Review: The Amazing Spiderman (very light on spoilers)
The Amazing Spiderman is the Casino Royale of comic-based movies.
And now, I shall explain myself…
I went into The Amazing Spiderman with little info. I’d seen trailers. I knew the director and cast. I knew there was negativity in the online community. I read one review, Manohla Dargis’ mixed NYT notice. And I knew that Sony had screwed the pooch with the media in general by premiering the film in England while refusing to show it stateside, even under strict embargo.
So I went into a Glasgow multiplex, 5 days into the film’s run. 1:30p 3D show. RealD glasses at the cost of 80p (about $1.25) to the ticket buyer. The theater promoted “permanent” glasses one could purchase. The 3D bump was £2.10 (about $3.25), making the price £10.80 or with glasses about $18 US. The theater was about 85% full. The chain offered a 10% discount for buying online and also, a £14.99 ($23.25) a month (3D costs extra) all-you-can-watch pass.
Anyway…
I found the movie to be a revelation. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Raimi’s movies, mostly because of the villains (all lame and under motivated for my tastes) and the endless vamping around the central relationship. What I loved and respected about Raimi’s films is that he embraced the comic book completely. Raimi’s vision was more loyal to the books than any comic book based movie until that time. The great Tobey Maguire was perfect for Raimi’s Spidey vision. Maguire had played a lot of teens and brought an edge to them that added a layer. In Spider-Man, he was stripped down to being more vulnerable than we’d seen him… earnest. And Kirsten Dunst was a lovely object of his passion… unobtainable blonde Hitchcock girl trying to be an adult as Peter Parker tried to hang onto his inner teen. She was hot for the guy in the suit with the codpiece and the power.
Marc Webb didn’t “reboot” Spiderman. He reconsidered Spiderman the way a theater director reconsiders Shakespeare. From the evidence of the film itself, it seems that Webb and writers James Vanderbilt/Alvin Sargent/Steve Kloves looked at the idea of Spiderman – teenager of the moment gains power, gains ego, loses loved ones, falls in love, commits to doing good even at personal expense – and didn’t get caught up in the history of the book or movies… kinda like Frank Miller reconsidered Batman.
The Amazing Spider-Man’s Peter Parker is a nerd. But he has the natural anger of a whip smart kid in 2012. He isn’t a wallflower. He rides a skateboard because he does, not to be cool or to offer a plot point. He has a gift for science. And without making it into a Feminist Plotpoint, so does Gwen Stacy.
The casting of the actors in these two roles is perfect. Andrew Garfield looks like the Peter Parker of the original books, all neck and expressive hair. Add intense eyes and a lot of emotional acting skill in between and in spite of being too old for the role, he’s perfect. I hated the idea of Emma Stone wasting her time in this film… I guess because I thought to would be a dead end that she had to recover from, as Kirsten Dunst is still escaping Mary Jane. But Gwen is not just an object here. She has the blonde hair and I have never seen Ms Stone dressed to accentuate her height, legs, and comfortable sexuality as she is here. But she is also more than capable of keeping up with Peter on an intellectual level while being far more sophisticated on an emotional level. He grunts a lot when faced with emotional expression… like all teen boys and the vast majority of grown men.
Choosing Sally Field and Martin Sheen as Aunt May and Uncle Ben was another stroke of genius, though the script made the casting, that seemed off, make perfect sense. Sheen plays yet another version of his character from Wall Street… but he’s just so good at it. Yes, they have dumped “With great power comes great responsibility.” And they replaced it with actual scenes with Uncle Ben trying to teach Peter what that means, starting with having great responsibility if you have no power at all. I know some underpants have bunched up over this kind of thing, but Peter Parker isn’t Superman… he’s a young man figuring out his limited powers.
This is at the crux, I think, of whether you buy into this new version of onscreen Spidey or not. I don’t want oversimplify either side of the argument, but for me, this film’s relationship between Uncle Ben and Peter is the most real and emotional it has ever been. He is Uncle and father. His arguments to Peter are clear and not cluttered by some new power. There is something iconic and cool about “With great power…” But when Uncle Ben dies here, the message is stronger and the emotion is also.
Aunt May, like Gwen, is not a female who needs her hand held. She is a 60ish woman who works, who might not be safe on the subway at 9p at night, but who has enough of a brain in her head to figure things out as they connect to the real world, of which she is an active and conscious member.
I loved PP’s coming to understand his new powers. It was as good as Raimi’s and like the whole film, less cute/kitsch. The suit makes perfect sense to me. The mechanical web shooters fit the vision of Parker here and I like that the chance if scientific/mechanical failure opens dramatic/action doors.
Shall I state the obvious here? I don’t care about the tradition so much as I care about the movie. I don’t care whether Peter’s parents ever showed up in the comic. I don’t care about this like or that line. I don’t care if it takes an hour to get to the suit. Am I involved in this story? Do I care? Answer here: YES!
While most comic-based movies are about big action beats, the action on ASM is clearly the secondary consideration. A basis in real emotion always comes first. The best comparison, to me, is Bond. That series evolved from the straight-forward Connery films to an increasingly comic Roger Moore to a very serious Timothy Dalton to an oddly familiar but not overly exciting Pierce Brosnan. And then, they broke the mold with Casino Royale and a real actor in Daniel Craig. (God knows, Brosnan would have loved to play the Bond they wrote for Craig and might have been great.)
I can’t really think of a comic-based movie that has leapt so dramatically from obsessing on the original text… to make it better, decades later. The stupidest notion I have heard, now that I have seen the film, is that they didn’t need to do the origin story again. Well.. this is a more radical leap than Burton/Schumacher to Nolan. It clearly needs this version of the origin story to move forward. Nolan’s Batman also demanded a reboot, though less radically because the idea of Dark Knight was already so well defined by the books.
But the idea that a franchise needs to die (see: Batman & Robin) before being reconsidered is a bit of self- loathing from geeks. I think of all stories more like I do theater. There are too many Shakespeare rethinks, ultimately. Most are shite. But a good one is a glorious thing. And so, I am willing to wade through the others to get there. I don’t think Webb and Co consciously said, “Fuck the prior series,” holding out some of the classic notions in an act of arrogant petulance. None of the Spider-man dialogue was Shakespeare. ASM is as different from the Raimi films as Zeffirelli’s Hamlet with Mel Gibson was from Olivier’s… or Branagh’s Henry V from Olivier’s revered classic. Those films kept Shakespeare’s poetry, but did edit substantially… And changed meaning and subtext.
When Amazing Spiderman asks the basic questions, like how would a man behave after Spiderman saved his 4-year-old from a blazing car that’s been thrown off of the Williamsburg bridge by a giant lizardman, the writers didn’t look to old comics for answers. They sought a realistic emotional truth. And when they expand that particular bit, it speaks to the audience’s greater truth, that defeating evil is more compelling when we all reach for our best selves together, not just relying on one guy in a suit with special powers. This is radical for a superhero movie. It’s as though Hawkeye and Black Widow actually had something to do in the third act.
The movie is filled with these moments of unexpected true emotion. From Captain Stacy obsessing on what little he knows and refusing to show any imagination then figuring things out, to Flash being a human who understands loss, to C. Thomas Howell, to Rhys Ifans, whose serious performance here could change the rest of his career. (I hated the CG lizard at first… but thought it got to be quite strong in the last reel.). Gwen’s dramatic side was beautifully written and performed.
This isn’t Dark Knight at all. Batman is a much darker, much more adult character. But what does reflect Nolan is that the villain in the next ASM movie won’t – if things continue in this vein – be about spectacle, but character. Whatever the costume, the motivation will not be – mwah ha ha – killing everyone in midtown Manhattan for no real reason, but something personal… even intimate. You know, like desperately wanting your arm back but the cure making you insane or like how being a vampire gives you everlasting life, but you need to kill humans to sustain yourself.
I am truly shocked by what this movie is and how gutsy the choice by Sony and Marvel was. I am somewhat embarrassed by the knee jerk reaction of some who constantly scream about originality being dead, yet seem to want this film dead for being too original… or not seeing the originality for the history, the budget, expectations, and god knows what other distractions.
I am not saying you need to love ASM or that you are a misguided fool if you don’t. Reasonable, intelligent people can disagree about all art. But I was really moved by this film, more so than by any other comic-based film I’ve ever seen. (This doesn’t include graphic novel films like A History of Violence.) I was very, very impressed. And I love that it’s not like any other superhero film. I went down that road with Peter Parker. I believed him.
I like this Spiderman better than Raimi’s… Much as I prefer Indy 2 to the rest But one doesn’t have to choose. They are two different visions and you can care about both on their own scale. Embrace you truest, best feeling and embrace it. Don’t react because you expected this or that and feel like you gave to take sides. That’s what Uncle Ben would tell you… even if neither you nor I have great power or responsibility for the future of this series. And don’t be surprised if I hug you even if you just threw a basketball at my head… or this review.
I like DP reviews where he gives me a sense of taking the journey he took.
Great review. However, in regard to one of your asides, I thought Whedon gave Hawkeye and Black Widow great, character-specific tasks in the third act of Avengers. Spoiler… Widow is the one who actually closes the portal and saves the world.
“I prefer Indy 2 to the rest”
BURN THE HERETIC!
FS, calm down. Calm down. We will put him on a seat-warmer, and HOPE HE WILL COME TO HIS DAMN SENSES XD!
That aside, I chose for one reason: Spidey never got his due on screen before. All of those Raimi films, all of them, have very good Spidey moments, but never captured how I have always felt about the webslinger. This film, unlike the previous trilogy, captured the Spidey I love from the comics, and that’s I why it’s the only Spider-man movie for me. It will probably be the only Spidey movie for a lot of people if they give it a chance. You summed up it’s uniqueness quite well David and hopefully that messages gets out to people.
I don’t understand the revisionist history on Raimi’s trilogy. The first one was quite good, the second one was hailed as possibly the best superhero movie ever made until that time. Now just because the third one was a letdown somehow the entire trilogy gets taken a dump on.
