What? It's how I cope.

I'm down to my last nerve,
so I'm trying to be careful with it.

Hey, what's up with Spider-Man? Did you see the new-huh? Yeah, I know I've been on kind of a video game thing the last few posts. I've been trying to avoid things that are, as the kids say, triggering. Do they still say that? What I mean is that even glancing at news sends me into a spiral of outrage and anxiety that's just unhealthy. And, it turns out, my going apoplectic over every horrible, racist thing the President of the United States says and does, doesn't actually make him stop saying and doing horrible and racist things. 

Pictured: The President committing
what I'm pretty sure is actual treason. 
Not pictured: consequences.

I mean, I didn't watch the debate, but the next day I saw the thing about how when asked to condemn the Proud Boys he used this as an opportunity to ask them to carry out an armed insurrection if he loses the election. Which is a crime, right? And-holy shit, I'm doing it again. But all this to say, if gaming isn't your thing and you're just here for my screeds, skip this one, sit tight, I'm sure my resolve will break and I'll be back to unhealthy obsessing about world events outside my control any day now. 

Look, the shitshow that is 2020 isn't
going anywhere today, so we might as well
 talk about nonsense for a minute or two.

But back to Spider-Man. Did you see Peter Parker's re-design? Yeah, how's that for whiplash? But hey, these are the times we live in. Anyway, if you don't follow this sort of thing, the PS4 Spider-Man game that was such a big deal a couple years ago is being re-mastered for PlayStation 5 to coincide with the release of the Miles Morales sequel/DLC. Which, great, they want to make sure it looks it's best on the new console and that it compares favorably with the new campaign. Except... 

Yeah, except they for some reason they replaced the character model for the twenty-three year-old Peter Parker and with a child. Like, a child. Ok, I say "for some reason" and Sony did give an explanation, although it was in some kind of meaning-neutral marketing speak, so who the hell knows?

Above: Peter Parker
Below: Yikes, what?

Above: Ben Jordan capturing the true 
essence of Yuri Lowenthal as Spider-Man.

So what's up with Spider-Man? Well, according to the PlayStation blog:

 "...to get a better match to Peter Parker/Spider-Man actor Yuri Lowenthal's facial capture, we have cast Ben Jordan to be the face model for Peter Parker on the PS5 console."

-Spokeaperson James Stevenson from 

Insomniac Games, giving a business answer

Yeah, but, why does he need to look like Yuri Lowenthal? Like, the thing about voice actors is that they don't necessarily need to look like the character model. Take the titular character Archer on Archer for instance. Archer looks like Jon Hamm because that's what you'd expect a douche spy to look like. H. Jon Benjamin, the voice actor who plays him on the other hand, looks nothing like Jon Hamm.

"Again, because it's a cartoon and genetics. Now does anyone have
 a question for me that isn't why don't you look like Archer?"

-Benjamin at every Comic Con panel

What? Don't look at me like
that, you are older than me.

Also, he doesn't look like Yuri Lowenthal. Like, at all. Also, also, Yuri Lowenthal is older than I am-which is you know, old, making Insomniac's explanation weird and unsatisfactory. But weird and unsatisfactory explanation aside, why is the new character model, Ben Jordan, so much younger than original actor John Bubniak? I mean there's sort of a trope in video games-especially Japanese RPG's, of protagonist characters being super young. Like, heroes are fifteen, seasoned warriors are seventeen and anyone twenty-two or older is a wizened sage or dead. But the Peter Parker in the game has been Spider-man for like eight eight years already and serves as kind of a mentor for Miles Morales. They kind of look the same age now.

Final Fantasy III was our Citizen Kane.

And doesn't seem like it word work from a story perspective. I mean, I generally haven't cared about video game story lines since the 16-bit era, which is admittedly weird because current games are closer than ever to being interactive movies whereas games of the 90's asked us to take chibi anime soap-operas like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger seriously. But Spider-Man's story was surprisingly good and relied heavily-as good Spider-Man stories do-on Peter Parker struggling with balancing his super hero job with the responsibilities of his early adulthood. Recasting him as a kid again strains credulity.

Strains credulity in a video game about a photographer with radioactive spider powers. Ok, there's obviously worse things going on in the world right now, but I guess I'm just fascinated by the motivation behind such an unnecessary recast. Although recasting Spider-Man with increasingly younger actors seems to be a tradition. 

Pictured: Remember Toby McGuire? He played Spider-Man
way back in 2002. I think with Hedy Lamarr as Mary Jane.