Even though the Sam Raimi-directed, Tobey Maguire-starring Spider-Man movies were each big hits, the third one was kind of a dud critically speaking, and Raimi was having trouble making a story work for the next one. This, despite Dylan Baker being right there in the second and third movies as Curt Connors, thus setting up the Lizard as a likely villain for the fourth movie.
As it turns out, a fourth movie was made with the Lizard as the bad guy, but once Raimi departed, Sony decided, for reasons passing understanding, to reboot the franchise from the ground up, thus giving us, not Spider-Man 4 in 2012, but instead The Amazing Spider-Man.
It was an odd decision to reboot the series and do Spidey’s origin all over again only ten years after the last time, but that’s what Avi Arad and Sony decided. They brought in Marc Webb, hot off the superb romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer to direct, and also re-cast the entire movie, and restructured things as well. While Spider-Man 3 had both Captain George Stacy and his daughter Gwen as minor characters, they were front and center in Amazing Spider-Man, with nary a mention of Mary Jane Watson. Peter Parker’s interest in photography is kept, but he doesn’t become a Daily Bugle photographer yet (so no J. Jonah Jameson or Robbie Robertson). Flash Thompson remains as Parker’s high-school nemesis, and Norman Osborn is mentioned (with a lot of action taking place as OsCorp) but not seen, nor is there any mention of his son Harry.
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In addition, the movie makes use of Peter’s parents, Richard and Mary Parker, who were introduced in 1968’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #5 as secret agents who were killed by the Red Skull, one of the more bizarre story choices made by anybody at Marvel. Since then, they’ve been pretty much a non-factor, showing up occasionally here and there, but rarely to good effect. In the movie, rather than secret agents, they’re written as scientists who worked with Curt Connors for Norman Osborn, and disappeared and were later killed due to their work.
Andrew Garfield takes over in the title role, with Martin Sheen and Sally Field playing Uncle Ben and Aunt May, respectively. Emma Stone plays Gwen, while Denis Leary is Captain Stacy. Rhys Ifans plays Curt Connors, and Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz play Richard and Mary Parker. Chris Zylka plays Flash Thompson, Irrfan Khan plays Rajit Ratha, an OsCorp executive, and C. Thomas Howell appears as the father of a boy Spider-Man rescues on the Williamsburg Bridge, and, amazingly, plays a character who isn’t evil (a rarity in Howell’s filmography of late).
“Your boyfriend is a man with many masks”
The Amazing Spider-Man
Written by James Vanderbilt and Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves
Directed by Marc Webb
Produced by Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach and Laura Ziskin
Original release date: July 3, 2012
A very young Peter Parker is playing hide-and-go-seek with his parents. However, he looks for them in his father’s office, only to find the place ransacked. Richard Parker pulls a file from a hidden compartment in his desk and is relieved to see it’s there. He takes Peter to his brother Ben’s place and leaves Peter with Ben and his wife May.
Years later, Peter is a high-school student, having been raised by Ben and May after Richard and Mary died in a plane crash shortly after they left Peter with his aunt and uncle. Peter is awkward, tormented by basketball star Flash Thompson. When Peter tries to stop Flash from humiliating another kid, Flash beats him up for his trouble, though Gwen Stacy—who is tutoring Flash—humiliates Flash right back by reminding him how much tutoring he needs.
That night, there’s a flood in the Parker basement, and Ben and Peter pull some boxes out that include Ben’s old bowling trophies and also Richard’s briefcase. Peter finds papers inside it that shows that Richard was working on cross-species genetics with Dr. Curt Connors at OsCorp. There’s a tour for potential OsCorp interns, so Peter goes, sneaking in as another student. (Said student is later thrown out of the building. Peter is distressingly unconcerned about possibly ruining this young man’s life and career.) To his shock, Gwen is already one of Connors’s interns, and she’s the one giving the tour. Despite Gwen’s admonitions to stay with the group, he wanders off to where they’re genetically engineering spiders for no reason the script can be arsed to supply. One of them bites Peter. Gwen is forced to take his stolen badge and throw him out, though not until after Peter impresses Connors with his knowledge of genetic engineering (most of which he got from his father’s papers).
Upon going outside, Peter realizes that he’s stronger than he was, and he can stick to things. He winds up getting into a fight with a bunch of people on the subway, one of whom tried to balance a beer bottle on Peter while he slept on the subway. He was the one dumb enough to sleep on the subway, but these people get knocked around a subway car (and one woman has her shirt torn off) for no good reason.
Peter goes home and has trouble adjusting to his new powers, almost completely wrecking the bathroom at his house. Peculiarly, neither May nor Ben ever comment on his destruction of almost the entire bathroom.
At school, Peter decides to humiliate Flash by asking him to take the basketball from Peter’s hand—which he can’t do either because Peter moves too fast or because he uses his sticking powers to hold onto the ball so Flash can’t grab it. He then does a supremely acrobatic jump shot that destroys the backboard.
