With The Amazing Spider-Man 2 on the horizon, I felt the need to re-post my review from the original Method to Madness blog on the original Amazing Spider-Man film. Fear not, my fellow Web-heads, I plan on having a review on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 up later this week. For now, let's revisit 2012's Spider-Man re-imagining by director Marc Webb.
Cast:
Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker / Spider-Man
Max Charles portrayed Peter Parker as a 4-year-old.
Denis Leary as Captain George Stacy
Martin Sheen as Ben Parker
Sally Field as May Parker
Irrfan Khan as Dr. Rajit Ratha
Chris Zylka as Flash Thompson
Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz portray Peter's parents, Richard and Mary Parker
Martin Sheen as Ben Parker
Sally Field as May Parker
Irrfan Khan as Dr. Rajit Ratha
Chris Zylka as Flash Thompson
Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz portray Peter's parents, Richard and Mary Parker
Leif Gantvoort plays the burglar who robs the convenience store. Hannah Marks portrays Missy Kallenback, an unpopular girl who has a crush on Peter. Kelsey Chow's brief role is simply credited as "Hot Girl" during the end credits of the film, but the actress revealed to media outlets around the time of the film's release that her character is in fact Sally Avril. Similarly, C. Thomas Howell's character is credited as "Jack's Father" at the end of the film (Jack being a boy that Spider-Man rescues on the Williamsburg Bridge) but he is referred to as Troy by one of his fellow construction workers in the film itself. Unlike the previous films, J. Jonah Jameson does not appear. Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee has a cameo appearance, as he did in the previous films.
At the 2011 Dallas Comic Con, Lee detailed that he plays a librarian listening to music on his headphones while stamping books, oblivious to the ongoing battle. Michael Massee plays the mysterious man in the shadows who talks with Connors in his prison cell in a teaser scene during the end credits. As to the man's identity, director Marc Webb said, "It's intentionally mysterious. And I invite speculation..." Michael Papajohn, who played Uncle Ben's killer in the 2002 film, has a cameo as Alfred, Dr. Ratha's limo driver.
Years later, a teenaged Peter (Garfield) attends Midtown Science High School, where he is bullied by Flash Thompson (Zylka) and has caught the eye of the beautiful Gwen Stacy (Stone). At home, Peter finds his father's papers and learns he worked with fellow scientist Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans) at Oscorp. Sneaking into Oscorp, Peter enters a lab where a "biocable" is under development from genetically modified spiders, one of which bites him. On the subway ride home, he discovers that he has developed spider-like abilities.
After studying Richard's papers, Peter visits the one-armed Connors, reveals he is Richard Parker's son and gives Connors his father's "decay rate algorithm", the missing piece in Connors' experiments on regenerating limbs. Connors is being pressed by his superior, Dr. Ratha (Khan), to devise a cure for the dying (but unseen) head of Oscorp, Norman Osborn. In school, Peter gets into trouble after a basketball challenge with Flash in which Peter accidentally shatters the backboard glass. His uncle changes work shifts to meet with the principal and asks Peter to replace him walking home with Aunt May that night. Peter gets distracted and helps Connors regenerate the limb of a laboratory mouse. Peter's failure causes an argument with his uncle and he leaves. At a nearby deli, a cashier refuses to let Peter buy a chocolate milk since Peter is two cents short; when a thief suddenly raids the store, Peter indifferently observes. While searching for Peter, Uncle Ben attempts to stop the thief and is killed. The thief escapes as Peter finds Ben on the sidewalk.
Afterward, Peter uses his new abilities to hunt criminals matching the killer's description. After a fall lands him inside an abandoned gym, a luchador-wrestling poster inspires him to create a mask to hide his identity. He adds a spandex suit and builds mechanical devices to attach to his wrists to shoot a biocable "web". Peter accepts a dinner invitation from Gwen, where he meets and has a tense conversation with her father, police captain George Stacy (Leary), over Spider-Man's motives. After dinner, Peter reveals his identity to Gwen and they kiss.
After seeing success with the mouse using lizard DNA, Ratha demands Connors begin human trials immediately if Osborn is to survive. Connors refuses to rush the drug-testing procedure and put innocent people at risk. Ratha fires Connors and decides to test Connors' serum at a VA hospital under the guise of a flu shot. In an act of desperation, Connors tries the formula on himself. After passing out, he awakens to find his missing arm has regenerated. Discovering that Ratha is on his way to the VA hospital, Connors, whose skin is turning green and scaly, goes to intercept him. By the time he gets to the Williamsburg Bridge Connors has become a violent hybrid of lizard and man, tossing cars, including Ratha's, over the side of the bridge. Peter, now calling himself Spider-Man, snatches each falling car with his web-lines.
