Monica Studio are yet to confirm their future plans, but we’ll be sure to update you when they do…

POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD…

We’re about to go back in time to the 1990s, the grunge-and-bum bag-filled era in which new superhero solo outing Captain Marvel is set, but could we be seeing some more potentially Thanos-beating timey-wimey stuff happen when the young Nick Fury meets the extremely powerful ex-pilot Carol Danvers in the MCU’s latest gamble? Looks like it!

In a new interview with ET, Samuel L. Jackson, who is reprising his role as Fury for the umpteenth time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Captain Marvel – albeit with a lot of de-aging tech in play – has just gone ahead and confirmed that Brie Larson’s superhero can time travel. Just like that. Like it was nothing. Wew.

“She’s pretty much the strongest character — in terms of someone with powers are able to do things — in the Marvel universe. So, for Carol Danvers to be that person and for Brie to become that person, it’s gonna be a dynamite thing. I mean, [the Avengers] are up against some really, really tough odds right now — we saw throughout Infinity War — so now we know that we need something that’s as powerful as Thanos. And at some point, we’ll find out how powerful she is and all the things that she’s capable of. She’s one of the few people in the Marvel universe that can time travel, so…”

And with that, Mr. Jackson may be trying to snatch the spoiler trophy from Tom Holland. It’s long been suspected that time travel would feature heavily in the connection between Infinity War, Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame, but Carol actually wiedling time travel powers in the MCU is still a pretty big deal, especially when ET’s set visit and interview with Jackson also reveals that Fury and Danvers will be tackling what seems to be a Tesseract heist in space during the upcoming film.

“We’re actually entering a ship that belonged to a doctor from Carol Danvers’ past,” described Jackson of the scene being filmed on an alien spaceship. “She’s trying to find some answers to what happened, why he was on Earth and what that whole power core thing– Seems like the Tesseract has been the constant in all these movies.”

Mashable was also present on a set visit, likely on the same day, and the site has added more details to the scene unfolding before cameras. ‘Carol instructs [Fury] to “take the Tesseract, leave the lunchbox” while she runs off to buy him some time.’

We’ve also seen set pictures in the past, during production on Avengers: Endgame, that show the core team somehow back at the attack on New York from the first film, potentially using Tony’s BARF memory technology. Have they revisited these events because of the Tesseract? Will changing the outcome of Infinity War simply hinge on the Infinity Stone that keeps coming back like a bad penny? Is this all a ruse by Marvel to throw us off?

April seems very far away right now.

“The show’s gonna be forgotten, like everything.”

This is how David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, described the legacy of his most famous body of work to Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall during one of the many coffee-house round-tables they convened for The Sopranos Sessions, a weighty tome –  filled with recaps, discussions, dissections, analysis, insights and interviews – being released this week to coincide with the twentieth aniversary of the transmission of the show’s first episode. 

Chase’s shoot-from-the-hip, fatalistic world-view is often a dead ringer for that of his most famous fiction creation’s, depressed mob boss Tony Soprano. Tony would almost certainly have assessed his own existence in the same terms as Chase does the show’s. Namely: ‘It’s all a big nothing.’

And on one level, of course, Chase is entirely correct. There will indeed come a time when even our most celebrated works of art and our most iconic heroes and villains – Einstein, Hitler, Buddha, Jim Robinson from Neighbours – will inevitably recede and vanish into the infinite mists of existence. That final cut to black awaits every one of us, both individually and as a species.

And yet, ten years after its end, and twenty years since its beginning, The Sopranos still dominates most of the ‘Best of’ lists compiled by the critics who matter; and few viewers with any serious appreciation for television as a dramatic medium would dare place it outside the top three of the greatest series ever made. Its legacy, then, despite David Chase’s dark-edged humility, shows no signs of fading.

The Class of ’99

We’re at a time in pop culture history when we are surrounded with – some might say drowning in – choice. It sometimes feels like there are more TV shows out there than there are people, and not enough years in even the most generous estimates of our life-cycles to introduce ourselves to more than a miniscule fraction of them. The added problem is that a great deal of it is good, and much of it is great. We’re drowning, but at least we’re drowning in Dom Perignon. Among other many things, The Sopranos Sessions reminds us just how much of this proliferation of prestige television we owe to The Sopranos, and why – even after all of these years –  the show still holds an unusurpable position at the head of the TV heirarchy.

