The Conservative Cave
The Bar => The Lounge => Topic started by: movie buff on July 17, 2012, 09:43:49 PM
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Hey, welcome back!
Sorry this review’s taken so long, I’ve been crazy- busy!
So, now, to finish up my look at Spider- Man films, I’ll be looking at the Spider- Man reboot, ‘The Amazing Spider- Man,’ which just came out a couple weeks ago. The idea of a reboot came about just 2-3 years ago. Originally, they were going to continue the Sam Raimi Spider- Man series, and the prevailing rumor was that the new villain in it was going to be the Vulture, and that he’d be played by John Malkovich. Then, I guess, they realized that fan reaction to ‘Spider- Man 3’ was quite mixed a with a lot of fans having serious issues with it, so they decided to just reboot the whole thing. It is starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Sally Field, Martin Sheen, Denis Leary, and Rhys Ifans.
The film opens as we see Peter Parker as a little boy. His panicked parents, fleeing from something, drop Peter off with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May (Sheen and Field), then leave and Peter never sees them again.
We cut ahead to see Peter now a teenager (Played by Andrew Garfield), not as pathetic as Peter was starting out in the Sam Raimi trilogy, but still with a lot of problems. A flooded basement causes Peter to discover his scientist father’s old briefcase, which contains details on a risky experiment he had been working on, as well as proof that he had been working with another scientist, Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans), on it. To investigate this, and find out what may have caused his parents’ disappearance and apparent demise, he heads over to the Oscorp biology building, where Connors works, and discovers that his friend/ crush Gwen Stacy (Stone) is a protégé of Connors. He meets the apparently friendly Connors, who talks about a project he’s working on which involves the possibility of healing diseases and imperfections in humans by injecting them with DNA from lizards and other animals that have regenerative healing properties. Connors has a personal interest in this project, since he only has one arm, so the idea of being able to grow back a new one is obviously intriguing to him. While secretly poking around one of the labs, Peter comes across an area filled with experimental spiders, which swarm all over him. He frantically brushes off most of them, but one secretly remains among his clothes, and bites him on the back of his neck.
His powers begin developing quickly. Initially he’s scared, mostly of the potential side effects, but he soon gets excited. As was the case in the first Sam Raimi Spidey film, Peter eventually uses his abilities to stand up to and humiliate high school bully Flash Thompson (But unlike in the Raimi version, here Flash eventually becomes a nice guy or near enough to it afterwards). Shortly after this, Peter gets into a very heated argument with his aunt and uncle, and storms off. While out, Peter sees a thug robbing an obnoxious convenience store clerk who had just finished giving Peter a hard time, and lets him go. The thug in question runs into Uncle Ben (Who was out looking for Peter to bring him home), shoots him dead, and runs off. Racked with guilt over this, it gives Peter the impetus to begin fighting crime, initially just to try and catch the killer (He listens to any reports of a criminal matching the killer’s physical description in the hopes that it might be the guy, and in the process catches several criminals that look like him). He grows closer to Gwen, who quickly learns his secret, but finds out that her father (Leary), who happens to be a police captain, hates Spider- Man with a passion.
Amidst this, Connors is put under more pressure to develop his genetic engineering technology and have a successful human trial of it, as his boss Norman Osborn (Not really physically seen in the movie other than briefly in the very end, but he’ll undoubtedly play a bigger role in the inevitable sequel), is apparently dying, and when Connors’ research is perfected it’ll be able to cure Osborn. Connors’ immediate superior takes a sample of what Connors developed, intent on testing it on someone at a local veterans’ hospital. To avoid this happening, Connors decides to test the formula on himself. His arm rapidly grows back, but he soon turns into a reptilian monster known simply as “The Lizard,†and goes on a rampage. Spider Man rescues several people who would have otherwise died during Lizard’s rampage, and in the process first becomes really thrust into the public eye.
When Dr. Connors recovers, he is at first horrified of the damage he caused as the Lizard, but soon becomes impressed at his heightened senses even in his normal human form. After he and Spidey fight, he soon realizes that Peter is Spider- Man, and starts going after him. As Connors becomes increasingly drunk with his newfound power, he decides everyone should become like him, and synthesizes the formula that made him Lizard into a gas that he can spread throughout the city so that everyone will become mutated into reptilian monsters. Spider- Man of course realizes he must stop this, and it leads to a showdown atop the Oscorp building, tragedy, hope, and a setup for a sequel.
