Wednesday, July 4, 2012

The Amazing Spider-Man


Best to be clear from the get-go: I’m not a terrible admirer of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films. Any of them. They’re not horrible or anything (well, maybe the third one), but for the most part, they are too glossed over. Too clean and happy and forced. J.K. Simmons helps make them bearable, as does a batshit crazy Willem Dafoe, and, later, Alfred Molina.

Point is, I wasn’t fan of the originals, and when it was announced that a new Spider-Man reboot was being released just five years after Raimi’s last Spidey flick, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.

So, I offer up with virtually no surprise that Marc Webb’s well-intentioned revision is as unnecessary as I thought it might be. Despite casting better actors than Raimi did, The Amazing Spider-Man offers nothing new. Nothing new to the Spider-Man franchise or to comic book movies in general. It’s glossy, clean, happy and forced. I honestly don’t think the filmmakers involved should be surprised if a little irritation is thrown their way – we’ve been here before, and damn recently, too. 
Webb’s film isn’t a whole hell of a lot different than Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie (I know it may not be fair to compare, but when they’re this similar, how can I not?). Raised by his aunt and uncle after his parents’ mysterious deaths, Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a high school nerd who, after a set of absurdly convenient circumstances, finds himself bitten by a scientifically engineered spider, thereby adopting some groovy super powers. When his uncle (Martin Sheen) is murdered, he sets out to find the guy who did it, but winds up, you know, saving the world instead.

I mentioned convenient circumstances before, and at the risk of harping on nagging plot holes (as I did in my Avengers review), there are a few things that simply cannot go unmentioned here. In order to achieve his super powers, Peter finds himself in a secret lab at Oscrop Tower, which is headed by Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans). So, if you are willing to accept that Peter was able to 1.) Get 10 steps through Oscorp’s lobby dressed like a stoned-out hipster from the ‘90s, 2.) Be issued a security badge without showing any form of identification, and 3.) Sneak away and access a super secret lab with a temporary intern security badge then, sure, I guess you can appreciate what’s happening.
Look, I get it. I understand that, yes, this is a super hero movie, which requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief from those watching it. I know not everything in The Amazing Spider-Man is meant to be taken literally. I’m cool with giving a little slack, but scenes like the one I just described isn’t me giving the film a hard time, it is lazy, convenient filmmaking.

And that’s just one of the reasons this flick didn’t work for me. Others include CGI that looks no better than the Spider-Man from 2002, and the film’s curious rush in the time it introduces its villain, to the time said villain decides to take over the world (seriously, it’s a matter of minutes… usually there is some grandiose planning to be done).

The question: is The Amazing Spider-Man better than Raimi’s Spider-Man? I’m the wrong person to ask. There are parts of Raimi’s first and second films that I enjoyed a lot, and there are a handful of things here that I cared for (namely Campbell Scott as Peter’s father, Emma Stone as Peter’s love interest and Dennis Leary as a police captain), but for me to say one is better than the other is to assume that they are different enough to be critiqued separately. Which, really, they are not. D+

24 comments:

  1. Yeah, I think I'll skip this. I just have no interest in seeing this though I did love the first 2 Spider-Man movies.

    Oh, I still want the $7 of the $9 I spent on Spider-Man 3, the remaining $2 is for that entire cameo sequence by Bruce Campbell.

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    1. Ha nice. And what a cameo that was. Definitely worth the $2. The rest of it? Yuck.

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  2. Yeah, this was incredibly bland and hard to enjoy. Blah.

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    1. I want to say something like, "Yeah, it's such a shame." But it's not. I guess this is what happens when you make movies so similar so close together.

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  3. Yaay another person who didn't like it! I'm so sick of telling people why I dislike this film. I, on the other hand, am quite a big fan of the first Spiderman (and that only), 'cuz it was just one of those cinematic trips in the formative years of one's life that they can't forget.

    This one, was so unnecessary, and I felt badly made, and the villain sucked, and the ending was dumb, and worst of all- completely wasted the brilliance that is Emma Stone.

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    1. I could not agree more with every single thing you said. Bland, boring, lame villain, cheap ending, and an underused Stone. Just criminal.

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  4. YES! Only Peter f***ing Park would go into a room filled with glowing, neon spiders, and poke at their webs. Grr. I don't remember Sam Raimi's films enough to say whether or not this is better, but it was so uninspired. Oh Garfield, at least we know he can be in much better films.

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    1. Uninspired is a really good word to use in regards to this flick. There's just nothing to it at all. I think it'll go away very very quickly.

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    2. Eep. I just heard it's the first planned in a trilogy....

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    3. I just heard that too! Honestly, that completely depends on box office returns.

      (Pauses. Checks Box Office Mojo.)

      Aaaaand it set an opening day record. Yep, we'll be seeing two more of these.

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  5. Spider-Man 3 is probably the greatest comedy of the 21st Century
    Proof:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOtpeYERu9w

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    1. Ha, yeah, that was a really really unfortunate scene to show up in any movie ever. Just awful.

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  6. I was a fan of the first two, but I'm not the least bit excited to see this. Still, I'll probably give it a look in the next week or so.

    Thanks for the follow by the way!

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    1. Thank YOU for coming onto the site and reading/commenting so much. Glad to have e-met you.

      And yeah, I'd say this is completely skippable.

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  7. Great review! This film really doesn't interest me at all, but I may see it some time for Stone and Ifans. Rebooting the franchise so soon just seems absolutely unnecessary for me.

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    1. Yeah, unnecessary indeed. And considering this made a goddamn killing in the brief time it has been out, we can definitely expect two more of these. Let's hope they put something a little more thrilling together.

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  8. the story definitely lacked, but the talent was at least good.

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    1. Yeah I think that's fair. Hopefully the sequels will fare a little better.

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  9. Ouch. Well, I have noticed that we have similar views on superhero movies, so if you don't like this one then I probably won't care for it either. I might skip this one altogether.

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    1. Honestly, you wouldn't be missing anything if you skipped out on this. It simply adds nothing new. Such a shame for the talent involved. Sigh, oh well.

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  10. When I was just a kid I read 3 or 4 Spider man comic books because I love Spider-Man (1994 TV series). Then I saw Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and it was a (bad) carbon copy of the original. It was good(to bad), but 1.Tobey Maguire don't know how to act, 2. Kirsten Dunst is too good to this series of (bad) films, her character is sucks(she cheats Spider-Man in every film), 3. Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina are Golluming, 4. They rehash the story over and over, 5. Bad CGI effects, 6. Too clean and happy and forced. The only good thing about this films J.K. Simmons, JUST THAT. The third film is horrible, but it goes in so bad its good area. When Tobey Maguire danced I laughed so hard and Spider-Man was dead.
    The Amazing Spider-Man IS GREAT. 1. Andrew Garfield IS Spider-Man, 2. Emma Watson is helpful, 3. I bought the DVD and my Grandma likes it, 4. It shot from the point of view of Spider-Man, 5. This film respect the comics better, 6. The Amazing Spider-Man is darker than Spider-Man. Overall Spider-Man: C; Spider-Man 2: C+; Spider-Man 3: between D+ and C-;The Amazing Spider-Man: B.

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    1. It's actually really refreshing to hear a Spider-Man fan not call Spider-Man 2 a masterpiece. None of these films really do it for me (though I do love J.K. Simmons). Did you like The Amazing Spider-Man 2?

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    2. Ha ha! I don't to see it. Will be terrible. It will ruin ALL the spider-man films. Probably I'll never see it.

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