The Sopranos was, in essence, an anti-TV series, and the character at its helm, Tony Soprano, was an anti-hero the likes of which audiences had never seen before; one who would push the boundaries of our empathy and understanding to their limits, and beyond. It was a show about the intersections between Family and family; faith and betrayal; guilt and innocence; dreams and reality; good and evil; cunnilingus and psychiatry; and, of course, the sacred and the propane (sic). It was a show about everything. It was a show about nothingness.

Few could’ve realised it at the time, but The Sopranos – cinematic in its scope and vision, literary in its depth and complexity – was about to shake up and remake the TV landscape, ushering in a new era of revolutionary TV characterised by ever greater risks and almost boundless creative freedom.

Without The Sopranos, without James Gandolfini, without Edie Falco – without that whole, remarkable, almost pitch-perfect cast – without HBO, without that team of writers, directors and producers, and almost definitely without the clarity of vision brought to bear on it all by the bold and uncompromising genius of David Chase, TV today might have been a whispering, barren wasteland, filled only with generic cop shows and hoary old hospital dramas. Your eyes, at this very moment, might have been skimming down a review of a book called ‘Twenty Years of Ground-breaking US Game Shows’.

Simply put: the 10th of January 1999 was D-Day for TV.

It’s fitting that this moment in TV history and its seismic aftermath should be commemorated and chronicled by two men who were with The Sopranos from the very beginning, and who between them have spent two decades delineating its multi-layered, mesmerising genius.

Have You Heard the Good News?

Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall bring not only a fierce love and admiration of the series to their collaboration, but also a wealth of experience and knowledge: Seitz is editor-at-large for RogerEbert.com, as well as the TV critic for New York magazine and Vulture.com; Sepinwall is the chief TV critic for Rolling Stone, and previously worked for both Uproxx and Hitfix. He’s also the author of a clutch of highly-regarded books on TV, among them The Revolution Was Televised. Both men were critics at the Newark Star Ledger throughout the time that The Sopranos was on air. The Star Ledger, of course, is the paper that usually slammed on to Tony’s driveway at the beginning of (almost) every season of The Sopranos, and of which Tony himself was an avid reader. 

The Sopranos Sessions is essentially a box-set in book form, both in terms of how it’s presented, and in the behavioural mindset I’m certain it will inspire in its readers. Just one more page, you’ll promise yourself, just one more chapter, and then I’ll put it down. Before you know it, it’s three o’clock in the morning, you’ve binged half the book, and you’re on the phone to your estranged wife, with Lionel Ritchie ringing in your ears.

The book is divided into three parts. There are the recaps, analyses and deconstructions, so engagingly written and thought-provoking that you’ll feel like you’ve actually watched the episodes. Then there are the ‘bonus features’: previously published articles about the show and its cast; ruminations on the show’s relevance to and connection with the wider culture, all of which were written by the authors between 1999 and 2007; and, finally, the piece de resistance: a glut of brand new and in-depth interviews and discussions with creator David Chase on all aspects of the show, with inevitable segues into pop-culture, history, music, cinematography, the art of show-running, philosophy, psychology, sickness, sin and the minutiae of life itself.

Chasing It

David Chase is an auteur extraordinaire; an almost holy figure. If The Sopranos is a church, and few are broader or more ornate, then Chase is undoubtedly both the head of that church and its God. Sometimes his sentences demand the sort of close examination normally reserved for entire episodes of his magnum opus. His mind appears to be in constant flux, constantly revising, reframing and re-interpreting his own motivations and understanding, ceaselessly interrogating the meanings behind his words and actions. It’s not just that there was no better person than Chase to bring The Sopranos to life; it’s simply that there was no other person who could possibly have done it. His genius bleeds into and out of every blessed moment.

Through Chase’s conversations with Seitz and Sepinwall – as funny, insightful, frustrating, illuminating and erudite on all sides as you’d expect – we come to realise that true genius is kaleidoscopic and mystical, and sometimes feels closer in character to the big bang than a controlled explosion. Chase can’t always account for the genesis of some of the shows deepest and most pivotal moments, or else shrugs and says it was just luck. He brings great clarity to some aspects of the show – for instance, we discover that Ralph definitely burned Pie-O-My (‘You never got the goat thing?’ he chides) – and veils others in ever greater cloaks of obscurity. 

