All right. I saw The Amazing Spider-Man today. What did I think of it? Uh, well…amazing!
In fact, I liked this movie a whole lot more than all three of Sam Raimi’s movies put together! There! I’ve said it! (“Oh no! Consternation! Uproar!”)
Let me get this straight, I love Sam Raimi. I think he’s a great director. His Evil Dead movies are among my all-time favorites. But while he’s great at directing broad, physical stuff, he really comes up short in characterization. And that was the biggest problem for me with those movies. I just didn’t care about the characters. Especially not the relationship between Peter Parker and Mary Jane. And that was what you were supposed to care about the most. But instead, it just came off as tedious.
So when Marc Webb was chosen for director, a guy whose biggest movie prior to this was I Days of Summer[/I], which was a Romantic Comedy that was character-driven and focused on relationships, I was skeptical. But it turned out, that was what the Spider-Man movies needed all along. You needed a director who was good at bringing out the characters and the subtleties of their relationships. This is something Webb realized and what Raimi failed at. You can have all the web-slinging and over the top superhero vs. supervillain battles you want, but it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t CARE about the characters! It’s elementary storytelling.
Simply put, this movie succeeded for me on everything that the Raimi movies failed at. Andrew Garfield is a way better Peter Parker than Tobey Maguire. Emma Stone was also great as Gwen Stacy, and the relationship between the two had way more sincerity and chemistry than with Maguire and Kirsten Dunst (again, you CARE!) Martin Sheen was a great Uncle Ben, and Sally Field was a surprisingly good Aunt May. Denis Leary was also great as Capt. Stacy, and Rhys Ifans was appropriately both alternately menacing and sympathetic as the Lizard, as he should be.
The evolution of Spidey’s costume was also better-handled. So that by the time we finally see him in full garb, it really felt like it was earned. I was also glad to see him using mechanical webshooters. And while that’s more of a fanboy nitpick, I was never 100% on board with the organic webshooters of the Raimi films. For me, it was always mechanical.
Also, there’s much more of Parker as Spider-Man in this movie. Raimi’s movies just never seemed to have enough Spider-Man in a movie that was called Spider-Man. Raimi’s Spidey was also strangely mute throughout most of the films, whereas Spider-Man has always traditionally been a chatterbox. So I was very pleased to see Spidey in this movie chatting it up and quipping through his mask.
And speaking of the mask, another big problem I had with Raimi’s movies was that they felt to me like they were always trying to contrive ways to get the mask off Maguire every chance they got. Whether that was because Raimi felt Maguire couldn’t act through the mask or Maguire himself just didn’t like to wear it I don’t know. And while there are moments in this film as well where Peter has to unmask, not once to me did they feel forced or artificially contrived. In fact, in two instances, they’re pretty significant, and in one of them it’s even a major plot point! So I can’t begrudge the movie at all in this case for doing it.
I really don’t have much bad to say about this film. But if I had to single out any possible minuses, J. Jonah Jameson is conspicuous by his absence, but there’s no doubt in my mind he’s being saved for the sequel. And while the Green Goblin may not be the main villain in this one, I’m glad that they decided not go with the obvious choice and went with the somewhat less popular Lizard instead. Besides, considering that Gobby is a big deal, it looks as if from this movie that we’re getting some build-up to him just as we did with the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies. So that when he does finally show up, it’ll feel like a real treat.
Also, and this is really just a technical thing, the projector bulb in the theater we saw it in burned out at the last few seconds of the movie, so we didn’t see that or the post-credits scene for that matter. The management gave us free passes, though, and we’ll more than likely put that towards The Dark knight Rises.
A lot of fanboys have been sharpening their knives in anticipation of this movie, actively hating it and rooting for it to fail. I can’t understand why, as it’s probably more faithful in spirit to Spider-Man than Raimi’s movies ever were (Which incidentally were faithful in terms of story adaptation, almost to the point of slavishness. But that’s not as important as being faithful in terms of spirit.) And there’s certainly plenty of them to nitpick at. They’ll probably be particularly upset that the line, “With great power comes great responsibility” is never uttered. But seeing as how we’ve heard it a thousand times before and that’s it’s pretty much integral to Spider-Man’s character, I think we can do without hearing it just this once. Besides, hearing it said aloud these days would just come off as preachy and heavy-handed. And I think Martin Sheen’s Uncle Ben paraphrases it quite nicely in this movie. (Also, incidentally, I think his death as it’s depicted in this movie has far more emotional impact than in any telling of Spider-Man’s origin that I’ve seen to date). For me, this is the Spider-Man movie I wanted all those years ago when the first movie came out.
Sure, a lot of fanboys will be disappointed, because obviously this means that Sony will retain the movie rights, keeping Marvel/Disney from incorporating Spidey into any future movie projects a la The Avengers. And I think that’s probably where a lot of this hostility is coming from. But for me, a good story is a good story, regardless of who is responsible for making it. And judged on its own merits as a superhero movie - and more importantly as a Spider-Man movie - it’s a damn good one!