C’mon, you saw it yesterday if you didn’t catch it Tuesday. And The Amazing Spider-Man is a movie worth seeing.
We won’t go into the plot too much: suffice to say there are few surprises, one of the few drawbacks to the movie. Marc Webb ultimately hands in an origin that’s streamlined, smartly paced, and often very funny. All of the tweaks, many of which are pulled from Ultimate Spider-Man, are for the better. It isn’t perfect, but it’s an excellent start.
The action scenes are sharply done. Ten years of improvements to CGI helps considerably. They’re fluid and they make sense; more to the point, they’re heavily inspired by the comics. Still, that’s not the best part of the movie.
The best moments are actually the small interpersonal scenes: Peter stumbling through asking Gwen Stacy for a date, Gwen trying to get rid of her father, Peter clashing with Uncle Ben. It does create a problem in that when the movie has to go for the big soaring “Everybody Loves Spidey” moments, they feel a little corny and out of place. But this Peter is very, very much an awkward, and endearing, teenager.
The characterizations are consistent in the sense that nobody is a bad guy, but awkward in the sense that the movie moves too fast for them to be anything other than sketches. Rhys Ifans’ Curt Connors is a scientist facing the fact that he’s hit the limits of his talents, and the movie drops hints his life is slowly falling apart in other respects. We see a wedding ring but an empty, sterile house, for example. But we don’t get enough time with him to develop it, which would have given his turn to villainy some weight. Flash Thompson turns from bully to trying to give Pete a big hug, and this was a guy introduced grinding someone’s face in their lunch. Why is he suddenly Mr. Sensitive?
The other complaints are really nitpicks: you’ll wonder if the Lizard is going to ask anybody if they know how he got these scars, for example.
It’s a good movie, and worth your time in theaters. One hopes that the huge Tuesday opening and no doubt equally enormous July 4th will convince Sony that Marc Webb can be trusted with the franchise.
What’d you think of it? Let us know in the comments.
image courtesy Sony
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I wasn’t thrilled with the movie but I didn’t hate it either. My biggest complaint was the way Uncle Ben died. His dumb ass deserved it trying to jump on a gun for no damn reason. I hope the script for the sequel is better.
Orci and Kurtzman are writing it, so it’ll be worse in every possible respect.
They write Fringe and the Star Trek movies so they have my vote of confidence. They would have to write something spectacularly shitty to do worse than this movie.
Like the Transformers movies? Because they wrote those.
It was well done, the effects were a nice step up from the Raimi movies (well, most of them were) and the casting was great — the movie just didn’t need to exist though. There were a lot of great scenes, but outside of those it felt like a real slog through the same old story.
I also found the fact that they changed everything in minor, surface ways annoying — his girlfriend’s blonde instead of a redhead, there’s a mean policeman instead of a mean newspaper man out to get him, instead of being bitten by a single spider, a whole bunch fall on his head, they mangle Uncle Ben’s “great responsibility” speech and so on. They’ve colored everything in with slightly different colors, but they’re using the same coloring book page.
Also, for f–k sakes, stop taking your mask off constantly Peter. Andrew Garfield is not such an incredible heart-throb that we can’t go 30 seconds without seeing his face.
But eh, the scenes of Peter discovering his powers were fun, Emma Stone is cute and they finally revealed what exactly Spider-Man’s webs are sticking to when he’s web slinging, so not bad.
I get the sinking feeling, the more I consider it, that Marc Webb was not given a free hand to do what he wanted, and it keeps the film from being great.
I like to think they just hired him because his last name is “Webb” and then were all “What the hell? He wants to put all this character development and romance and s–t in the movie! What was the last thing this guy directed? 500 Days of Summer? Oh f–k…”
I enjoyed it and I personally think it was better than the Raimi ones…
Pros
1: The time frame of the movie was better you felt this was more like a couple of months while Raimi’s was what like 1-2 yrs in one film? he’s at school and awkward, gets bitten, uncle dies, graduates high school, and then its thanksgiving all in a matter of what 45 mins?
2: Designed web shooters >>> that organic crap they did in the first
3: Gwen Stacy was Peter Parker’s first love and deserved the spot light over Mary Jane (Whom Parker didn’t meet until well after high school). Two people had the most effect on Spider-Mans genesis… Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy. The first movie bastardized a key moment in Spider-Mans life towards the end.
