Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can...

[walkertexasdruid]

I am looking forward to The Amazing Spiderman 2 coming out next week. I do have a couple of questions for them, though:

Why does Rhino look like a Transformer?

Why remake the Green Goblin, when Willum Defoe's portrayal was one of the best comic book movie villains of all time?

Are they going to kill Gwen Stacy and then have the Jackal clone her and Spiderman in The Amazing Spiderman 3?

Can't wait for next week! :dance:

[Magus]

1. Rhino is wearing a robot suit instead of the one from the comics.

2. Money.

3. Maybe?

This movie looks really bad to me. I didn't like the first ASM at all. I'll definitely be looking at reviews before thinking about seeing it.

[Premmy]

Why does Rhino look like a Transformer?
Because rhino has always worn power armor, how "armor"y it looks varies by artist and setting.

Why remake the"The most important villain to this character's most important storylines"" , when Jack Nicholson portrayal was one of the best comic book movie villains of all time?
Yeah, good question.

Are they going to kill Gwen Stacy and then have the Jackal clone her and Spiderman in The Amazing Spiderman 3?
Oh god I hope not
Can't wait for next week! :dance:
From what I've seen it's not as good as the first one, but not horrible.

[Aerozord]

I cant get past how horrible the portrayal of Spiderman himself is. He's like that annoying douche that thinks his juvenile humor is actually funny.

[Premmy]

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lq5ee3dKO61qj41h3o1_500.jpg

[Flarecobra]

I cant get past how horrible the portrayal of Spiderman himself is. He's like that annoying douche that thinks his juvenile humor is actually funny.

https://24.media.tumblr.com/b5a9482edd7f76f69e62347e6bb5d95e/tumblr_mf3wiwOC3b1rf4dgqo1_250.gif

Pretty certain it's nothing new.

[synkr0nized]

I don't understand why any of you is excited for these movies.
They'll just re-do it all again to keep their control over the rights, as long as they keep making money off of it.

[Premmy]

I don't understand why any of you is excited for these movies.
They'll just re-do it all again to keep their control over the rights, as long as they keep making money off of it.

What, you mean like every comic book movie?

[rpgdemon]

I agree with Synk, it bothers me how Sony keeps rebooting the series to keep the movie rights to Spiderman. I want him in the Marvel movie universe.

Also, the mouth thing the new guy does is SO annoying. Just watch for it. He's got this weird... Tongue thing... That he does.

[walkertexasdruid]

I guess I am one of those naive people who are optimistic about things I want to like, even if there is evidence to contrary.

[Aerozord]

https://24.media.tumblr.com/b5a9482edd7f76f69e62347e6bb5d95e/tumblr_mf3wiwOC3b1rf4dgqo1_250.gif

Pretty certain it's nothing new.

I never said I liked Spider-Man 3, in fact I will go on record as saying it looked so mishandled I never even saw it. Just like I'm probably not going to see this one

[synkr0nized]

What, you mean like every comic book movie?

Not a bad point, but I feel like it's significantly different/worse due to the situation Spiderman is in, with Sony apparently keen on shitting out new movies however often is required to retain the rights.

I'm not sure what has to happen for them to consider it enough of a flop to not make more, but I suspect the amount of fans and kids excited for these movies regardless with keep them coming.

[Aerozord]

I'm not sure what has to happen for them to consider it enough of a flop to not make more, but I suspect the amount of fans and kids excited for these movies regardless with keep them coming.

Nothing, for very shallow old money reasons. To the movie industry the most valuable thing is a license. In the old days this was a rather minor things. Studio would try something out and if it flops big deal try something else.

Then the nostalgia driven economy came into being, and superheroes became one of the most valuable revenue sources. This alone wouldn't matter much if not for Marvel. Sitting back, waiting for most of the licensees to return to them before consolidating. Sony knows that if they lose the rights than Marvel gets them back and there is little chance they will be able to buy it again. Worst of all since Disney owns Marvel they know there is little chance of grabbing up new ones either.

If they lose Spider-Man they lose the entire superhero movie genre. Ironically Marvel is the problem. Not just for the above reasons but also because by showing how much money can be made they are making Spider-Man seem more valuable.

Forgetting the reason most of these movies did well is because they were good and not because they were superheroes. Hell most of the Avengers were characters the mainstream knew almost nothing about so it certainly wasn't brand recognition that was drawing them out.

The only good thing that will happen if this bombs is maybe their next attempt will be better.

[synkr0nized]

I was talking just about Spiderman movies, the "they" being Sony.

Because none of Spidey's movies have been good.

[Premmy]

Not a bad point, but I feel like it's significantly different/worse due to the situation Spiderman is in, with Sony apparently keen on shitting out new movies however often is required to retain the rights.
You DO realize Marvel's got like, twenty years of future movies and tv shows planned out, and are trying to sell "Vin Diesel, the tree" pretty much purely on brand recognition right now, yes?
"Just for the Licensing" Is pretty much an invalid complaint when comparing superhero(Particularly Marvel/DC) Franchises. That's their whole reason for existing, to have adaptations in the first place.

I could make many other drawn out points about the nature of shared comic-book universes and start quoting MCDuffie here, but that's another debate. I could talk about Toyetic merchandise- driven media compared to American Superhero-Franchises, particularlyTokusatsu, and that's related and fun to discuss."This movie sucks because Sony wants money" has pretty much nothing to do with it's quality in a comparison to other things made for the exact same reason.
If you don't like the genre, well that's your thing, but it's kind of Fallacious to present the Spider-man film franchise as being in a "Unique" situation.
I'm not sure what has to happen for them to consider it enough of a flop to not make more, but I suspect the amount of fans and kids excited for these movies regardless with keep them coming.