Spider-Man suspects Connors is Lizard and unsuccessfully confronts the creature in the sewers. Lizard learns Spider-Man's real identity via the name on an abandoned camera and follows Peter to school where they fight. In response, the police start a manhunt for both Spider-Man and Lizard. The police corner Spider-Man and Captain Stacy discovers that he is really Peter. Lizard plans to make all humans lizard-like by releasing a chemical cloud from Oscorp's tower, to eliminate the weaknesses he believes plague humanity. Spider-Man eventually disperses an antidote cloud instead, restoring Connors and earlier victims to normal, but not before Lizard mortally wounds Captain Stacy. Before his death, Captain Stacy makes Peter vow to keep Gwen safe by leaving her out of it. Peter initially does so, but later at school suggests to Gwen he may see her again.
In a closing-credits scene, Connors, in a prison cell, speaks with a man in the shadows who asks if Peter knows the truth about his father. Connors replies, "No", and demands Peter be left alone before the man disappears.
Unlike Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man films, this reboot is directed by Marc Webb and combines elements from the classic Spider-Man lore as well as the more recent Ultimate Spider-Man line of comic books.
By now, we already know the origin story…
The protagonist of Spider-Man is Peter Parker, a science prodigy teenager who lives in Queens, New York. He is bitten by a genetically altered spider and inherits its powers, including enhanced strength, agility and reflexes. When an armed thief, whom Peter had a chance to stop earlier but didn’t, kills his uncle Ben, he feels guilty and dedicates his life to fighting crime as the costumed vigilante Spider-Man. Peter tries to balance school, a job, a girlfriend, his family life with his widowed aunt May, and his activities as Spider-Man.
Andrew Garfield replaces Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in this reboot, and wastes no time giving him a fresh feel to the film. His build suits Ultimate Spider-Man’s more accurately than Tobey did the classic Spidey model. Tobey came off TOO nerdy at times to the point that it didn’t feel like Spider-Man at all in the original films but someone in a bad cosplay. Andrew Garfield brings that perfect balance of charm and youth to the character that we’ve known and love for so many years in comics. The iconic witty banter from Spidey was a welcome addition to this reboot as well.
Much like the comic books, Spider-Man has his traditional web-shooters and artificial webbing instead of natural webbing as a result of the radioactive spider bite. As a result, the amount of webbing he can shoot and use is limited to the amount of web fluid he has with him. They didn’t address this as an issue until the film’s climax vs. The Lizard whereas he crushed both of the shooters on Spidey’s wrists.
Gwen Stacy is Peter Parker’s love interest in this film instead of Mary Jane Watson. In Amazing, she’s more to her classic comic book version rather her street wise version in the Ultimate line of comics. If you’re familiar with the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon from a few years ago, her and Peter’s relationship is VERY much like that. I personally loved Emma Stone’s take on the character, as I honestly wanted her to be cast as MJ in the original trilogy.
Instead of being hounded by the Daily Bugle, Spidey has to earn the police’s trust as well as the people of the city. Other than the Lizard, Spidey spends most of the film convincing Captain George Stacy (Gwen’s dad) that he is a hero, striving for a better and safer city.
Norman Osborn (the man who becomes the Green Goblin) is mentioned heavily in the film, but he doesn’t make an appearance at all. Same goes for his son, Harry. This could be argued and debated after viewing the film’s mid-credit teaser though.
Peter doesn’t catch the thief who kills Uncle Ben — instead it serves as a driving force for Peter to continue doing good in the city other than just mindlessly hunting for revenge. Initially this decision bothered me at first, but it works for the narrative. Shows that Peter has character growth in his responsibilities with his powers and isn’t just driven by revenge and rage.
There is no pro wrestling fight sequence. As much as I loved the BoneSaw (“Macho Man” Randy Savage) bout in the original film, I can live without it here. The only thing that comes close to wrestling is that during a random escape from thugs, Peter falls through an unstable roof and into a closed-down luchador-style wrestling arena. This is where he is inspired to wear a mask to hide his identity. Yeah, I’ll admit that was downright cheesy on that placement in the plot.
Dr. Curt Connors (AKA The Lizard) is a former friend of Richard Parker (Peter’s father), instead of random miscellaneous instructor at Empire State University like in Spider-Man 2 and 3. He’s my biggest issue with the film - Connors’ actor does a fine job, but all of the fight scenes with The Lizard look fake as hell. I can understand they made him CG just to keep things simple but they could’ve at least called Marvel Studios and get a few pointers on making it look less obvious.
