The Amazing Spider-Man (Film Review)
Aug. 5th, 2012 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWas it necessary? No. Was it fun? Definitely yes. Minus one or two complaints, this turned out to be a delightful popcorn movie, which learned from its predecessor(s) by (re)using the good, by and large avoiding the annoying and coming up with elements of its own.
One of the scenes of the Raimi films that struck not just me as "heroism versus normal life: doing it wrong" was the scene in Spiderman II where Peter, having just decided to give up the vigilante life, witnesses a mugging, struggles and then walks away. This is a wrong either/or. He could have helped in a non-superhero way, among other things by calling the police.
By contrast, Garfield!Peter Parker is already stepping in when he watches people getting bullied before aquiring super powers. Later on, when the film's villain is on the rampage, he first goes to the police to alert them of the danger.
Something I always enjoyed about the Raimi films: Spiderman I and II both offer scenes of the people teaming up to support Spider-man in the grand action climax; this also happens here, and the man who starts it is the father of someone Spidey saved earlier. After The Dark Knight Rises, this was very refreshing. This crowd still needs help against supervillain plots, but it consists of individuals who are capable of using their minds to come up with something they can do as well.
But of course, any film stands and falls with its characters. We got no annoying love triangle (there are not annoying love triangles, but they're so rarely done in way that makes you feel for everyone concerned!), and the Peter/Gwen romance was, until the end, refreshingly unangsty. Making Gwen Stacy the Girl Who Lived (until the sequel anyway) was in terms of the comic book history great to see, as was the decision to let her find out about Peter's double life relatively early (so no angst of the "if only I could tell you WHY I'm late/ ignored our date/whatever" type), and to make her a key part in foiling the villainous scheme du jour. Add good chemistry between Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield, and you have a convincing and charming romance on screen.
Peter as Spider-man was as in any origin story a work in progress, and here he kept learning from everyone through the film: Uncle Ben (of course), but also Captain Stacy with his terse remark that Spider-man so far seems to hunt down very specific criminals (because Peter is still looking for Ben's killer), not to protect people, that there is a difference. You can see the progress from guilt trip (btw, the extent to which Peter is co-responsible for Uncle Ben's death strikes me as the right amount - it's there, but not over the top) to atonment/revenge to enjoying besting the bad guys to wanting to help people first and foremost. And he quips. This is no small thing, as MacGuire!Peter's lack of quippage was the biggest difference to the comic version(s) around.
On the minus side: The Amazing Spider-Man joins the Batman movies and the Iron Man movies in giving us a main character whose parents died simultanously and where for some reason only the father is subsequently brought up as if the mother didn't exist. Yes, the Anglo-American world is obsessed with father/son stories, but you know, that's no reason not to branch out. While the death of Peter's parents wasn't as dominating the film as the trailer had made me fear, and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen being great) and Aunt May (Sally Field breaking the 616 tradition of making Aunt May look 90 and going for the Ultimateverse look instead) are given their due in terms of emotional importance to Peter, the whole "your father" thing as a MacGuffin to lead Peter to OsCorp and Dr. Connors (and as an inducement to watch the sequel via the tag scene) still annoyed me. Enough with the father obsession already, comic films!
The other annoyance was Captain Stacy's dying request for Peter to stay away from Gwen. Not that it was out of character, either for the Captain to make or for Peter to get guilt tripped into promising, and I'm grateful Gwen almost immediately figures out why Peter breaks up with her, but it still doesn't change the fact that after letting Gwen have her own agenda throughout the story, the film at the last minute in order to give Peter romantic angst after all serves up something like this. Do not want.
The villain: came across as in the Doc Ock vein from the second of Raimi's Spider-man films but alas transitioned too quickly from "tragic and under enormous pressure, fatal experiment/accident ensues" to "going on a rampage being Evil McEvildom" for this to work in the same way. As Doctor Octopus, there was a moment of redemption near the end, but it felt as the result of the lizard effect diminishing and his humanity reasserting itself, and you know, villains whose deeds were all because they were possessed (replace term by appropriate one to the story in question) are never as interesting as the villains who do what they do because they believe it's right in a non-insane way. Still, Connors when human got to brood convincingly, and all the hints about Norman Osborn as the unseen stringpuller are an obvious build up for the sequel.
You know, though: otoh we had minor villain Flash Thompson making his comicverse transition from bullying jock at the start to compassionate human being without a Vietnam (insert more up to date war experience) interlude, and that really worked.