He also liked Hangover II better than Hangover. But Temple of Doom ROCKS, so no shame in prefering it to the rest.
I can’t speak to anyone else’s alleged Raimi revisionism, but I have been consistent. I thought Spidey 2 was good, but wildly overpraised. Same problems with villain and relationship.
And I like those first 2… but never thought they were the great movies some did.
Great review DP. I totally disagree with you but you made some valid points that made me rethink what I liked and disliked about the film. I may check it out again….
“…to Rhys Ifans, whose serious performance here could change the rest of his career.”
I thought “Anonymous” and “Mr. Nice” had already done that (maybe they helped him get the role here even).
But nitpick aside, this is the damn near perfect kind of review that motivates leery people to go see the movie when they had no intention at all of checking out yet another Spider-Man movie.
good review. liked the part where you compared Webb’s take to ‘the way a theater director reconsiders Shakespeare’.
ASM felt like a guy looking at the source material and running through his own filter. And it worked because he played down the blockbuster elements and played up the character moments.
Great review…as NPR’s Linda Holmes points out though, Maguire’s PP was a nerd…Garfield’s is a geek. Which makes a lot more sense in the world in which we live.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2012/07/03/156194584/a-nerd-is-not-a-geek-two-spins-on-spider-man
Good review that has a good perspective on the film, even though I liked it a bit less, and still think it does not rise to Spiderman 2 level.
I think that people who are comparing the mentor relationship between the two films are being a bit unfair as this film does not actively seek to establish that type of relationship. If anything Connors is more a mentor to Gwen than to Parker.
I do very much like the chemistry between Garfield and Emma, and was actually very glad that Gwen wasn’t held hostage in this film, the way Mary Jane was in every one of Raimi’s flicks.
I do agree with some of arguments in the link below however and while I enjoyed it at a certain level, it fell below recent reboots Batman Begin, and Xmen First Class.
http://www.hitfix.com/motion-captured/a-second-look-at-the-amazing-spider-man-only-heightens-the-frustration
Big G, it’s not revisionism: it’s just time. Those films have not aged well. If you also factor in Spidey 3, and those residual effects. You have a trilogy of films, that are getting smacked around a lot right now. It’s not like Amazing Spider-man makes those films disappear, they are still on available to purchase, but it’s refreshing to have this take. This really special Spider-man film, that hopefully a lot of people see before July 5th, 2014.
It seems if you are a hardcore Raimi fan, then what Drew wrote may apply to you. The reason why this movie is different in every way is the tone, the way it views heroism, and how Pete doesn’t walk away like a chump at the end of the movie. The ending of Spider-man still pisses me off, and this movie washes it away with a Pete of stronger character than the Pete found in Raimi’s films. If Drew misses that, then he misses it. I just know that over my entire life of watching Spidey cartoons, reading comics, and watching these films. This film nailed the Spidey, that I’ve always wanted to see on screen.
The differences between Amazing Spider-man and Spider-man are huge. One film is a run of a mill origin story. The other is a special film, with a great cast, and a story about what it means to be hero. The sacrifice one makes, when they decide to wear that suit. Also, PETE DOESN’T STRAIGHT UP KILL A GUY IN AMAZING SPIDER-MAN LIKE PETE DOES IN SPIDER-MAN.
David: Haven’t seen the new Spider-Man yet, but I love your lede. I called Casino Royale the Batman Begins of James Bond movies, so now I’m really interested.
I called CASINO ROYALE the WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT of Bond movies. We’re all obviously talking about the 1967 version, yes?
LOL: Actually, if we were talking about the 1967 version, you would be spot-on, Christian.
Speaking of the 1967 Casino Royale — does anyone here have a copy of the original soundtrack album on vinyl?
But of course.
Christian: Then I don’t have to tell you: There was a period of several years when serious audiophiles used that LP to test their new stereo player set-ups. Evidently, the production standards on it were such that the album was something like a gold standard.
Which is why its such a keeper.
Emma Stone is cute, but her character is a mess… Is she the popular girl with a good heart? Wait, she’s into science? Who is this girl?!
Kirsten Dunst was terrific as the popular but insecure girl from a broken home who wants to be an actress. I saw the original again and was very surprised at how good she is handling all of it. There is a scene between her and Peter Parker out on the backyard where I realised that no other “love interest” in a superhero movie has been as richly developed.
Paltrow is great, but she’s there for the banter… Katie Holmes was wall-paper and her replacement, Maggie G, was no better in my opinion. Not even Natalie Portman had that going for her in Thor and she is Natalie Portman.
What’s better yet, Mary Jane’s acting career was a major plot point in the second Spiderman.
Also, I hate how the new one (SPOILER ALERT) ends dramatically with him staying away from Emma Stone only to thirty seconds later change into a happily together ending. Yes, it’s ambiguous and it only hints at the happily together ending, but it’s there.
The original actually went there… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DYodUX4sJU
Watching that ending again makes you notice just how similar the new one is. And just how less ballsy.
Oh well.
joey, the ending of ASM though sets up the sequel(s) to explore the SPOILER ALERT I GUESS famous Death of Gwen Stacy storyline; Peter makes a choice here, not keeping his distance from Gwen, that will eventually get her killed
Bulldog – Just read Drew’s piece you linked to… no idea what his perspective comes from, as he seems to be willfully disregarding story elements left and right… especially after seeing it twice.
He goes on and on about the credits it’s tag, as though that is the bulk of the movie and already hates ideas… not execution, ideas… of where the story might go in future installments. And that Norman Osborne’s not in the film. And that Garfield isn’t plating what’s in the page. Is he joking?!?! Is he reviewing the movie or Drew’s wishes for a movie that wasn’t made? He has every right to make it all about himself, but that’s not a film review or criticism. That’s fanboyism, first and last.
And if Devin is “investigating” what might have been cut out of the movie, excuse me for questioning whether the movie that was made was anything other than target practice for him.
I don’t particularly want to fight with these guys, but when the response to a film is “but here’s what isn’t in it,” I have little interest in the conversation.
kbx, that would be a nice touch if they do it, but I’m not talking (referring to what David said above) about it being a bad idea, I’m talking about it being badly executed. It felt false and forced almost in order to not have a downer ending, unlike Raimi dared to do.
Also, can someone talk about that “swinging on cranes” sequence. Was it just me or that was plain awful. Not quite Shia swinging like Tarzan in Indiana Jones, but close. Dangerously close.
i like that he implies he’ll break the promise. because that’s what a lovestruck 16 year old kid would do. They make decisions based on emotion and have impulse control problems.
I get the end of Spiderman from a technical standpoint. He walks away because he fears for what might happen to those closest to him. It’s a rational and well thought out decision that makes sense from the perspective of a 30 year old screenwriter. For a 16 year old kid that’s all hormones and emotions, it makes sense for him to say ‘what’s the worst that could happen’. He tries to do the right thing but it doesn’t quite hold.
Seems more natural for the character. I think it worked well for Spiderman on one level because no one was expecting him to walk away. I think everyone was genuinely surprised he made that choice. it was a left turn when everyone was expecting a right. It worked because it defied expectations. Plus, how long did Peter stay away from MJ…. until the inevitable sequel.
So im not sure why the line at the end where he implies hes going to break the promise is so surprising and criticized. Would it have been better for him to keep acting like an emo douche until the next film? Doesn’t the promise of their relationship continuing make for a fuller and more resolved story in the film?
I realize it’s almost idiotic to consider one film as a standalone in this day and age of superhero multi sequel franchise trilogies. However, if you took Raimi’s Spiderman as a standalone, Harry’s dad is dead, Peter Parker turns his back on the girl he’s crazy about and Spiderman becomes an albatross around his neck as he swings through the city, one final money shot for the audience…. fade to black.
Not exactly the most inspirational endings. I realize that part of being Spiderman is the burden of responsibility. But there’s also the part of it that is fun. Raimi’s films didn’t exactly give us a Spiderman who enjoyed his role. We got the sad sack, lovable loser Spiderman.
As a standalone movie, Amazing Spierman has a far more fulfilling arc. Yes, you could spend time debating Peter Parker’s overnight broken promise to Gwen’s dying father. But that promise is going to be broken. You know it, i know it, the audience should totally know it. So why is everyone so shocked by this moment?
Too soon?
Wait, Garfield and Stone were playing SIXTEEN? Do sixteen year olds have crow’s feet (Garfield)? Also why is a HIGH SCHOOL KID working in a SCIENCE LAB that you’d need six MIT degrees to work there?
Eh, whatever, STONE IS PURE HOTNESS, all that matters in life and all that matters in movies.
Joey – I like the ending a lot… because it makes sense for all of those characters. I don’t think it felt forced at all. And I felt the Raimi ending was a cop out, with almost no real motivation.
And I liked the cranes. Again, because they were character motivated.
I don’t love “Amazing Spider-Man” as much as many folks here but I do think the promise thing is really well-handled. SPOILERISH He is invited to break the promise by Gwen — the post-funeral scene (oh, I love that Hitchcock homage) in which we see that she intuits that Peter is being standoffish because he promised her dad he would leave her alone is beautiful and Gwen’s awareness that they are breaking that vow together (rather than, for instance, Peter deciding to do that on his own) makes the scene work.
Also what has Denis Leary done to his face?
i agree with the crane scene. i liked it a lot. Webb’s Spiderman made the character feel so small in a big city. Raimi’s versions made it seem like moving across the city was an afterthought.
Just making it to the Oscorp building was a feat and required help to get there. Taking something usually glossed over and turning it into a struggle.
Though i did feel it mirrored that scene at the end of Raimi’s Spiderman when the people team up on the bridge and throw stuff at Green Goblin declaring “you fight one of us, you fight all of us”.
I liked both of those moments. I like the crane bit more, because as you said, it has character implications as opposed to DONT MESS WITH NEW YORK!
The end of Spider-man is only made worse by Spider-man 2. Pete walks away from MJ once, and he’s willing to do it again at the end of 2! MJ has to stop him, reassure him that everything will be okay, and then Pete finally accepts being in the relationship. This is followed by the nonsense of 3, and this alone is why the Raimi trilogy bothers me so, and why I want to hug Webb and the writers of Amazing for the relationship alone.