[synkr0nized]

Dopey Maguire last played the role in, what, 2007? So less than ten years and we've already gotten a new cast and reboot.

The X-men set of movies ended around then and hasn't been rebooted. In fact, other movies added to them, with another coming this year at some point.

The various Avengers don't look to be in danger of getting rebooted. If anything, they'll keep stringing along together both with their own movies and with Avengers movies, provided we all continue to enjoy them.

Flops like Daredevil and Ghost Rider are laying low, thankfully, so perhaps down the road we'll get reboots that might be an attempt to update/give it a better shot. But as far as I am aware no one is running to chop something together just 'cause.

Prior to Nolan Batman saw re-casting in a somewhat-contiguous story setting. Rather than a re-casting and rebooting.


Basically all I'm pointing out is how I think Spiderman's being handled a bit differently. I'm sorry to have derailed conversation.

[Aerozord]

Now that I think about it, I think movies are the only thing that handle licensees like this unless its specifically stated to be exclusive. Lets say you do the reverse and give someone the rights to do something with a movie license. Book, video game, whatever, then yes they can use it, but nothing stopping them from giving it to other people to use too. Even then its not like they have eternal control, they have to negotiate a new contract every so often or lose the rights

Am I missing something?

[Bum Bill Bee]

There were parts I liked about Amazing Spider-man, but my least favorite part was Andrew Garfield, or rather almost all the material that was written for him. Can anyone tell me why Andrew is an improvement over Toby? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2KSPiTOMR8)

I'll just wait for ASM2 to come out on DVD. The main reason I'll even be watching is the promise of some Sinister Six, or rather, three villains plus cameos.


And PS Am I the only one who hopes/fears that the Jamie foxx electro will look anything like this? (http://kyrtuck.deviantart.com/gallery/40866911#/art/Foxx-news-383385568?_sid=6c4591c9)

[Magus]

This movie just looks really bad, though. Like that is what separates it from Disney's Marvel movies and Fox's new X-Men movie. It looks really, really bad.

They're all made to make money, I don't think anyone is really not saying that. But there's still a question of the level of quality you get for your money. Why should this one make money when it's not even GOOD?

As for the "three villains" thing, I hear Harry Green Goblin and Rhino are barely in it.

[Arcanum]

I'm going to go see it because I'm home from school and it's the only movie out that my friends here haven't seen yet due to it just coming out. So we're going to hang out and then go be mildly entertained either by the movie itself or by cracking jokes about how bad it is. It's a win/win.

[MSperoni]

Is it just me or is having Paul "Pig Vomit/John Adams" Giamatti cast as Rhino a weird decision?

Not seen ASM2 yet (not sure I will), and I have no doubt Giamatti can play any role they give him excellently, but having him play Rhino is as weird to me as having Arnold as Mr. Freeze.

Maybe I don't know Rhino anymo' though.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Can anyone tell me why Andrew is an improvement over Toby?


Because he isn't Toby.

Bam! Next question.

[Solid Snake]

Look, we're all avoiding addressing the real issue with Spider-Man, which is:

WHERE THE HELL IS SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN?!?

That shit was fuckin' awesome, who gives a crap about debating the relative merits of the movies when none of those awful movies could even remotely compare

[rpgdemon]

Ultimate Spiderman is pretty awesome, and I really actually want Drake Bell as movie Spiderman now. He does the character justice.

[Solid Snake]

Ultimate Spiderman is pretty awesome,

...
...I want some of whatever is you've been smoking lately.

[Aerozord]

...
...I want some of whatever is you've been smoking lately.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v135/aerozord/spidermandeadpool_zps894f232f.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/aerozord/media/spidermandeadpool_zps894f232f.jpg.html)

[rpgdemon]

...
...I want some of whatever is you've been smoking lately.

Hear me out:

I don't want or need Spiderman to be anything but goofy fun. Sure, it errs on the side of silly, cartoony-stuff a little too often, but that's okay because it's a show about a wisecracking kid who crawls around on walls and shoots glorified sillystring at people. Don't bog that down by making it super serious!

Plus, the cameos by the metric ton of Marvel characters from A list to C list is enjoyable.

What are you NOT liking about it?

[Solid Snake]

What are you NOT liking about it?

Basically, what you've just articulated is the exact opposite of the perspective I have towards what I want from Spider-Man.

I loved Spectacular because it took itself incredibly seriously. Not just from a choreography perspective, though the fight scenes are impeccable. But from a storytelling perspective, everything is just so tight. Like, the way episodes flowed, for one thing, there's just this sense of timing that permeates everything...time's advancing, week by week, in Peter Parker's universe, in an episodic fashion that just feels right. The show hooked me in with these ancillary antagonists and protagonists that the writers made a clear, concerted effort to care about. I actually really liked Gwen Stacy, and Mary Jane, and Aunt May, and Liz Allen, and Flash Thompson, and Sandman and Electro and about fifty zillion other characters that I've never given a damn about in other iterations of the material.