Anyone hoping for some final closure on the whole ‘Is Tony dead?’ question  may find themselves pleasantly surprised… and then hopelessly disappointed. And then pleasantly surprised again. And then, well, you get the idea. It’s a journey that seems destined to go on and on and on and on…

Or is it?

Whichever side you’re on (or perhaps you’re on neither side, and think that the whole question of Tony’s fate is either a distraction from proper contemplation of the show’s overarching themes, or an artsy gimmick unworthy of further consideration) you’ll find the Freudian slip that prompts Chase to aim an exasperated “Fuck you guys” in the direction of an astonished Seitz and Sepinwall – and its fallout – very interesting indeed.

Duck Hunt

As Laura Lippman says in the foreword to The Sopranos Sessions, there are levels of Sopranos obsessiveness. I’ve always considered myself in the higher ranks of obsession, having watched each epsisode of the show more times than I could count. I’ve pondered and pored over its myriad meanings and symbols, and I’ve proselytised in its name. But Seitz and Sepinwall make me feel like a newbie, a late-night channel-flicker. Their insight is staggering and immersive, though still entirely accessible to those in the earlier stages of Sopranos-based obsession.

Seitz and Sepinwall’s ability to tease out themes, intuit connections, analyse at the atomic level and discover hidden meanings in the material frequently had me lowering the book in slack-jawed admiration, from the revelation that eggs always augur death; to the deliciously meta reframing of season three’s Mr Ruggerio’s Neighbourhood; and to passages like the below, which I’m going to reproduce verbatim so that you can revel in the Ouroborotic beauty of the duo’s reasoning: 

“The architecture of the Tony/Livia relationship is astonishingly intricate in retrospect. It’s driven not just by straightforward dialogue and definitive actions but subtle psychological and literary details, including the recurring talk of infanticide, Tony’s two dreams about mother figures (the duck and Isabella), and the way that the idea of asphyxiation is woven throughout the season. Tony feels suffocated by his mother; the resultant panic attacks make him feel like he’s suffocating; he now intends to deal with the problem by suffocating his mother (poetic justice), but arrives to find her lying on a gurney, a plastic mask on her face providing constant oxygen. (“That woman is a peculiar duck,” Carmella tells Tony. “Always has been.”)”

The real joy of the show, and the joy of this book, lies in the act and art of interpretation. The Sopranos has always invited this response – it’s pretty much built in to the premise – because psychiatry, much more than gangsterism, is, and always has been, at the show’s heart; a ceaseless search for answers to the great conundrums of life, the universe and everything (and nothing); questions for which there are rarely easy answers, and sometimes no answers at all. Just more questions, carried across the sky by a great wind. Who am I? Where am I going?

Tony Soprano wasn’t alone in therapy. Arguably, we were in there with him. Jennifer Melfi, Tony’s long-standing and long-suffering psychiatrist, was the greek chorus, our entry-point into Tony’s world, but she was also, in a sense, our psychiatrist. She interrogated our motives for watching the show, just as much as she questioned her own motives for continuing to treat Tony. Or, as Seitz and Sepinwall put it: “The series is sometimes as much about the relationship between art and its audience as it is about the world the artist depicts.”

We saw more of Tony’s life than Melfi ever did or could – the very worst of his trangressions, from the inconsiderate to the murderous – and still kept following him down the rabbit-hole of his own broken soul. Much of the reason why we did this – exemplary writing aside – was James Gandolfini, the jaded, gentle giant with the hang-dog face and the little boy’s heart, whose “humanity shone through Tony’s rotten facade” to gift us what was, in all likeihood, the most complex, compelling, complete and completely human character ever to be committed to the screen (I’m not ashamed to admit, not being a gangster myself, that David Chase’s eulogy to James Gandolfini, included in this book, made me cry).

Don’t Stop Re-Reading

I haven’t re-watched The Sopranos for years, but that’s set to change as a result of The Sopranos Sessions, which has re-invigorated – and deepened – my love for the show. You may not be as intense a fan of The Sopranos as I am, and that’s okay. This is a perceptive, lucid, engaging and above all versatile book that could serve as a series companion, a read-me-in-the-toilet tome or a TV-studies text book depending upon your level of interest, and fluency, in the show. There’s something for everyone.  

All legacies fade, but until David Chase’s prediction for The Sopranos comes true – in I hope not for another few million years or so – Seitz and Sepinwall deserve to be part of that legacy.

The Sopranos Sessions is published in the UK by Abrams Press on Friday the 18th of January 2019.

