By Bob Clark
The Spider-Man character is now celebrating its 50th anniversary in the pages of Marvel Comics, created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko in the pages of Amazing Fantasy before being granted a full book of its own that would eventually become one of the flagship titles for both that particular publishing house and for superhero comics in general. It’s almost surprising that it took until 2002 for the first full-fledged motion picture starring Peter Parker, the science-geek turned teenage hero after a fateful bite from a radioactive spider, especially considering that before then there were no less than four Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve, four live action Batman films with three different Bruce Waynes (and another eventually on the way courtesy of Nolan & Co.), one big-screen X-Men adventure and countless animated versions on the small-screen, as well as a handful of live-action series like The Incredible Hulk (there was also that movie Ang Lee did, but whatever). But then Spider-Man, like most of the Marvel superheroes, relied on powers that weren’t quite so easy to put on screen given the limitations of physically captured special effects in the 70′s and 80′s. It’s really not that difficult to make us believe a man can fly, or make us wonder where a vigilante gets such wonderful toys, but asking us to buy that a high-school kid can climb a skyscraper with his bare hands and swing from the rooftops with spinneret silly string? All one has to do is look at the live-action Spider-Man series from the 70′s to see how dreadfully silly it could look without the right tools at your disposal.
Anyway, that 2002 Spider-Man film directed by Sam Raimi managed to put the character and his fabled origin story on the screen and reach a mass audience, most of whom probably already knew the basics from any of the various animated series, video games and comic books themselves. Hell, by 2002 you could’ve already been introduced to Spidey through the mainstay Marvel series, 40 years strong by then, or 2000′s revamp Ultimate Spider-Man, under the long-running stewardship of writer Brian Michael Bendis, who managed to successfully update the old stories to a new millennium and captivate a whole new generation of fans. Bendis mixed a skillful degree of contemporary revisionism and respect for the original source material in his weaving of this modern Peter Parker, creating a surprisingly convincing story over more than a decade with a beginning, middle and end all its own that both alludes to the storylines and characters of the original series while arranging them in ways that both streamline the narrative and pump up the drama throughout in ways that resonate both in terms of its 2000′s setting and overall, as well. It’s saying something when you can make even the wretched corporate-franchise mess that was the “Clone Saga” into something readable, much less fun to read, but Bendis did just that and more, allowing his version of Spidey to stand on its own in something of the same calibre as Frank Miller’s or Loeb & Sale’s takes on Batman, or Chris Claremont’s definitive stamp on the X-Men.
As such, when the time came for Raimi to direct his big-screen version of Spider-Man, one could be mistaken for thinking he and screenwriter David Koepp might’ve taken some of their cues from Bendis and his revolutionary efforts at updating the classic character from the increasingly remote flavors of the early 60′s to just around the corner of a new millennium. Then again, considering the generations that had grown up expecting a Spider-Man film that best reflected the spirit and style of the classic 60′s incarnation, it’s by no means surprising that Raimi’s film was more of a retro affair. Yet popular as it was, I could never quite shake myself of the distaste for how much it missed the mark, both in terms of telling the story and finding some kind of footing in a modern world. In both the script and visual style, very big things are gotten wildly different, if not outright wrong. Raimi especially failed to capture anything even remotely resembling a real New York City onscreen, instead favoring a digitally cleaned-up metropolis on the order of the spic-and-span graffiti-less Paris of Amelie, yet with none of the fairy-tale flair. In that sense, and for how it ascribed hero-worship deification to proud Manhattan cops and firemen it almost seemed to presage both 9/11 and the cult of New York’s Finest in its wake, and the eventual Disney merger with Marvel Comics in the ways that Raimi’s version of the city more and more resembled the Times Square remodeling project invited upon the city by the house of the mouse. It got even worse when those movie urbanites were asked to open their mouths, with accents and attitudes as authentic to New York as Mockney is to Cockney. It wasn’t a comic-book version of New York, but the Giuliani version of it– by far the more artificial and distasteful incarnation.