The characters felt alive. The world itself felt alive. Every decision Spider-Man made, I felt invested in. It was the rare kind of animated show Bronies earnestly pretend only Friendship is Magic is -- the kind of show that deliberately appealed to adults as much as children, that was written with intelligent dialogue and crammed with homages to the source material.

Really, if nothing else, I want my Spider-Man to be authentically Spider-Man, not just "Spider-Man goofing off with a bunch of cameo B-tier superheroes." Give me Peter Parker interacting with his high school friends and foes any day, taking pictures for the newspaper and being an awkward teen with a huge secret, that's exactly what I love Spidey for.

[Aerozord]

I think both do what they set out to do well. What I care about is that Spider-Man is flawed, and I mean in that very human self-destructive kind of way. He fails. There are people he cant save. If there is one thing I think Ultimate did really well it was the message, you wont always do good, the point is you try to.

This is why I dislike this new spider-man. If there is one thing he definitely isn't, its a socially awkward confused science geek consistently screwing up with the few people he does associate with.

[Premmy]

What are you NOT liking about it?
It turned Grown-ass man Luke Cage into a teenager. It gives spider-man a regular team. It gave Spider-man a fucking Motorcycle.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Basically, what you've just articulated is the exact opposite of the perspective I have towards what I want from Spider-Man.

I loved Spectacular because it took itself incredibly seriously. Not just from a choreography perspective, though the fight scenes are impeccable. But from a storytelling perspective, everything is just so tight. Like, the way episodes flowed, for one thing, there's just this sense of timing that permeates everything...time's advancing, week by week, in Peter Parker's universe, in an episodic fashion that just feels right. The show hooked me in with these ancillary antagonists and protagonists that the writers made a clear, concerted effort to care about. I actually really liked Gwen Stacy, and Mary Jane, and Aunt May, and Liz Allen, and Flash Thompson, and Sandman and Electro and about fifty zillion other characters that I've never given a damn about in other iterations of the material.

The characters felt alive. The world itself felt alive. Every decision Spider-Man made, I felt invested in. It was the rare kind of animated show Bronies earnestly pretend only Friendship is Magic is -- the kind of show that deliberately appealed to adults as much as children, that was written with intelligent dialogue and crammed with homages to the source material.

Really, if nothing else, I want my Spider-Man to be authentically Spider-Man, not just "Spider-Man goofing off with a bunch of cameo B-tier superheroes." Give me Peter Parker interacting with his high school friends and foes any day, taking pictures for the newspaper and being an awkward teen with a huge secret, that's exactly what I love Spidey for.

In Weismans name, amen.

[rpgdemon]

The one thing that I agree that Ultimate doesn't do super well is that I want more Peter Parker, and more non-hero interactions. I tend to find heroes most interesting when they're NOT behind the mask, and get to just be themselves.

[Magus]

Okay, this is going to be a long one.

This entire review is basically one big SPOILER so either you don't care (and you shouldn't), or you've already seen it. Suffice it to say, the movie sucks, so you shouldn't care if you are spoiled.

SPOILERS

Let me start by saying this movie could have been worse. There are some good ideas here (given mostly very poor execution, but we’ll get into that), and, I actually enjoyed a few of the scenes, something I couldn’t really say about Amazing Spider-Man 1 at all. I was also annoyed out of my mind at several, and indeed, most of the movie.

Since these movies were originally created as an answer to the criticisms of Raimi’s Spider-Man 3 (it’s poor critical reviews and the passage of time prompting a reboot, lest Sony lose the rights to Spider-Man), it came as quite a surprise that this film made the same exact error. It had too many villains, and one felt incredibly tacked on. I am of course talking about…SPOILERS…the Green Goblin. NOT Harry Osborne—Harry Osborne was given quite a bit of development, and even though I found his backstory questionable at best (retroviral hyperplasia that is also genetic? Do the writers know what a retrovirus is? I dunno, maybe it’s a genetic susceptibility to a retrovirus regular people don’t have), and kind of dumb at worst (Peter and him used to be best friends before Harry got shipped off to boarding school for ten years, something not even mentioned once in the first movie, despite numerous chances to, as the entire plot revolved around Oscorp in that film as well), I at least have to admit we spent lots of time with Harry Osborne in this movie. But the Green Goblin himself, Harry’s alter ego, appears at the last minute, does his nefarious deed we all know is coming, and then…the movie kind of ends. Well, there is an extended, overly dramatic epilogue, but we’ll get to that.

The Venomification (?) of Green Goblin is exactly the sort of mistake you would think would be avoided in these scripts, but perhaps they can’t help themselves. After all, they have a sequel to set up here, and a spin-off universe to begin spinning-off (the Green Goblin and Rhino will return in The Sinister Six, presumably). But seriously: to repeat the biggest sin of Spider-Man 3 (far more erroneous than beatnik Peter, who is the greatest artistic invention of mankind) speaks to a sort of intense blindness in the creation of these things. Just toss everything together in a very loose chronological order and film it seems to have been the strategy behind this movie.

