The Amazing Spider-man

Gauz wrote:Emma Stone played Gwen Stacy, not Mary Jane. Mary Jane has red hair.


Also, I thought your review was nice minus the original spiderman bashing. I don't have anything against Tobey Maguire and the first and second spiderman movies are still really good imo.

Agreed. I mean, come on, before the Dark Knight came out Roger Ebert was calling Spider-man 2 "the best super hero movie ever made". Tobey MaGuire apparently had enough acting skill to melt the cold, bitter, cynical frost around Ebert's black heart.

Also, the Avengers didn't have a ton of character development, but it was there. Bruce Banner learned to accept the Hulk as part of himself and learned to control it, and Tony Stark had a little more narcissism chipped away. I haven't seen Thor or Captain America yet, so I couldn't tell you much about how they've changed.

Captain America realized that Tony Stark is the Real Leader of the Avengers, Thor didn't change much because his big personality change was in his own movie where he learned not to be a dick to everyone.

PiEdude wrote:
Agreed. I mean, come on, before the Dark Knight came out Roger Ebert was calling Spider-man 2 "the best super hero movie ever made". Tobey MaGuire apparently had enough acting skill to melt the cold, bitter, cynical frost around Ebert's black heart.

Roger Ebert is a (mostly) tasteless hack. He gave Prometheus 4/4 stars, and referred to The Phantom Menace as "an astonishing achievement in imaginative filmmaking," noting that things like character development and plot don't really matter in science fiction. Star Wars movies, he says, are "meant to be looked at more than listened to". He gave Avatar 4/4 stars. He's easily impressed by special effects, and he has pretty low standards for genres he's too senile to 'get.' I don't know why people take him seriously.

Also, to be fair, Spiderman 2 didn't have a whole lot of competition, aside from maybe Jack Nicholson Batman. It was good for a super hero movie, but Super Hero movies had yet to really mature. (and I'm sure we owe some thanks to the popularity of the Spiderman movies for that maturity.)

PiEdude wrote:

Gauz wrote:Emma Stone played Gwen Stacy, not Mary Jane. Mary Jane has red hair.


Also, I thought your review was nice minus the original spiderman bashing. I don't have anything against Tobey Maguire and the first and second spiderman movies are still really good imo.

Agreed. I mean, come on, before the Dark Knight came out Roger Ebert was calling Spider-man 2 "the best super hero movie ever made". Tobey MaGuire apparently had enough acting skill to melt the cold, bitter, cynical frost around Ebert's black heart.

Also, the Avengers didn't have a ton of character development, but it was there. Bruce Banner learned to accept the Hulk as part of himself and learned to control it, and Tony Stark had a little more narcissism chipped away. I haven't seen Thor or Captain America yet, so I couldn't tell you much about how they've changed.

To be fair, the Avengers was the Pay-off to the character development of the previous films.

I still like Spider-Man 2, and it's still one of the best superhero films, but Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Durst were not the best actors for their role. Don't get me wrong, Maguire was okay, especially as Peter Parker, but his chemistry with Durst was pretty bad, especially in their dialogue.

Oh, and this scene would of made it EVEN BETTER.

Alright. I loved the original Spiderman movies back when I was a kid, but they haven't aged well. When you get down to it, they're kind of campy, and don't hold up well to the Dark Knight Trilogy or the original Iron Man.
Watching The Amazing Spiderman, I get the feeling that the writers and the directors sat down to watch the original trilogy so they could take note of what worked, what didn't, and what they needed to improve upon.

The Villain

I'll admit, I didn't think that The Lizard could be a credible villain, and I still think that he was still a little weak. Doesn't matter how you cut it, a mad scientist who injects himself with gecko DNA and turns into a regenerating Man-Lizard with a burning desire to MAKE EVERYBODY JUST LIKE ME! is B-movie material. You could make it very polished B-movie material, but the end result will be campy nonetheless. But still, excellent design.

It makes sense to start out with a C-grade villain, because the writers are using it to set up Norman Osborne/The Green Goblin as a villain. At one point in the comics, it was revealed that Osborne had orchestrated most of Peter Parker's grief, setting him up as Spiderman's arch-nemesis. In the original trilogy, Norman Osborn was killed off in the first movie, but kinda hung around to make Spiderman's life miserable... through his son's psychosis or something.

Anyhow, the original Green Goblin and the Lizard share similarities that I think are intentional, but the Lizard is generally an improvement... and not just because of the Goblin suit.