4: We did not need J.J.J. and the Daily Bugle for this movie. And Captain Stacy was needed to lay the ground work for things to come that will really shake things up in a good way.
5: NO HARRY OSBORNE… man those films realy put a bad taste in my mouth for James Franco.
Cons:
1. It felt rush and jumbled towards the end
2. Some moment were too cheesy (web shooter into the camera for 3d effect)
3. Sally Field was just there added nothing to the movie which is a shame.
My gut tells me that if there’s a director’s cut coming, Sally Field gets way more screen time.
I hope so and I hope there is more time with Dr. Conners too. Id say this is a B to B+ movie that had a lot of minor things holding it back from being an A.
While Sam Raimi’s movie was a better over all movie package. The story and direction they are going with this new series is a better one. I may just be over analyzing and inferring too much but I do not want to get flamed for discussing “spoilers”.
Yeah, the whole “SONY HATES IT” thing tells me there was more beef to this movie. It’s still a good movie but the fact they hired two action hacks as screenwriters tells me the notes were “LESS OF THIS INTERPERSONAL CRAP MORE SPLOSIONS!”
Hopefully we are getting the JJ Abrams influenced “Orci and Kurtzman” team and NOT the Michael Bay “Orci and Kurtzman” team.
I haven’t seen this movie yet, and for some reason I just do NOT give half a shit.
good input.
I think most people are wondering why it needed a reboot? It is clear it did, Just because the way Spider-Man 3 played out.Story wise Peter already had an identity crises, he already got the girl and that relationship was already tested. Harry Osbourn/Green Goblin thing finished off. He came clean with Aunt May about the Uncle Ben thing and she liked Spider-Man. So all that was left for Spider-man to do was fight a villain of the year or two, reboot from the start or forget 3 ever existed. Which would you have preferred?
This movie has set up a franchise not a trilogy. Here you get rid of the Lizard but open the door for bigger badder threats with Green Goblin and Doc. Ock cards yet to be played. You have “what happened to peters parents”, Gwen Stacey and how does he go from Gwen to Mary Jane. You now have the opportunity to spin off into the Scarlet Spider series by introducing the Jackal and the clone saga because that fits into things as well.
I couldn’t agree more. I didn’t necessarily hate Spider Man when the Maguire movies came out, but I enjoyed 1 and 2. 3 was the one that made me hate the web-slinger, so when I heard this was coming out, I was thinking, “Fuck you very much, I’ll stick to my beloved Nolan-Batman-awesomeness thank you very much…” But then I saw previews. I saw that they had Spidey creating the web-slingers and that was it…plus I enjoyed Garfield in the Social Network.
Went and saw it, and it was brilliant. The Lizard does look a lot like…well, ahem, “Do you wanna know how I got these scars??” and his character wasn’t too fleshed out. I was also confused by the Flash change in morality and character, I thought that was bizarre when he went in for the sneak-attack-bro-hug after getting slogged by Parker, but oh well… Maybe they wanted to appease all the organizations crying out against modern-day bullying… Who knows?
I look forward to the next one, and I will definitely be there. Also, +1000 for no Osborne characters. Also, James Franco sucks. Just in general. I hated him.
i don’t know i think the transition of Flash from Bully to friend was a bit too streamlined. However,they were not buddy buddy… Flash as big of an a-hole as he was doesn’t mean he cannot relay sympathy for a dude losing his uncle and even afterwards it was peter who initiated the last conversation all that changed was he stopped bullying Peter.
Orci and Kurtzman only wrote the first Transformers. They had a hand in crafting the story for the second film, but much of it was re-written by Ehren Krueger, who also had sole credit on the third film.
I liked most of apart from two things. The Lizard’s character design (huge claws but no big scary teeth? Lame) and the part with the cranes. He already has a bunch of giant frigging skyscrapers to swing off, WHY THE HELL DOES HE NEED CRANES?
I think they were going to explain how he was able to swing in a straight line down a street. That is a minor pet peeve of mine in other movies and some of the games he wasn’t really swinging from building to building, he would travel in a straight line. I would wonder what his webs attaching to that allow him to travel down the street like that… also is it too much to ask they explain his webs disintegrate after a few hours or something because i can just imaging after a few months there would just be a huge amount of webs just lying around the city. Hanging from buildings and construction sites.