All right, let’s get into the nitty gritty. The movie opens with Richard Parker, like 15 years prior to the movie starting, trying to escape the clutches of Oscorp agents with super-secret information (we find out it’s just that he created the genetically modified spiders that bit Spider-Man. Whee?), as he fears it is too dangerous for human testing. We see him recording his thoughts for future-Peter onto an old PC running, I believe, Windows 98, which was a very nice touch. But then, in a large fight sequence on a private jet (that he somehow chartered—is he worth millions or something? He seemed well enough off but this honestly seemed a bit out of his price range. But anyway) he and an Oscorp assassin wrestle over a brand-new Sony VAIO laptop, the kind of Man of Steel-esque product placement that takes you right out of the movie as if someone slapped you in the face. Can’t these people stick to inserting it a little more discreetly? Like make every single computer at Oscorp a Sony or something? This anachronism aside, this scene is…okay. It’s incredibly predictable in its beats (Richard’s about to die! Oh, Mary got out of the bathroom just in time! All is well—oh no, the assassin’s not actually completely dead!), but I have to admire the writers for doing something which I figured they would ignore, which is that every time the assassin gets a hold of the laptop and closes it, Richard has to get it back, reopen it, and re-start the upload of his super-secret information to his super-secret bunker. The writers of the movie took into account the automatic sleep mode that comes on when you close laptops! Amazing!

This is one of the few times we’ll be “amazed” by this film.

Suffice it to say, everyone dies in the plane crash. Hopefully.

Cut to present day. Now, this is my favorite scene in the entire movie and actually made me lose a lot of my fears about what was going to happen later (that my fears were fully realized within the next twenty minutes made it doubly distressing, but at least for a few minutes I was enjoying myself). This is what is termed by Tvtropes as “The Teaser”—I would call it a cold open, but it’s not really a cold open this time at all. But it serves the same purpose as the opening of an Indiana Jones or James Bond movie—a seemingly unrelated mini-adventure that introduces you to the character before their “real” adventure begins.

In this case, it’s Spider-Man chasing after a hijacked armored truck full of yellow Oscorp goo (if I paid more attention to the comics, I might know what this goo signifies. As far as the movie is concerned, it’s just a valuable MacGuffin that has been hijacked). The driver is Paul Giamatti cursing in broken English with an intense Russian accent. Parsing what he says to Spider-Man when Spider-Man lands on the hood of the truck is difficult, but it’s something like, “Stupid Spider! I kill you! You curse the day you were born!” or something to that effect.

This guy is freaking hysterical. I loved it. The entire scene feels like a throwback to more enjoyable times. Spider-Man drops a bunch of corny quips, which far outweigh everything “funny” he said in the entirety of ASM 1. The action is frenetic as Spidey has to keep all the vials of goo from breaking, causing him to jump and shoot webs all over the place, ride on various police vehicles (the scene starts with the revelation that apparently every police car in the city is following this armored truck). The scene culminates in him taking down Paul Giamatti in hilarious, humiliating fashion, all to the tune of Giamatti cursing him out. “SPIDER! THIS IS NOT OVERRRRR!”

During the scene Spidey saves Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), a doormat of a man who then develops an intense obsessive man-crush on Spider-Man. This is quite sad but pretty amusing. Unfortunately, for a character fulfilling a basic archetype, he doesn’t follow it very well. Unlike your typical doormat, when the boss forces him to stay after work on his birthday, he complains intensely and out loud to said boss. In fact he complains to pretty much anybody who will listen that HE designed the electrical grid and Oscorp basically screwed him over by never promoting him. Usually the doormat character mutters stuff like that and avoids actual confrontations. Now, the implication is he designed the electrical grid for most of New York City, which seemed quite bizarre to me. I’m assuming most of said grid existed before Max Dillon would have been an adult, though maybe he helped design the various modifications and upgrades to it that have been made since then. The other option is that he designed the electrical grid for the Oscorp building, which makes a lot more sense, since he is called upon by his boss to repair part of it. So after complaining loudly to his boss who doesn’t give a crap, he proceeds to stay after work and repair it. Maybe instead of being a doormat he just has some strange compulsion to obey authority? It’s difficult to tell. It seems clear that if he stood up to his boss and fixed it the next day he wouldn’t be fired, as the boss appears to barely give a crap about anything and certainly never makes any threats to Foxx to fire him, but perhaps he can’t see that.

Now, the following scene starts out hilarious, then gets kind of stupid. Really quickly. Foxx walks into a room filled with arcing electricity, and finds the broken electrical coupling. Now keep in mind he is literally surrounded by walls of blue-white lightning bolts flying everywhere. He calls a security guard or custodian or something to go turn off the breaker for the sector, but the guard says, “Forget it, I’m out of here”. Now obviously in real life Foxx’s character would leave and turn off the breaker himself and come back, or finally use this as an excuse to go home. But. This is a movie.

Foxx gets a step stool and reaches up to the two halves of the broken coupling, while singing “Happy Birthday” to himself. Now, I can’t remember if he says something to this effect, so I think it is actually just Jamie Foxx’s clear mastery of acting that gives it away: Max Dillon knows exactly what is going to happen when he puts the coupling back together. You can see it on his face, he gives a resigned sigh, something. It’s really funny. He just completely accepts that after a lifetime of debasement he’s going to be killed putting together this coupling. So he puts the coupling together…and nothing happens. For three seconds. THEN he is electrocuted.

This is ABSOLUTELY HYSTERICAL. I almost don’t regret the remaining 2 hours of the movie which ruin all the good will it builds up here at the beginning. Foxx somehow falls through the floor (maybe it explodes), down into a tank of genetically engineered electric eels which begin shocking and biting him. Everything explodes. It’s stupid but it’s so funny. Anyway, this leads to him turning into Electro, who is a bright-blue villain imbued with electrical powers. In fact, he seems to be made of electricity, and much like Dr. Manhattan can “teleport”. In this case he jumps into electrical outlets and zips around using the power grid. I don’t think the original Electro had this power, though I haven’t read Ultimate Spider-Man to see if this is an alteration. Obviously the bright-blue skin is from the Ultimate iteration of the character.

