Spider-Man: Lotus
Starring Warden Wayne, Sean Thomas Reid and Tuyen Powell
2.5/5
Spider-Man: Lotus is an infamous Spider-Man fan film (an unlicensed film made by fans) directed, written and produced by Gavin J Konop.
After the death of his girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Tuyen Powell), a grieving Spider-Man, aka Peter Parker (Warden Wayne), is unsure whether he can still call himself a hero.
On a technical level, Spider-Man: Lotus is a competent debut. The untrained cast deliver decent performances (if sometimes soap-operatic), and Sean Thomas Reid stands out with measured, weary grief as Harry Osborn. The dramatic scenes are generally well-shot, and the visual effects are surprisingly solid for a fan film (except for the glaringly fake fire in the warehouse fight). Lotus begins with an earnest, energetic action sequence, the film has a couple of stylish black-and-white scenes with Spider-Man rendered in colour, and has a touching emotional core of Spider-Man bonding with a terminally-ill young fan.
If Spider-Man: Lotus were just a half-hour short film about Spider-Man confiding in a fan and learning to be a hero again, it would have been much better-received. But much of Lotus is an uneventful, angst-ridden slog. The characters are mopey and underdeveloped, the dialogue is clunky and overwritten, and Lotus’s action scenes are very poorly-shot.
It’s also worth noting that Konop made Lotus essentially out of spite and oneupmanship toward the MCU Spider-Man series, and he and star Wayne were both exposed for a long string of racist, homophobic and ableist online behaviour.
Spider-Man: Lotus is free to watch on YouTube, but there are many far better fan films (with less problematic creators) out there, including Tears in the Rain (a Blade Runner short), Batman: Dying Is Easy, Patient J, Punisher: Dirty Laundry, Power/Rangers, Portal: No Escape and the Uncharted fan film.