Peter gets in trouble for breaking the backboard. At no point does anyone mention the superhuman leap he took to get to it. Ben has to switch shifts to meet with the principal, so he’s working that night, and Peter has to meet May at her job and take her home. (May doesn’t need that, but Ben insists.) Peter agrees.
He goes back to OsCorp and shows Connors the decay algorithm that his father came up with (though Peter himself takes credit for it, not wanting Connors to know that he found his father’s papers). Connors, who is missing his right arm, wishes to find a way to transfer the genetic traits of reptiles that allow them to regenerate limbs to other species.
Peter works with Connors to incorporate the algorithm, and it works! A three-legged mouse is able to regenerate its missing limb. Peter goes home to find a furious Ben—Peter completely forgot to pick up May. May herself doesn’t think it’s that big a deal, but Ben does, and they argue, Peter leaving in a huff (closing the door so hard, the glass breaks).
Ben goes after Peter. Peter goes into a bodega for a bottle of milk, but it’s $2.07 and he only has $2.05. The clerk refuses to accept the lesser amount and kicks Peter out. The next customer distracts the clerk and then swipes the cash from the register. The clerk runs after him, Peter himself uninterested in helping the guy who dicked him around over two cents. The thief trips and a gun falls out of his jacket, right in front of Ben, still looking for Peter. They struggle for the gun, and the thief shoots Ben fatally wounding him.
Peter arrives just in time for Ben to die. Later, the cops provide a sketch of the killer, and it’s the thief that Peter let go. He has a star tattoo on his wrist, and so Peter spends the next several weeks going after anyone who matches that description, and checking their wrists. His first foray doesn’t go very well, and the guys he fights point out that they can see his face now. So he fashions a red mask to cover his face, and later uses some of the OsCorp tech he observed, including biocabling based on spider’s webs, to create webbing that he can fire from shooters in his wrists.
He continues his search. He also finds himself flirting with Gwen more and more, and she eventually invites him over to her house for dinner with her family. Dinner starts out okay, but devolves into an argument over the masked vigilante, with Gwen’s police captain father very much against him. Captain Stacy points out that this vigilante just seems to be on a vendetta against one person he’s looking for. That’s not being a hero, and that’s not helping the cause of justice. After dinner, Peter reveals to Gwen that he’s the masked vigilante.
An OsCorp executive, Rajit Ratha, informs Connors that they’re proceeding to human trials—they’ll do it under the guise of a flu shot at a veterans’ hospital. Connors is appalled, but Ratha reminds Connors that Norman Osborn is dying, and they can’t wait. Connors is fired.
Somehow, Connors still has the code to get the formula out of the OsCorp lab, and he injects it into himself. It regenerates his right arm, but then goes further, turning him into a giant lizard. He goes after Ratha, who is stuck in traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge heading to the VA hospital. Peter puts on his new costume and tries to save lives, including rescuing a little boy from a car that had gone over the side, but which Peter saved with his webbing.
When it’s over, he identifies himself as Spider-Man.
Stacy announces that there’s an arrest warrant for Spider-Man, blaming him for what happened on the bridge. Meanwhile, Connors reverts to his human form. He has set up an entire lab in the sewers, er, somehow, and is experimenting with the formula.
Realizing that the creature is Connors, Peter searches the sewers, using his webbing the way a spider would, spinning them in all directions from an intersection of sewers where he saw a mess of lizards all going at once. They fight, and Peter has his head handed to him. He manages to escape, but he leaves his camera behind. Connors finds it and sees the “Property of Peter Parker” sticker that May no doubt insisted he put on it, and now Connors knows who Spider-Man is.
Peter goes to Gwen’s and she tends to his wounds. She’s worried about him the same way she worried about her father some day going to work with his badge and gun and not coming home. Peter tries to tell Stacy about Connors, but Stacy doesn’t buy it—though he has one of his people look into Connors just in case.
Connors attacks Midtown Science High to go after Peter. Their fight takes them all through the school, including at one point through the library, where the librarian looks just like Stan Lee. Connors then heads downtown, where the cops go after him—but Connors has made the serum into a gas, and he turns several cops into lizard creatures like him. He then heads to OsCorp, to use a device we saw earlier that will blanket all of New York in that gas.
Gwen has gone ahead to OsCorp to use her intern’s access to create an antidote to Connors’s formula. Peter tries to go after Connors, but is attacked by the cops, who get his mask off. Peter hides his face until he takes care of everyone except for Stacy. He shows Stacy his face and says that Gwen is at OsCorp and Connors is headed there. Reluctantly, Stacy lets Peter go.
He arrives at OsCorp after a wholly unnecessary and incredibly overlong arrangement of cranes to aid in his web swinging from the guy whose kid Spidey saved on the bridge earlier. Gwen evacuates the building, and gives her father the antidote. Stacy takes it to the roof and helps Peter fight Connors. Peter manages to swap out the cure for the nasty gas, and Connors and the cops are all cured—but not before Connors has killed Stacy. Stacy’s dying wish is to tell Peter to stay away from Gwen to keep her safe.
