Spider-man
2 was one of those rare sequels that I feel was better than the first movie.
Great villain, great action, great emotion; to me it was a flawless movie. Cut
to two years later and we received a sequel that wasn’t that great (for details
I shall not get into on this blog post). After that movie, while it was very successful,
Sony/Columbia Pictures decided to start anew.
So the
big question; is The Amazing Spider-Man bad? Well, no, not at all. Taken on its
own, it is a perfectly suitable origin story that fleshes out a few things
while skipping over other aspects. In fact, this time around I think they found
an actor who can really play Peter Parker. Not only that, the movie’s take on
Gwen Stacey is phenomenal. Whereas the original movie didn’t have the budget to
get too many notable stars, this one spared no expense and that talent paid off
within the movie.
The
problem is two-fold; how do you retell an origin story most of the audience has
already seen, and how do you make that said story interesting. Unfortunately, I
believe this movie failed on both aspects. It is by no means horrible, and you
should definitely see it to form your own opinion. But without being too spoiler-ific,
I will try and convey why I thought it wasn’t as great or, ahem, amazing as it
should be.
The Word “Reboot”
No no,
not the TV show of the same name, but the definition of the word. “To start
from scratch, with the expectation of seeing different results.” That was the
basis for this movie. To tell the origin story, but try and bring different
facets to life. This happened by changing up the love interest, Gwen over Mary
Jane, focusing on Dr. Curt Connors, and keeping Peter firmly in high school. With those three key ideas, the hope was that
the story would feel fresh and different enough from the previous movie.
All
three ideas are great, and should have helped create a story that felt similar
but new at the same time. Unfortunately, the story has decided to follow to
close to the same beats the first movie used. Granted, we always knew *and
seriously, if you’ve never seen the first movie or read comics, major spoil
alert* Uncle Ben was going to die. We always knew that would be the impetus for
Peter’s full on transformation to a superhero. But did we have to have a
villain that followed in the footsteps of Willem Dafoe’s crazy portrayal of
Norman Osborn? (Watch the movie, and compare the two characters’ inner
monologues, they are waaaaay too similar to be coincidence.) Did we seriously
have to spend well over an hour to see Spidey in costume? (A nod to the “darker”
tone of Batman Begins.) I feel like the main problem was the writers/producers
took all of these great ideas from previous superhero movies (and yes, Batman
Begins/The Dark Knight greatly influenced this movie, which is a shame) and
meshed them into a high school Spider-man story. It just feels, for lack of a
better term, silly. The over-use of emotion and random outbursts by Peter felt
awkward. And yes, I know the character is an awkward nerd, but this didn’t feel
natural. It almost felt like Andrew Garfield wanted to do a different take on
Peter, and the director/writers/producer/powers-that-be said, “No! It must feel
dark and moody like those Batman movies that sold so well!”
This is a story that is supposed to be a reboot on the origin, but we have executives
and etcetera that were too afraid to actually do it. Instead, we have a flawed
movie that turns the melodrama up to eleventy-billion and thinks that is the
same as the dark and gritty tale the Batman stories have done, expecting people
to flock to it in droves. I truly think that if The Avengers came out way
before they wrote/filmed this movie, that it would have actually been much
better. They would have seen that light-heartedness mixed with the right amount
of emotion would have made a much better Spider-man than using this, which I feel
is more “emo” than Tobey’s weird transformation in Spider-man 3.
We
have a movie that is too dark for its own good.
The Boring Effect
Now, I
took a young six year old boy to this movie, thinking it would be something
great for both of us to enjoy. Unfortunately, for the first half of the movie,
Amazing Spider-Man was boring! Yes, I kid you not. For a good hour and fifteen
minutes (and you bet your butt I kept count), Spider-Man was nowhere to be
found! We had a few snippets here and there of emo-Peter learning to use his
powers (via something so silly and non-Peter that it just made me laugh), but
nothing real until well after half of the movie was over. That was a big
miss-step. The audience already understood that Peter was going to be
Spider-Man, they should have dived right into that aspect instead of waiting so
long to dawn the costume. Again, it feels akin to Batman Begins, and that the
powers-that-be thought that drawing out the origin = movie gold.
When he
finally started going out as Spidey, we are given just a few scenes that help
stylize what he does. I will delve into this more later, but they are too far
from each other to keep a six year old entertained. While I enjoy the dramatic
aspects (and let’s be honest here, Spider-Man was always about melodrama, even
in the comics), you have to find the right balance between that and action to
keep everyone interested in the story! This movie failed to do so.
So, we
have a movie that was too afraid to stray from the original story, with a
villain and similar story beats that made it seem more like a flimsy remake
than a reboot. We had a movie that was incredibly boring to boot. Why is it
that I think it isn’t that bad? Well
let me take the time to go into that as well.
The Actors
Every
single actor in this movie, from main supporting character Gwen Stacey to the
lowest plot-mover Flash Thompson were phenomenal. For once, the characters
truly looked like their comic-book counterparts. Not only that, all of them are
talented actors that play their roles perfectly. This is surprising given the
sub-par script. I think it was a great move to keep Peter in high school, and
incredibly great to use Gwen as his first love (like it was in the comics). In
fact, I’m more excited to see more of the supporting and cursory characters
than Peter’s story. Who would have thought that I’d leave the movie theater
going, “Wow, I sure wish they did more with Flash Thompson.”
Straying From The Original
When
the movie did do something different than the original, the story became
incredibly interesting. Focusing more on Peter’s father made for a great
mystery (that was left very under-cooked). A role model in Captain Stacey made
for what could have been compelling drama (again, under-cooked). The mechanical
web-shooters (which they kinda straddled the line between Peter creating them
and not) were a great idea. Even the costume was different, yet familiar in a
way that made his movements incredibly interesting.
The Special Effects & Other Additions
Goombah-Lizard
not withstanding (Hah! A reference to that Super Mario Bros. movie, how
original!) the special effects really stood out. For once, we had an INCREDIBLY
acrobatic Spider-Man, which was, well, amazing! We had a wise-cracking Spidey!
Granted, some of his jokes fell flat, but this Spidey was still funnier than
the previous version (where Sam Raimi, the director, chose to use sight-gags
for most of its humor). The fight scenes were spectacularly choreographed, and
the web-slinging was also fun to watch. In fact, I wish they would have done
more of that first person-view for those scenes. The ties to New York City felt
great, and didn’t come as a hoaky surprise like it did in the original (i.e.
you had characters that truly supported Spider-Man, and for good reason). In
fact, they chose the right director in Marc Webb to do these human aspects. He
truly understood how to make you care about everyone in the movie.
In conclusion, this movie wasn’t absolute dreck. It had its
moments, but overall it felt like a miss-step. They were too afraid to really
change things, and instead mixed-and-matched from different superhero movies in
the hope that they’d make a great one. If I were to sum up The Amazing
Spider-Man in one sentence it would be this; Disappointing, but it had its
moments and I saw the potential for this new series to flourish.