Question for future films: the Daily Bugle exists in this verse (we see various people reading it), but given the Spidey support in the grand climax, I'm not sure how effective J.Jonas Jameson's Spider-man vilification could be. And there must be a JJJ, there must be.
One of the scenes of the Raimi films that struck not just me as "heroism versus normal life: doing it wrong" was the scene in Spiderman II where Peter, having just decided to give up the vigilante life, witnesses a mugging, struggles and then walks away. This is a wrong either/or. He could have helped in a non-superhero way, among other things by calling the police.
By contrast, Garfield!Peter Parker is already stepping in when he watches people getting bullied before aquiring super powers. Later on, when the film's villain is on the rampage, he first goes to the police to alert them of the danger.
Something I always enjoyed about the Raimi films: Spiderman I and II both offer scenes of the people teaming up to support Spider-man in the grand action climax; this also happens here, and the man who starts it is the father of someone Spidey saved earlier. After The Dark Knight Rises, this was very refreshing. This crowd still needs help against supervillain plots, but it consists of individuals who are capable of using their minds to come up with something they can do as well.
But of course, any film stands and falls with its characters. We got no annoying love triangle (there are not annoying love triangles, but they're so rarely done in way that makes you feel for everyone concerned!), and the Peter/Gwen romance was, until the end, refreshingly unangsty. Making Gwen Stacy the Girl Who Lived (until the sequel anyway) was in terms of the comic book history great to see, as was the decision to let her find out about Peter's double life relatively early (so no angst of the "if only I could tell you WHY I'm late/ ignored our date/whatever" type), and to make her a key part in foiling the villainous scheme du jour. Add good chemistry between Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield, and you have a convincing and charming romance on screen.
Peter as Spider-man was as in any origin story a work in progress, and here he kept learning from everyone through the film: Uncle Ben (of course), but also Captain Stacy with his terse remark that Spider-man so far seems to hunt down very specific criminals (because Peter is still looking for Ben's killer), not to protect people, that there is a difference. You can see the progress from guilt trip (btw, the extent to which Peter is co-responsible for Uncle Ben's death strikes me as the right amount - it's there, but not over the top) to atonment/revenge to enjoying besting the bad guys to wanting to help people first and foremost. And he quips. This is no small thing, as MacGuire!Peter's lack of quippage was the biggest difference to the comic version(s) around.
On the minus side: The Amazing Spider-Man joins the Batman movies and the Iron Man movies in giving us a main character whose parents died simultanously and where for some reason only the father is subsequently brought up as if the mother didn't exist. Yes, the Anglo-American world is obsessed with father/son stories, but you know, that's no reason not to branch out. While the death of Peter's parents wasn't as dominating the film as the trailer had made me fear, and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen being great) and Aunt May (Sally Field breaking the 616 tradition of making Aunt May look 90 and going for the Ultimateverse look instead) are given their due in terms of emotional importance to Peter, the whole "your father" thing as a MacGuffin to lead Peter to OsCorp and Dr. Connors (and as an inducement to watch the sequel via the tag scene) still annoyed me. Enough with the father obsession already, comic films!
The other annoyance was Captain Stacy's dying request for Peter to stay away from Gwen. Not that it was out of character, either for the Captain to make or for Peter to get guilt tripped into promising, and I'm grateful Gwen almost immediately figures out why Peter breaks up with her, but it still doesn't change the fact that after letting Gwen have her own agenda throughout the story, the film at the last minute in order to give Peter romantic angst after all serves up something like this. Do not want.
The villain: came across as in the Doc Ock vein from the second of Raimi's Spider-man films but alas transitioned too quickly from "tragic and under enormous pressure, fatal experiment/accident ensues" to "going on a rampage being Evil McEvildom" for this to work in the same way. As Doctor Octopus, there was a moment of redemption near the end, but it felt as the result of the lizard effect diminishing and his humanity reasserting itself, and you know, villains whose deeds were all because they were possessed (replace term by appropriate one to the story in question) are never as interesting as the villains who do what they do because they believe it's right in a non-insane way. Still, Connors when human got to brood convincingly, and all the hints about Norman Osborn as the unseen stringpuller are an obvious build up for the sequel.
You know, though: otoh we had minor villain Flash Thompson making his comicverse transition from bullying jock at the start to compassionate human being without a Vietnam (insert more up to date war experience) interlude, and that really worked.
Question for future films: the Daily Bugle exists in this verse (we see various people reading it), but given the Spidey support in the grand climax, I'm not sure how effective J.Jonas Jameson's Spider-man vilification could be. And there must be a JJJ, there must be.
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Date: 2012-08-05 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-06 09:16 am (UTC)