Spider-Man PS4 is a gift that keeps on giving. Fans of Insomniac’s wall-crawling adventure title have already received the three DLC chapters that the developers initially promised, but the treats didn’t stop there: an unexpected Christmas gift saw the much-requested ‘Raimi Suit’ added to the game towards the end of last year, and now Insomniac is teasing something else. 

Marvel Games is in the midst of a #FantasticFourWeek on Twitter, with official tweets already confirming that new content pertaining to Marvel’s first family will soon be added to Marvel: Future Fight, Marvel Puzzle Quest and Marvel Contest Of Champions. But for fan’s of Spider-Man PS4, it’s this intriguing tweet that would’ve caused the most excitement…

  

So, something “fantastic” is coming to Spider-Man PS4 in a future update. In that tweet, Marvel Games explained as much, as well as asking for fans to make their guesses as to what this could be. Of course, the players obliged in abundance, and we’re about to do the same. 

Could the Fantastic Four’s famous HQ, the Baxter Building, be added to the game’s detailed rendering of New York, perhaps? It was notable by its absence when Spider-Man PS4 first launched, and this iconic Marvel landmark would surely grab a few real-life headlines if it did pop up in the game.

Or maybe this Fantastic Four content could be, like the ‘Raimi Suit’ addition in late 2018, the arrival a surprise new suit? Peter Parker has donned Fantastic Four threads numerous times in the comics, and one particular suit has a history with Spidey’s video game adventures…

This, if you’re not familiar, is a costume that’s known among fans as the Amazing Bag-Man suit. Pete first wore it in the comics in 1984, donning this makeshift ensemble as a last-minute option after ditching the symbiote-based black suit in the Baxter Building.

The costume became something of a favourite with video game developers, going on to appear as an unlockable outfit in the PS1 titles Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro and the PS3-era Shattered Dimensions and Edge Of Time games. Again, if Insomniac added it to Spider-Man PS4, they’d be sure to please fans and grab some column inches, both of which will keep the game in people’s memories and prompt them to load it up again.

As it stands, though, the ‘Fantastic’ addition to Spider-Man PS4 is yet to be properly revealed. As we find out what it is, we’ll be sure to update this article. What are you hoping for?

Margot Robbie has finally been confirmed for the role of blonde dolly Barbie in Warner Bros’ long-in-gestation live-action movie. The studio has struck a deal with Mattel to move forward with the project, with Robbie now attached as a producer as well as the film’s star.

“This project is a great start to our partnership with Ynon and Mattel Films,” said Warner Bros chairman Toby Emmerich in a statement. “And Margot is the ideal producer and actress to bring Barbie to life on screen in a fresh and relevant way for today’s audiences.”

Robbie added that “Playing with Barbie promotes confidence, curiosity and communication throughout a child’s journey to self-discovery. Over the brand’s almost 60 years, Barbie has empowered kids to imagine themselves in aspirational roles from a princess to president. I’m so honoured to take on this role and produce a film that I believe will have a tremendously positive impact on children and audiences worldwide. I can’t imagine better partners than Warner Bros and Mattel to bring this film to the big screen.”

There are no details yet on what direction Robbie and Warner Bros plan to take the iconic toy in, but it’ll still be a long while until we see this film materialise on the big screen. Warner Bros previously pushed the Barbie film back two years after its original star, Amy Schumer, dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, and Robbie is about to start work on Birds Of Prey, the all-girl DC team-up flick where the actress will reprise her role as Harley Quinn for the studio.

Hot on the heels of the Golden Globes, awards season continues apace with the reveal of the nominees for the 2019 Bafta awards.

The Favourite, which won star Olivia Colman a Golden Globe for Best Actress this week, came out on top with a whopping 12 nominations. Tying for runner-up with seven nominations apiece were A Star Is Born, Bohemian Rhapsody, First Man and Roma.

The category shortlists were announced by Brit actors Hayley Squires (I, Daniel Blake) and Will Poulter (Detroit, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) live via social media this morning. 

The winners will be revealed at the 2019 Bafta Film Awards ceremony, hosted once again by Joanna Lumley, on 10 February.

The nominees for this year’s Bafta Rising Star Award, which is voted for by the public, have already been announced: Letitia Wright, Jessie Buckley, Cynthia Erivo, Barry Keoghan and Lakeith Stanfield.