That aside, the reaction by some to the crane scene, is why the internet is so tiresome. It’s a character motivated and rather moving scene, but it dares to be sincere. It dares to be representative of some real human emotion, and that just flusters the GOTIs.
C. THOMAS HOWELL POWER.
Wow, a lot of love for this movie. I really don’t get it.
I’m glad you guys enjoyed it. I wished I had too. Now all I can hope for is that Dark Knight Rises blows me away, but I also happen to be one of the few who doesn’t love Nolan. DAMN YOU JOEY, GROW UP AND ENJOY YOURSELF YOU SEXY BASTARD!!
Big G, it’s not revisionism: it’s just time. Those films have not aged well. If you also factor in Spidey 3, and those residual effects.
The first Superman “aged” liked shit once Burton’s Batman hit. It took Reeve’s paralysis and a remastered DVD to place some distance so it could be seen from a more nostalgic position.
Same thing will happen to Raimi’s Spidey.
And it’s going to take Nicholson’s death to revise Batman ’89, post-Nolan.
David, did you mean “unobtainable blonde Hitchcock girl” metaphorically? Because Mary Jane is pretty famously a redhead, even if Dunst is normally blonde.
Funny how this hair color thing worked out in these movies: blonde Dunst playing redhead Mary Jane; redhead Bryce Dallas Howard playing blonde Gwen; natural blonde Emma Stone, probably most recognized for redhead roles, playing blonde Gwen. Oh, and Elizabeth Banks, best known as a blonde (no idea if it’s her natural color), playing brunette Betty Brant.
Meanwhile Lex is losing his hair.
Ermes Effron Borgnino otherwise known as Ernest Borgnine dies at 95. May he Rest in Peace.
RIP Ernest Borgnine.
AIRWOLF POWER.
Airwolf kicked an unbelievable amount of ass.
Well, I admit I never saw much AIRWOLF, so I didn’t realize it’s the big point of reference for Borgnine fans of a certain generation. Seems odd to me, like if after Jimmy Stewart died people were saying “HAWKINS power!” Or Henry Fonda: “SMITH FAMILY” power!”
I watched ASM again. The conclusion i have come to is this. This summer The Avengers proved how to do a big, summer spectacle superhero movie. Amazing Spiderman proved how to do a small, character driven superhero movie.
I think Nolan will show how to make a superhero film that’s both epic spectacle and character driven.
Havent seen Dark Knight Rises, but you could have the three best comic book/superhero movies ever made come out in a three month span.
Id put ASM and Avengers up with Dark Knight Rises as the best the genre has ever offered.
I meant Dark Knight. Havent seen DKR yet
I know it’s probably silly for me to join in on this conversation now, especially when it’s all sort of JS-baiting even if I don’t mean it as such, but I’m seriously pretty flabbergasted by how many of you really enjoyed this movie and thought that it worked as any kind of cohesive whole. SPOILERS follow, obviously, as I work through what I actually want to write about this movie on my own blog at some point this week.
Parts of it are fine, yes. Scene to scene, it’s not unenjoyable, certainly not boring, largely well-acted.
But this Peter Parker/Gwen Stacy relationship everyone loves… WHAT on earth are you on about? One of the major things I was actually looking forward to in this movie was a different sort of Parker/girlfriend relationship — that’s something I felt that could definitely be done different from the Raimi movies, which I mostly really like. And certainly, Stone is good, Garfield is good, and they look and sound good together. But Stone is barely in the movie! And their relationship barely progresses! You see like three scenes in a row where they sort of fumble through their initial attraction to one another. Then later, he confesses his identity and they kiss. OK, nice moment. In the climax, she does the same kind of cursory do-gooding that any other superhero girlfriend gets to do in the middle of the action. And then: they “break up” after having a grand total of zero dates and a grand total of two conversations that last longer than a minute, in a blatant steal from the first Spider-Man movie with a sweet but kind of wan chaser to say don’t worry, they still like each other!
How is this a different, more emotionally honest comic-book-character romance story? SO much of this movie is lumpily cutting together an origin (that involves Gwen far less than MJ in the first Raimi movie), a villain origin, a TINY bit of relationship stuff, and pretty boilerplate if sometimes well-assembled superhero stuff that there’s no real time to develop the kind of chemistry-heavy relationship some of you are imagining took place!
Lots of strong moments in this movie, yes. But how you guys think this adds up to more than a mutant remake of the first two Raimi Spider-Man movies with a cooler girl (WITH LESS SCREENTIME!) and a fucking 1991 Rufio-ready SKATEBOARD is absolutely beyond me. I wish I had been moved — and moved to not even think about the Raimi movies during this one. But all I could think of how closely many of this movie’s ideas imitate that one without bringing anything really new to it.
And Garfield, talented as he is, sounds like Hayden Christiansan when he talks.
Also, again, I try not to compare to the Raimi movies, but it’s also bizarre to me that people complained about an “emo” Parker in Spider-Man 3, yet seem MOVED by the fact that Garfield spends this entire movie looking like he’s on the verge of tears.
I agree 100% with Jesse I don’t get the love for this movie at all. I have liked Andrew Garfield in other movies but his Peter Parker is the most unlikeable action movie hero I can remember. The only one that comes close is Hayden Christensen in the Star Wars prequels. This whole I’m so angst-ridden I can’t get a sentence out or look anyone in the eye is lame. I do like that it is an interpretation of a character that should happen when translating a character from one medium to another. But I don’t like webb’s or Garfield’s interpretation of this character.
Dave I understand your disagreement with some of what Drew wrote, but I still agree with what I think he addressed with the plot issues, and not just style issues. Many things were left open ended in this movie, and not just for the purposes of the sequel.
SPOILERS AHEAD
One of the first questions I had was, didn’t Peter miss his mom too? It’s like she never existed and every conversation was about how his father was gone.
Also, if an antidote can be produced so quickly for the Lizard. Then can one be produced for Spiderman as well?
What was the motivation behind releasing a gas that turns everyone else into lizards?
I love the fact that Connors is a character of conflict, but exactly what is he conflicted about? As the Lizard, when he is supposedly at his worst, he goes after his colleague on the bridge to stop him from giving the serum to the war veterans, and yet as the Lizard he is also willing to expose everyone to the toxin.
Peter apparently gives up his search for Uncle Ben’s killer with no mention of it in the script anywhere.
Also, all the coincidences bothered me, including that the father of the little boy he saved on the bridge ended up being the guy who could control the cranes to help Spiderman at a key moment. A nice moment for sure, but when you compare it to the train scene of Spiderman 2, that was a more spontaneous action on behalf of the crowd, whose lives were in imminent danger and were witnessing Spidey getting his ass kicked while he fought to save their lives.
And on a more humorous note, no sports coach tries to recruit him for their basketball or football team even after there were many witnesses to what he did in the gym and on the football field.
END SPOILERS
I actually enjoyed the superhero journey that the boys from Chronicle had, and that surprisingly low budget feature handled the superhero coming of age story better than this blockbuster did.
Two comments, one geeky, one spoilery
Geeky: It’s not very well known (and might have been retconned by now) but Peter’s parents were CIA agents who were killed by the Red Skull.
SPOILER
In the original comics, they spent years with Capt. Stacy being more of a Commisioner Gordon clone than an opposing force. Then, at his death scene, his last words to Spider-Man are “Peter, take care of my daughter.” Which is when Peter learned he knew. I haven’t seen the film yet, but finding out they decided to flip that scene just for a cheap flip back at the end really annoys me.
END SPOILER
Jeremy, see the movie. It works rather well.
That aside, Chronicle is not even in this film’s ballpark. I really like that film, but it’s incredibly uneven. All of the kids except the one they kill, are ham-fisted actors. The villain kid does more mugging for the camera, than DeNiro in a Fockers movie. While the hero kid is a bland version of Keith Gordon. Even with all of that, it works great as a villain origin story, but fails as a tale of superheroes.
Now let’s run through this with inference:
SPOILERS AHEAD
“One of the first questions I had was, didn’t Peter miss his mom too? It’s like she never existed and every conversation was about how his father was gone.”
His dad took his mom away from him. The mom is an innocent party, while the father is not. Why would Pete be angry with his mom, when his father is responsible for them leaving?
“Also, if an antidote can be produced so quickly for the Lizard. Then can one be produced for Spiderman as well?”
The Lizard is aberration. Spidey is made that way. His parents designed him to be the only who can handle the double 0 mutation. They even imply as much in the movie, so an anecdote would not effect him. He’s naturally able to adapt in ways no other human cannot, and that’s why the effects can be reversed on the likes of Connors and the Swat team.
“What was the motivation behind releasing a gas that turns everyone else into lizards?”
Dr. Connors states as much in the film: to end human weakness. Turning everyone into lizards, eliminates human weakness, and that’s what drives the Connors’s character as his mind deteriorates.
“I love the fact that Connors is a character of conflict, but exactly what is he conflicted about? As the Lizard, when he is supposedly at his worst, he goes after his colleague on the bridge to stop him from giving the serum to the war veterans, and yet as the Lizard he is also willing to expose everyone to the toxin.”
They explain this as well in the vlogs Connors leaves, that Pete watches. The more he uses the serum. The more it deteriorates his mind. This means that the Lizard who attacks Ratha, features a more controlled Connors, than the one who wants to eliminate all human weakness.
“Peter apparently gives up his search for Uncle Ben’s killer with no mention of it in the script anywhere.”
No, this is not what happens. Captain Stacy tells him, that he’s not doing any good attacking guys who look the same, and explains why. There’s an entire dinner scene revolving around this, and you think it’s dropped? It’s there. The film even has another shot of that artist sketch to imply, that the search for Uncle Ben’s killer is not over.
