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The Amazing Spiderman
Sep. 14th, 2014 06:59 pmI finally saw The Amazing Spiderman. I have mixed feelings! I liked most of the movie's parts, but unfortunately the part I liked least was Spiderman, which is a problem in a movie called The Amazing Spiderman.
Gwen Stacy is probably my favorite. That scene where she's hiding in the closet in the lab, you can hear her breathing in terror because her mentor-turned-psychotic-dinosaur-thing is coming - but no matter the danger, she's going to stay until she has the antidote that could save thousands of lives? Perfection.
In fact, Gwen Stacy's heroism kind of makes Peter Parker's look flat. She's honestly terrified, because the monster might really rip her to pieces, but she does the right thing anyway. He, on the other hand, is never anything like that scared. In fact, he's kind of a jackass. Often charming and clearly redeemable, and I bet a lot of high school students would use newfound superpowers to show off at first, but at the same time, I want a bit more from my superheroes.
I felt like the movie didn't really earn many of his touching scenes, particularly the one where all the crane operators all band together to give him a clear shot at the tower. Of course this vision of cooperation is beautiful, but still, he really hasn't done very much to earn the trust of the city.
I really did like the villain, though. I think Marvel's villains are best when they are tragic as well as evil, so they do awful things but you can see how they went wrong (in this case, by injecting himself with an extremely experimental lizard DNA treatment that completely messed up his brain) and root for them to redeem themselves.
And of course this works even better when the heroic characters also want the baddies to redeem themselves, which The Amazing Spiderman didn't do as much as it should have. Peter Parker has no real connection with Dr. Curtis Connors: sure, Connors and Peter's dad were BFFs, but Peter's never met him before. Gwen Stacy, who works in his lab, knows him better and clearly sees him as a mentor, but the movie doesn't do much with that.
Hence the movie's biggest flaw: it does not have nearly enough shots of Andrew Garfield looking desperately sad puppy face. I know The Social Network set a high bar for this, but c'mon, Spiderman is getting tossed around by a dinosaur creature who used to be his father's BFF! How can you fail to milk this for angst?? But they really, really did.
Gwen Stacy is probably my favorite. That scene where she's hiding in the closet in the lab, you can hear her breathing in terror because her mentor-turned-psychotic-dinosaur-thing is coming - but no matter the danger, she's going to stay until she has the antidote that could save thousands of lives? Perfection.
In fact, Gwen Stacy's heroism kind of makes Peter Parker's look flat. She's honestly terrified, because the monster might really rip her to pieces, but she does the right thing anyway. He, on the other hand, is never anything like that scared. In fact, he's kind of a jackass. Often charming and clearly redeemable, and I bet a lot of high school students would use newfound superpowers to show off at first, but at the same time, I want a bit more from my superheroes.
I felt like the movie didn't really earn many of his touching scenes, particularly the one where all the crane operators all band together to give him a clear shot at the tower. Of course this vision of cooperation is beautiful, but still, he really hasn't done very much to earn the trust of the city.
I really did like the villain, though. I think Marvel's villains are best when they are tragic as well as evil, so they do awful things but you can see how they went wrong (in this case, by injecting himself with an extremely experimental lizard DNA treatment that completely messed up his brain) and root for them to redeem themselves.
And of course this works even better when the heroic characters also want the baddies to redeem themselves, which The Amazing Spiderman didn't do as much as it should have. Peter Parker has no real connection with Dr. Curtis Connors: sure, Connors and Peter's dad were BFFs, but Peter's never met him before. Gwen Stacy, who works in his lab, knows him better and clearly sees him as a mentor, but the movie doesn't do much with that.
Hence the movie's biggest flaw: it does not have nearly enough shots of Andrew Garfield looking desperately sad puppy face. I know The Social Network set a high bar for this, but c'mon, Spiderman is getting tossed around by a dinosaur creature who used to be his father's BFF! How can you fail to milk this for angst?? But they really, really did.