Besides that, there’s all manner of ways in which the Raimi & Koepp film failed spectacularly with its storytelling, even while breaking box-office everywhere it went. Shooting in 1.85, the director’s action set-pieces and the coverage he uses to capture it are both fairly limited and in some cases wrong-headedly boring– it’s increasingly frustrating to have fights take place shot in an aspect ratio that doesn’t properly allow for both superhuman characters to be on the screen at the same time. Raimi would correct that mistake and shoot his two sequels in 2.35, granted, but it only underlines both the problem of the mis-en-scene there and the choice of the high-flying Green Goblin as the film’s villain to begin with, especially considering the ways that it deviates from the fabled Gwen Stacy story (which was the only thing that ever made either of those characters remotely interesting in the first place) and the way he’s put on screen. What’s the point of casting Willem Dafoe if you’re just going to put a fixed mask in front of his face? Casting itself is a major problem throughout the Raimi trilogy with Tobey Maguire’s scoop-of-vanilla-on-white-bread-with-mayonaise Peter Parker and Kirsten Dunst’s lame bottle-redhead Mary Jane, though to be fair they’re both failed by the script long before they get a chance to lack any evidence of chemistry onscreen. Koepp’s version of Parker is more of a limp stoic and far removed from the bouncy, wisecracking teenage vigilante of any issue from the comics (the closest we get to a classic Spidey quip basically amounted to a weak, ugly bit of homophobic gay-bashing), just as his MJ lacks any of the spitfire, catty attitude that made her captivating on the page, instead settling for a depressive hand-me-down girlfriend vibe that would seem more at home on 90210 or its ilk.
As such, I could hardly have been less disappointed when Sony announced plans to reboot the franchise, just barely ten years after the first film debuted, a move that most critics attacked as a cynical effort to push Raimi out after the lackluster reception of Spider-Man 3 and to keep the character out of Marvel’s hands as they began building their own blockbuster cinematic enterprises, culminating in The Avengers from earlier this year. Time will tell if Spidey will ever swing into action with the rest of those corporate superhero entities (as I’ve said before, he was never really one of that team to begin with, so it could mean less to me), but at least by now we’ve finally seen what a proper Spider-Man movie can look like when done right, and with an eye for both capturing the classic and modern for new audiences. Though working from a sometimes disjointed Frankenstein-script inspired largely by Bendis’ Ultimate run from Alvin Sergant, James Vanderbilt and Steve Kloves, music video and (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb manages a cinematic version of the 50 year old superhero that’s both current to trends in the real world and cinema while managing to remain true to the roots of the character’s mythology and deliver one of the most impressive feats of comic-book action storytelling this side of Richard Donner’s original ode to the Man of Steel.
By now, of course, there’s already been the obligatory accusations that Webb’s style aims for more of the dark and gritty style of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, and that kind of tone is at least somewhat wrongheaded for the comparatively bright and zippy atmosphere of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s original. That’s both true and misleading– yes, The Amazing Spider-Man has a more shadowy vision than the candy-coated Raimi films, but that’s more owing to the relative realism on display here. Though shot primarily with studio-sets in Los Angeles and occasional location work in Manhattan, Webb’s vision feels much truer to the look, feel and spirit of New York than anything from the prior films. Even when Webb indulges in the same kind of sentimental all-American hogwash from the Raimi films, he manages to both ground it and play with it in ways that make it feel like a perfect blockbuster ode to all walks of city life, from the intellectual know-it-all high schoolers to the rough-and-tumble hardhat construction workers. It helps that Webb and his screenwriters allow Spidey to get into some crisply choreographed fight sequences with New York cops and SWAT teams– bringing back a little of the anti-establishment fire that ran through the comics even back in the Lee and Romita years– and that those authorities are invested with a genuine narrative dynamic via the character of Captain Stacy’s efforts to capture the red-and-blue vigilante in the interests of law and order.
Captain Stacy’s just one of the classic comic-book characters more or less overlooked in the Raimi films who gets a second-chance here in the Webb film, though he’s the only one to get a significant revisionist update for the modern world (James Cromwell’s appearance in the last Raimi flick is closer to the character as an elderly policeman than Dennis Leary’s shotgun toting smart aleck with a badge). Rhys Ifans’ take on the sympathetic, but demented Dr. Curt Conners– mild mannered scientist turned into a megalomaniacal mutant lizard upon injecting himself with a reptilian formula to regrow his amputated arm– manages to mix both classic mad-scientist insanity and gravitas in equal amounts, allowing his character to better blend in with a long-term backstory involving Parker’s mysteriously absent scientist parents. Sally Field and Martin Sheen may at first be a little distracting as Aunt May and Uncle Ben, but their loving, no-nonsense blue collar spirit helps give them more dimension than the lifeless cardboard cutouts of Rosemary Harris and Cliff Robertson from the Raimi films, and without ever going quite as overboard in modernizing them as Bendis did in the comics (no pony tail for Uncle Ben).