Ugh. Now we get all the bad parts of the movie, which is the other two hours. So there are two…no, three (sigh) other major plot threads in this movie besides the entire Electro vs. Spider-Man plotline. That’s four major plot threads if you’re keeping count, by the way. Did I mention this movie is a butt-numbing 142 minutes long? And, oh yes, it starts to drag.

The second plot thread is Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy. At the end of the last movie, Spidey gave a promise not to kill Gwen with his mere presence to her dying father. Cue haunting illusions of Dennis Leary looking sad wherever Peter looks. So Peter finds he can’t commit to a relationship with her, seemingly months after starting a relationship with her. So he dumps her. Gwen then says, “I am dumping you. I am dumping you!” A review by Walter Chaw at FilmFreakCentral (http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2014/04/the-amazing-spider-man-2.html) claimed this was Gwen “[reclaiming] her victimization as power.” What? It’s sad and pitiful, is what it is. It’s like George in Seinfeld, “’It’s not me, it’s you’? What? Hey, I invented ‘it’s not me, it’s you’!” when a woman breaks up with him. He’s annoyed that she broke up with him before he could break up with her. This is all we really get out of Gwen doing the same thing. She’s pissed at emo-Peter and his endless introspection and dead-father-sightings, but by the end of the film he’s COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED in trying to dump her, as she recklessly insists on helping Spidey defeat Electro. “You don’t get to make that choice! I’m staying! It’s my choice!” says Gwen, as transformers explode around her and lightning bolts almost fry her instantaneously. WHAT? Look, this trope can be pulled off in certain situations, but when you are clearly an underpowered mortal sack of meat who can be killed with a flick of Electro’s finger, maybe you should listen to the Patriarchy and beat feet. Come back with some superpowers and we can talk. And honestly, your excuse is you “know the electrical grid”? ALL YOU DO IS FLICK A SWITCH AT THE RIGHT TIME. THAT’S IT. Sheesh.

My annoyance at this plot thread is it’s like, half the movie. Half the movie is dedicated to an on-again, off-again romance between emo-Peter and Gwen Stacy, as she waffles over moving to England to go to Oxford university. If I were her the scene at the Chinese restaurant would have been the last time I ever bothered speaking to old Petey, but apparently his penchant for sad instrospection and his wimpy, stuttering demeanor is just perversely appealing to her.

Can we just go over how terrible Andrew Garfield’s rendition of Peter Parker is, again? His Spider-Man is much approved over the first movie, but man. His rendition of Peter Parker is still terrible, terrible, terrible. STUTTERING IS NOT ACTING. REPEATING YOURSELF IS NOT ACTING. It’s inane. When people pause in their speech real life, they say, “um” or are silent during the gaps. They don’t repeat the last few words again. It’s just sloppy and seems to be predicated on a PERCEPTION of acting instead of actual acting.

The screenplay doesn’t help. At one point we are treated to Peter listening to a sad song on his iPod while laying on his bed. If only they could have been more tongue-in-cheek and had him weeping while doing this, like ‘ole Tobey Maguire would have done. Anyway, this depression leads him to try and return to figuring out what happened to his parents, a scene which eventually pays off later when in ANOTHER hissy fit he’s tearing down a bunch of maps and timelines he created and decides to throw the scientific calculator from his dad’s bag against the wall, revealing that inside of it were dozens of subway tokens. This makes Peter realize his father’s secret base is in an old abandoned subway station! For some reason. How that connection is made and why his father had a bunch of subway tokens hidden inside a scientific calculator are mysteries we may never solve.

See, this is our third plot thread, which kind of intersects with the fourth. Peter trying to figure out what happened to his parents. Well, he figures it out, by opening up his father’s secret base which is a train car that rises up out of the floor of something called the “Roosevelt Spur”, which is an abandoned train station designed to get FDR on and off the subway system without people knowing he had polio. All of THAT is quite interesting but since this isn’t National Treasure 3 it’s largely ignored. Also how in the world did Richard Parker afford this hidden train car filled with (1990s) computers that rises out of the ground on some sort of hydraulic system? I get that he’s fairly well off and undoubtedly made lots of money, but the house they lived in wasn’t particularly huge or anything. Also, sure, I know he was accused of stealing the information so maybe the government took his estate, but you’d think the Parkers wouldn’t be so bad off that Aunt May has to work double shifts at a restaurant to pay for Peter’s college. Did Daddy Parker leave jack in his bank account or something? Did they never sell the house to get back the equity? None of it really holds up to scrutiny, so I guess I’d better ignore it and not talk about it…oops.

See, adding in these complicated parts of the Spider-Man mythos do only that—complicate things. In the comics, his parents were SHIELD agents, but since Sony can’t say “SHIELD”, they’re instead just scientists working for Oscorp. The thing is, all of this stuff came about after years of comic book plots when people were looking for something new. Backstories and mythologies need to be endlessly expanded upon to help drive stories set in the “present” of Spider-Man continuity. So it makes sense that the whole “parents were secretly SHIELD agents” subplot is eventually introduced in the comic books. After you’ve told a hundred Spider-Man stories, you still need to tell a hundred more.