“Also, all the coincidences bothered me, including that the father of the little boy he saved on the bridge ended up being the guy who could control the cranes to help Spiderman at a key moment. A nice moment for sure, but when you compare it to the train scene of Spiderman 2, that was a more spontaneous action on behalf of the crowd, whose lives were in imminent danger and were witnessing Spidey getting his ass kicked while he fought to save their lives.”
Love the subway scene, but you are forgetting what happens at the end of that scene: PEOPLE DIE. Go watch it. People get thrown out of the train by Doc Ock, and they do not land on the tracks.
If you don’t like coincidences, that’s cool, but these things tend to happen. What you are ignoring about this scene, is how it makes New York seem so BIG! Raimi’s movies featured a New York, that Spidey could get around in three seconds. Amazing Spidey has a New York, that even Spidey needs help with getting around.
“And on a more humorous note, no sports coach tries to recruit him for their basketball or football team even after there were many witnesses to what he did in the gym and on the football field.”
Peter Parker doesn’t do organized sports, man!
SPOILERS AHEAD
“Spidey is made that way. His parents designed him to be the only who can handle the double 0 mutation. They even imply as much in the movie, so an anecdote would not effect him.”
And that comes back to my problem with coincidences JS. It would imply that they knew that some day he’d be accidently bitten by a Spider and their nifty human experimentation would come in handy. Seems to be a very heavy borrowing from the Ang Lee Hulk story line.
BD, I am not sure if you can jump to that conclusion. It’s not out of the realm of possibilities, but there is a different way to look it it. The spider that bites Pete, is similar to the spider in Pete’s dad’s office in the beginning of the film. It seems rather possible, that Pete is the way he is because of genetics testing. Being bitten by the spider only enhanced abilities, that were already inside of him from the original test done on him as a child.
My question is, what on earth is the point of that deviation from general Spider-Man lore? I get that they didn’t want to just repeat the Raimi-movie origin (although they repeated plenty from that movie anyway), but what added depth does it bring to turn Parker’s transformation at least partially into Chosen One fate bullshit?
The movie doesn’t even seem confident in this idea, as it seems pretty likely more of this material was cut out before the movie came out. So you have this major subplot in the first half of the movie that disappears only to be kinda-sorta teased for the sequel — as if that’s what anyone wants to watch a sequel about? More about Parker’s parents?!
Why didn’t they just skip the origin and do a Parker’s Early Days as Spidey movie? That’s basically what the second half of the movie is anyway (albeit still weirdly derivative of the Raimi movie and pretty all over the place in terms of what they want to accomplish).
To what end, JS? Does that aspect make Spider-Man more interesting to you?
Jesse, David already summed this up for you. You are not complaining about the film, but complaining about what it’s not. This movie gives us a Spidey whose not a douche. Go watch that six minute Spidey trilogy montage. That Spidey is a whiny guy, who thinks being Spidey is torture. We now have a Spidey, who isn’t tortured, accepts his job, and that works for me. That’s better lore, works better with the comics Spidey who has always been written that way, and it’s a BETTER SUPERHERO STORY. This movie is a movie about heroism. That alone makes it better than every Raimi film, but you go enjoy those Raimi films. No biggie, but I am animated about this for a reason: read David’s review.
Sure, there is discussion of how what has clearly been excised effects the film, but in Drew’s write-up…. how is pointing out character inconsistencies, contrived plot points, and obvious holes reviewing what’s not there. Seems to me he’s very much reviewing the film that’s there *and* discussing it in context of that which is missing.
You found Garfield’s version non-tortured?! Dude looks like he’s on the verge of tears in most of his scenes. Dude seems angry and angsty about his parents; angry and angsty about Uncle Ben; mumbly and tortured even at the prospect of talking to Gwen! Hell, Poland describes him as “angry” in his near-rave review. I mean, you have to have conflict in a superhero story, so I’m not even saying that it inherently doesn’t work to have Parker be kind of mopey and angsty and angry… just surprised that you read Garfield’s Parker as this stand-up all-around great-guy hero.
And honestly, I got a greater sense of Maguire enjoying being Spidey than I did from Garfield. In action, he seemed to dig being Spider-Man. It was the real-life stuff where he seemed more hapless.
SM, if you believe that’s the case. I disagree, because some of these folks have a grudge against this film, and it’s not being treated fairly by them. They have their reasons, I have my reasons for disagreeing with them (one of the best superhero films ever cast aside?), but that does not mean I cannot call a spade a spade. I posted about the inconsistencies with the film right after seeing the it, but this does not mean I cannot state, that he’s pulling things from the air.
Jesse, you got a great sense of that, but that’s not what the character said or how he reacted in Raimi’s trilogy. Go watch that montage. Every single statement he makes about being Spidey, never comes across as heroic. Garfield might be miserable, might be put out, but he accepted his fate. He’s going to be a hero, because the city needs him to be. Whatever the cost, he’s going to be a hero, and that alone is why he’s a better Spider-man than Tobey ever was.
I also suggest you read more Spidey comics, but Garfield is playing that Spidey. Peter Parker has moments of anger, angst, and melancholy but guess what? He does his job. He puts on that suit, swings into danger, and does what the city needs him to do. That’s a stand up hero, and that’s a human hero. You bringing up Gwen sort of ignores one thing as well: she’s beautiful. Downright beautiful women, can lead a man to being goofy and mumble like Dustin Hoffman in “Dick Tracy.”
Why their relationship works, why all of it works, stems from the characters in it having real weight to them. They come across as human beings and not comic book characters, and anyone ignoring that is missing the wonder of this film.
I’m not a huge fan of film criticism by supercut. People can cut together lots of similar things across multiple movies. Doesn’t carry much weight for me. When Peter is in action as Spidey in the Raimi movies, he’s not constantly complaining or saying “this sucks.” Like the Garfield Spidey, he’s more flip and confident and heroic. Some six-minute YouTube video doesn’t change the content of the full six hours’ worth of movies.
Also, filmmaking is more than BUT THIS CHARACTER IS HEROIC! (Besides the fact that your description of Garfield’s version could very easily apply to Maguire’s.) It’s cool that you really felt the weight of those characters as humans, but to me they felt like conveniences played by extremely likable actors. And Garfield’s mumbly, extremely attractive, skateboarding Parker was like no version of that character I’ve seen in various comics or cartoons (I’ve seen one of those characteristics at a time in other Spider-Man iterations, but put together it felt more like a construct to me than a real person).
Jesse, you are dodging the obvious: it’s a montage of FOOTAGE FROM THE MOVIES WITH DIALOGUE, FROM THOSE MOVIES. That’s in caps because really, you are dodging that those films, tell a different tale than the one you believe you saw. Garfield’s Spidey is more heroic, confident, and Spider-man, than Tobey’s Spider-man ever was, and six hours of film proves that in every conceivable way.
What I find funny is a reviewer who seems to like the Raimi films, is stating that what I feel makes Amazing Spidey exceptional, isn’t good enough for you, even though you like films I find lacking. I will ignore the whole Peter Parker nerd thing, because he married a SUPERMODEL. Being a geek does not mean one is ugly, not all the time anyway.
Finally, your entire last paragraph is utterly ridiculous. I could spend a day ripping it apart from my inference abilities alone, but you are doing what most people who dislike this movie are doing: bashing it based on the previous trilogy. That’s fine and good, enjoy your opinion, but that previous trilogy featured some of the most two-dimensional characters in history. They were not humans, they did not make human decisions, and their reactions were ridiculous. I will just point to Spider-man 3 as proof of this last sentence XD!
“That’s better lore, works better with the comics Spidey who has always been written that way, and it’s a BETTER SUPERHERO STORY.”
Actually, JSP, I recall Peter Parker being so unhappy about being Spider-Man in some of the early comics that for a while he simply stopped suiting up, and avoided super villains like the plague, until he was more or less shamed back into doing derring-do.
Yes Joe, that’s the early comics. Spidey is an Avenger now. He’s grown up! He’s still not married, but let’s hope that changes with the MARVEL NOW reboot.
But isn’t this supposed to be a movie about his early days as Spider-Man?
I actually would’ve been really happy had this movie worked on its own terms. One of the things I found so disappointing about Amazing Spider-Man is how many elements of it seemed to be knocked off from Raimi’s version, which seems like a really weird direction for a supposed “reboot” to take.
I didn’t go into this movie thinking, oh man, I love those Raimi movies SO much, I’m going to HATE the SHIT out of this one for REVENGE! I wanted to see a good Spider-Man movie with Garfield and Stone, who are both generally pretty great. But I got a weird mish-mash of knocked off Raimi elements, occasional inspiration, and some really stupid story elements… which JS has weirdly interpreted as SPIDER-MAN AS HE WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE SEEN! I went with a lifelong hardcore Spider-Man fan who was not blown away, did not think, wow, this is the Spider-Man Raimi missed. And he liked the movie more than I did, still wasn’t blown away.
Let’s list some stuff that happens in Amazing Spider-Man, especially if YouTube compilations of six minutes of out-of-context flips FROM THE MOVIE!!! are game as criticism…
*A scientist mentor to Peter becomes a bad guy and, as such, is able to figure out Spider-Man’s secret identity and go after him personally (Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2) and relocates his mad-scientist lab to an unlikely location (Spider-Man 2).
*A section of 40-50 minutes at the beginning before Parker becomes Spider-Man, followed by him testing his powers on a rooftop (Spider-Man).
*Action sequences involving cranes (Spider-Man 3), a bridge (Spider-Man) and a fight in a sewer (Spider-Man 3 again), including a sequence where regular people in NYC band together to help the hero (Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2).
*A scene following a funeral where Parker decides he must leave the girl he loves to keep her from danger (Spider-Man).
If anything, I wish this movie was LESS like the Raimi versions in areas besides “we’ve made Aunt May younger but somehow far more lame and less active.” So I could better tell it apart. I didn’t hate the movie — the acting is mostly good, the action stuff is often well-done, Spidey has more weight as a special effect this time around — but I’m flabbergasted that anyone would watch it and think, wow, what a cohesive emotional journey and more accurate/entertaining interpretation of this character.