Here is the full list of this year’s nominees:

Best Film

BlacKkKlansman

The Favourite

Green Book

Roma

A Star Is Born

Best British Film

Beast

Bohemian Rhapsody 

The Favourite 

McQueen 

Stan & Ollie 

You Were Never Really Here

Best Actor

Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born

Christian Bale, Vice

Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

Steve Coogan, Stan & Ollie

Viggo Mortensen, Green Book

Best Actress

Glenn Close, The Wife

Lady Gaga, A Star Is Born

Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Olivia Colman, The Favourite

Viola Davis, Widows

Best Supporting Actor

Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman

Mahershala Ali, Green Book

Richard E Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Sam Rockwell, Vice

Timothee Chalamet, Beautiful Boy

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, Vice

Claire Foy, First Man

Emma Stone, The Favourite

Margot Robbie, Mary, Queen of Scots

Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

Best Director

Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman

Pawel Pawlikowski, Cold War

Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite

Alfonso Cuarón, Roma

Bradley Cooper, A Star Is Born

Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer

Apostasy, Daniel Kokotajlo (Writer/Director)

Beast, Michael Pearce (Writer/Director), Lauren Dark (Producer)

A Cambodian Spring, Chris Kelly (Writer/Director/Producer)

Pili, Leanne Welham (Writer/Director), Sophie Harman (Producer)

Ray & Liz, Richard Billingham (Writer/Director), Jacqui Davies (Producer)

Best Animated Film

Incredibles 2

Isle of Dogs

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Best Foreign Language Film

Capernaum

Cold War

Dogman

Roma

Shoplifters

Best Original Screenplay

Cold War

The Favourite

Green Book

Roma

Vice

Best Adapted Screenplay

BlacKkKlansman

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

First Man

If Beale Street Could Talk

A Star Is Born

Best Documentary

Free Solo

McQueen

RBG

They Shall Not Grow Old

Three Identical Strangers

Best Original Music

BlacKkKlansman

If Beale Street Could Talk

Isle Of Dogs

Mary Poppins Returns

A Star Is Born

Best Cinematography

Bohemian Rhapsody

Cold War

The Favourite

First Man

Roma

Best Editing

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite

First Man

Roma

Vice

Best Production Design

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindlewald

The Favourite

First Man

Mary Poppins Returns

Roma

Best Costume Design

The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite

Mary Poppins Returns

Mary Queen Of Scots

Best Make-up and Hair

Bohemian Rhapsody

The Favourite

Mary Queen Of Scots

Stand & Ollie

Vice

Best Sound

Bohemian Rhapsody

First Man

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

A Quiet Place

A Star Is Born

Best Special Visual Effects

Avengers: Infinity War

Black Panther

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindlewald

First Man

Ready Player One

British Short Film

73 Cows

Bachelor

The Blue Door

The Field

Wale

British Short Animation

I’m OK

Marfa

Roughhouse

This feature contains spoilers for Spider-Man 2, and for Insomniac’s Spider-Man game.

“It’s good to have you back, Spider-Man.”

It’s been almost 15 years since the release of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 and, for some, it’s yet to be surpassed. Even though the overall quality and variety of comic-book movies have significantly improved since 2004, when the only other examples to be had were Blade: Trinity and the second run at The Punisher, the first Spidey sequel just works in a way that even the very best Marvel Studios movies have seldom matched.

Starting a year or so after the first film, Spider-Man 2 picks up with Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker still struggling to balance his job, his college studies, and his personal life with the great responsibility part of his great power. Desperately in love with Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson, he just can’t catch a break. As stress overwhelms him, even Peter’s spider-powers start to fail him, causing him to turn his back on being Spider-Man in order to sort his life out.

While some prefer the modern consistency of the MCU to the nostalgic Silver Age optimism of Raimi’s take, Spider-Man 2 is a triumph of comic-book cinema that absolutely holds up to this day. It follows then, that the film’s best qualities come through most brilliantly in the sequence that is universally agreed to be its best.

Quite aside from being a better superhero action scene than anything else we had seen up to that point, there are a number of reasons why the fight between Spider-Man and Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus atop and around a runaway subway train is the heart of the movie. Representing the very best we’ve seen of Spider-Man on the big screen to date, it’s the build-up and the aftermath that cements this sequence as one of the greats.

‘Do you love me, or not?’