Best of all the recasting, however, are Andrew Garfield’s Peter, balancing awkwardness and charm in a way that Tobey’s stiff take could only ever hypothetically approach, and Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy, which manages to elevate her not merely to the pretty-damsel-in-distress level that John Romita’s illustrations provided on the page, but far in a way makes her a living, breathing character of her own. Though the script mainly just gives them empty pauses to awkwardly share together between the action beats they zig zag through, the two of them share enough of a natural, winning chemistry to make the prospect of a full telling of the Gwen Stacy arc good and bad in all the best ways. And given the creative ways in which Webb and his team conceives, stages and executes epic superhero action sequences from beginning to end (and in native 3D, no less), what it all boils down to is not only one of the most dramatically and emotionally fulfilling comic-book movies in years, but easily one of the most visually stunning ones. Webb displays a gift for putting together action set-pieces that are both engaging, inventive and clear that even seasoned vets like Jon Favreau, Joss Whedon and Christopher Nolan have been mostly unable to approach in their movies– from the clumsy trial-and-error discovery and experimentation with his powers to the acrobatic fights shared with crooks, cops and the Lizard alike, Webb’s Spidey is one that dances across the walls and ceilings of the screen in ways that ought well stand among the very best of superhero set-pieces.
Far in a way, Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man at the very least a stronger debut than the 2002 original, and if things keep up we might even see something better than Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 (though I doubt we’ll get as impressive a Doctor Octopus as Alfred Molina). Damned if it isn’t the best Marvel movie I’ve seen yet, and at least as good as anything from DC.
Let me just say that I’m happy that you’re mostly alone when we are talking about the first two Spider-Man movies (I even like the third one, but that’s not a point I can take against you, since I’m talking more in generalities).
The stories were interesting and I couldn’t care less if it was Marie Jane or whoever was the one that had to be with Peter Parker in the comics, because after all, they are comics and this is a movie, look how Watchmen fared for being too loyal to the comic (snoooooze). Sam Raimi took a 60′s comic, Sam Raimi approach to the movies and that in itself is greater than what I see in the trailers for this movie that I won’t even bother to see at all.
I mean, it looks like every other big blockbuster, it doesn’t look to have a style, it doesn’t seem to have an interesting storyline, and that’s because it’s an overall rushed project, as you mention it was for taking it away from Marvel’s hands.
I’ve been reading reviews, viewing trailers and this whole movie seems wrong, there seems to be nothing good in it at all, only Uncle Ben played by Sheen (the good one) has received the praise for this movie, and that is saying a lot about a character that we all know that must die very early on for us to get to the spidey action.
As jokey as a concept is that Hulk is reviewing films, I think that this seriously toned review is the best reason I can find for me not going to see the film. I read the words and I know I’m gonna hate it, so I’m just going to keep my money for The Dark Knight Rises double dip and leave it at that.
http://badassdigest.com/2012/07/06/film-crit-hulk-smash-the-amazing-spider-man-has-99-problems-but-an-uncle-be/
All I can say is, all kidding aside– I think that the Raimi movies are mostly a waste. The first was a painful experience for me in the theater, primarily because they were too faithful to, frankly, the weaker parts of the comics and didn’t bother to update things except in all the wrong places. Willem Dafoe isn’t the Green Goblin so much as he is the Green Goblin in Power Rangers cosplay, which wouldn’t be so bad in and of itself if it weren’t that all you have to do is spray paint his face green and you have the perfect Gobby. And with Tobey underselling an underwritten role (Raimi spends more time framing him in front of the damn US flag like he’s Captain America) and Kirsten not having any real spark or life at all (ironically, she’s more like Gwen Stacy in the comics, aside for the Broadway aspirations), there’s precious little to latch onto. Even the action sucks.
Webb got it right here. The only quibbles I can say are that the script is a little disjointed and the editing feels like things were cut out for time, but by and large this was great. I’d give it a chance.
I would, but I prefer to see films with actual scripts and plot. Like the Raimi Spider-Man movies.
Coming out of a discussion we had the other day about the importance of a director, you can’t look at the Spiderman movies and say “hey, those are Sam Raimi films” or at least come out saying something about how it was nothing like every other superhero movie that had come out before, it has a distinct visual style, and quibs here and there about wether you like it or not… the framing and the cinematography in this new one feel like I’ve seen it all in other better movies: a crude example, the shots I’ve seen are like the first choice I’d throw out for the shot and that would be easily scribbled away because even I know better.