I don’t think we’re that sick of Spider-Man that we need complicated backstories for why his parents died which then create complicated stories for the films themselves. I believe in Raimi’s trilogy the implication is they simply died in a car crash, with no further explanation required, because the story they were telling there was far, far simpler compared to the mythology they are forcing on us with these Amazing movies.

Anyway, this brings us to the fourth thread, which is Peter vs. Harry Osborne. Dane DeHaan gives a…performance, here. I don’t know. I’d have to really watch it again to truly judge it, but he seems to do a bad job. It’s almost like he’s sort of hammy, but then not hammy enough to fully deliver on the hamminess. See, again, the best part of this movie are the deliberately hammy parts, like the opening (and then closing) scenes. Dane DeHaan doesn’t really chew on the scenery, he just kind of gums it a little bit once in a while. Towards the end of the movie he starts to really take off, but for the first two hours (sigh) he just sort of seems a bit disturbed instead of outright twisted.

Anyway. As mentioned, Harry suffers, like his father, from something called “retroviral hyperplasia”, which is going to cause him a lifetime of pain before he succumbs at some early age (like in his 50s). The key to curing this was the mutant spider research Richard Parker worked on, but Parker of course destroyed all the spiders before trying to escape. Harry however realizes that Spider-Man must have been bitten by one of these spiders, and so asks Peter to get in contact with Spider-Man so he can have a vial of Spider-Man’s blood. Peter realizes this is a bad idea—the reason the spiders worked on him without any bad side-effects is his father used his own DNA to mutate them. So he is “compatible”. But who knows what will happen if a regular person gets some of the spider-juice? So Peter, disguised as Spider-Man, shows up and gives Harry the bad news. Harry doesn’t take it well, so he decides he has to get the spider-juice some other way.

Well, eventually (I don’t get why there’s like an hour in between these two things, but anyway) he finds out that some of the spider-venom is stored at Oscorp in “special research division”. However, because he did a computer search for it, his rival for control of Oscorp, who is this 60 year old pointlessly evil executive guy who was previously involved in covering up Max Dillon’s “demise”, shows up and…fires him. Yes, he actually fires the CEO. This scene makes NO SENSE and doesn’t stand up to even the tiniest bit of scrutiny. See, the evil, uh, Vice President, let’s call him, previously covered up Max Dillon’s accident that turned him into Electro, and then imprisoned Electro at “Ravencroft Institute”, which seems like the answer to Arkham Asylum in the DC-verse, in that it’s some kind of supermax prison for super criminals (or something like that). Evil Vice President says he is framing Harry for all this and firing him for “criminal conduct”. The problem is we are given NO context to this—we aren’t shown him calling the police, or tell the board this story and getting them to remove Harry, or anything. He just kicks Harry out of the building and takes over his office, all while telling Harry he’s going to “die a horrible death”, because, again, he is pointlessly evil. It’s handled with such storytelling incompetence I can’t believe it was left in. They cut out various scenes involving the introduction of Mary Jane—why in the world did they leave this in or not modify it heavily?

By the way, I'm about 99% sure that Evil Vice President, in a stream of invectives including ones like "unworthy" and I believe "prevaricating", calls Harry an "urchin". Man...maybe Evil Vice President should have been the main villain?

So anyway. Harry breaks Electro out of Ravencroft (using his never afore-mentioned hand-to-hand combat skills to take out a couple of guards) so Electro can break him into Oscorp, which he does, and then Electro goes off to have his final battle with Spider-Man. Harry takes an elevator down to the basement and injects himself with the spider-juice, which turns him into the Green Goblin.

Meanwhile, Spidey realizes Elecro escaped. His previous experiments showed he couldn’t carry a large enough battery around to hold all the electricity Electro is shooting at him—in fact, let’s just talk about THAT idiotic scene. Using a Youtube video, Peter finds out you can store electricity in these things called “batteries”. That the video itself points out there are also these things called “capacitors” goes completely over his head, and he focuses intensely on batteries as a solution to the whole Electro-shooting-lightning-bolts problem. Now, cursory logic has already revealed to you that you’d need a pretty big battery to hold the power from a lightning bolt. But Peter, ludicrously, starts his testing out with a tiny little C-battery. Seriously. Of course the battery explodes. Then he tries six C-batteries taped together. They also explode. Obviously. IT’S A LIGHTNING BOLT, YOU IDIOT.

Finally, he tries a car battery, which also explodes. Yes, your car battery in your car cannot carry the power capacity that is IN A LIGHTING BOLT. Man. This scene has some good slapstick humor in it, but it reveals that Peter, despite being a mechanical genius who can create his own webslingers, is a complete idiot when it comes to actual science and physics.

Anyway. Gwen Stacy reveals to him that magnetic fields allow electrical current to pass through metal without melting it (or something, I was barely paying attention at this point). She then uses a car battery to magnetize Spidey’s webslingers so they won’t explode when he shoots webbing onto Electro. The thing I don’t get is—why does shocking them with a car battery magnetize them? Is it because it’s alternating current or something? Why weren’t they magnetized when Electro shot electricity through them? It’s kind of like the screenplay writer realized he had a good idea for a solution to the problem, but failed to bother researching a legitimate way to have it come about, or why Electro didn’t magnetize the steel himself. Also, it seems clear these webslingers have some sort of electronics in them, so it seems like they should have been fried by this magnetization. I dunno. It doesn’t seem to hold up to a cursory examination but I guess, like Peter, I am simply ignorant of all things electrical.

