Friday, July 13, 2012

The Amazing Spiderman Review

Introduction: When it comes to trilogies and series the movies involved in them need to stand on their own two feet. You should never be forced to watch another film in the series just to resolve the central story in another. Each movie should be strong stand alone films with connecting plot points between them being more sidelined and hinted at instead of being the main focus. You can see this in Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and even the Avengers (san Iron Man 2). In recent years though Hollywood has tried to create trilogies by releasing half-movies; movies that have half the plot being the movie and half being unanswered questions that would force the audience to watch the next one such as Golden Compass, Green Lantern, Prometheus, and now The Amazing Spiderman.

Peter Parker: The movie begins by showing Peter's real mother and father going on the run from an unknown force. Peter grows up his whole life with his aunt and uncle and because of his abandonment he is kind of angsty yet still does what's right. Then one day he finds his father's old briefcase and decides to go see his father's old partner Curt Conners at Oscorp. He gets bitten by a spider. We get comedic stuff where he gets used to his powers. Same old song and dance. Whatever. Then his uncle gets shot and killed and Peter puts on a red mask and sun glasses and tries to find his uncle's accidental killer. I shall continue discussing Spiderman later but for now I really want to go in depth with Peter Parker. The character has a lot of problems. He is too many things yet still has the same expression throughout everything. He is a loner, he is angsty, he is witty, he is a photographer, he is a genius in genetics and engineering, he is a skateboarder, he is a vengeful vigilante, he is a good person, he glosses over the death of Uncle Ben the moment he gets a finalized costume, and so on and so forth. He never grows as a character. There is no motivation for suddenly shifting from vigilante to being Spiderman. The character feels created in order to manipulate the audience into liking him without him actually being Peter Parker. They could have easily said this was Clark Kent or Wally West or just about anyone.

Gwen Stacey: Emma Stone really makes this character feel special. She is interesting and likable, but not with Peter Parker. Their is no romance between these characters. She is just a tossed in romance. Which makes sense since it was the same thing in the comics. Gwen Stacey's father is the police chief who is trying to capture Spiderman while also trying to capture the Lizard yet a vigilante is obviously a more serious threat then a giant humanoid Lizard. DUH.

The Lizard: Dr. Curt Conners has a stumpy arm. He has a stumpy arm. Dr. Curt Conners has a stumpy arm. This is basically every line of dialogue coming out of his mouth. We get it. You miss your f*cking arm. Then, thanks to Peter, Conners grows back his arm and transforms into the Lizard. He then stops a man from using the Lizard serum to transform innocent people into Lizard's and in the next scene decides he will transform innocent people into Lizard's as well. Wow. The major problem with this character is that he doesn't fit the tone of the movie. When you're watching the Batman movies they are very grounded and don't do things that are too fantastical such as making the Joker the cause of a bleach accident or making Bane use venom. The makers of this movie didn't realize that if you have a giant Lizard running around New York City that is very schlocky and campy. The original Spiderman trilogy really knew how to make the tone of the movie work.

Spiderman: The  moment Spiderman finally comes around is the point of the movie where things really start falling apart. He is suddenly saying one liners and is apparently having a ball looking for his uncle's murderer. He also magically gains the costume. This also contrasts the tone. It's like with Batman Forever and Batman & Robin when a colorful tone was added to a dark character and it just didn't work. It's the same problem here. They are adding a dark tone to a colorful character. Anyways, he also decides to stop everything that has driven him so far and fight a giant lizard for no reason. Hell, those web shooters that I have been looking forward to have been turned into something completely pointless. In the comics, the web shooters added tension since they could run out at any time while also showing Peter's brilliance since they were his invention. In the movie he buys commercial use web packs SOMEHOW and throughout the course of the movie they never run out. Hell, in Spiderman 2 his ORGANIC WEBBING RUNS OUT. In the end, this movie could have worked out a lot better as something other than a Spiderman movie.

Conclusion: When talking about this movie you just know it was made for the wrong reasons. Colombia Picture were going to lose the license for Spiderman if they didn't make another movie so they made another Spiderman movie. They decided dark and gritty was the new thing so they added that to a colorful character. People are paying for a lot of stuff like Prometheus so why not leave a lot of things unanswered and half-assed? And the girls would just love to see Peter Parker with an Edward Cullins hair cut. And ohhhhhh! Mark Webb would look great on this since his last name is Webb. Ha ha, get it? This movie was all about marketing something for people to like based on what they are buying now. It does have it's moments in the beginning and I like Gwen and her dad but it just falls short.