It feels unoriginal and annoying to think of this film as something as cash-in as it is, it’s a disgrace really to be witnessing a film made by a studio and not a director.
I dunno, I can’t honestly say there was anything distinct about the first Raimi film. The second, maybe (which was a little better), but for the most part it had such a glossy, artificial look that it felt like what we might’ve gotten if Tim Burton had made that damn Superman sequel. Webb’s work here definitely fits into a genre (I enjoyed how sci-fi it was, rather than strictly superhero, which fits for the character), and he easily bested anything Raimi did in terms of action set-pieces and character work. And really, the only true weaknesses I can find in the Webb film now seem to be from the fact that Sony did a last minute recut, which is a real shame because otherwise it’s a strong work.
I will admit that Webb’s voice as a director with only two features so far isn’t as developed as Raimi’s was at that point… But then again I don’t like any of Raimi’s films to begin with. Webb’s almost in the same place that Donner was with the first “Superman” (which in many ways is still the best superhero movie made). And at any rate I see more of a personal, or rather individual voice in this movie than the Nolan Bat-films or in Favreau’s nice, but still kinda generic “Iron Man”.
Won’t this film’s purported modernity date more rapidly than Raimi’s ahistorical fantasies? I suspect it will, but I suppose every generation will have its Spidey series, so it may not matter much. I’ve never read Ultimate Spider-Man so any resemblance the Webb movie has to that was irrelevant to my own disappointed screening. By no means is Raimi’s series pre-emptively definitive, but it seems that he was chased away because he resisted a “modern” (i.e. trendy, fashionable, cool?) approach, while Webb’s movie has little other purpose than to be all of the above. Aren’t you also giving the Raimi series a bit of a bum rap by ignoring all the ways he called attention to Peter Parker’s working-class existence? If anything his films were more class-conscious than Webb’s, which is not necessary an aesthetic virtue in its own right but also might not be inferred from your comments. Ideally we should discuss Webb without bringing up Raimi, since comics characters are eligible for as many different yet equal cinematic interpretations as they are for reinterpretations in print, but there’s an inescapable pressure on the Webb film to justify its existence by comparison with Raimi’s work. I’d like to think that I wasn’t relatively unimpressed with Webb simply because he wasn’t Raimi redux, but I have to say that I find your “better than” arguments mostly unpersuasive. Despite that, you make an honest case for both the necessity and the success of the new film from your perspective, and it’s not my business to tell you not to have enjoyed it.
The whole Harry/Peter thing brings out some of the class issues of the film, but not in any meaninful way, I’m afraid. It’s especially hard for me to see any real class struggle on screen when you have a Queens home so artificial it makes a Wes Anderson doll-house look documentary. Again, it’s the banal artificiality of New York throughout the movie that makes any deeper reading impossible for me. That fake holiday parade set-piece especially puts this way beyond in some bizarro Manhattan for me, as opposed to say, the way that Richard Donner simply shot New York as a stand-in for Metropolis (right down to the Westchester train stops echoing in Grand Central).
I agree that in one sense the ultra-modern takes on iconic, archetypal superheroes wind up dating them in the long run– even “Superman” is so thoroughly a 70′s movie. But superheroes have to be dated in the pages of the comics themselves unless you want to reach for some timeless register that can just as easily feel divorced from any reality. I’d rather have a superhero movie be something of a period piece than something that’s out of touch with any kind of lived in world. There is a place for that kind of timeless approach, but I think it’s best suited for drawn things like closed graphic novels or things like “Batman: The Animated Series”. Live action benefits from the definition, and even the dating effect.
As for calling things “better”– there’s so much negativity towards this film already I feel compelled to match my enthusiasm with something full throated in the other direction.
Actually, most of the print reviews I’ve read have been pretty positive, though I imagine some web opinions have been brutal. Amazing may date more quickly than Raimi’s films, but your reference to Donner’s Superman shows that a good film can date into a kind of timelessness, and I think time will have to pass before Webb’s movie can be appraised more fairly, rather than in comparison to the Raimis, to Avengers, to Dark Knight Rises, or in a “why so soon?” context. I felt that parts of the picture were bad not just in a comparative way — the business with the cranes and its set-up is at least as corny as anything from Raimi — but I also felt as soon as I left the theater that I owed the picture a second look come DVD time.