I enjoyed both opening shots at Spider-man franchises. There were a lot of screwing around with the lore in Raimi’s version too. In all honesty, my only real interest in this version is to see where the Gwen Stacy story goes. If it goes to it’s natural conclusion (and done well), it will be huge.
Has anyone noticed how Fox’s F/X has been playing the Raimi films around the clock? Does anyone else think this is done to intentionally deaden any interest in the new film. I can see how playing “Batman Begins” or “The Dark Knight” would amp people up for TDKR, but constantly reminding people that “Spiderman” was done just a few years and pretty well at that has actually made me less interested in “Amazing Spiderman.” Seems kind of like an eff you from one studio to another.
No, I think its just associative marketing. FX shows The Spiderman movies to take advantage of the media buzz for Amazing Spiderman.
That’s basic tv programming 101
In re: Gwen Stacy storyline, here’s what needs to happen:
The sequel should end with the traditional GS comic book fate, but Peter should be so overcome with guilt that he goes back to Oscorp, where he perfects an experimental time machine that allows him to go back to the exact moment when Gwen… well, you know the rest.
BUT, he is astonished with Gwen is saved from her fate by the last-second intervention of…
SUPERMAN!
Supes, of course, reversed the course of the earth (or flew faster than light, or what the fuck ever) in order to save Lois Lane, and now he and Peter have permanently altered the space-time continuum such that the Marvel and DC universes now coexist. Disturbed and depressed that his beloved NYC is now Metropolis, Peter Parker moves to Gotham to seek out a mentor in Batman, and becomes the new Robin (although as Nightwing, since “Robin” is kind of gay).
Meanwhile, Superman realizes that Earth is now threatened by twice the number of enemies than previously thought, so he teams up with Silver Surfer to enlist the Fantastic Four to join with the JLA to fight the Skrulls and the Legion of Doom.
In the first Ultimate Team-Up, which earns more than Avatar and Titanic combined, the Avengers refuse to team up with the JLA and Lex Luthor’s alliance with the Skrulls threatens to force the citizens of Earth into cosmic slavery. But in the post-credits teaser, Galactus appears…
In the second Ultimate Team-Up, the Avengers realize that only an alliance between the X-men and the Teen Titans can meet the threat of both Galactus and the Legion of Doom. The 20-minute battle between Brainiac and Ultron before the intermission is hailed as the sine qua non of 3D FX, and the film goes on to earn more than every superhero franchise combined, despite the 3 hour, 42 minute run time. After the defeat of Galactus, however, Superman reveals that the crisis is more complicated than anyone could have foreseen. The space-time breach that Peter Parker and Superman have created has resulted in a crisis…
… on INFINITE earths. The third Ultimate Team-Up is the first film that breaks the $400 million production cost barrier, and the first that needs to earn $1 billion just to break even.
You’re welcome, movie executives.
Superman was going really fast and went back in time and that the world going in reverse was a visual representation of the time passing in the opposite direction.
Reversing the course of the Earth would have killed everyone on the planet.
I thought I covered that with “or flew faster than light,” anghus, but thanks for the tip — I’ll have to remember not to stop a planet rotating at more than 1,000 mph in the future.
Does this mean that I can’t roll back the mileage on my car by driving it reverse, either?
BoulderKid, I think it’s the opposite. F/X would be riding the wave of pub for the new film and start replaying the older films cuz there’ll be more interest in them. People’s interest in the franchise is piqued, time to cash in. It’s really not done to draw people away from the new. Sony/Marvel would have a say in how often FX could air the older Spidey titles. They’d probably also have contracted blackout dates too. They’re hoping for a symbiotic relationship where seeing for the first time or reviewed pleasure would drive people to the theater and for people flipping channels, they see the spidey uni will be more apt to stay on and watch since they’d have spidey on the brain. Sony/Marvel would have a say in stopping an over saturation point but remember, they’re going to reap some benefit from the thing playing as opposed to sitting on the shelf. There’s a contracted amount but they’re probably getting some of the ad sales as well.
EDIT: Sorry didn’t see angus had responded.
WHAT MOVIE DID EVERYONE (except Jesse) SAW?! haha this is incredible to me.
By the way, I hadn’t read Poland’s review until now, but:
Webb “reconsidered Spiderman the way a theater director reconsiders Shakespeare”
is so wrong for so many reasons.
Not David Bordwell,
Yes. You also can’t convert a Delorean into a time machine nor can you stop a laser using a house sized portion of jiffy pop.
the movies lied to you bro.
WHAT MOVIE DID EVERYONE (except Jesse) SAW?
i love that sentence. “What movie did everyone saw”. You type like an illiterate hillbilly talks.
Right now Cinemascore is sitting at A minus. So whether you enjoyed the film or not, the vast majority of ticket buyers gave it an above average grade.
Not that the masses are by any means a strong indicator of quality, but most people seem to love it, like it, or at least give it a passing grade. There’s a vocal minority who seems pretty critical. Should we consider you their ambassador?
Jesse – My question is, what on earth is the point of that deviation from general Spider-Man lore? I get that they didn’t want to just repeat the Raimi-movie origin (although they repeated plenty from that movie anyway), but what added depth does it bring to turn Parker’s transformation at least partially into Chosen One fate bullshit?
I agree with that and most of your points. I don’t detest the film, but I’ll give JS credit for hitting on the larger debate theme, which is easiest to put as Ditko Spider-Man vs Bendis Spider-Man.
It’s not much of a choice for me. If Spidey started as the Bendis version, he would have been pulped in the masher along with thousands of other characters and we wouldn’t be debating any film, let alone which one is better.
The ASM/Bendis version makes Spidey more of a blatant ripoff of Superman, which is exactly what Lee was trying to avoid when he gave it to Ditko. Without the “why me” question hanging over Peter’s head,he’s no different than Hal Jordan, save for the story device that grants the powers.
You’re right that this was the same mistake Ang made with Hulk. The lifeblood of Marvel characters is that they are not pre-ordained. Iron Man 2 touched on the edge of this with Howard Stark’s “new element that saves Tony from beyond the grave”, but that was at least after he saved himself with the damn suit and was repurposing his father’s tech. Try the “Chosen One” route with Captain America, and it utterly destroys the central theme of the character.
In the end, Destiny storylines are, at best, clever twists being passed as deep thought. The outcome is pre-ordained for established characters, so the creators are banking on people focusing on the differences and wanting to relive the repetition.
Kind of amazing how Raimi’s first film was my most anticipated film possibly ever and ASM is third on my must see-list behind “Magic Mike” and “Savages.” To be honest it’s probably a wash between ASM and something like “Battleship” or “Abe Lincoln: Vampire Slayer.”
I don’t buy the argument that superhero films and their inevitable reboots are somehow our new Bond films or even akin to Western programmers from the fifties and sixties.
Bond has such longevity because it’s interesting to see the variations across films from the actors, to the technology, villains, locales, and stories. Three quarters of Spiderman villains are tragic scientist figures, the plots will almost always take place in Manhattan, there are only two prominent women in his life, Parker will always be some combination of insecure and tortured.
I just can’t escape the cynical view that this is nothing but another cash grab. I’ll see the film some day, maybe just on DVD but I just can’t get excited for this. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. The film is doing about as poorly at the box-office as a “Spider-Man” film can do, which when done properly is probably the most broadly appealing comic book property. Maybe this will be another “Batman Begins” with a “Dark Knight” building on the quality of the initial film, but I don’t really see it.
Boulder, the reason why it’s not a cash grab, is because of how different it is from the Raimi films. I really dislike those films, rarely ever re-watch them, so this film basically is all new and all different. Jesse still seems to be dodging the question above, and stating this movie is nothing new. When really, it’s so freaking new, that it’s revelation at how new it is. It’s not a cash grab, it’s a real reboot of the series, and it sorely needed to happen.
I don’t get the cynicism towards rebooting Spidey, given the director and stars of those previous films moved on. There are always going to be Spidey movies like they are always going to be Batman, Superman, and now Iron Man movies. These stars get old and you have to reboot. Do you have to do the origin every time? Nah, but Amazing Spidey is creating a new world with new actors, that could easily go on with these actors for 10 years.
It’s also not doing poorly at the box-office. Did you not read what David wrote in the Weekend round-up? It seems people are being cynical towards this film because of the past, giving it grief because they love Raimi and his trilogies, and it’s not the film they wanted it to be. The film it is, remains one of the most special and amazing comic book movies ever made. The build over the next two years should be there, because if you stop being cynical and see the movie, then you will understand why.
All of that aside, Martin, you know there is destiny in all of these stories. We are not even sure how pre-ordained Peter Parker is in this trilogy. He’s the only one to survive the experiments, but the spider biting him seemed to bring out some latent abilities.
Yes, it’s only cynicism that prevents people from seeing this movie. It’s not at all because it’s a cynical reboot telling us the same fuckin origin story we’ve already seen. Sony absolutely didn’t make this movie cause they were about to lose the rights. NIH uh. They wanted to get Spider-Man “right” after the hundreds of millions of dollars of uproar generated by the previous series.
It’s okay to love the movie but when you start grafting nonsense onto real world machinery it comes across as silly.
It was a movie that exceeded the expectation that it would be crap. From an artistic point of view I think you’re kidding yourself if you think this special and unique snowflake holds up any better than Raimi’s.
Jesus Christ, The Lizard is such an awful villain, I just can’t imagine any real critique of this film ignoring that. From motivation to the effect it was a shitsandwich of a character.
i think every movie is a cash grab. no one is putting these 200+ million dollar movies into production for the sake of art.
Calling it a ‘cash grab’ is the sentiment of someone who has zero understanding of how this business works. They’re all cash grabs, except for the ones that dont make money.
And it goes both ways. Saying ‘its not a cash grab’ is equally naive. Christ people, these things are designed to make money.
Grow up.
