Friday, May 09, 2014

Amazing Spider-Man film informatics Part 09: Employees of Oscorp

The following are employees of Oscorp who have appeared in both movies.


Dr Rajit Ratha
Dr. Rajit Ratha was the Director of Business Development in the Biogenetic Division of Oscorp in Manhattan. Peter accidentally bumps into Ratha during a science tour around the labs, but he ignores Peter's apology and continues walking. Curious, Peter follows Ratha, unnoticed, and sees him about to enter a room, until he was stopped by two Oscorp workers and wanders off with them. Peter enters the room which is full of genetically altered spiders, which later results in Peter getting bitten by one of the spiders and receiving superpowers.
Later, Ratha visits Dr. Connors in his office. Ratha states that Norman Osborn's sickness is rapidly increasing, and that Connors needs to begin human trials immediately. Connors refuses, saying that his new serum isn't ready yet, and as a result, Ratha fires Connors. Ratha then takes some of Connors' serum, stating that he will be testing it on limbless, retired military men and women in a veteran's hospital by passing it off as a vaccine. He leaves, and, in desperation, Connors ends up using it on himself.
Later that night, Ratha was being driven across the bridge to get to the hospital when Connors, now transformed into the Lizard, begins attacking the citizens. As people flee from their cars, Ratha remains in his, confused as to what is going on. The Lizard then attacks him, attempting to grab Ratha out of the car. Ratha manages to dodge the attacks, and Lizard ends up throwing the car off of the bridge. Before Ratha and his car plunge into the water, Spider-Man appears and webs the car to the side of the bridge, saving him.
In a deleted scene of the first movie, it was revealed that Dr Ratha tracked down Dr Connors in the sewers, seeing him having a conversation with Peter Parker as Spider-Man. Dr Connors begins to transform and Dr Ratha temporarily subdues him by shooting him. Ratha then proceeds to sedate Peter, asking him questions about his knowledge of his true origins: as the Oscorp employee admits, it's not by chance that Peter is the only example of cross-species engineering that actually succeeded. While he's speaking with Peter, the Lizard regenerates himself and attacks the two of them. With Spider-Man too weak to do anything, The Lizard kills Dr Ratha by biting off his head with his huge jaws. Dr Ratha's badly decomposed body was found in the sewers beneath Manhattan a few days later.


Alistair Smythe
Alistair Smythe is a member of Oscorp, a scientific genius specializing in robotics, cybernetics and genetics. He is shown to be harsh due to his frequent insults towards Max Dillon and even orders him to fix an electrical fault at one of Oscorp's genetic lab on his birthday, which leads to his transformation into Electro. After the incident, Smythe tries to cover up the incident by pushing the blame to Harry Osborn. After Harry Osborn makes a deal with Electro and breaks him out of Ravencroft Institute, Electro kills Smythe by burning a hole in his chest while breaking into Oscorp with Harry.


Donald Menken
Donald Menken was the personal assistant of Oscorp Industries founder, Norman Osborn. Menken escorted Harry Osborn to see his dying father to say his last goodbyes. Afterwards, he witnessed Harry's humiliation of the board just as Peter Parker arrived. After Electro was detained at Ravencroft Institute, Menken visited to supervise and witness him as he taunted both Menken and Dr. Kafka, prompting Menken to order Electro to be shut down to prevent the full extent of his powers.
When Harry was tipped off by Norman's former assistant Felicia Hardy about the cover-up around Electro's transformation, Harry was infuriated. This led to the discovery that Menken had been using Harry's name to sign off on Special Projects at Ravencroft. Menken and his team immediately came into Harry's office, removing him from his position and seizing power of the company. When Harry came back to the building after making a deal with Electro, Menken was forced at gunpoint by Harry to give him a cure. Menken took him to a deep storage facility, injecting him with a vial of irradiated spider venom kept in containment. As Harry painfully mutated into a goblin-like form, Menken escaped and activated an alarm throughout the tower.


Felicia Hardy
Felicia Hardy was Norman Osborn's executive assistant, and later became Harry's assistant after Norman's passing. In the comics, she becomes a world-renowned cat burglar known as Black Cat.
Following the death of Norman Osborn, Harry made Felicia his assistant, claiming that everyone there worked for her now, much to the boars's annoyance. Later on, Felicia asks Harry if there's anything he needs. He replies saying no, unless she can get him back the genetically-modified spiders that were destroyed after the Lizard's attack one year prior. She tells him that she overheard Donald Menken talking with the guards and they had the spider venom extracted prior to their disposal. She tells him they are located in the building in a division called Special Projects.


Gustav Fiers 
Gustav Fiers "The Gentleman" is an associate of Harry Osborn and Oscorp Industries. He is rumored to be the one who plotted the deaths of Richard and Mary Parker.
At the end of the first film, Fiers visited Curt Connors after he was incarcerated in Beloit Psychiatric Asylum, following his rampage in New York City. He questioned Connors as to whether he'd told Peter Parker the truth about his father. Connors told him to leave Peter alone, causing Fiers to simply disappear.
Towards the end of the second film, Fiers visited Harry Osborn in his cell at Ravencroft Institute. They began to talk about building a team, and Harry requested it be a small one. He suggested that they begin with Russian mobster Aleksei Sytsevich, who had just been freed from prison. Fiers later walked in to a level in Oscorp Tower, and walked past robotic arm-like tentacles, robotic wings and a robotic rhino-like suit. Sometime after, he gave the Rhino exo-suit to Sytsevich, as requested by Harry.