The business with the cranes didn’t bother me quite as much, but I know what you’re talking about. Part of it is I think Webb earned that sentiment a bit more with Spidey’s rescue of the worker’s kid on the bridge (a scene that I liked quite a bit, even though it lifts a little from Spielberg’s best suspense scene in “The Lost World”), and because Webb doesn’t hit you over the head with it nearly as much as Raimi did. Similar moments from the first “Spider-Man” rubbed me the wrong way as utter bullshit, like the bridge of “Noo Yawkahs” tossing stuff and hurling insults at the Green Goblin while he’s dangling a train car full of Boy Scouts over the river like a penny dreadful melodrama villain– there, Raimi was emotionally overreaching on at least three fronts. At least when the hardhats put out the cranes for Spidey, it’s to help him save the city and not just a girl tied to the train tracks.
Plus, it’s not like everybody’s united behind him– the po-lice shot him in the damn leg. Even with the Capt. Stacy bit, I appreciated that this one brought Spidey back to more of an antagonistic relationship with the cops, even letting him get into some damn fights with them. Anyway, it feels like there’s a progression so far in the movies. Raimi’s films, released and made after 9/11, feel like they’re contractually obligated to show cops and firefighters in not just positive, not just heroic, but a nigh-religious light (the fact that he did the first one this nauseatingly even before 9/11 makes it even worse). Now, ten years later, we’re back to the point where firemen don’t have to be turned into sacred shrines and our heroes can be allowed to beat the crap out of a SWAT team without it seeming like treason. Let Webb throw in all the hardhat heroism he wants– as long as Spidey can punch cops, I see it as progress.
Lol, Bob — can’t argue with those last sentiments at all. I also see what you’re saying about the cranes being earned, but the bridge scene was somewhat undercut for me once it became clear that the rescue was in the film only to set up (or “earn”) the crane scene. I’ll give Amazing credit for a balanced presentation of cops as both impediments to heroism and people with reasonable arguments against vigilantism, though poor Dennis Leary seemed straitjacketed in a PG-13 role.
I dunno, I wouldn’t be surprised if the crane scene was more an effect of the bridge scene in the script, something they thought of later on as a pay-off to the earlier bit. I quite liked the bridge rescue, really, especially as one of those now standard “Spidey takes his mask off to show he’s just like you and me (and give the actor some facetime)” cliche. Maybe I just liked the mechanics of that set-piece, as well as the cranes to be honest (at least it answers that nagging question of how Spidey always has a high place to secure his webbing at). I’ll echo and underline your observation about the duality of the cops in the movie– it’s fun to watch Spidey fight them, but Leary’s Capt. Stacy makes a lot of valid points about how a lone vigilante, no matter how superpowered, can muck up longterm stings (unless he’s an all but officially sanctioned arm of the law like Bats or Supes, which opens up a whole other ethical/legal can of worms). All in all, he was a better moral adversary than J.K. Simmons’ screechy J. Jonah Jameson.
Who’d a thunk it?
I’ve pretty much spent the last decade railing on superhero movies, playing the deja vu card, and the genre’s disavowal of human elements in favor of rampant pyrotechnics. Yet (sorry to disagree with you Jaimie, but the movie to me doesn’t seem all wrong as you say, but quite the contrary) I have found a superhero movie with the right lead actor, the right love interest and the right supporting players (ok, Sally Field never really transcends herself, and Dennis Leary plays his role too rigidly and the girl’s policeman father) and a smart focus on human elements and the emotional side of this mythological property that allows for some exhilarating engagement with people rather than set pieces. Marc Webb showed some talent with actors in 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, and the heart of this re-boot was certainly in the right place. There’s an underpinning of angst in Andrew Garfield’s witty portrayal that trumps anything Maguire has done, and it’s not at all at the expense of homespun innocence, and Stone is a natural charmer. Webb plays a game of restraint, never rushing into the inevitable over-the-top CGI set pieces that for once seem to rightly emanate from the slowly building transformation. And yeah, the swing is seemingly right here. This film has absolutely no right at all to be even passable, and the idea to re-create the success quotient reeks of unimaginative greed.
But re-invention has been successfully applied, a new spiderman has usurped the old one, and the adage ‘less is more’ has come persuasively into focus. I went into this film reluctantly to appease the young ones, and was armed with sword. I came out surprised, and for the first time exhilarated by a superhero movie.
