4 MINUTES OF THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

Jesus, is it too much to ask to KEEP THE GODDAMN MASK ON?

 

But he's so dreamy.

One of the things that shows the disconnect between me, just a movie fan, and fans of the comic book character -- I'm not at all bothered by him losing the mask.

If he does indeed take the mask off at every possible opportunity, I don't think you have to be a fan of the comic to find that annoying.  I mean, ostensibly the mask is there for a reason.

What this movie gets right is drastically going to get overshadowed by what it gets wrong in geeks' eyes. Or maybe it will all suck, I don't know. I have been a seesaw of opinion one way and then the other based on every piece of new footage I see. 
 

I really appreciate how in Nolan's Batman films Bale never takes the mask off when he is in Batman mode. 

 

It's obviously been a long time since I've seen Dark Knight or Begins cause...

 

I don't believe there's ever a shot of Bale in his Batman suit without the mask--at least while he's fighting bad guys.  

I think we see Bale in the suit without the mask a couple of times in TDK.  

 

When he's standing on top of that tower in Hong Kong about to make the dive...

 

and a bit iffy... but as he's mourning the death of Rachel in his suite.

 

But Bale isn't actively engaged in fighting opponents while unmasked.  We keep seeing this with Spidey throughout the movies. 

 

The only time I can think of Bats being unmasked and fighting in the movies is with Returns when Keaton tears off the mask in order to try to get to Pfeiffer. 

While I'm not a fan of the look of the film my major issue is that most of the major plot elements on display are a total turn off. Origin story? No thanks, we've seen it. The parental mystery? Some sort of connection to a villain? Batman 1989 did it and it was a little annoying back then. The whole police force after Peter? This was just set up in The Dark Knight and to be continued this summer... 

 

For a movie that's supposed to be starting fresh it all seems very stale to me. 

That's pretty much it... stale.  If it was going to be good, they wouldn't have done another origin story AND abandoned the fairly interesting one that had been established for the character AND replaced it with something that is more generic and tired.  I don't rule out hope it will be passably entertaining, but then again 500 Days of Summer wasn't even that good.

I hear what your all saying, but I kinda agree with Nick. It looks pretty good. Part of me kind of gets the same feeling i got watching X-Men First Class, finally I had something to wash the bad taste of the previous iteration out of my mouth.

I guarantee that SPIDER-MAN 3 is a more interesting film than this turns out to be.

I'm leaning towards liking this.  Snarky. cracking-wise Spiderman is overdue.

 

I agree.  Sometimes it serves the drama (Spider-Man 2's train scene is as good as it is because you can see his face, and a you get a lump in your throat when a train full of people whose lives he just saved have his back on the secret identity thing), but cynically, you know most of the time it's a contractual thing with the actors.

 

That said, after that kid rescue bridge scene I'm ready to take this movie on its own terms. Another origin seems like wasted space, but fuck it, I wanna see The Lizard. And Garfield seems fun in the role.

Edited by Phil - 5/15/12 at 2:38am

It looks good, yes. But its looks, though not that impressive anyway, are not what my problem with this has been.

I like how this Peter is weedy but he doesn't seem meek, like he's a bit of a dick. I like that they're doing a better job of making the villain seem a threat than Spiderman 1 or 2 (can't speak to 3). I like the suit and that they're going for mechanical web slingers. I like Emma Stone. I like the dubstep.

 

The "when your past is a mystery you keep looking for the truth" thing is pure Wolverine.

I actually like the idea behind him taking his mask off for the kid trapped in the car. It's just that it seems to be coming off in fights ALL THE GODDAMN TIME, to the point where it doesn't mean anything.

 

And I finally get to the heart of what's not clicking with me here. The disparate elements of this flick are fine. Unless Peter's parents were secretly Jew-hating neo-Nazi geneticists, there's just zero justification for the navel-gazing, and the film is using it as a foundation for everything he does. And I simply do not care.

 

We'll agree to disagree.

 

*WHOO* Skateboarders

And is "not THAT bad" really worth anyone's time given the ambrosia of SPIDER-MAN 2?

Raimi got the mask "removal" right in the first Spider-man.  During the climactic fight the mask is torn and we can see part of Maguire's face just like Spidey's mask is always being torn in the books.  This was further enhanced in 2 during the already mentioned train scene.

 

The kid rescue I can understand but the rest of the film he doesn't seem to care that 500 cops are looking for him.  He seems like he should be pretty easy to find.

We see Bale in the suit without the mask, but only before he is about to go into battle and when he is sitting around mourning Rachel's loss. He never rips it off during a fight like the movie version of Spider-Man seems to do ad nauseum. I realize this is done so the actor can get emotional impact across on screen (Batman at least has his eyes and mouth to work with) but sorry Tobey and Andrew, you signed up to be in a Spider-Man movie. Blame Steve Ditko.

Aside from the train, and when he's either entirely alone or to connect with someone particular (ex. Doc Ock after the chip burns out), Tobey only tore it off when he was completely alone.

