THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Pre-Release Thread - Page 5

If I have nightmares tonight, its your fault.

 

 

I'll respectfully refrain, I'm trying to stay neutral on that specific subject until I have the opportunity to see the film myself. I have been PMd by a couple of you who have heard similar rumors though, so they're welcome to share if they so choose.

 

I can say, as I have in the past, that nothing in the trailer or promotion of this film has convinced me of its necessity yet.

 

And if Parker comes across a recording of his parents telling him they love him and explaining the entire film I'm walking out of the fucking theater. (I won't, really. But I'll want to.) 

Considering that they've thrown a critcally loved, multi-billion dollar generating franchise under the bus for the sake of this reboot, this had better be really fucking good. Mediocre or even just "good' isn't going to cut it. A BATMAN BEGINS style reboot that is critically well received but doesn't make as much cash but puts the franchise back on track will work, but anything that falls short of that will essentially be a disaster.

That is fair enough and admirably professional.

 

 

 

That's it completely. This has to be a homerun simply to justify it's existence. Did Sony think that Spider-Man 3 was their Batman and Robin?

Everyone will be walking into this with utter bemusement, fanboy and Joe Public alike. Spider-Man 4 would have been just fine thank you.

 

Also I had Spider-Man 4 all mapped out and fanwanked to death in my head. It was glorious, and if this doesn't match up, I'll be sore. I really I am a pain in the ass.

Is Sony releasing this though because they thought it was the best decision?  I thought it was their only decision?  The original players were somewhat non-committal and the rights were at threat of being pulled away I thought? 

 

Outside a few small circles, Spidey 3 isn't really regarded with the same disgust as Batman and Robin.  People say it sucked, but they often don't call it one of the worst movies ever, right?  My point is, I don't know if Sony felt like their back was in the corner because of creativity, but rather a need to get something out to keep it in their court.

 

I love Spiderman.  I will support any iteration of it out of pure dedication to my favorite comic character.  I expect this movie to be simply acceptable and that's it.  The history behind it's green-light, the origin aspect of it and a somewhat promising but unproven director will keep my expectations at hopeful (perhaps even optimistic) yet cautiously intrigued.  In the end, the thing I find the most insulting is the Lizard design, but I felt the same way about Green Goblin.  Of course, things frustrate me, but the villain design is the only truly offensive thing as of right now.

I think at the end of the day, in their consumer electronics, their decisions with things like the PSVista and now this...

 

...Sony's decision-making seems to have become a little off of late.

I'm willing to believe this wouldn't have happened if they didn't schedule a release date for Spider-Man IV.

 

When Raimi and company were banging out a script and story, Sony already decided on a release date for the film, in summer 2011. Unfortunately, none of them could come up with a workable story. By early 2010, Sony realized they would have to be paying Raimi, Maguire and Dunst's massive salaries, as well as MORE pre-production cash on a film that hadn't yet started yet, while ALSO moving the release date they couldn't meet. Fact is, these release dates matter that much, as far as getting shareholders excited about coming profits.
 

Once they got to the point where they had like three or four re-written scripts for the film and were looking at at least a $300 million expenditure again (with the fucking VULTURE, who Sony hated), they opted to go with their much-cheaper contingency plan. Which they wouldn't have had to do if they just held back on giving such an arbitrary deadline to Raimi and friends.

God, that new clip is terrible. What is Garfield doing? He's playing Peter Parker like he's mentally handicapped.

Ya, clearly. This whole movie looks cheap and bad to be frank. I don't give 1 iota that Raimi isn't involved, although there is nothing slightly kind of sort of at all remotely interesting about a 2nd Spiderman origin story so soon.

 

 

 

 

It's excruciating.  The dialogue is choppy, Peter has a facial tick, Emma Stone looks 35 (she looks great, just not at all convincing as a highschooler).

 

Is every non-spidey moment going to be this bad (the doorman scene)?  And even some of the spidey moments (superdickery)?
 

 

No one is ANY spiderman movie has even looked like they were in highschool. Luckily the first movie only spends like a half hour in the highschool setting and the rest they were in and then out of college.
 