Peter’s response is to completely ghost Gwen, not even showing up for the funeral. When she shows up at the Parker house to confront him, he just says he can’t see her anymore, and she figures out that her father extracted the promise from him. The next day in class, Peter is late, and says it won’t happen again—the teacher says that he shouldn’t make promises he can’t keep, and Peter says, for Gwen’s benefit, that those are the best kind.
Spider-Man continues to fight bad guys in New York. Meanwhile, Connors is confronted in jail by a mysterious Gentleman, who confirms that Peter hasn’t been told the truth about his parents.
“Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t like my meat loaf?”
What an interminable chore this movie is. Every single scene in this movie goes on about 15% longer than it needs to, whether it’s Peter’s never-explained wander through a room full of genetically engineered spiders, Peter getting beat up after saving a kid from being tormented by Flash Thompson, Gwen and Peter asking each other out (a particularly unpleasant scene that results in constant checking of one’s watch wondering how long this rhapsody in awkwardness will go on), Peter figuring out how to use his powers in an abandoned warehouse (including some remarkably convenient chains to practice web-swinging with), every fight Peter has with Connors, and especially that absurd sequence with the cranes.
Seriously, Spider-Man has webbing that enables him to swing all around the city, whipping around buildings, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, etc. What possible use is a bunch of cranes shoved out into the middle of the street? And why bother showing it?
When I saw Amazing Spider-Man in the theatre, my then-girlfriend (now wife) had to go to the bathroom, and she left right after Stacy let Peter go to OsCorp. By the time she got back, Peter hadn’t gotten anywhere near OsCorp yet. Literally nothing of consequence had happened in the movie in the time it took her to pee, as those of us with empty bladders just spent several minutes watching construction workers call each other on their phones and then watching cranes move around over Sixth Avenue. Exciting stuff.
This movie also makes it impossible for me to ever believe that Peter Parker was able to keep anybody from figuring out that he’s Spider-Man, mostly because he spends basically the entire movie showing off his powers in his civvies, and the entire second half of the movie losing his mask, whether on purpose (on the bridge to help calm the kid he’s trying to rescue down—which was actually pretty effective) or by accident (when the cops fight him). But after trashing the bathroom, after showing up Flash Thompson by making the basketball stick to his hand, by using his powers in public constantly, it’s just frustrating.
On top of that, the movie makes all kinds of story choices that are dictated, not by what makes a good story, but by the fact that it’s only been ten years since someone did a movie that showed Spider-Man’s origin, so changes had to be made to avoid repetition. So Peter can’t enter a wrestling contest and then let the thief who steals the receipts go by because Sam Raimi did that, so it’s a thief at a bodega instead. Except you still need the wrestling hit, because that’s what inspires Peter to put on a costume, so he, er, um, falls through a ceiling into a wrestling ring with posters of guys in costume on it. Sure.
We can’t have Ben tell Peter that with great power comes great responsibility, because the last movie did that, too, so instead there’s a vague speech about responsibility that doesn’t entirely make sense, and then Peter becomes Spider-Man, not because he learned his uncle’s lesson a hair too late, but instead to get vengeance (and ameliorate his guilt over not stopping the guy before he shot his father-figure). It takes a lecture from Captain Stacy instead to put him on the path to heroism.
That’s one of several bits that make me wonder if the filmmakers actually read Spidey comics, or just glanced at them. I get the same occasional disconnect between events and context that I got from Mark Steven Johnson’s wrongheaded Daredevil movie. A perfect example is something that probably seemed innocuous to most of the audience, but it threw me entirely out of the movie. Peter goes on the internship tour by stealing someone’s badge. That person is then thrown out of the building, thus losing his chance at a very prestigious internship, and quite possibly ruining his career and life. It’s played for laughs, but the entire point of Spider-Man is his unthinking actions lead to someone getting hurt. Why not just have him apply for the friggin internship program and avoid having our hero be a thief and a fraud? Not to mention the first fight he gets into is with a bunch of people on the subway whose only crime is to balance a beer on Peter’s forehead while he sleeps. Some hero.
There is nearly zero evidence that Peter has any kind of smarts. Yes, he goes to a brainy high school. Midtown High has become Midtown Science High, which raises the question of what Flash Thompson is even doing there, and why the school tolerates the kind of hazing Flash was doing, as that’s not the sort of thing that would be put up with in a school with “Science” as part of its name—they’re trying to develop Nobel Prize winners, not basketball stars. Anyhow, the point is, despite this, the only evidence we see that Peter is anything other than a typical skateboarding doofus teenager from the early 2010s is his building of the web shooters—which happens in a quickie montage. Every other time he acts in any way science-y, it’s stuff he got from his Dad’s papers.
Peter gets bitten by a genetically engineered spider because he has to for the plot to work, but while the movie contrives a good reason for Peter to be at OsCorp—the connection between his father and Connors—he has no reason to go into the room full of spiders, nor is any reason for the spiders to even be there given. (At least in this movie. It’s explained in the sequel.)