Adapting the classic comic arc, “Spider-Man No More!”, the film is intrinsically about the personal toll that being Spider-Man takes on Peter. His failing powers are an emotional problem, not a physical one, and over the course of the plot, we have to see him come to terms with this. Peter is easy to root for in the first place, so even though the film doesn’t quite reconcile the emergence of an eight-limbed supervillain with the timing of Spider-Man’s brief retirement, the film explores this in a more sensitive way.

First, Raimi follows the excellent Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head montage with a scene in which Peter witnesses a mugging that Spider-Man could easily stop, and guiltily walks on. That guilt directly spurs his admission to Aunt May that he could have stopped the man who killed Uncle Ben (threequels notwithstanding) but doesn’t admit his secret identity. Rosemary Harris’ performance is such that you can’t tell if she already knows or not, really.

The next action sequence comes when Peter bravely tries to rescue people from a burning apartment building, without the help of his powers. It’s rare for superhero movies to really make you fear for the hero’s safety, but this does the job nicely. With some effort, Peter makes it out alive, but the scene is buttoned by a realisation that he didn’t manage to save everyone this time.

When Doc Ock does re-emerge to present a real, superpowered threat, it comes in a scene that formed the basis of Spider-Man 2’s very first teaser trailer. Having got used to the idea that he might be able to enjoy his own life, Peter has to sit across from Mary Jane and tell her, again, that he doesn’t want to be with her.

The film works hard to set up that being Spider-Man is a thankless job, but it does so in a way that is utterly engrossing and entertaining. Peter just can’t catch a break, right down to stopping off at J. Jonah Jameson’s office to retrieve his suit at the exact right moment to confirm all of the editor’s biases about him.

The triumphal note isn’t just that “HE’S BACK”, as the subsequent Daily Bugle headline trumpets, but that he’s prepared to continue in spite of everything the film has thrown at him. Once we’re all aboard with that, the film really lands its most spectacular fight scene.

‘You have a train to catch’

After a quick skirmish on the face of a clock tower, Spidey and Doc Ock tumble onto the top of a passing train and the punch-up begins in earnest. Having briefly battled earlier in the film while Peter was experiencing performance issues, the film maintains the sense that Spider-Man is outmatched by the thrashing mechanical limbs throughout the subsequent fight scene.

The audience knows that Octavius is planning to take him alive, as part of a deal with Harry Osborn, but the jeopardy comes from giving Spider-Man the kind of problem that a more powerful hero would solve more easily.

So, when Spider-Man starts to gain the upper hand, Doc Ock sends the packed commuter train speeding towards a dead end without brakes and sods off. Later superhero movies like Avengers: Age Of Ultron and this year’s Incredibles 2 also have scenes where heroes take different approaches to stop a runaway train, but both feature either more powerful or more experienced characters.

Peter may be able to do whatever a spider can, but his particular set of skills isn’t necessarily suited here. Some viewers still argue about the physics of his somewhat impractical solution which involves shooting webs at the surrounding buildings in order to stop a speeding train. Heck, there was even a cheeky nod to the physics of it in Insomniac’s recent Spider-Man game for the PS4.

Going all the way back to “You will believe a man can fly”, superhero cinema has always been more about entertainment and emotional investment than real-world rules. All nitpicks and jokes about Maguire’s strained expression aside, Peter’s heroic efforts to keep the train from crashing through the end of the line have all the benefit of knowing what’s on the line. It’s the aftermath that marks this sequence as a watershed in the genre.

During his exertions, Peter has lost his mask and as the webbed-up train grinds to a stop, he finally passes out. Gently carried back into the carriage by the grateful passengers, Spider-Man’s identity is revealed to a carriage full of strangers.

“He’s just a kid,” one of them observes. “No older than my son.”

Everything about the tension of this moment works. For the entire film up to that point, Peter’s secret double life has caused problems. We’ve seen him wrestle with telling his loved ones that he’s Spider-Man, realising that he could save himself a lot of bother. And then he’s outed to a bunch of random New Yorkers.

The “we won’t tell nobody” of it all is a peerless emotional payoff to that thread. It’s the optimism of Raimi’s take on the film, summed up at the climax of its standout scene. You could say it’s a more refined version of the beat during the original film’s climax, where an unlikely bunch of bystanders on a bridge heckle the Green Goblin and throw stuff at him, accepting Spidey as one of their own.