There are a few problems with ‘The Amazing Spider- Man.’ First, Andrew Garfield as Peter at times seems like he’s not good at handling serious moments (i.e. His reaction to Uncle Ben’s death seems a bit forced). Second, they don’t explain a lot about what actually happened to Peter’s parents, other than the fact that they went on the run when Peter’s father realized how dangerous the work he and Connors were doing could be, and apparently died. Then again, the inevitable sequel will hopefully show more of that. Also, a scene near the climax in which a bunch of civilians band together to help Peter get to the Oscorp building in time to stop Lizard’s plan is a bit corny. Lastly, Spider- Man’s classic catchphrase of ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ is never directly heard. Uncle Ben at one point explains the principle in general to Peter, that those who are gifted with great power or gifts have a duty/ responsibility to use them to do as much good as possible, but the actual specific phrase itself is never heard.
For a long time, I was VERY opposed to rebooting a franchise that’s only a decade old (What’s next, a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ reboot?), but ‘The Amazing Spider- Man’ proved to have a very good story. It certainly takes things in a different direction from the Raimi trilogy, but it handles them quite well. The story and the questions it raises, especially those having to do with ethics in various ways, are quite interesting. I like the fact that Peter’s still in high school for this one, in the Sam Raimi one, he graduates from high school like 20 minutes into the film.
The special effects work really well. The Lizard looks great, a truly frightening monster, and the fight scenes with him and Spider- Man are well- done, as are the action sequences (i.e. Spidey rescuing civilians from the Lizard’s first rampage, including a little boy stuck in a car about to fall into the water). Also, a common element to Marvel superhero movies is to have the legendary comic creator Stan Lee make a cameo at some point in them. I think Lee’s cameo in this film is easily one of the best he’s done, it is VERY funny.
Although, as I said, Andrew Garfield isn’t quite as good at the serious, emotional side of acting the way Tobey Maguire was, he still pulls in a very good performance. This version of Peter is less of an awkward nerd than the Maguire version, and instead is slightly more of a skater punk, but still with dorky qualities (i.e. his skateboards are littered with scientific and mathematical scribblings). He proves to be quite funny at times, and seems to have Spidey’s knack in the comics for teasing and heckling his enemies down pat.
Emma Stone makes Gwen Stacy sweet and understanding, but spunky and with a strong personality. She makes a good love interest, but knowing what will almost certainly happen to her in the sequel, whenever it comes out, makes her a tragic character as well. I love what they do with Denis Leary as her police- captain father. As I said, he makes it clear through most of the film that he is no fan of Spider- Man, but it goes deeper than the usual “He’s taking the law into his own hands, and makes cops like us look like incompetent morons†routine that’s rather common in superhero movies; He also has an issue with the fact that Spidey makes policemen’s jobs harder at times (i.e. Early in the film, Spidey nails a criminal trying to steal a parked car; Later, however, we learn that by doing so, he unwittingly ruined a planned police sting to take down the car- thieves’ entire operation, as the car in question was secretly equipped with a tracking device designed to lead the cops right to the thieves’ hideout when they stole it). It’s a legitimate point which I hadn’t really thought of before that much in superhero films.
Rhys Ifans makes for an interesting villain as Dr. Curt Connors/ The Lizard (A villain they had tried to bring into the Raimi trilogy, so much so that Dr.Connors was a recurring character in them, played then by Dylan Baker, but they could never make it work). He’s similar to Doctor Octopus in ‘Spider- Man 2,’ in that he does have noble goals, at least at the start; In addition to wanting to regrow his arm, he believes that his research, once perfected, will ultimately lead to a world in which deformities or ailments of any sort will be a thing of the past, so nobody will ever be viewed as a freak or an outcast again. However, as he becomes drunk on the newfound power he gains, he starts to view humanity as a whole as being fundamentally flawed, and in need of a radical transformation that he intends to give them by mutating the population as a whole.
Martin Sheen and Sally Field are wonderful and realistic as Uncle Ben and Aunt May. In the Raimi trilogy, the two of them were portrayed as loving and sweet (And I did love the actors that played them), but also as kind of wimps/ pushovers who couldn’t really control Peter. In this version, Ben and May are still good people, but they are also assertive enough that they’re not afraid to lay down the law with Peter and chew him out if they think he’s crossing the line. Even then, though, you can tell that everything they do is done out of love as well as out of concern for Peter’s well- being. In other words, they act like parents.
And there you have ‘The Amazing Spider- Man,’ a good restart to the series certainly worth the price of a ticket, or even just a rental whenever it’s on DVD. That’s all for now, come back tomorrow when I start looking at a couple Batman films!