It’s never explained why Connors—who works at a massive cutting-edge technology center—doesn’t have a prosthetic arm. Nor is it ever explained how a just-fired-from-a-corrupt-company Connors is able to get at the serum and build an entire lab in a sewer.
Captain Stacy’s heel-turn is never at any point convincing. His arguments against Spider-Man are solid ones, and Peter does precisely nothing in the movie to make him seem wrong to the general public. Stacy in the comics always thought highly of Spider-Man and guessed on his own that Peter was Spider-Man, but in this movie, he has to take on the lesson-giving role that Ben should have, but he can’t because they don’t want to copy the previous movie. (And ’round we go again.)
To this day, I have no idea why they felt the need to reboot the franchise. This basic plot could very easily have been the basis of a fourth Spider-Man movie that followed the three Raimi films. Even with the re-casting and a new director, it could work. (It’s not like they haven’t re-cast characters in movie series before…) In fact, this particular re-casting of the title character is a very sensible progression, as Tobey Maguire reminds me very much of Steve Ditko’s Peter Parker (he co-created Spider-Man with Lee, and co-plotted and drew the book for its first thirty-eight issues), while Andrew Garfield reminds me just as much of John Romita Sr.’s Peter Parker (he took over from Ditko, and continued to draw the character for most of the rest of the 1960s and has remained associated with the character ever since).
If nothing else, the casting of most of the heroic parts is pretty good. Emma Stone looks exactly like she was drawn on the celluloid by Romita (seriously, it’s like the most perfect casting of Gwen ever), the super-serious faces of Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz well suit the tragic roles of the Parker parents, and holy cow are Sally Field and Martin Sheen magnificent as May and Ben.
Mostly it’s the latter two together that work—the meat loaf conversation is quite possibly the high point of the movie—as Field is pretty much left to flounder after Ben’s death. This is the part where I’m tempted to say, “nobody ever went wrong casting Martin Sheen in anything,” but then I remember Babylon 5: River of Souls and recall that that isn’t quite true. Having said that, President Bartlet makes a dandy Uncle Ben, as he gives the movie life and verve.
Garfield never quite feels right to me. Part of it is his aggressive ordinariness—he’s supposed to be a compassionate nerdy kid, and we just get a stereotypical millennial teenager. Having said that, his chemistry with Stone is superb. I can’t say enough good things about Stone’s work here, as she captures the complexity of the Gwen Stacy character, and she’s just an absolute delight. The awkward asking-out conversation aside, the scenes with Garfield and Stone are very well done. Not surprising, really as they play to Webb’s strengths—(500) Days of Summer was an absolute delight.
The same can’t be said for the bad guys. Irrfan Khan gives what may be the single most boring performance in an otherwise distinguished career, and the less said about Rhys Ifans’s dreadfully over-the-top super-villain the better.
Ultimately, this feels like a knockoff of a Spider-Man picture more than it does a Spider-Man picture. Just a major disappointment all around, exacerbated by the truly awful pacing and hit-and-miss casting and especially being forced to work around the shadow of the decade-old movie that did the same general plot.
Despite all this, the movie did quite well, and a sequel came out only two years later. Next week, we look at The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Keith R.A. DeCandido has always loved Spider-Man, and his first-published short story and his first novel were both collaborative Spidey tales: the short story “An Evening in the Bronx with Venom” (written with John Gregory Betancourt) in the 1994 anthology The Ultimate Spider-Man, and the novel Venom’s Wrath (written with José R. Nieto) in 1998. He also wrote the short story “Arms and the Man” in 1997’s Untold Tales of Spider-Man and the 2005 novel Down These Mean Streets.
I still remember my metaphorical head-scratching when they announced they were rebooting Spider-Man so soon after Raimi’s movies. This movie was not needed, especially as an origin story. Is there anyone alive who doesn’t already know Spider-Man’s origin story? Or Superman, for that matter? God, I hate origin stories. I can’t believe Hollywood still bothers with them.
@1 – easily one of the best things the MCU did: take 10 seconds to do a Spider-Man origin and get on with the story.
The “wrongness” and unnecessary rebooting of this franchise, along with yet ANOTHER origin story turned me off of the franchise for good, until Marvel took the reigns and fixed it. I loved the first two Raimi Spider-Mans, but this movie just seemed pointless.
If nothing else, now I know that the whole “Peter Parker’s parents were secret agents” thing wasn’t a plot point the movie COMPLETELY pulled out of its own butt. But I was still seriously underwhelmed when I saw this (via Netflix), and have yet to see the sequel.
hoopmanjh: No, it’s a plot point Stan Lee pulled out of his butt in 1968. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
You make some fair points about the plot holes, Keith, but I actually rather liked this one. Andrew Garfield is a much better Peter Parker than Tobey Maguire was; Raimi’s movies basically modified Peter to be like Maguire, but Garfield felt a lot closer to the mark, and he was very good in the role. Emma Stone was excellent, and I loved what a strong, resourceful character Gwen was portrayed as. Martin Sheen was awesome as usual, and Sally Field did pretty well. I was a little underwhelmed with Rhys Ifans, but he was okay. And I’ve never much cared for Denis Leary, and it seemed so strange to me to turn George Stacy — who was pretty much a second Uncle Ben in the comics and a defender of Spidey — into such a hostile, Jamesonesque figure; but it ultimately worked as the setup for Stacy’s turnaround and his role in the climax.