 

The thing that is really sad is that there's some good ideas here. Garfield. Stone. The Lizard as the villain. They could have gotten a new director, re-cast and stayed vaguely in the Raimi universe and everything could have been fine. People would have accepted that in a long running franchise. But they had to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

I'm with you guys on the pointlessness of this reboot but let's not write the obituary just yet based on some random out-of-context clips three months before the film's release.

 

To be fair, these are the random out of context clips the marketing department thinks will best sell the movie.

 

Which is pretty much always the case when it comes to out-of-context clips released months before an actual movie.

I have to disagree, I can't see a context where those scenes don't bring the movie to dead stop.

Apparently they are going to spread the origin story over multiple films.

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...and playing Spider-Man like he's wearing the symbiote suit already. I really don't understand Webb's or Garfield's take on any of this.

 

 

 

Source?  I mean, I don't disbelieve it, that sounds very much like modern hollywood.

 

Holy buckets though.

Marc Webb explains.

 

I don't really care i guess.

And once they finish devoting an entire trilogy to Spider-Man's origin, they'll reboot the series again and start afresh with a new-new take on Spidey's origin.

He doesn't explain it very well.

 

 

 

 

 

Blerg.  Spider-Man's Parents: The Motion Picture!

"There are obligations to the canon" Explained Webb.

Obligations? What an odd choice of words.

OFFS

I want to see Spidey thwip his way around NY in 3D, but everything i've seen or read about this, with the exception of Stone, is putting me off more and more.

Above everything else, it's making me feel OLD. I'm clearly not the target demographic and I feel like my Grandad, railing at The Smiths on top of the pops in the 80s, instead of shouting 'thats not music', i'm groaning, 'thats not Spidey'

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Ditto, and I bet you're a good deal younger than I am.

 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off for a cup of coffee and a Benefiber-fueled dump.

 

Wow the only thing worse would this scenario happening to Batman.

Welp, there goes the fleeting optimism seeing the latest trailer managed to conjure up.

 

Okay, I get it, it's not like Spider-Man is some unassailable piece of literature whose basic structure is un-fuck-with-able.  And I know you have to do what will make for a better movie, not a better copy of the comic.  But we're barely 10 years away from a pretty successful example of bringing the origin to the screen pretty much unchanged.  It works cinematically.  This latest iteration smacks of nothing more than being so afraid of comparisons to Raimi's film, they've decided to change everything in order to put their own stamp on it.  Well if that's the concern, spare us three films of Spidey's origins and who-gives-a-shit material about Peter's parents and just give us a goddamn Spider-Man movie.  We don't need to be hand-held through his origin again.

 

They're trying so hard to re-invent the wheel here that they've forgotten to make sure it rolls.

Beautifully put.

I'd say that's fair. Spider-Man, Batman and Superman have the most recognised origins in the medium. Imagine if Warner Brothers decided that Bruce's parents were killed in a skiing accident or that Super-Man was from the Moon?

 

It's just...weird.

 

 

And it's not like I'm some dyed-in-the-wool Spidey fanboy who's all "OMG THEY'RE RUINING MY CHILDHOOD!"  For example, I have zero problem with what Michael Bay is doing with Ninja Turtles.  All those Spidey stories I remember are still there, and this film doesn't change them at all.

 

But it does demonstrate that these filmmakers don't seem to grasp what has made the character endure for almost 50 years.  And like I said, this doesn't seem motivated by having a clear, bold vision for the character, but by desperately wanting to remind people they didn't already see and love this story ten years ago.

 

What's worse to me is that it seems like they feel the origin, which they're neutering, is the only compelling story to tell with Spider-man, which is why they're drawing the origin out over multiple movies.

 

Ugh. In flashbacks or as part of the normal story structure?

Exactly.

Maybe Green Goblin can fall in love with Gwen's unborn Spidey-baby in part 3.

 

And if they were going to reinvent the wheel to this extent, they should have thrown race out the window too. Donald Glover as Spidey, etc.

 

Course I would have wanted the late Ossie Davis as

 

 

 

You know, I recently caught an episode of Spectacular Spider-Man that was perfect in explaining the origin of Spider-Man. Spider-Man was struggling to rid himself of the black costume, and the audience was given a glimpse into Parker's mind as it quickly showed how and why he became Spider-Man (in the space of a minute it flashed through the spider-bite, the wrestling match and the death of Uncle Ben). As the black costume attempted to dominate Parker's mind, Uncle Ben moved from being a simple memory to an actual ally in Peter's stuggle to resist the power of the symbiote. All of this was maybe five minutes in length but it not only gave Peter's backstory but also demonstrated perfectly why Uncle Ben had continued to be such a strong presence in Peter's life, even after his demise. And it was true to the comics.