JS, what question am I dodging? I see you not commenting on any of the very clear parallels/knock-offs in ASM that for me make the movie less than an amazingly fresh experience. You just keep saying NO it’s NEW! I don’t really see what’s new about it, because the movie is too muddled to set itself truly apart from Raimi’s movies. You’re filling in the blanks the movie leaves because you know and love the character, and ignoring any questions about its obvious closeness to the earlier films. I don’t have that luxury; I only have what the movie gives me. I mean, I’ve read some comics, but I’m not so crazy in love with Spider-Man that I can make excuses for any inconsistency or thinness with saying oh my god they NAILED the comics! I also must not know the comics well because Garfield’s Spidey doesn’t come across like any of the ones I’ve read, including the Bendis version.
Martin S, it’s funny, I actually really like Bendis, and have read a large chunk of his Ultimate Spider-Man run and really enjoyed it. Honestly, I feel like if ASM actually got a little closer to that sensibility — down to things like actually developed relationships, funny dialogue, and an actual sense of being a teenager, not just school as a convenient place to meet one pretty girl and show off rebellious skateboarding skillz, then I would’ve had
But really, both Raimi’s movie and Webb’s movie borrow some bits from the Bendis story without adapting it (though yes, JS is right, Raimi’s sensibility is more Ditko than Bendis overall). Which is fine; the Nolan Batman movies pick and choose as well. The problem is that ASM picks but doesn’t really choose. It’s kind of a hodgepodge of past movies, past comics, and screenwriter BS.
I’ve written way too much already but I have some more on this here: http://bit.ly/NVInHX
“Calling it a ‘cash grab’ is the sentiment of someone who has zero understanding of how this business works. They’re all cash grabs, except for the ones that dont make money.”
I think the “cash grab” label comes with how blatant they are with the influence of the accounting side over the creative side. See: Battleship – it may be just a dumb, fun movie and if that’s what you want then that’s cool, but it’s fairly obvious that from the start there was just a title and $200mil and it didn’t matter what filled the 90min running time as long as stuff blew up.
Contrast that with something like XMen: First Class, which was in a similar situation to Spidey in the thing that got it greenlit was that the studio may have lost the rights. Compared to Battleship, it’s fairly obvious that Matthew Vaughn had something to explore with the relationship between Xavier and Magneto, even though the initial impetus was from the accounting department.
Hold it, in Raimi’s Spider-Man Peter doesn’t kill Uncle Ben’s killer. The guy falls out of a window due to his own recklessness. Watch the movie again, JS.
I think there’s a huge difference between wanting to make big bucks and being a cash grab. The later presents itself w/such little regard for quality or the audience the whole intent is seen a ethically questionable at best.
But in SPIDERMAN 3, the Sandman IS Uncle Ben’s killer. Which is why I don’t think the Raimi films work as a trilogy (I agree with JS on that point). Watching it again proves my point that the today’s CGI is next year’s blue screen bleed. But the efx in SP2 totally work for me, since the characters have the weight of comic book animation.
y’know, in just ten days all this spider-man talk will be dust in the wind…..’the dark knight rises’ may not make ‘avengers’ dough but it will probably be hailed as THE superhero movie of the year….fwiw: ‘the amazing spider-man’ is a movie…’the dark knight rises’ is a film….just a thought….
You may have to… elaborate on what you mean… by “film”… and “movie”… and possibly… use less… ellipses…
😉
(especially if you refer to TDKR as “a film” and “THE superhero movie” in the same paragraph)
scootzy likes using ELLIPSES and ALL SMALL CASE so you don’t recognize his writing style, which is cared about by no one.
Though after Ryan Adams’ riotous Borgnine freakout on Elswhere the last couple days, scoot has a ZILLION MILES to go to claim the throne of the grumpiest old junket guy on the LA scene. Seriously what was THAT SHIT? Adams apparently likes me and hits me up on Twitter sometimes, but WOW is this guy intense. Makes Scootrereerezzzz look as genial as fucking whoever.
Calling it a cash grab doesn’t mean I’m some ignoramus of the business. There’s just a very significant difference between making a film based on a property that hasn’t been adapted yet, was done so a long time ago, or was done poorly the first time; and one that was done competently just a few years ago. I think audiences very much have a legitimate criticism when they can demand that a studio is not showing them something new, but still asking for their money again.
Obviously the film is doing well overseas where the market had not made the same inroads nine to five years ago, but there’s definitely a substantial drop off in attendance here. Sure similar or slightly diminished returns are being shown in actual dollars, but in the domestic market there is definitely a collective groan in anyone over 15 now going up anytime an ad pops up for this film.
The “Batman Begins” reboot made sense since there was some real distance between Nolan’s film and the Burton ones, the last Bat-films that were previously made and generally regarded as good were thirteen or even sixteen years or never depending on who you ask. Also I will maintain that Batman is always open to differing interpretations in a way that Spider-Man never has. Just in the 1990s and early aughts you had Burton’s gothic films, Schumaker’s campy ones, Batman the Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and Nolan’s flicks. I would argue that all but Schumaker’s were generally well regarded yet extremely different. Raimi’s films may have taken missteps but they represents a pretty good representation of the standard Spiderman story from which even its Animated series doesn’t differ in the sense of pathos or narrative offered up from the Raimi films.
I admit my argument is somewhat weakened by the fact that I haven’t seen the film and will do my best to see it in the coming weeks, but already you have a large percentage of viewers basically saying its the same stuff with new actors. NO ONE was claiming that Batman Begins was too similar to Schumaker or Burton’s films.
I can see how people who had some issues with Raimi’s films can like ASM and thus find that it has a sense of artistic legitimacy, but I think my view is reasonable too. The fact that I generally really like the Spiderman character yet see going to this film as a chore says something.
I didn’t even like ASM very much, but I do think the “cash grab” thing has become a meaningless critical buzzword that people like to throw around; the negative-spin equivalent of the positive-spin term “reboot.”
It may well be Sony interference that left this movie as uncomfortably similar to its predecessors as it is, but saying that you can tell when something was made just for the money and when it wasn’t, I don’t know, seems kind of pointless to me, especially when there’s a whole movie you can watch and judge on its own merits.
Normally I’m fine with ellipses (I abuse the shit out them myself), but 3 in one sentence is entering William Shatner territory.
Also, is that Ryan Adams and the Cardinals ryan adams?
Edit: “you can tell when something was made just for the money and when it wasn’t”
I don’t think it’s so much “you can tell when something was MADE” as “you can tell when something has SUFFERED”. It’s difficult to guess motivations, but often times when something doesn’t quite work you can sometimes sense whether it’s due to creative flaws (they tried to do something and it just didn’t work) or whether it’s due to external influences (it makes little to no sense without some information that just isn’t in the film as presented).
JS – All of that aside, Martin, you know there is destiny in all of these stories. We are not even sure how pre-ordained Peter Parker is in this trilogy. He’s the only one to survive the experiments, but the spider biting him seemed to bring out some latent abilities.
Do you mean Destiny in film or comic? Film, for the most part. In comic, a lot of retconning attempts.
But, you know how pre-ordained this is. Even if Parker becomes Man-Spider in one film, they’re not going to end on a Cronenberg note. The only thing uncertain, is if they kill Gwen. I tend to not think so, unless Emma wants out after three. Keeping her on the knife’s edge plays perfectly into the game.
Jesse – Honestly, I feel like if ASM actually got a little closer to that sensibility — down to things like actually developed relationships, funny dialogue, and an actual sense of being a teenager, not just school as a convenient place to meet one pretty girl and show off rebellious skateboarding skillz
I don’t think that’s possible in one movie. A series, yeah. But in a film, you’re asking for a slooow crawl where Parker doesn’t become Spidey until the end of the first film, or beginning of the second. It would certainly be different.
Chrisitan – But in SPIDERMAN 3, the Sandman IS Uncle Ben’s killer. Which is why I don’t think the Raimi films work as a trilogy
Which, IIRC, is a mutation on another holdover idea from Cameron’s original treatment.
“Even if Parker becomes Man-Spider in one film, they’re not going to end on a Cronenberg note.”
You are aware that there’s a story where Spider-man turns into a pregnant spider and gives birth to himself?
No, really.
I’m trying to visualize a Hot Blog in 1964, with almost everyone freaking out because Guy Hamilton in GOLDFINGER turned 007 into a borderline superhero instead of the more conventional spy he was in the first two Terence Young films. Why does everything have to be either/or? Can’t we just enjoy ASM without running down the Raimis? Can’t we all just…get along?
The uber-bizarro piling on of Ernest Borgnine (yes, the ever controversial Ernie “Cabbie” Borgnine) for some of his outdated life views over at HE just shows how anonymous online petty hate has devolved conversation.
It isn’t anonymous… The guy doing it is a well-known blogger and critic who runs Awards Daily.
You know, a guy who gets PAID TO WRITE ABOUT FILM AND INTERVIEW ACTORS, which I cannot.
FS, I thought of the same Ryan Adams, who Lex should know, because he’s Mandy Moore’s husband. Your points about First Class, are also on the ball as well. That aside, we agree or disagree about this movie, but the thread didn’t get burnt down! Let’s all pat ourselves on the back, for making that happen XD!
martin, I think the only possible redeeming factor to this reboot is if they kill Gwen and deal with it. It will be interesting to see.
“The uber-bizarro piling on of Ernest Borgnine for some of his outdated life views…”
Yes, masturbation is so passe. He might as well be promoting minstrel shows!
If we consider Spiderman as the end of the 1st half of summer, what has been your favourite summer film thus far and your biggest disappointment?
My biggest good surprise was Ted. Also really enjoyed Avengers and Savages.
Biggest disappintment, Prometheus.
finally got around to watching spiderman.
oh yeah this was so boring.
– no chemsitry between Garfield and Stone ..
– rest of the cast was okay
– theatre was full – something i didn’t want …
lots of kids under 10 years old for some reason ..
class trip – they weren’t that bad but they
make a lot of noise
– unlike DP i liked Raimi’s version better – Dunst power! over Stone power!
– i can’t deal with sitting in a theatre for nearly 3 hours for dark knight rises . so i’ll skip it . sad .
i don’t know how you guys will deal with it after 2 hours .