BRAVO!
Loved this essay.
As I am one to have also hated the Raimi films it’s refreshing to read someones views on EXACTLY why this reboot outshines the films that were made a decade ago. Spiderman is a difficult character to bring to the screen as much of the angst inherent in the books seems to allude the film-makers that have brought him, cinematically, to life in the past. Most times than not they trade human emotion for big chases, over-the-top fight sequences and state-of-the-art special effects. The reason I have always championed Richard Donner’s SUPERMAN (1978) as the super-hero movie by which all will eventually be compared is because, despite the technology and the audacity that is within the film-makers reach, Donner honed in on what made the character tick from the inside out. To a similar extent, Nolan has also done the same with the recent Batman franchise.
It comes as no surprise that Marc Webb makes a success of this property as he exuded a deft authority and knowledge of human emotion with his characters in the near flawless romantic comedy 500 DAYS OF SUMMER (one of my ten faves of its year if release and probably one of the four or five very best rom/coms since Woody Allens ANNIE HALL). He has a timers ear for truth in dialogue and knows how to cut the fat off a situation to expose it to the bone. Frankly, I wasn’t AT ALL interested in seeing this newest foray into the Marvel Comics classic but, once I found out who the director was, am now interested to seeing how it unfolds.
Your review really covered all bases and was a joy to read.
I recognized very early on that the Donner film was going to be an influence on this movie when we had that early bit of Peter looking at Gwen Stacy through the viewfinder of his camera, ala Jimmmy Olsen in the newsroom of the Daily Planet. Your focus here on how Webb uses his rom-com experience to flesh out the Parker/Stacy story is right– Raimi never made the MJ story work even this close in his films. But it’s also amazing for me that as a first timer with this sort of thing he knocks it out of the park in terms of superhero action, as well– for all his experience in the “Evil Dead” movies and others with action elements, the most he does in his Spidey movies is really just a lot of comic-book posturing. The best executed fight of his films was the bit with Doc Ock on the el-train, but what bothers me there is for the most part Spidey isn’t doing anything particularly tied to his abilities– when he’s throwing punches on top of the train and whatnot you could substitute almost any other superhero, and it’s the same. But here, Webb invents and stages action sequences that are tied to him using his webs and the walls and ceilings to his advantage. It’s a genuinely Spider-Man moment.
Bob,
I haven’t been able to see this yet but I will because most of what I’ve seen of it has impressed me.
Forget the action, the set pieces, what matters in a film of any kind is character and emotion. What is at stake in those scenes. Do we care?
This Spider-Man appears to have a light feel to it too; the chemistry between Gwen/Stone and Peter/Andrew is what is selling it for me.
We can believe nowadays that a man can fly or do the extraordinary things superheroes do but how often have we FELT it. Not since the original Superman probably. Maybe this will break the duck. THE AVENGERS promised it might (“puny God”) but ended up chucking out all character, all excitement and all invention for the last hour.
I liked Raimi’s Spider-Man films in a lukewarm, ambivalent sort of way. They never broke out emotionally or built up that bubbly energy you’d tend to want these types of films to have. Something was bogging them down. A tell-tale sign of a film whose flavour is not quite right is the amount of comic relief moments you chuck in to the pot to balance it out. There was plenty of nonsense in those films.
On a side note, thank God Christopher Nolan’s Batman films will soon be over. I still think The Dark Knight is the most uninteresting film I’ve seen. Batman Begins was good, though.
I’d advice against forgetting the action and set-pieces in a superhero film, Stephen– if Raimi had delivered those goods consistently in his Spidey films rather than mostly a lot of empty posturing, I’d be more forgiving of them. But what’s so great about the Webb film is that it marries great action and visuals with a level of charisma from the performers that you usually don’t see together in these kinds of blockbuster films. We’ve seen plenty that are visionary spectacles with iffy acting, or ones that aim to be character-driven stories while skimping on the action (Nolan still doesn’t know how to shoot a fight), but here we have almost the best of both worlds. Increasingly, I feel the only real drawbacks from the experience stem from how the studio recut the film at the last minute to save certain gamechanging plot twists for later films (or cut them out of the story altogether, fearing fanboy backlash). Other than that, this was a hoot.
I was more saying that the action is secondary to character. I don’t mean it’s unimportant. Too often those are the least interesting parts of the films when they are meant to be their main raison d’etre. I don’t want to switch off when things get smashed.