It's not just Spider-Man either. It was annoying when Captain America lost his mask at the end of Avengers too for no particular reason.

Having it pulled off by an alien marauder actually makes sense, though. Spidey just likes taking it off all the damn time.
 

Even Daredevil took of his mask in the climactic Kingpin fight. He REALLY had no excuse, what with the sonar thing and all.

 

You guys remember DAREDEVIL? Guys?

I remember Daredevil! And I'm fairly sure that even HE has a more logical mask-removal than Spidey! I recall Kingpin laying him out and pulling his mask off so he could see who had caused him so much trouble.

 

 

I had the same complaint with the original trilogy. Seems like it was for nothing more than ego's sake because "actor needs face seen".

 

 

 

Thanks, Phil!

Oh man I can't wait til all of us are called Raimi die-hards because we don't rate the slick, anonymous, 2nd-unit action of Marc Webb. You know what Raimi bought to the table? A personality. I LIKED "Sam Raimi Presents Spider-Man", much better than "Sony Pictures Presents Spider-Man".

C'mon, you have to admit that a big reason so many people are actively rooting for this to fail is because of their affinity towards Raimi and how Sony treated him leading into 3.

A big reason so many people are "rooting for this to fail" -- if that's even a thing -- is that it injects all that bullshit about Peter's parents that nobody really liked from the comics into an origin story we've already seen done barely ten years ago.

No, I'm rooting for it to fail because it looks like a cynical rehash of a still-vital series of films that didn't need to be made in the way that it has been. This is such an obvious case of the studio putting franchising above literally every other concern that it drives me crazy. The fact that they disrespected a director who actually brought charm and wit and ballbusting comic-book action stuff into mainstream superhero films is just the icing on the cake.

 

There is just so much wrong about this whole film, from its inception as a reboot to its insipid origin altering to its competent but anonymous trailers to its aggressive attempt to stamp out any memory of the films that it owes its existence to.

All of which I can agree with. Problem is, people were already rooting against it before they even knew all of what you guys just talked about. The most we knew was that it was a reboot (which means origin), which certainly deserves some vitriol, but doesn't explain the majority of its early on-set.

 

But that's just me, I guess.

 

In the meantime, I'll do my best to ignore the origin, pretend he broke up with Mary, met Gwen and we finally got Lizard for #4.

The kid rescue scene was really good!  The mask removal made sense there.  Trying to calm the kid, and telling him it'll make him strong, and my goodness what a last second save!  

 

I was gonna see it anyway, because I like superhero movies, and Spidey is my favorite, so I am kinda obligated to see it.  Well see.  

 

Exactly. The only way I'm not Transformers 3 levels of hostile towards this is because I like the cast a lot.

It's the hard reboot aspect that's the real problem for me. If this was a soft reboot and I was seeing what I'm seeing, I'd be OK with it. But knowing I'm going to get a re-jiggered origin is the sticking point for me. That and the skateboard.

Fuck SPIDER-MAN 3, this new one is shaping up nicely.

If there's a scene as beautifully conceived, shot and scored as the birth of the Sandman in this middle-of-the-road cashgrab I will eat my figurative hat. Look up "discernment", folks; some of you could do with exercising a little bit of it.

SUPERGIRL has a scene that is beautifully conceived where she learns about her flying abilities and does an air ballet, accompanied by a brilliant score from Jerry Goldsmith. It's one of my personal favorites, but the rest of the film is still shit. Will the next flick have a great scene like Sandman? Maybe not, but hopefully the whole thing will at least be consistently good which is what matters.

So you prefer a solid baseline of "okay" to films with actual ambition? Well, to each their own.

Ambition is admirable, but it doesn't automatically make a film better than it is. SPIDER-MAN 3, despite its ambition, still falls flat on its face embarrassingly. Same thing happened with Ang Lee's HULK, and while THE INCREDIBLE HULK didn't have as much ambition it's at least consistently well made and entertaining.

In other words: for the modern nerd, it's better to tick off boxes than think outside of them.

 

I would watch SM3 and Lee's HULK over INCREDIBLE HULK every single day of the week. It's like you're comparing molecular cookery to McDonald's here.

My point is ambition doesn't always save a film. SUPERMAN RETURNS had loads of it, but it meant squat in the big picture.

Whaaaaat. SUPERMAN RETURNS had the ambition to ape a thirty year-old film. It was as by-the-numbers as you could ask for.

 

We're getting back into this whole thing where a large, deluded group of people somehow think SPIDER-MAN 3 was the worst shit ever, aren't we.  Hell, have you're middling, competent Spider-Man film. I'll be over here watching a flawed but striking string of scenes from a director who actually has a style to speak of.
 

I'm not in that group, there are definitely far worse films than SPIDER-MAN 3.

I'll take it one step further -- I think there's more that works about SPIDER-MAN 3 than doesn't and have always felt this way. The bad stuff is bad, but the good stuff is good and there's more of it.