–
Really enjoyed Avengers, Prometheus, Magic Mike, and Brave. Moonrise Kingdom is my favorite movie of the year so far, though that’s not really one of the summer crew.
Biggest good surprise was That’s My Boy.
Biggest disappointment, probably Amazing Spider-Man. I had even lower expectations for Battleship, Rock of Ages, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, though they all failed to meet ’em. Thought Ted was pretty bad, too. Man, this makes me sound sour.
In arthouse terms, I wish I liked Dark Horse a lot more than I actually did.
Sanj, what happens in that last hour of sitting in a theater for three hours that doesn’t happen in the first two hours?? And where do you draw the line? If a movie is two hours and eight minutes, would you go? Dark Knight is two hours and forty-five minutes, with credits. So if you skip credits, you’re basically avoiding it because you can’t sit in a theater seat for an extra, what, 25 minutes or so? Does your local theater use folding chairs or something?
The only redeeming factor of the reboot, is that it gives some of us the Spidey movie we have always wanted! Seriously, when they reboot Batman in three or four years. The shit storm that will ensue, will be hi-larious.
Now to answer BD’s question: Moonrise Kingdom is my fave, and the disappointment would be Prometheus as well.
Anghus, oh no! the foreigner had a spelling mistake. Let’s attack him for being an idiot!!
Also, yes… make me the ambassador of the small percentage (spelled right? Probably not… don’t care) of people who didn’t like the movie.
Take a deep breath. Relax. This is a spiderman movie we’re talking about.
my legs and back start to hurt after 1.5 hours . if i start hitting myself to get the blood flowing people around me think i’m crazy.
if it were 2 hours i’d consider going .
add the trailers + extra waiting time before the movie starts = 15 minutes – which makes dark knight rises 3 hours. … the movie could have cut into 2 parts and made 2 hours each picture if there was an awesome story to tell .. Nolan is giving extra value . so good for him ..
i wonder if theatres have to do anything special to deal with the extra hour … more people will end up buying something to eat if they know the run time …Nolan is saving the junk food industry all by himself.
they showed the same dkr trailer before spiderman – nobody in the audience clapped or yelled or anything.
If Nolan ends on a high note I don’t think there is any way they’ll reboot Batman so soon. They will look at the reception of this Spiderman reboot and take note.
I suspect that the only thing Nolan can’t do is completely kill Batman. He may be allowed to kill Bruce Wayne.
Batman itself proves that you can make Batman films without rebooting. Batman Forever did outgross Batman Returns without telling another origin story.
Sanj is the best thing ever. But really Stone doesn’t even get a LOOK AT HER?
I think The Avengers delivered exactly how it was supposed to, and a second viewing long after opening weekend allowed me to be less picky about certain things than I was at the press screening (it’s where letter grades feel the most arbitrary). Other than that, the only mainstream film that I really loved was Ted (although I haven’t seen Magic Mike yet) while I was shocked at how moved I was by Men In Black 3.
I didn’t care, to varying degrees, for Dark Shadows, Battleship, What to Expect When You’re Expecting (which I only ‘hated’ for it’s “breast is best and C-sections are tragic and dangerous!” propaganda), Snow White and the Huntsman, Prometheus, Rock of Ages (easily one of the worst films of 2012), Brave, Amazing Spider-Man, and Savages. Madagascar 3 was fine, but summers are not made by Madagascar 3, no matter how much of a Dreamworks defender I am.
But I was rather pleased by the indie circuit, loving Beasts of the Southern Wild, Take This Waltz, and The Moonrise Kingdom while rather enjoying The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Safety Not Guaranteed (Bernie was a B-, though it was well acted and I cannot begrudge anyone who enjoyed it more than I). It’s been a weird summer for me, looking like one of the worst in recent years until the last weekend in June which had four of the year’s best (Moonrise Kingdom, Ted, Take This Waltz, and Beasts of the Southern Wild) all either opening or expanding. I guess in the broad scheme of things, summer lives or dies by The Dark Knight Rises (I *think* I’m seeing it next Tuesday but not confirmed yet) because it’s all pretty much b-level ball after that until the very end of August. Bring on Les Miz!
So yeah, biggest positive surprise was easily Ted. Biggest negative surprise is probably Brave.
LexG – i really want to give Stone a LOOK AT HER!!! but can’t do it for this movie . Stone got a huge LOOK AT HER!!! for Zombieland for me ..
imax tickets where i am is 15 bucks … i have no doubt that tdr will be sold out for that in the first 3 days or longer. people have the money – the money itself will distract them not from leaving after 2 hours.
movie critics will be forced to watch the entire movie .
the most hyped movie of year takes a long long time to watch .
also i didn’t say Garfield did a bad job at being spiderman … he didn’t go class a lot like a normal teen would do …and he sure wasn’t doing any homework .
that school must be pretty easy or something .
i’m not going to bourne legacy movie not because its long because somehow i won’t understand the crazy spy plot and i’ll feel like a loser. so now i have nothing to complain about.
Battleship, Savages, and Rock of Ages are WAY FUCKING BETTER than Avengers or Moonrise Kingdom.
Though I did like the girl in MK. YEP YEP. She should do a remake of LITTLE DARLINGS with Moretzy.
Lex, for someone who’s all about VISUALS, did you not notice how fucking clumsy Rock of Ages LOOKED? I swear there are shots in Shankman’s musical sequences that are basically an out-of-focus arm in the foreground taking up 40% of the frame with the character you’re supposed to be watching in the corner.
CRUISE.
Y’know, Sanj, you could just get an aisle seat, and then when your back starts to hurt, get up, go to the lobby, walk around for a minute or two and then go back…
Hend – martin, I think the only possible redeeming factor to this reboot is if they kill Gwen and deal with it. It will be interesting to see.
I agree. It would be interesting, but it really comes down to when it’s done. End of second film, first act of third, etc…
But After reading Foamy’s link about preggy Spidey, the plotline fits frighteningly well with an attempt to reinvent the character in the current Marvel films.
Favorite: “Moonrise Kingdom.”
I doubt whether I’ll see a better movie all year.
Biggest Disappointment: “The Dictator.”
The movie where Sacha Baron Cohen officially ran out of steam (and ideas).
Anna Faris was, however, her usual delightful self.
Most Pleasant Surprise: “Snow White and the Huntsman.”
Who knew the year would produce two terrific (and utterly different) takes on the same fairy tale?
So The Hunger Games is splitting their finale into two films. Now i have a principle to reference when i refuse to see it.
Anghus, if splitting up the movies leads to what’s happening with “Breaking Dawn”, and that series actually getting a real ending. If it works out that way with “Mockingjay”, then it’s a good decision to split up that book. Seriously, the ending of the Hunger Games is atrocious, and giving them three years will hopefully fix it.
i dont know if id use Twilight as a model for anything other than making money…
…oh wait.
“Potter” did it.
“Twilight” is doing it.
Why not “Hunger Games”?
Business as usual 21st century style.
Oh I see what you did there, even if I don’t subscribe to cynicism! That aside, BD, they are going to reboot Batman. They’ve already said as much. This is Warners. They are the TENT-POLE movie studio, and they need the pole attached to Bats.
I wouldn’t even put it past them, to make it an origin story. Much like with Spidey, there are always better and different ways to tell a Batman story. Grant Morrison is a pretty exceptional storyteller, and his Bats is different in a myriads of ways compared to Nolan’s. So the stories are out there, and I look forward to seeing them even if people like Jesse will go on and on about being disappointed with them XD!
theatres should put dark knight rises on pause at 1 hour 45 minutes and give everybody a 10 minute break .. people can get more food – check their cellphones and stuff …after 10 minutes – un pause it and enjoy the movie ….good idea ?
wonder if actors in the movie can sit through their own movie …maybe they need to tell Nolan its just too long .
Do you really think they’ll need a 10-minute intermission to check their phones, Sanj?
More than likely, 90% of the audience will have never shut them off in the first place, and will be madly texting/tweeting/whatever-the-f**k-they-damn-well-feel-like-doing throughout the entire movie.
…since that’s what the majority of the audience does every time I see a movie in a theater.
JS, the frustration for me is that — as you point out — there are SO many comics and stories out there. Percentage-wise, how many of them are origin stories? Five percent? Ten? If you ask a huge Batman fan for the ten or twenty best Batman comics ever, would half of them be retellings of his origin? Of course not. So while you certainly could retell it in an interesting way, I feel like these comics movies are all missing the middle stuff when they try to rush into a trilogy and then rush into a reboot.
Even with Nolan’s Batman: it looks from the ads like it features Bruce Wayne returning to the Batman role after hanging it up for awhile. Sounds awesome. But part of me is a little bummed that we only got one “Batman being Batman” story from Nolan, in between the origin movie (which I loved) and this comeback/trilogy-capping movie (which I’m anticipating wildly).
Same with the X-Men movies — even though I loved First Class, it’s kind of a bummer that the first three movies got rushed into trilogy-ending status for the final stretch, only to be rush-rebooted (although that one at least has some ties to that continuity and doesn’t eliminate the possibility of further present-day X-Men movies).
There are years and years of Spider-Man stories to adapt, riff on, etc., so it’s kind of a bummer to me that HALF of the Spidey movies so far are origin stories!
That said, it wouldn’t bother me if ASM had been great on its own terms. I’d hope a new series of Batman movies, then, could just tell new kinds of Batman stories without re-explaining to the audience who Batman is! Give us a Batman detective story, or an Arkham Asylum story, or any number of others that haven’t been put onscreen before!
10 minute intermission is for whole theatre – it takes that long to get people back into seats ….
dark knight rises bluray should be out in december…
guess i’ll wait .
there’s just too many factors that in the theatre that will
ruin the experience of watching this epic tale of guy in a batsuit fighting crime.
wonder how long avatar 2 is going to be …
“wonder how long avatar 2 is going to be …”
I’m guessing 2 hours and 15 minutes, which will be 2 hours and 15 minutes longer than it should be.
is the avatar hype factor gone ? will avatar 2 only make 500 million instead of 1 billion ?
all this talk of spiderman movie – anybody ask what Tobey Maguire thinks of this ?
all these superhero movies – actors have to be good at reacting to crazy people trying to kill you.