“Charisma”, that’s what I’m talking about!
Ahem.
Nolan still doesn’t know how to shoot a fight the way you like.
Because he totally should shoot a fight scene just the way you like them.
I’d settle for fight scenes where you can tell what’s going on in any given moment beyond “Batman’s fighting somebody”. Even the damn “Bourne” movies were less disorienting in their shaky-cam fisticuffs. Nolan can stage coherent action scenes when he wants to– the Tumbler sequences from the Bats films worked fine, and most of that action from “Inception” is easy enough to follow (probably because the rest of the movie is going out of its way to be hard to follow). But so far he’s stumbled when it comes to fight sequences that don’t involve vehicles or spinning rooms. I’m hopeful that in this next movie, we’ll at least have things clear enough to see when Batman lands a punch or two. But who knows.
Having only seen bits and pieces of the Spidey franchise over the years, I’d have to say “The Amazing Spiderman” looks superior to its predecessors on one score alone — the physical stature of its hero. Andrew Garfield stands almost 5’11″, Tobey McGuire a Lilliputian 5’7″. This matter of size becomes important, especially if the heroine can’t throw her head back and part her lips when she gazes into the eyes of her man. It’s the old Tom-Cruise-Nicole Kidman or Tom Cruise-Kelly McGillis or Tom Cruise and practically ANY female co-star dilemma. Women like their leading menfolk, especially the superheroes, TALL.
Actually, considering the dweebish roots of the character, a shorter actor playing Parker would actually make a bit more sense than someone taller. Hell, it might even pay dividends abstractly if you’re looking for someone who can pull of the physicality of all the wall crawling, jumping and swinging– you need an acrobat, not a heavyweight. In that sense, Tobey actually matches the ideal body for the character, but Garfield matched the right persona in his performance, which is what really counts. Anyway, it feels like they shot to downplay his height onscreen, so that’s not really much of a factor.
Bob, I enjoyed your piece a lot and was interested to learn more about the comic books and how the films have adapted and changed them. I went to see the latest film with my family at the weekend and my teenage son in particular loved it and said it was one of the best he has seen. I’m aware that I’m not really the target audience, but I do still prefer the Raimi films – partly, as I just said over at Samuel’s blog, because they came first and so some of the ideas which have now been rehashed in this one felt fresher, but also I thought Tobey Maguire made a perfect Peter Parker/Spidey, seeming more of a believable high school student than Andrew Garfield does.
I’ve been trying to think what my favourite comic book movies are – I would agree with Dennis that the original Superman films are the best (I was blown away by the first one, but also loved the romance of Superman 2), and then maybe Spiderman 2 and the first of Nolan’s Batman films, though I didn’t like the sequel so much.
Quick reaction: I mostly liked the film, thought it was very solid origin story and Garfield and Stone were excellent. But I think you’re way overselling it–the Lizard as a villain was kind of an uninteresting splicing of Norman Osborne and Doc Ock from the first two movies, the action was fairly good and well-staged but not nearly as thrilling as you suggest, the pacing in the final act felt off, and there were too many unanswered questions that weren’t super-intriguing in the first place. Also, I loved Raimi’s first two films, esp. the second of course, and when I re-watched the original I was struck by how fresh and fun it still is 10 years later, despite a liberal amount of dorkiness and cheese. I liked the teenage love story and angst of this version, but if asked which one would endure longer, I’d have to say Raimi’s original “Spider-Man.”
I’ll admit that the Lizard feels kind familiar when you consider Osborne and Doc Ock, but let’s face it– all of Spidey’s best villains are mad scientists, really. The only other bad guys who ever seemed remotely interesting to me were Venom and maybe Kraven– all of the others just felt like lame “Dick Tracy” caricatures used to pad out the line-ups of the variously Sinister Sixes. And maybe I’m overselling the action, but I don’t think I’m exagerating to say it far outpaces the Raimi catalogue. I think one of the things you’re talking about in how you enjoy the Raimi films, however– the dorkiness and cheese– is perhaps something of a generational thing when it comes to the geek/outsider experience of adolescence. The Raimi films are much closer to an older, more innocent kind of high school experience where the worst that could happen is somebody calling you a wallflower, and increasingly that’s not something I could relate to at all when I saw the first film. The angst is more genuine nowadays, I think.
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So. Amazing Spider-Man.