The movie naturally had to take things in a different direction so soon after the previous film series, and as a result there are some things I don’t think it handled as well as the previous films, like the origin story. Still, I did like it that Ben went out attempting a heroic deed. And I can’t complain too much about what wasn’t covered here. After all, there were things the previous films skipped (mechanical webshooters, Spidey banter, Gwen as Peter’s first love) that I was glad to see here, so it’s only fitting there should be things that are in the Raimi series but not this one. Leaving out Peter’s freelancing for the Bugle works fine, because in the comics that didn’t begin until the fourth Spidey story (the first story in issue #2 of ASM). Also because the previous trilogy already covered that so well.
I’m a sucker for “normal people help the hero” scenes, so I loved the crane sequence. I also loved the bits where Spider-Man actually acted like a spider: first the web-vibrations scene in the sewer, then in his fight with the Lizard in the school where he skittered over his body and fully cocooned him. It was also cool how subtly they handled the spider-sense, making it clear through Peter’s actions that he had a heightened sense of approaching danger without ever really calling attention to it. Much better than the Raimi films, which mostly ignored the spider-sense altogether after a couple of slo-mo showcase shots.
The mechanical webshooters were well-handled. It kind of takes something away from it if the webfluid is something anyone can buy rather than something unique to Spidey, but it makes sense, since research into superstrong polymers based on spider silk — even genetically engineered variants thereon, I believe — is something that’s really happening these days. And Peter did at least invent the wrist-mounted webshooters on his own (and I felt the film did a nice job establishing him as an inventor beforehand).
It did surprise me that Peter just up and told Gwen his secret, but I liked it. I get tired of the cliche of the superhero lying to his/her loved ones; that kind of dishonesty isn’t very heroic. And characters who are in on the secret are more interesting because they can play a wider range of roles in the story than just clueless outsider. It’s another decision that makes Gwen a stronger character.
The one part where my heart sank and I thought “Oh, they’re just repeating the previous trilogy” was when Peter broke things off with Gwen after the funeral, which felt like a rehash of how the first Raimi film ended. I was glad they had Peter walk it back somewhat at the end there. And it didn’t bother me that it entailed breaking a promise to her dying father, because Gwen isn’t an object, but a person with the right to choose for herself whether to risk being Spider-Man’s girlfriend. She handled being a cop’s daughter for 17 years, she knows damn well what she’s getting into, and she proved she’s more than capable of taking care of herself. Frankly, Captain Stacy didn’t have the right to try to dictate her life like that, deathbed or no.
For me even worse than the basketball scene was when Peter and Gwen were in the bleachers by the football field and he casually tossed the football so hard it bent the goal post. But I guess if they cut away from it fast enough we don’t have to wonder why nobody questioned Peter about that.
I too had my doubts and concerns so soon after the almost perfect Raimi version. Wasn’t really intending on seeing it, but decided to give it a chance when some friends wanting to see it invited me to come along. Didn’t think it was that bad, but not great either, though I may be among the very few who preferred it over Homecoming. I largely agree with CLB’s assessment, largely concerning Emma Stone being a vast improvement over Kirsten Dunst in terms of performance and characterization. Was also pleased to see Flash closer in line to the comic character, not the seemingly unredemptive one dimensional bully portrayed by Raimi. I felt Sally Field was miscast, I mean I know she’s the right age, but maybe I’m biased towards May’s tradional looks as the comics version always reminded me of my grandmother. Also KRAD, many Science, and other “specialty” high schools do offer athletic programs as ordinary high schools do…
I was just reminded of something that’s always bothered me. Keith, maybe some comic background info on my question? Why are Uncle Ben and Aunt May so old? I don’t even know who is the sibling between Ben/May and Peter’s parents. Was there a large age gap between them? Did Peter’s parents have them well into their 40s? They’re usually represented as really old, especially Raimi’s version. I loved what the MCU did with Marisa Tomei :)
@9 Austin Or maybe Ben was just that much older than Peter’s father, or heck maybe like myself not being an Uncle until I was almost 40…
Though Austin, I’ve always wondered why it was created for Peter to have been raised by an Aunt and Uncle as opposed to parents (or even grandparents who Ben and May had more of a resemblance to)…Maybe the Father beingkilled by a criminal was thought to be too much like Batman’s origin…
Austin: Ben Parker is Richard Parker’s older brother. May’s maiden name is Reilly (which is why the clone of Spider-Man took on the name “Ben Reilly”). Richard is much younger than Ben, as drawn, at least.