 

If a 22 minute cartoon can do this so perfectly, and in such a simple way, why couldn't a feature-length movie?  

 

Would it still be so perfect if you divorced yourself from the knowledge of his origin? If you were learning of Spider-man for the first time?

 

Here's the thing -- kids rarely learn about "origin stories" in their first experiences with characters. You see Spider-Man, think he's cool, watch a cartoon or whatever, and then your dad or a friend tells you how he became Spider-Man, then maybe you watch the Raimi film or whatever. This idea that the origin story is so important to selling the character to new fans is ludicrous. Was Superman or Batman or Spider-Man's origin the first way you discovered the character? Not likely.

 

 

I never said you had to, but if I wasn't already familiar with the origin of Spider-man, that five minute clip from the cartoon would read more like a fever dream.

 

I'm saying if you're going to tell the origin, you should tell it, not that you have to tell it. (Case in point... I don't think they should be telling it here, but it's their reboot)

James Bond got on pretty well for over 40 years before we ever got anything approaching an origin story.  Granted, a secret agent requires a little less backstory than a super-hero, but still, no one's experience was ruined by not knowing how Bond became a spy.

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I believe so. It was short, informative and was important to the plot. I'm merely saying that, if they had to tell the origin story again, why not try to something interesting with it like this? You can keep everything about his origin the same but deliver it in a new one way.

 

 

Very true, Mr Dickson. Very true!

 

I feel like those type of short flashbacks were how I experienced ALL superhero origin stories for the first time. That or in the blurb at the top of the first page of every comic.

There is also the case of a 6 part film series starting with number 4 going back and showing an origin story which wasn't needed.  When did this obsession with origin stories come from, who cares why someone became something or is doing something; people aren't idiots and can enjoy a movie without being spoon fed everything.

 

 

That bolded section may be a bit too far. Understanding the given circumstance of a character is pretty important.
 

 

And its actually the way the stories were originally introduced for many of the characters. Superman and Batman didn't get origin stories into well into their runs because the creators realized that the heroes were more compelling than their origins. Who cares HOW Superman can jump over a building in a single bound when you can just SHOW him doing it. In some ways adding origins complicates things. When there's just this guy called Batman who dresses like a bat and beats of gangsters it just kind of works, but when you start to explain how it happened you start getting into weird psychological territory like "why in blue blazes would someone ever do that?"

 

The current origin obsessions is born out of fanboy continuity obsession, and its bad storytelling. Spreading out the origin story over several movies? Don't even get me started.

It's not bad when done right. The first half of Superman, Spider-Man, Iron Man and Batman Begins are some of the best moments in the genre and make for really great drama regardless if you know it already or not. It's not the origin that's the problem if it's never been done cinematically before. It's doing it again less than a decade after the last one.

 

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True, but here's an anecdote I can share...

 

I knew Batman from Adam West and Scooby Doo and Super Friends as a kid. I was reading Uncle Scrooge comics, not superheroes. It wasn't until '89 and Burton's flick did I get a glimpse into the psyche and origins of Bats. That flick flipped a switch in me. I dove into Batman comics and became obsessed with the character.  Partly due to the troubles (parents' divorce, etc) I was having at the time as a 13 year old and I needed something to latch on to. That was my first exposure to how complex of a character Bruce was and why he put himself in mortal peril every night. How he took a terrible situation and stepped up and did something good with his anger.

 

In hindsight, it's dumb and unnecessary. But did it matter to me at the time that the film depicted the Joker killing Bruce's parents instead of Joe Chill? Nope. Not in the slightest. If we had the internet at the time, I guarantee comic fans wold have been collectively gnashing their teeth.

 

Was his origin important to tell? In this case I say yes. First bigscreen adaptation. Also, he's a bit of an urban myth and mystery in this flick, so investigating Bruce's past becomes an important plot point. Spidey doesn't need 3 movies to tell his origin tale. An INCREDIBLE HULK style prologue (or an illustrated one like SM2) would do just fine.