Both villains gained their powers through human self-experimentation, but I think that Curt Conners was the only one who had a motive to do so. His greatest desire was to regain his lost limb, a fantasy that's so close to fruition, but was about to be snatched away because Dr. Conners wouldn't move as fast as Oscorp wanted.
Norman Osborn, on the other hand, took the Performance Enhancer Serum to prove that it was ready for deployment, and save his company... because Oscorp was riding on the success of a single program. And he couldn't find an intern. Yeah.

Another thing, while both villains discovered Spiderman's identity, both reacted in different ways. The Green Goblin terrorized Aunt May and then proceeded to kidnap Mary Jane. In fact, that was the default reaction of the villains in all three Spiderman movies. It got old, fast.
The Lizard, on the other hand, went straight for Peter Parker while he was at school. Finally, someone who played things smart.

There's a few things that I think that the older movie did better, though.

Spiderman

Concerning Uncle Ben's death.
I like the dialog better. The ironic echo of "I missed the part where that's my problem" ought to be cheesy, but it worked. Best of all, there was no long, drawn out speech. Uncle Ben was just able to gasp out "Peter" before he died.
And, hey, the car chase and subsequent beatdown was great.

In the newer movie, Ben's death was alright. You had the Death Speech, and the fact that he got killed over a convenience store robbery... well, I don't think it quite worked. Unlike the original movie, Peter Parker had no idea that the guy had a gun, and that he was letting a dangerous criminal walk run free.
On the other hand, I think the new version offers a better transition into superhero-hood. Peter Parker became a vigilante, hunting down every criminal with longish-blond hair that he could find.

Also, there's the matter of secret identities.
In short, I think the original movie did it better. There were two events that would have clued people into Spider-Man's identity. The first was the cafeteria scene. Somehow, people see Peter Parker dragging a lunch tray behind him with a cobweb, and they don't connect him to Spider-Man several months later. Maybe it's the fact that time has passed and everybody has moved on. Still weak, especially considering how the followup is Peter humiliating Flash in front of everybody.

In the newer movie, there's a lot more to connect Peter and Spider Man, not all of which can be filed under "I saw that wrong". There's the requisite humiliation of Flash Thompson, yes. But Peter Parker clearly never watched the first Superman movie, and throws a football hard enough to dent a goalpost in front of the football team. What makes this worse is that he's not getting into these situations accidentally.
On the other hand, it's more fitting with his character, as the idea of staying away from Gwen Stacy wasn't his idea in the first place.

Also, I think that the way criminals reacted to the original Spiderman was more realistic. Pardon me, but if I was chasing someone who then proceeded to climb the side of a building, I wouldn't hunt him down. Rather, my reaction would be more along the lines of "Dear God, it's climbing the walls!"

Everything Else

I'm feeling pretty positive about Aunt May, as I doubt she'll be as much of a useless old bat as the previous one.

And it's been too long for me to think of anything else. I'll give it a "Four Untattooed Blond Guys out of five, would see again."

I think the greatest problem with that film is that the hunt for Uncle Ben's killer gets dropped about halfway through the film, and Spiderman just goes off and fights the Lizard, so he misses the vital lesson that his inaction to stop him had bigger consequences, sure he got a little of that as he saw Ben killed, and who shot him, but it didn't have the same resonance.

Also the whole thing with saving the construction worker's child, and how later it caused every crane user in the area to help him, because Spiderman saved 1 child was pretty silly.

In the original film, there was a montage of Spiderman doing good and capturing thieves, and the growing press around him, which helped you see his growth as a hero. In this film Spiderman goes after the guy who killed Uncle Ben , and stops anyone who looks like him. Then he saves that kid, and other than that fights the Lizard, there isn't really time to show him more as a hero.

I think the greatest problem with that film is that the hunt for Uncle Ben's killer gets dropped about halfway through the film, and Spiderman just goes off and fights the Lizard, so he misses the vital lesson that his inaction to stop him had bigger consequences, sure he got a little of that as he saw Ben killed, and who shot him, but it didn't have the same resonance.

Precisely. I think the point where it gets dropped is where he stops the car thief, and the police try to apprehend him. After that, avenging Uncle Ben takes backseat to wooing the daughter of the local commissioner.

Also the whole thing with saving the construction worker's child, and how later it caused every crane user in the area to help him, because Spiderman saved 1 child was pretty silly.

In retrospect, yes. At the time, I was grinning like a lunatic, because I knew that this would be the one scene that would get carried over into the video game perfectly.

In the original film, there was a montage of Spiderman doing good and capturing thieves, and the growing press around him, which helped you see his growth as a hero. In this film Spiderman goes after the guy who killed Uncle Ben , and stops anyone who looks like him. Then he saves that kid, and other than that fights the Lizard, there isn't really time to show him more as a hero.

Perhaps we'll see more of that in the sequel?