Also keep in mind that Ben and May were created in 1962. Ben and May were likely intended to be in their 50s then, and that’s what people in their 50s often looked like. (Still do, sometimes.) But health, medicine, and nutrition are all better now than they were half a century ago, so now a 53-year-old is more likely to look like Marsa Tomei than Rosemary Harris (who was 75 when Spider-Man came out in 2002).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Christopher: I’m a sucker for normal-people-help-the-hero sequences, too, but I’m still trying to figure out how that actually helped Spidey. As far as I can see, the only person helped by that sequence was Wrenn, who was able to use the bathroom without actually missing anything significant in the movie.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who doubts that Marc Webb was considering my future wife’s bladder when filming that sequence….
I went into this movie fairly skeptical about the need for a Spidey reboot, but emerged pretty pleased with the outcome. For me, the Raimi films really emulate the tone of the 1960s Lee-Ditko and Lee-Romita comics, whereas a lot of the tone of Webb’s first film is reminiscent of Brian Bendis and Mark Bagley’s early Ultimate Spider-Man run. I definitely prefer the Stan Lee stuff, but Bendis’ run is nothing to turn one’s nose up at.
I mentioned in one of the previous Spidey rewatches that Sally Field is my favorite of the Aunt Mays. It’s definitely helped by the fact that we get to see more of her and Ben interacting.
The love story between Peter and Gwen works largely based on the chemistry of the actors. I like the fact that in this movie, Gwen has more than MJ ever had to do in terms of saving the day.
Dont get me wrong – I like Spider-Man: Homecoming just fine, but I do think that it’s a shame the sequel to this film dropped the ball so badly. There’s enough of an interesting setup here that they could’ve come up with something that would’ve at least rivaled the Raimi films in terms of quality.
This was a movie with acceptable action, but an awful script, and the WORST-written Peter Parker ever. He’s a jerk, a complete a*hole. He becomes Spider-Man through a criminal action, sneaking into OsCorp’s research area (plus, ruining the other kid’s tour), which completely undermines the character. Poor Andrew Garfield, he deserved better.
“The promises you can’t keep are the best kind”? UGH.
Oh, and no “with great power…”, despite being teased. And the skateboarding just SCREAMS they wanted to be hip. I also rememeber thinking how Connor’s computer animation in his hideout to show the mass-lizarding plan was pretty stupid.
I suspect the crane sequence was inspired by a Spider-Man videogame for PlayStation that had something much like it (basically, they’re just there for Spidey to use as platforms, but still).
@6 – Chris: The banter was one of the things they got right. And yes, Peter doesn’t have the right to promise to Captain Stacy he’ll leave Gwen alone, because she’s a person. But making the entire point of him saying that the best promises are those that you break, that is not cool.
@13 – krad: HAHAHAHA!
@14 – Twels: Whoa, no. This film spectacularly fails to be like Ultimate Spider-Man. It tries, by being different than the original comics (by way of having to be different to Raimi’s first movie), and having Peter be “hipper”, but it still doesn’t read at all like Bendis/Bagley.
Constructed web shooters versus organic. Only thing this movie did right. Well, those and Emma Stone.
Christopher: I’m curious, since you didn’t mention it, and it’s something I know you care about — no comment on the fact that Peter got into OsCorp via theft and fraud, ruining poor Gustavo’s shot at an internship or on the fact that the first time he uses his powers on other people it’s on a bunch of people on the subway who didn’t actually do anything bad?
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Poor Gustavo. That’s a supervillain in the making.
@13/krad: The intent was that the cranes gave him an easy straight-line path to Oscorp Tower. IIRC, a lot of the intervening buildings were relatively low, so he couldn’t have gotten very long weblines going, and that would’ve slowed him down — particularly considering that this Spidey is more of a novice at navigating the city by webline than the one you and I have written in prose. Getting a number of consistently high anchoring points for his webs let him go much further with each swing and build up more speed.
Granted, you could argue that the time it took to set it up negated that advantage. But I appreciated the idea. Really, the whole premise of Spidey swinging from the corners of buildings is physically problematical, because his fulcrums are off to the side of his direction of motion, which would pull him sideways. Not to mention the unpredictable updrafts on the sides of skyscrapers, which realistically would make it next to impossible to get a long, lightweight strand of webbing to get anywhere near making contact with the point where he aimed it, if at all. The crane sequence made more physical sense to me than the way his swinging is normally portrayed.
As for your question in #17, I honestly don’t remember those plot details. I liked the movie when I saw it, but I don’t think I’ve actually seen it since.
That’s right, you two have written Spidey professionally, it’s cool to have you in the conversation.
Adding on to (and agreeing with) what Christopher said in @19. Spidey was also already injured in this scene, webbing up a wound on his leg, and clearly limping, falling while climbing buildings, etc. The easier approach provided by the cranes made it easier/quicker for him to make it to Oscorp, and not waste another half hour climbing rooftops to get there, bleeding the whole way. I figure if he tried to web-swing off of the buildings, he’d have to zig-zag for more as well. The cranes provide a straight-line path.
I always viewed the “subway fight” as him learning how to control his response to the Spider-sense. Especially when you consider how apologetic he is throughout.