Peter’s parents, Richard and Mary Parker, are the heavy focus of the origin story. Apparently, Richard Parker has rather shadowy past and it ties into Peter becoming Spider-Man and Connors becoming the Lizard, since he hid his classified notes that Peter found and gave to Connors to use to complete their cross-species hybrid formulas. I can live with this being the driving point of the films as long as they don’t go as far-fetched as some of the lore went with his parents being accused of being Nazis and ending up being SHIELD agents. No, none of that just keep it simple…
Speaking of Gwen and Peter’s relationship… While Stone and Garfield played the parts more to my satisfaction, it just seemed VERY rushed on the romantic aspect. The scene that comes to mind is Gwen just randomly hunting Peter down at school and writing down her address in his notebook and inviting him to dinner out of the blue. It just came off as VERY odd in my book. Girls aren’t that forward anymore — I know I’m getting old, but last time I checked it’s not that easy to get her to get you to come over and meet the folks, especially when they haven’t even had a real first date yet.
No lack of closure on what happens to Dr. Rajit Ratha… After that initial attack by the Lizard, he’s not seen again for the duration of the film. Did Lizard eat him? Did he haul ass out of town? What? He’s supposed to be one of Osborn’s right-hand goons yet he doesn’t have any further involvement in the plot. His absence seemed VERY odd. Same goes to all of the talk about Osborn and the use of his company, yet we don’t get to actually SEE him.
Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone’s onscreen chemistry is unmatched here, but still doesn’t top the combined star power of Marvel Studios’ Avengers. Regardless, the duo manages to squeeze a few laughs and smiles out of its audience. But don’t count out Denis Leary (Capt. Stacy) and Rhys Ifans (Connors/Lizard) either. Excellent performances all round from the cast here.
More hand-to-hand fight sequences than just pure CG-spotfests. It looked good in the original films where there was one real punch thrown for every 20 blows in CG, as if you’re going to do that in a film you might as well make a damn video game instead.
The costume — Initially, I was on the same boat as everyone else. I HATED the early designs and photos of it prior to seeing the film, but by the end of the film it won me over. It’s symbolic to the reboot — it’s a NEW Spider-Man with a new look. Same thing with classic Spidey to swap to the Unlimited costume people hated in that animation. Just takes time to get used to.
Out of the summer superhero blockbusters for this year, I give this one a 7.25 out of 10 stars. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but it has potential to become even better in its sequels down the road. It’s a great kick-start for the franchise and if Sony plays their cards right they could crank out another trilogy out of this bad boy as well.
At the 2011 Dallas Comic Con, Lee detailed that he plays a librarian listening to music on his headphones while stamping books, oblivious to the ongoing battle. Michael Massee plays the mysterious man in the shadows who talks with Connors in his prison cell in a teaser scene during the end credits. As to the man's identity, director Marc Webb said, "It's intentionally mysterious. And I invite speculation..." Michael Papajohn, who played Uncle Ben's killer in the 2002 film, has a cameo as Alfred, Dr. Ratha's limo driver.
The Plot (FULL Spoilers)
A young Peter Parker discovers his father Richard Parker's study has been burgled. Gathering up hidden documents, Peter's parents take him to the home of his Aunt May (Field) and Uncle Ben (Sheen), then mysteriously depart.After studying Richard's papers, Peter visits the one-armed Connors, reveals he is Richard Parker's son and gives Connors his father's "decay rate algorithm", the missing piece in Connors' experiments on regenerating limbs. Connors is being pressed by his superior, Dr. Ratha (Khan), to devise a cure for the dying (but unseen) head of Oscorp, Norman Osborn. In school, Peter gets into trouble after a basketball challenge with Flash in which Peter accidentally shatters the backboard glass. His uncle changes work shifts to meet with the principal and asks Peter to replace him walking home with Aunt May that night. Peter gets distracted and helps Connors regenerate the limb of a laboratory mouse. Peter's failure causes an argument with his uncle and he leaves. At a nearby deli, a cashier refuses to let Peter buy a chocolate milk since Peter is two cents short; when a thief suddenly raids the store, Peter indifferently observes. While searching for Peter, Uncle Ben attempts to stop the thief and is killed. The thief escapes as Peter finds Ben on the sidewalk.
Afterward, Peter uses his new abilities to hunt criminals matching the killer's description. After a fall lands him inside an abandoned gym, a luchador-wrestling poster inspires him to create a mask to hide his identity. He adds a spandex suit and builds mechanical devices to attach to his wrists to shoot a biocable "web". Peter accepts a dinner invitation from Gwen, where he meets and has a tense conversation with her father, police captain George Stacy (Leary), over Spider-Man's motives. After dinner, Peter reveals his identity to Gwen and they kiss.After seeing success with the mouse using lizard DNA, Ratha demands Connors begin human trials immediately if Osborn is to survive. Connors refuses to rush the drug-testing procedure and put innocent people at risk. Ratha fires Connors and decides to test Connors' serum at a VA hospital under the guise of a flu shot. In an act of desperation, Connors tries the formula on himself. After passing out, he awakens to find his missing arm has regenerated. Discovering that Ratha is on his way to the VA hospital, Connors, whose skin is turning green and scaly, goes to intercept him. By the time he gets to the Williamsburg Bridge Connors has become a violent hybrid of lizard and man, tossing cars, including Ratha's, over the side of the bridge. Peter, now calling himself Spider-Man, snatches each falling car with his web-lines.
