50/50 pedals are nice if you find that you'd like to ride in regular shoes or sandals and have a wider platform which can greatly increase foot comfort if you wear a softer cycling shoe.

You don't have to gorrilla the pedal on but they need to be tight (and they will self tighten).... the reason a pedal wrench is long as you sometimes need immense leverage to get frozen pedals off a bike.

Make sure you grease the pedal threads and I am in the habit of taking my pedals off whenever I do any tune up and will re-grease the threads... they are never hard to remove when you do this.