Jesse, you are once again judging these films on what you want from them, and not what they are. I am glad you want the middle, but the beginning is fun. There is now a new Spidey, with someone new he loves, and new villainy to face. That’s exciting, but you don’t like it. Which is fine, but it’s weird to judge these films on what you want instead of what they are. That’s just weird to me.
Also, who Spidey is in Amazing Spidey is a different, from who he is in Raimi’s films. When they reboot Batman, he’s not going to be same Batman as Nolan’s Batman, and that’s going to require a new origin. Do they have to be so extensive with it? Probably not, but different origins lead to different motivations; and that’s important in a reboot even if you don’t like it.
ETA: Anghus. seriously, that’s tremendous.
See, this is what I loved about the old Batman TV show in the 1960s. That version of the mythos didn’t need no stinkin’ origin. Batman and Robin were kicking bad guy ass right out of the gate, and that was that. Why were they kicking ass? Because they were freakin’ Batman and Robin, goddammit. Any other stupid questions?
“But in SPIDERMAN 3, the Sandman IS Uncle Ben’s killer.”
That’s why most Spiderman fans treat #3 the way most Matrix fans treat Reloaded and Revolutions: It never happened.
And since when is “reboot” considered a positive term? This video from five years ago is the first time I heard the word applied to a movie, and it was definitely negative even then (skip to 1:27 if you’re easily bored).
SamLowry, I know it’s just a comment in passing, but I feel like that’s a revealingly ironic turn of phrase there — “most Matrix fans treat Reloaded and Revolutions”… as if they never happened. So you’re describing these hardcore Matrix FANS who dislike two-thirds of the Matrix films. Just like there are Star Wars FANS who think that half or even two thirds of the actual Star Wars movies suck.
I’m not saying being a true fan makes you love every crap movie in a franchise (big fan of the X-Men movies, not at all of Last Stand). But it is kind of funny to me that there are “fans” who don’t actually like very much of what they’re a fan of.
I know, you might be speaking of fans of the first Matrix movie, and of course it’s possible to be a fan of one but not the others. But it has often struck me as odd.
As it does that for some people, the only way to keep movies from being RUINED is to pretend the sequels they don’t like flat-out don’t exist. I really dislike X-Men: The Last Stand, but I don’t need to engage in actual denial to reconcile my positive feelings toward the others. Similarly, the first Matrix movie is obviously a lot better than the other two… but there’s interesting stuff in the other two and it doesn’t “ruin” anything for me that they aren’t as good as the first one, because the first one can be watched on its own — which I don’t think is the same as holding your fingers in your ears and saying NOOOOOOO DOESN’T EXIST.
JS, I often agree with that criticism (or meta-criticism) — people do sometimes judge the movie they wanted to see rather than what the filmmakers actually wanted to do (in fact, see the Matrix sequels and Star Wars prequels! I feel like a lot of the ill-will there comes from that exact feeling). And maybe I’m doing that to an extent with origin-story movies. But movies don’t exist in a vaccuum; I can’t just pretend that I’ve never seen a superhero/Batman/Spider-Man origin before and re-experience it every five or ten years like it’s brand-new just because they made some tweaks. And, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, that’s my big problem with ASM isn’t that it’s another origin story; it’s that it’s a very similar origin story. It’s weird to me that you consider it so completely new!
Like I said above, it’s not that I could never enjoy an origin movie. It’s just that it seems to really dominate these movies in a way that limits them and renders them a little repetitive. If they were kicking off four/five/six-movie series, that would be different. But usually these things get capped as trilogies. Always making a trilogy and always starting with the origin does make these types of movies seem more uniform than they need to be.
Perhaps it might be more accurate to say the Official Version is what is denied; there are at least two Phantom edits that supposedly make that movie more or less watchable, and the Matrix sequels desperately need a voiceover explaining that “the real world” is just another layer of the Matrix…but Spiderman 3? Is there any amount of editing that can save that movie?
I dunno, I find Phantom Menace perfectly watchable in its actual incarnation. I don’t need to watch someone else’s control-freak edit to feel at peace with a movie that GASP, has stuff I don’t love in it!
Hence I don’t really think in terms of “if only a fan could edit Spider-Man 3.” There’s stuff I love in that movie, and stuff that is obviously the product of an absolute mess of a screenplay with quick fixes and ridiculous patch-overs throughout. A re-edit could probably not fix it. But as a critic, even a part-time one, I’m not really in the “how can I fix this movie?!?” business. Nor in the holding my ears and going la la la can’t hear you business. Spider-Man 3 exists. I like parts of it. I don’t like other parts. So it goes.
Though not a good film, Batman Forever did handle the first in a new series origin problem quite well. Three minutes of screen time talking to his shrink touched on all you need to know about Batman’s childhood. Even in Burton’s first movie they put together a small amount flashbacks fleshing out the origin. Compare that to Singer’s Superman which spent like 45 minutes going back over the smallville stuff even though it was a kinda-sorta extension of the first two Superman films which already had all of that well covered.
Scott Mendelson was writing about that a bit over at his blog… but it does sort of fudge it and act like Batman Forever wasn’t supposed to be a sequel to Batman and Batman Returns. Though it’s tonally very different and looks nothing like those movies, which aren’t super continuity-heavy anyway, it is pretty clearly meant as existing within the same world. But yeah, one thing I like about those movies is that none of them were “origin movies” even when touching upon Batman’s past. Probably why Batman Begins seemed so fresh when they actually did that — and mistakenly led a bunch of producers and studio execs to think, ah ha, it’s the ORIGIN part that’s interesting, not the storytelling/actors/filmmakers!
Martin, I’m thinking end of two, but we’ll see if they introduce the Goblin in the next movie or not.
While Begins did contain an origin story, it wasn’t the long drag leading up to it. While the Batsuit didn’t appear until the hour mark, Bale was still using the skills he would employ as a hero and there was plenty of action prior to the exposition explaining his history with Gotham’s underworld.
I love Donner’s Superman and the long origin story helped make the film seem larger than life and more of a Spartacus-like epic than the usual action movie, but one of the flaws of the genre (particularly of Raimi’s Spiderman) is they just don’t get in the suit early enough.
Its the same way I felt watching Jackson’s King Kong. We were over an hour into it, the boats crashing against the rocks, and I’m sitting there thinking “Isn’t there supposed to be an ape in this movie?”
Calling a fan who puts together a watchable, sensible and halfway-decent edit of a bad movie a “control-freak” is like calling any director, like, say, George Lucas, a control freak.
Umm….
Sam, Lucas earned the control, and paid for it. Your justification is… BULLSHIT.
This gets me and JS on the same page. Fans re-editing someone else’s movies aren’t “any director.” It could be interesting as an exercise but this “fixing it” idea is ridiculous and fan-flattering.
See, I don’t know, when I see a 136 minute movie and think that 118 of those minutes are actually pretty solid and interesting enough, I don’t freak out that the other 18 minutes RUIN EVERYTHING and try to edit them out of MY version because I can’t deal with liking two hours of a movie but hating 20 minutes?
Again, could be an interesting exercise, but fans-know-better stuff is such bullshit.
Even Highlander 2?
I’m not a huge fan of armchair filmmaking. But most people are painfully aware that pruning a bad movie down and cutting out some of the fat can greatly improve the experience. Some movies benefit from extra footage, some can be saved with surgical precision.
Star Wars prequels were all about excess. Trimming them down almost feels merciful.
If I’m going to watch Highlander 2, I want it to be the original, completely batshit insane movie or nothing. When you re-edit it, you just have a bad, boring movie that STILL doesn’t make one bit of sense. For me, who wasn’t a huge fan of Highlander to begin with (I like it. I am just not a member of the fandom *shrugs*), the insanity adds flavor.
well there seems to be enough demand for dark knight rises for 4 midnight screenings ..
so people come in at 12 AM and leave at 3 AM .
how are 1000 + people going to get home at that hour ?
they have to pay extra for parking or take a cab or walk – bike …
any movie critics going to midnight screenings ?
anybody go to the midnight screening of spiderman or avengers ?
a lot of people are just going to fall asleep and waste money on dkr at midnight ..
Yeah the prequels were not about excess. Trimming them down is the height of bullshit, on every conceivable level. Seriously, someone should trim Topher Grace’s out of That’ 70s Show. Oh I forgot, he already got trimmed out of Hollywood, because the only one worth a damn from that show is Mila Kunis.
‘dark knight rises bluray should be out in december…
guess i’ll wait…’
no sanj, really, see it in imax when it opens…i’m not a huge imax fan but this one is REALLY worth the effort…there are a couple of set pieces that only imax can do justice…
i will just end up with a bad experience in any theatre with this dkr movie … too much time = more distractions …good lucky everybody who watches dkr and has a perfect experience in any theatres… with dvd/blue 99% chance no external factors will ruin the experience.
wonder what happens when the experience is ruined for movie critics …how annoyed will they be vs regular people watching.
I’m normally against fan edits as well, but the one I want to see is an edit of Star Trek: Nemesis. How the director screwed the pooch on the conclusion of the TNG cast films should be a crime, except he was aided by the studio executives who hired a director who said that he didn’t like Trek films. That scenes that make it into a better sendoff exist and a fan, who has more ownership of the material than the director, is capable of putting it together – well, that’s a cut I’d like to see.
slashfilm podcast on amazing spiderman – its nearly 1 hour audio review of the movie by like 4 people .
they really go into detail on why they don’t like this movie and compare it with the other ones…
i want DP to debate these guys since DP liked the film more than these guys did – real movie reviewers against each other…
review starts after 30 minutes – totally free audio download / stream –
I see your Slashfilm and raise you Spill.com
yeah the guys over at spill are fans of comic book movies and even they didn’t think this was amazing either…they gave it a rental instead of watch it ine the
theatres ..
Harry the Sound guy also doesn’t like spiderman movie
7 minute review –