It’s a bigger swing, but it’s neither cloying nor sentimental, it’s just a deserved validation of why Peter does what he does, right when he needs it the most. And of course, it could never happen in a 2018 version of the same scene. Granted, Spidey is just about the only character in the MCU movies with a secret identity, but it’s precluded by today’s culture more than any sense of “they don’t make them like this anymore.”

Even if we shed every ounce of cynicism about human nature, it’s impossible to credit that somebody wouldn’t unthinkingly tweet a picture of Peter unmasked before the magic moment of consensus comes about.

‘Isn’t it time somebody saved you?’

Off the back of that moment, the three main supporting characters all find out about Peter’s secret identity too. Harry finds that his evening plans to kill Spider-Man are somewhat flummoxed by the revelation that his best friend is also the person he hates most in the world. After tangling with Spidey again, Doc Ock is won over by Peter’s more personal appeal to stop the tritium experiment before it blows up the city. And finally, MJ understands why he’s been so flaky.

For sheer emotional resonance, it’s the most satisfying ending to any of the various Spider-Man movies that have come along since. Spider-Man 3 has great parts in it, (and that’s an article for another time) but with its shoe-horned symbiote sub-plot and messy construction site showdown, never measures up to the brilliance of its predecessor.

Then came the reboots. Both Amazing Spider-Man movies spend a weird amount of time on Peter beating up baddies rather than necessarily helping people. A daring rescue scene in which he reassures a frightened child by giving him his mask is the closest that Spider-Man gets to being Spider-Man in either of those movies, but was roundly criticised by fans who thought that Andrew Garfield spent too much time unmasked. The subsequent boost by New York’s construction crane drivers in the third act feels more like the Green Goblin moment than the train bit.

Spider-Man: Homecoming wisely focuses on other priorities, in a world where superheroes are commonplace at this point in the MCU timeline. Although he’s still concealing his identity, Peter’s alter-ego is a viral hit on YouTube, and the ferry scene (which feels more of a set with certain other purely functional escapades in Marvel Studios outings) has a nice gag about it where a passenger immediately switches to cheering Iron Man, the more famous hero.

Even in the midst of the sprawling, character-stuffed Avengers: Infinity War – a mammoth superhero team-up that inevitably leaves much less time to touch base with characters and their motivations than the solo films – Tom Holland’s plucky, eager-to-please take on Spidey feels more influenced by Maguire than by Garfield.

Even while its tone and its success have been influential on several subsequent comic book films, Spider-Man 2 still feels like a one-off. Though not without some of the bugbears that are attached to the era before the current cinematic golden age of superheroes, Spider-Man 2 has rarely – if ever – been matched for sheer emotional investment.

Something about superheroes and video games just clicks together perfectly: whether you’re swooping through Gotham as DC’s Dark Knight or swinging through New York as Marvel’s friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler, the ability to step into the shoes of our favourite comic book characters – and beat up goons from within their iconic outfits – is just pure, unadulterated fun.   

We are, however, in a little bit of a no man’s land at the moment. We waited for ages for Spider-Man PS4, but now that game and all of its DLC is firmly in the rearview mirror. DC’s latest single-player, triple-A, console-based adventure title was Arkham Knight, which is even further behind us in the distance. Neither of those games has a sequel officially announced, making the future seem – at first glance – to be a little bit bleak for superhero gaming.

If you know where to look, though, there are some big confirmed-to-be-coming superhero video games that it’s worth get excited about. And there are also some huge rumours that could turn out to be true. Read on for absolutely everything you need to know… 

Confirmed new titles

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

Coming exclusively to Nintendo Switch at some point in 2019 (exact date TBC), Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order arrives 10 years after the previous instalment in this hero-stuffed series. Seeming to take inspiration from events that are currently occurring in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the game will see heroes and villains working together to stop Thanos and his lackeys from collecting the Infinity Stones. Expect familiar faces from the Avengers, X-Men and Guardians Of The Galaxy teams, with the Nintendo Switch making the most of its multiplayer capabilities. 

The Lego Movie 2 Videogame

Traveller’s Tales, the brick-headed games company that makes all the LEGO titles, is yet to announce their next full-on superhero games (their last ones were 2017’s LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 and 2018’s LEGO DC Super-Villains). But we do know that TT is cooking up a tie-in game for The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. 
This game will feature LEGO Batman, who is putting aside his usual lobster thermidor to help Emett and his chums fight off an alien invasion. As we wait for the next fully-superhero-focused title from TT, this one (which is released for Xbox One, PS4 and Switch on the 26th February 2019) should tide us over nicely.