Also, MaGnUs, I’d say that there’s more than a passing resemblance to the Ultimate Spidey, what with more emphasis on Peter’s parents, the conversion from spies to scientists and the more goth-y take on Peter. Hell, Andrew Garfield even LOOKS like a Mark Bagley drawing come to life. Even the relationship (at least in the school scenes) feels more like Pete and MJ in the Ultimate books than anything like the Peter/Gwen relationship in the comics. But obviously, your mileage may – and does – vary.
Like I said earlier, overall the Raimi films are still my favorite (the first two anyway), but I didn’t dislike this one at all.
I didn’t dislike the movie but haven’t felt the need to watch it again. Possibly because I don’t find Parker in this as compelling a character as Maguire’s dorky but likable loser. They tried to make him too cool. Garfield’s Spider-Man makes me think of Poochie the Rockin Dog with web shooters. Well, maybe not quite that bad, but you get my meaning.
And as others have pointed out, enough with the origin stories! Especially when it’s just ten years from each other. Pretty sure my own elderly aunt knows the origin of Spider-Man by now.
Never thought Peter looked “goth-y” in Ultimate Spider-Man, or that Garfield looks like a Bagley character. Can’t agree, yeah. YMMV.
I was pretty underwhelmed by this entry (and the sequel), but I’m not much of a Spidey-fan. I did kind of like Andrew Garfield – with his high forehead and big glasses, he looks very Steve Ditko to me. Foreheads were Ditko’s signature move, of course. He also reminded me a little of James Dean, with the glasses and hunched shoulders.
Shame about the plot.
@21/grenadier: Good point about Spidey being injured — I’d forgotten that.
@22/Twels: I think most modern Marvel movies draw on the Ultimate comics to one degree or another, which makes sense, since the Ultimate Universe and the movies are both trying to do the same thing — retell the classic stories in a modernized, distilled way.
#9… That actually happens in real life, and Ben and May’s generation, specifically.
My Mom, for example, was one of eleven children, the third-youngest… and her oldest sibling was already 20 when Mom was born. Aunt Betty was the same age as my grandparents when I was born, and the first time I can recall seeing her was when I was 9, close to Peter’s age. Betty was 52.
Combine that with the fact that Peter’s parents are both Doctoral-level scientists, they likely *did* have him later in their lives, meaning that Ben could easily be in his 60s when he died.
Garfield was a better Spider-Man, but Tobey Maguire was a much better Peter Parker. The thing with Spider-Man is, Peter in his civilian identity normally will be this pushover, self-destroying but gold-hearted person others can’t help but walking all over without a second thought, while as Spider-Man he can cut loose with his id and turn into this snarking, often insulting and sarcastic smart-aleck who, while well intentioned and still extremely self-sacrificing, may come off as a jerk to people around him who don’t know about his secret. Out of the two actors, one got the point of an identity but not the other, and viceversa, and really, it was only Tom Holland who found the balance between the two.
Curt Connors loses a lot as a character without the wife and the son.
I liked this one, although it was a bit quick to reboot the series. The cast was great, and Emma Stone was the perfect Gwen. I am old enough to remember when Pete and Gwen first met, so it was nice to have a movie where she was his first girlfriend, the way I remembered it from the comics. I came out thinking that if the sequel did as well as this one did, the franchise would be in good shape.
This is a textbook example of a movie that didn’t need to happen.
Honestly. Sony should have made their current deal with Marvel much sooner, it’s costing neither company anything and it would’ve spared us the truly terrible sequel released years later.
@27,
My family is similar. My grandmother had her first child – my mother – when she was 19. She had her last child – my aunt – at 40. My aunt is two years older than me. We grew up together and she’s more like my sister.
@27/Pufnstuf: My oldest uncle was 15 years older than my father, and my father was 35 when I was born. So I can buy a 15-year-old Peter having a 60-something uncle and aunt.
EDIT: @31/ragnar: I had an old friend who was legally adopted by his grandparents because his mother had him as a teenager. He grew up thinking of his biological mother as his older sister. Which meant he was technically his own uncle.
@28/OverMaster: Garfield was definitely a better Spidey, but I don’t think Maguire was a good Peter. I think Peter was rewritten to fit the things Maguire does well.
@30/spencer-malley: I gather that when this movie was made, Sony and Marvel did have some discussions about implicitly linking it to the MCU — I think the makers of The Avengers considered incorporating this movie’s Oscorp Tower into their digital Manhattan as an Easter egg, but the timing of the VFX production didn’t work out so they weren’t able to do it.
spencer-malley: We’ll be talking about that horrible sequel next week, worry not. :)
Twels and MaGnUs: Interesting that you mention Bagley’s artwork, as the Spider-suit was reworked in ASM2 to look almost exactly the way Bagley drew it…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I had a discussion with friends once about whether Peter is really supposed to be as sad and pathetic as Maguire portrayed him, so I went back and looked at some of the Lee/Ditko and Lee/Romita issues, and if anything, Maguire isn’t nearly pathetic enough. Things were always terrible for Peter — everybody hated Spider-Man (not just Jameson: the police, Aunt May, the Fantastic Four, even Betty Brant). He constantly had money problems. He grades were slipping (shown somewhat in the movies, but not where he might fail to graduate, as the comics portrayed). And of course Aunt May was always hospitalized, or somehow on the verge of dropping dead, a trend that went out of fashion the last time the comics resurrected her in the 90s, and the movies never really adopted. As Spider-Man, he was almost always written as the underdog. He was constantly getting badly hurt or trapped in situations he couldn’t survive, so that he could call upon his inner strength and determination to win through. And Peter complained about it all, constantly. The “old Parker luck” wasn’t a joke; Peter really felt like the universe was out to get him.
