E3 2018: Everything We Learned From Sony's Spider-Man Demo
5. The Writing Is Spot-On (As Are The Villains)
Insomniac
Yuri Lowenthal might've only had a few months to endear himself to the Marvel masses, but if this demo's anything to go by, he's the perfect wall-crawler. Sharp, charming and hilarious in equal measure, Lowenthal's Spidey is every bit as much the hero fans have become familiar with in the comics - his scathing retorts a constant reminder of the character's unique nature.
As villain after villain appears on the Raft, Peter just cracks on like they're nothing. He tells the Scorpion to give him a minute while he's in his grasp, but by far the best moment comes when he's rebuffing the advances of Adrian Toomes - the villainous Vulture himself. Pent up in the Raft for an age, he flies at Spider-Man and revels as he does, before being webbed by the wall-crawler in the most dismissive manner imaginable.
It's classic Spidey through and through, and serves as a good indication of the story's writing. We know already that Spidey scribes Dan Slott and Christos Gage have had a hand in the narrative direction of the title, and with this Spidey already feeling particularly authentic, it's a move that looks to be paying off.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