As mentioned, Spidey and Electro have a big fight. Gwen flicks a switch while Spider-Man webs together a broken power coupling which then gets hit by Electro’s lightning bolt. Somehow the flow is reversed and the city’s power goes directly back into Electro along his lightning bolt. Too much power fills him and he explodes (hey, like those tiny batteries earlier!). The problem with this is two-fold: one, we saw him literally stick his hands onto a city power cable at the beginning of the movie and absorb a ton of power, so why is his capacity so low this time? And two, why can’t he cut this connection before he explodes? I guess because the script says so.

Things then get really stupid really fast. We’re getting into some INTENSE 30 year old SPOILERS, here, so fair warning. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS Gwen dies. Gwen dies, and it’s not by a lightning bolt or an exploding substation, which would be both logical and prevent a pointless sequence being tacked onto the movie. She is instead killed by the Green Goblin dropping her down a clock tower shaft.

See, the Green Goblin JUST SHOWS UP after Spidey kills Electro, realizes that since Gwen Stacy is there for no reason with Spidey that Spidey is Peter Parker, and then kills her out of revenge. There is literally I think one minute between the Green Goblin showing up (again, FOR NO REASON, except I guess he hates Spider-Man for not giving him the spider-blood, spider-blood, radioactive spider-blood) and throwing Gwen down a clocktower shaft. Spidey and Goblin then fight in the clock tower as Spidey desperately tries to keep Gwen from falling. He of course falls, and after trapping the Goblin under some fallen gears, shoots his webbing down the shaft after Gwen.

Now, the movie alters this slightly I think to make this less Spidey’s fault. See, in the comic book, his webbing actually kills her. It snaps her back because she’s falling too fast, and the sudden jolt of stopping kills her. This is lampshaded in Raimi’s Spider-Man—when the Green Goblin throws Mary Jane off the bridge or whatever, Spidey shoots multiple webs out to various contact points on her body, preventing her from snapping her spine. This actually happens in the comic as well, but only because he learns his lesson after killing Gwen Stacy.

In the movie, it appears that he was simply one second too late webbing her, and Gwen slams into the ground before bungeeing back up about three feet to come to a standstill hanging off the webbing. So the implication isn’t that he snapped her spine, it’s that he was simply a millisecond too late and she hit the ground with the full impact of falling down a clocktower shaft. Maybe this was to stop the myriad “SPIDER-MAN FAILS AT PHYSICS” jokes that would otherwise be made (he does totally fail at physics in this movie, by the way).

We then get an absolutely HYSTERICAL scene at the graveyard. It starts out with Peter looking sadly at the remaining members of the Stacy family, wondering which one he should kill next by associating with them. Should he make the older brother his sidekick so the brother can be murdered by murderous thugs? Should he become a mentor to the younger brother, so Peter can watch helplessly as the boy is consumed in a freak forest fire on a camping trip? Should he try dating the mother, so she too can be thrown down a clocktower shaft by the Green Goblin? Then a montage appears to show Peter literally standing in the graveyard for a full year, as first rain, then leaves, then snow falls around him. We come back around to spring and Aunt May gives him this big speech stolen directly from Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 about how it sure is a shame that Spider-Man fellow isn’t around anymore to protect people from supervillains and then Peter listens to Gwen’s graduation speech again and gets amped up to save New York again (despite the fact that her speech quite clearly contained the line “don’t live your life to save others” which seemed like kind of an asshole move on her part when I first heard it at the beginning of the movie but now seems like a rather prescient piece of advice that Peter should have taken to heart).

This leads into a scene which would have been my second-most favorite one in the film, as it involves the return of Paul Giamatti, now decked out in a mech with a giant rhinoceros horn on its “head”, courtesy of Harry Osborne (still scheming from his jail cell to form a supervillain team and create franchise synergy). Yes, he’s the Rhino. Instead of wearing a gray bodysuit he’s in a giant robot with machine guns and missiles. I’m sure this is from the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book or something but it’s really quite a bizarre change for the character if you ask me. I don’t care, though, as Giamatti is AMAZING and hilarious and if this is a way to get a tiny guy like Giamatti into these movies as a super-stereotypical Russian gangster who speaks broken English, then fine by me, as again, it’s like the only thing I really genuinely enjoyed about this movie. Anyway, this 8 year old kid from earlier in the movie (Spider-Man saves him from bullies, and then goes on and on about the kid’s science fair project, which is a wind turbine, which apparently to Spider-Man is the most amazing thing of all time. “Oh my God,” he says. “Is that…is that a WIND TURBINE?!” I didn’t know Spidey was such a big fan of green energy.

So this kid is dressed up like Spider-Man because he misses Spider-Man during Spider-Man’s six month absence. So as the Rhino is taunting the police as they powerlessly cower behind some squad cars, this kid’s mother isn’t paying attention and he RUNS out in front of the Rhino’s mech and puts on his Spider-Man mask to defy him. This is the schmaltziest schmaltz which ever schmaltzed. Everyone impotently yells at the kid to go back to his mother, which is really bizarre. In real life every one of those cops would have scrambled out to grab him, regardless of the danger from Rhino’s machine guns. His own mother would have run out there. Instead they just cower behind their cars.