Pre-order from Amazon

The Avengers Project

Square Enix is having a fairly massive 2019, with Kingdom Hearts III, Left Alive and the Final Fantasy VII remake among the heavy-hitters on its slate. Interestingly, though, the company is also quietly working away on a Marvel game known as The Avengers Project, in conjunction with Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal. Imagery pertaining to Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man and Thor showed up in the first teaser trailer, along with a very bleak-seeming tone, but we’ve heard very little else about this project. Shaun Escayg, the creative director behind Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, is leading the charge behind the scenes. We look forward to finding out what this one actually is.

Two DC games from WB Games Montreal

Osama Dorias is a Senior Game Designer at WB Games Montreal, and he confirmed towards the end of 2018 that two DC Comics games are in development at the studio. Given that WB Games Montreal previously brought us Batman: Arkham Origins and the Batgirl: A Matter Of Family (a story add-on for Arkham Knight), it seems logical to predict that the Bat-family could play a part in one or both of the projects. We have no official info to go on, though, so we’ll just have to keep our peepers peeled. Could this be another prequel to Arkham Asylum?

Marvel’s mysterious mobile title

As was announced very early in 2019, Marvel has teamed up with some former Blizzard staff to bring a new mobile title to life. Ben Brode, who previously served as director on the card-collecting Hearthstone game, is among them. His new indie studio, Second Dinner, has received $30 million of funding from the Chinese company NetEase as well picking up this mysterious Marvel gig and is subsequently going on a hiring spree. Since Marvel already has a card-collecting mobile game (Marvel: Battle Lines, it’s called), we’ll be very interested to see what Second Dinner eventually serves up.

The rumours that have our attention

Guardians Of The Galaxy?

The Guardians Of The Galaxy team already received the Telltale Games treatment, and they’ve been LEGO-fied plenty of times, but they may well be getting their biggest game yet. Rumours surfaced in 2017 suggesting that Eidos Montreal, as well as working on The Avengers Project, is developing a Guardians game. The Deus Ex and Tomb Raider franchises dominate this studio’s CV, making it seem like a logical choice for a swashbuckling single-player adventure game based on Marvel’s infamous bunch of A-holes. We’ve never seen an official confirmation from Eidos, though, so this one remains a rumour.

Something from Rocksteady?

Rocksteady Studios must have been working on something since 2016’s Arkham VR, but they’ve kept a very big lid on it. Rumours have suggested everything from another mainline Arkham entry to a co-operative multiplayer Justice League title, but we have nothing in the way of official info to go on. All we know, in fact, is that Rocksteady’s next release will not a Superman game. We know that because Arkham franchise regular Sefton Hill tweeted these words last year: “When it’s ready to show, you’ll be the first to know. Spoiler: it’s not Superman”.

Spider-Man PS4 sequel/universe expansion? 

Insomniac Games is yet to announce a sequel to Spider-Man PS4, but the game was an absolute smash hit and it leaves a few plot threads dangling for further web-slinging adventures. Now that the game’s three pieces of DLC have dropped, we’re hoping that Insomniac is building up to an announcement of what will happen next in the Marvel video game universe. After all, Spider-Man PS4 was heralded as a gaming equivalent to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Iron Man movie, suggesting that loads of games will follow in its footsteps. As soon as we hear anything, be sure to pass it on.

Injustice 3?

Likewise, Injustice 2 was a big hit for NetherRealm Studios and Warner Bros. It would seem logical to make a sequel. At the moment, though, those companies are prioritising the Mortal Kombat franchise, which releases its 11th instalment on April 23rd 2019. DLC and extra characters will surely follow for Mortal Kombat 11, meaning it could take a while for those involved to move back over to the Injustice series. The existence of Injustice 3 remains strictly a rumour, then, but we’ll keep you posted if that changes.

Something 4-related from Marvel

And finally, the weirdest rumour of the lot. The Marvel Games Twitter account has changed the copy in its logo to read ‘Marvel G4mes’. The rumour mill has gone into overdrive, suggesting everything from a Fantastic Four game to Marvel Vs. Capcom 4. Heck, maybe they’re going to announce four separate things? Again, as this rumour develops into proper news, we’ll update you and this article.

Which superhero game are you most excited to play? Is there a title you’re hoping to see announced? And what do you think that 4 means? Let us know in the comments below…