Thursday Movie Picks: New to the City

Wandering Through the Shelves hosts Thursday Movie Picks. It's a weekly series where bloggers post and share various movie picks every Thursday. 

The rules are simple: based on the theme of the week pick three to five movies and tell us why you picked them. For further details and the schedule visit the series main page here.

This week's theme is New to the City.

Spider-Man 2

When a failed nuclear fusion experiment results in an explosion that kills his wife, Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina) is transformed into Dr. Octopus, a cyborg with deadly metal tentacles. Doc Ock blames Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) for the accident and seeks revenge. Meanwhile, Spidey's alter ego, Peter Parker, faces fading powers and self-doubt as he moves into the city.

One of my favorite parts of the Spider-Man trilogy is that it is really rooted in the character struggling to make ends meets, trying to decide what kind of person he wants to be. And that it's always rooted back to Uncle Ben's lasting memory that great power invites great responsibility. I don't really feel like superhero movies focus on this other side of being an alter-ego anymore - just the moral or political questions of saving people...so I love the 'every day' aspects of Peter's arc.

Wonder Woman

Before she was Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on a sheltered island paradise, Diana meets an American pilot (Chris Pine) who tells her about the massive conflict that's raging in Europe. Convinced that she can stop the threat, Diana leaves her home for the first time. Fighting alongside men in a war to end all wars, she finally discovers her full powers and true destiny.

Having lived on Themyscira all of her life, Diana jettisons into the 20th Century having zero experience with any modern wonders like ice cream and inconveniences like Victorian dresses. Gal Gadot does such an amazing job capturing Diana's arc from teenagerly curiosity to becoming a mature woman. Choosing this made me realize I still haven't watched WW84...and I'm still not sure I will with all the bad reviews.

Superman: The Movie

Just before the destruction of the planet Krypton, scientist Jor-El (Marlon Brando) sends his infant son Kal-El on a spaceship to Earth. Raised by kindly farmers Jonathan (Glenn Ford) and Martha Kent (Phyllis Thaxter), young Clark (Christopher Reeve) discovers the source of his superhuman powers and moves to Metropolis to fight evil.

If it wasn't for Clark sporting glasses once the world discovers Superman, would the MCU have any idea how to protect their superheros without the hat and glasses mind-trick?