Anyway, I was hoping against hope that the Rhino would blow this kid away, but of course Spider-Man shows up and tells the kid he can take it from here. The scene gets way better as soon as this stupid kid is gone, much like all scenes in all movies that involve stupid little kids. The movie ends on a pretty good note as Giamatti once again launches into invectives and threatens to kill “Spider” like he’s Boris from Bullwinkle. If only the 139 minutes between the two Rhino scenes could have been cut out, this would have been the most enjoyable ten minutes I’d spent at the movie theater this year.

In conclusion, this movie blows. However, rent it at a later date for the Rhino scenes, or maybe watch them on Youtube or something. They’re great. Everything else ranges from passable (Jamie Foxx) to terrible (everything else).

[MSperoni]

That's quite a review!

Though I'm disappointed to hear it was so bad, I'm glad to hear that Paul Giamatti as Rhino seemed to work well. When I first heard about it I imagined him in the Rhino suit similar to the comics, not a gundam. I could not picture him in a big ol' beefy muscle suit...

I like that actor a lot, if anyone can play a role well he can.

[Aerozord]

This reminds me of something I really liked about the 90's Spider-Man cartoon. Originally the Hobgoblin was, some guy. Just some guy that got his hands on supervillain tech and thought to use it to rob people. Specifically they did this to show that Spider-Man was not the center of the universe. Not every villain needs to be caused by the hero's existence or have a vendetta against him. When some people get super powers they just want to commit crimes in order to get rich and fight the hero simply because he is trying to stop him. It lets things feel more real and organic because it helps you feel that there are things outside the confines of the narrative.

As well as, hey you dont need to explain everything. Some stuff you either never find out or if you did it wouldn't matter. Like in the above example you find out who he is, big deal, he has no connection to anybody. Or that scene in Justice League where Luthor finds out who The Flash is, well to him its just any of a billion people.

[MSperoni]

I actually own the comic where Hobgoblin first appears :D

Hobgoblin was created initially so Spidey could fight another Green Goblin type villain without having to bring Harry/Norman* back from the dead (though I guess they eventually did that anyway) and have Norman/Harry* become Green Goblin again (though they also eventually did that anyway). I guess that "Jack o' Lantern" guy didn't work...or was that the same character? I can't remember...

But eventually he got imbued with demonic powers via that weird red looking horse demon guy that's the first boss in Spider-Man's stage in Arcade's Revenge, and he got all 90s Comix and I think eventually became a demon of sorts, like with super strength and hellfire powers.

I guess the reason the demonic version was necessary was because by then the Green Goblin had returned and they needed to give Hobby another angle.

Later he got CYBORG IMPLANTS.

Dunno what they're up to with him now though. Haven't read a Spiddermunz comix in ages.

*I can't remember which one is which! Harry is the...son? (ULGH I suck as a nerd**)

** yet I can remember that the first boss in Spider-Man's stage Arcade's Revenge was that demon thing.

[walkertexasdruid]

Yeesh! I hope that my naive optimism can shield me from some of that when I watch it tomorrow. :O

[Solid Snake]

I didn’t know Spidey was such a big fan of green energy.

So, precisely two good things have come out of this movie: Spider-Man supporting green energy, and Magus becoming sufficiently infuriated to ensure that Snake doesn't write the longest posts in this topic for a change.

[Bum Bill Bee]

It gave Spider-man a fucking Motorcycle.

So? Whats the problem there. I still remember the 1970's Spider-mobile. Wooooo comic books!

Also: WHOA when did Snake come back to these parts!?

[Magus]

So, precisely two good things have come out of this movie: Spider-Man supporting green energy, and Magus becoming sufficiently infuriated to ensure that Snake doesn't write the longest posts in this topic for a change.

You take a vacation, you deserve it!

Just don't watch The Amazing Spider-Man on this vacation.

[Aerozord]

You know things like the motorcycle was the producers saying "you are contractually obligated to write this into the story so we can make toys of it". They handle it as well as possible with spider-man's knee jerk reaction being "why would I need a motorcycle". Also find ultimately going with it not too immersion breaking because, ok seriously when you were in high school with no car would you have turned down a motorcycle?

[Bum Bill Bee]

You sure? 'cuz for all I know, it could just be a reference to Peter Parker owning a motorcycle back in the late 60's comics.

[walkertexasdruid]

I watched it on Monday. Not the best movie I have seen, but not as horrible as Magus would have you guys believe. Great Spidey action and cool villains, shaky Peter Parker. I am looking forward to see what they do with a certain famous group of villains in the next movie.

[Death by Stabbing]

I had a good time at the movie. I was actually impressed by the guy playing Harry since I had not heard of him before. He behaved exactly how some one in his situation would.

It wasn't as good as the original trilogy's Spider-Man 2 but it was still a solid movie. It felt like there was too much of somethings and too little of others. It didn't feel complete on some level. I'm not sure I can put my finger on what exactly.

[Aerozord]

Looking over reviews I have a question for those that saw it. If they completely removed all the other sub-plots and focused this movie on Electro, do you think it would have been much improved?

[Magus]

Looking over reviews I have a question for those that saw it. If they completely removed all the other sub-plots and focused this movie on Electro, do you think it would have been much improved?

Yeah. It would have been an hour shorter, for one thing. This movie did a horrible job of balancing its subplots and it switched between them willy nilly with no clear transition. So simply excising them would have made it a better movie.

Note: This hinges on leaving in the Rhino, as well, because, again. Pure genius.