In a closing-credits scene, Connors, in a prison cell, speaks with a man in the shadows who asks if Peter knows the truth about his father. Connors replies, "No", and demands Peter be left alone before the man disappears.
The Verdict:
By now, we already know the origin story…
The protagonist of Spider-Man is Peter Parker, a science prodigy teenager who lives in Queens, New York. He is bitten by a genetically altered spider and inherits its powers, including enhanced strength, agility and reflexes. When an armed thief, whom Peter had a chance to stop earlier but didn’t, kills his uncle Ben, he feels guilty and dedicates his life to fighting crime as the costumed vigilante Spider-Man. Peter tries to balance school, a job, a girlfriend, his family life with his widowed aunt May, and his activities as Spider-Man.
There’s a few notable differences in the story compared to Raimi’s:
Much like the comic books, Spider-Man has his traditional web-shooters and artificial webbing instead of natural webbing as a result of the radioactive spider bite. As a result, the amount of webbing he can shoot and use is limited to the amount of web fluid he has with him. They didn’t address this as an issue until the film’s climax vs. The Lizard whereas he crushed both of the shooters on Spidey’s wrists.
Gwen Stacy is Peter Parker’s love interest in this film instead of Mary Jane Watson. In Amazing, she’s more to her classic comic book version rather her street wise version in the Ultimate line of comics. If you’re familiar with the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon from a few years ago, her and Peter’s relationship is VERY much like that. I personally loved Emma Stone’s take on the character, as I honestly wanted her to be cast as MJ in the original trilogy.
Norman Osborn (the man who becomes the Green Goblin) is mentioned heavily in the film, but he doesn’t make an appearance at all. Same goes for his son, Harry. This could be argued and debated after viewing the film’s mid-credit teaser though.
Peter doesn’t catch the thief who kills Uncle Ben — instead it serves as a driving force for Peter to continue doing good in the city other than just mindlessly hunting for revenge. Initially this decision bothered me at first, but it works for the narrative. Shows that Peter has character growth in his responsibilities with his powers and isn’t just driven by revenge and rage.
There is no pro wrestling fight sequence. As much as I loved the BoneSaw (“Macho Man” Randy Savage) bout in the original film, I can live without it here. The only thing that comes close to wrestling is that during a random escape from thugs, Peter falls through an unstable roof and into a closed-down luchador-style wrestling arena. This is where he is inspired to wear a mask to hide his identity. Yeah, I’ll admit that was downright cheesy on that placement in the plot.
Peter’s parents, Richard and Mary Parker, are the heavy focus of the origin story. Apparently, Richard Parker has rather shadowy past and it ties into Peter becoming Spider-Man and Connors becoming the Lizard, since he hid his classified notes that Peter found and gave to Connors to use to complete their cross-species hybrid formulas. I can live with this being the driving point of the films as long as they don’t go as far-fetched as some of the lore went with his parents being accused of being Nazis and ending up being SHIELD agents. No, none of that just keep it simple…
Some of my gripes…
Aunt May has very few moments to keep you interested in her character. And the lack of time put into establishing her and Peter’s relationship after losing Uncle Ben was ignored entirely just to spend the duration of the film on Peter and Gwen’s relationship.No lack of closure on what happens to Dr. Rajit Ratha… After that initial attack by the Lizard, he’s not seen again for the duration of the film. Did Lizard eat him? Did he haul ass out of town? What? He’s supposed to be one of Osborn’s right-hand goons yet he doesn’t have any further involvement in the plot. His absence seemed VERY odd. Same goes to all of the talk about Osborn and the use of his company, yet we don’t get to actually SEE him.
What the film does right…
The first-person oriented webswinging sequences were few and well placed. From the early reviews, I went into the film dreading that they would be heavily forced in the films like how the Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions video game tacked them on the end of EVERY boss encounter. It was cool the first two times, but after that, enough.Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone’s onscreen chemistry is unmatched here, but still doesn’t top the combined star power of Marvel Studios’ Avengers. Regardless, the duo manages to squeeze a few laughs and smiles out of its audience. But don’t count out Denis Leary (Capt. Stacy) and Rhys Ifans (Connors/Lizard) either. Excellent performances all round from the cast here.
More hand-to-hand fight sequences than just pure CG-spotfests. It looked good in the original films where there was one real punch thrown for every 20 blows in CG, as if you’re going to do that in a film you might as well make a damn video game instead.
The final verdict
Post a Comment