THE GOOD: Emma Stone. Like Frank Langella in Masters Of The Universe, Jurgen Prochnow in The Replacement Killers or David Warner in anything ever, Stone is by far the gem in this film. Thoughtful, emotional, well-acted – every scene she’s in is a total joy to watch no matter who she’s with. She’s not only pretty but she can ACT which is rare in this age of gross out comedy and blithering false-feminist feel-good fuck-swap like Perfect Pitch (do NOT google that film). I am deeply impressed with her in this.
Martin Sheen and Sally Field are an interesting pick as Ben and May Parker. It doesn’t totally work but it also does – while they don’t seem like the comic characters, they do seem very true to life. However, they do seem much colder compared to Cliff Robertson (I’ll get to that later).
The movie has a nice color palette to it.
THE BAD: the directing is very, very… VERY flat. It’s impossible to compare it against Raimi’s in the same way it would be impossible to compare Stanley Kubrick to Paul Verhoeven; and in this case, this film is the more “Kubrick” though without the intellectual bent. It’s cold and detached and uninterested in telling a heroic tale. It’s not a dumb film but…
It’s dull. The greatest problem with the film is that it’s dull as hell. I can remember two scenes in the film that work and work well but…
1.) neither of them deal with web-swinging or stopping the villain.
2.) though well-done, felt entirely out of place in a superhero movie and would be more in place with a good romance film like Until September or Kate & Leopold.
And so… why does this movie exist if it can’t give you good action scenes? As a point of preference, it’s interesting to me that compared to this film, the Raimi films are chock full of practical effect shots or at least well rendered greenscreen mattes. All the action sequences in this are CG renders from what I remember and it robs it of both visceral feel and realism. Spider-Man (in this hilariously stupid costume design) leaps about like a feather on the wind: he glides but there is no feeling of muscle or power behind it.
THE UGLY: Garfield is the worst thing to happen to Peter Parker since getting his coke-bottle glasses. Instead of being a quirky, solitary nerd, this version of Peter has a text book case of Aspergers. He twitches, is unable to make eye contact, talks with his hands, stutters and generally acts like a dinner theater version of Billy Bibbit. It was very, very painful to watch him because aside from the twitching and speech impediment, he was also a massive asshole to everyone. His aunt and uncle, the kids in school, Gwen, everyone. I felt bad the order characters had to interact with him.
(Side Note: this film is like a 12 year old’s response to Captain America, where the good German doctor said about the little guy appreciating what power was. Well… In this movie, when you get power, you decide to become an asshole the size of a CNN article response thread.)
The thing about Spider-Man, rewrite or not, the character exists as this: nice guy gets powers and makes a tragic mistake that loses him his Uncle Ben and he learns with great power must come great responsibility. This movie purposely avoids that. There is no lesson, Peter goes nowhere and becomes no one special. He is not a hero because he never completes any of the trials a hero must: makes no sacrifice, feels no guilt, doesn’t evolve or change. He puts on a mask and… thats it. No hero’s journey.
Garfield’s Peter Parker is Cameron Fry if he stayed in bed instead of going out with Ferris Beuller.
Instead, Peter loses his Uncle Ben (props to how they twisted his fate) and so he puts on his tights and goes on a vigilante spree to find the guy. While chasing the original killer into a warehouse in the original movie is an act of passion, a montage of beating up fleeing blonde men strikes more as misplaced revenge. That’s not Spider-Man because thats not heroic.
The Horner score is lilting. It’s not bad but it’s not heroic. The caper is a complete point of convenience and though not insultingly bad is unraveled as you watch it. You can outsmart the movie very quickly and truth be told, the film cribs it’s last 5 minutes from the last 30 seconds of the original Spider-Man.
All in all, the film isn’t BAD. It didn’t make me angry and I didn’t hate it but it did make me sad. Spider-Man was one of my *things* growing up, defining an identity of morals as opposed to The Punisher or Superman… and the fact that we’ve gone so far from me (and this will make some uncomfortable to read) crying Field Of Dreams style in the theater when Peter talks to Ben in Spider-Man 2 to me nodding off during the climactic fight in this version shows how far we haven’t come.
The film isn’t made for fans of the series but, instead, made to interest Twilight fans. Garfield’s hair is quaffed like the lead vampire in that movie and I’m pretty sure it’s for this reason. The leaden action sequences, odd dialogue (they even swipe a throw-away joke from the original movie) and a schmear of really bad one-liners and you get this.
The Aspergers Spider-Man.