If memory serves, this was one of the last couple scores from the late, great James Horner. After hearing the incredibly percussive scores from the likes of Hans Zimmer that tended to dominate a lot of summer fare around that time (“BWWWAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!”), it was refreshing to hear the kind of lighter – but no less exciting – touch that Horner could bring to an action scene. Granted, there were moments in which Horner went back to some tropes of his (the end credits have a moment nearly identical to one that occurs near the end of his end credits score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
Totally unrelated bit of trivia, but one of the worst mistakes in movie history was likely made when Sean Connery vetoed Irvin Kershner’s choice of James Horner to score the unofficial James Bond film “Never Say Never Again” in favor of the truly awful Michel LeGrand. Almost totally unrelated to the main topic, but still …
@34/Brian: Yeah, but that’s exactly why I didn’t think Maguire’s gentle fecklessness was quite right for Peter. As you say, Peter complained a lot. He wasn’t just sad, he was angry and frustrated. That was the foundation of his whole story arc in Amazing Fantasy #15. There, he was bitter and angry at the world, which was why he used his powers so selfishly before Uncle Ben died. As I’ve said before, that first story taken in isolation isn’t really a superhero story, but is more in the vein of the horror and sci-fi short stories from Marvel’s anthology comics, where the lead character’s hubris leads to an ironic comeuppance at the end. Maybe Garfield’s Peter had too much of an angry edge, but Maguire’s had too little. And at least Garfield had the fast-talking, wisecracking attitude.
@35/Twels: I did find Horner’s score here surprisingly good (I got tired of the sameness of his scores decades ago, but he seemed to have developed more range by this point), but I was even more surprised by how much I liked Hans Zimmer’s score to the sequel. Zimmer’s a hard composer to pin down, since he’s good at adapting his style to the preferences of different directors, so some of his scores (particularly his DC superhero scores) can be quite dull and minimalist and blaring, while others (e.g. Sherlock Holmes) can be strikingly innovative and lively and fascinating. I found his ASM2 score closer to the latter.
Not great, but not terrible, either. The best aspect is finally getting a Spider-Man who wisecracks like he’s supposed to. The portrayal of Peter as a mopey young man who only truly confides in his strong girlfriend was certainly an overture to the Twilight crowd, but I didn’t mind it so much, particularly as the latter element had in fact been introduced to the mythos in the pages of Ultimate Spider-Man (albeit with Mary Jane, rather than Gwen, as the trusted partner).
Unfortunately, the picture looks surprisingly cheap for an intended summer blockbuster. And I hate the unnecessary embellishments to the traditional Spidey costume, which make him look like a figure skater. (The outfit is to classic Spider-Man as the Henry Cavill Superman costume is to iconic Kal-El.)
Still, a largely respectable reboot. Which begs the question of how they could drop the ball so badly in the sequel. I mean, sheesh!
I’m trying to ignore the horrors to come and concentrate on this one and…the first act still sucked. I sat there watching the same beats as the movie ten years ago played out. Peter gets bitten by a spider in a lab after flirting with the love interest. Peter humiliates Flash with his new powers. Peter practises his powers on a rooftop. Uncle Ben delivers a homily about responsibility that Peter ignores at the time but later embraces. Peter allows a robbery to happen because the victim was just a dick to him. (Significantly, a departure from the original origin story, where Peter just couldn’t be bothered to help.) Uncle Ben gets shot by the fleeing robber and dies in Peter’s arms.
It picked up when it actually started telling its own story. It’s an interesting choice to have us follow Peter on his journey to become a hero, rather than immediately becoming selfless when Uncle Ben dies. (That’s possibly why, tonal awkwardness aside, his letting the intern get kicked out doesn’t jar: He’s not the Peter Parker we know yet.) He becomes a masked vigilante to get vengeance, only stopping criminals as a by product and messing up the police’s work. Then he comes across the incident on the bridge and the Lizard, and it’s at that point that he realises that with great power comes great responsibility, as he abandons his vendetta to help people and stop a villain that the police can’t handle.
I’m surprised krad is so critical of the crane sequence, because it’s exactly the sort of “ordinary people help out the hero” sequence that this rewatch normally praises: He’s injured, he can’t do his usual swinging thing, and it provides him with a useable path to OsCorp. (It’s also a nice touch that it’s inspired by Peter’s first moment of true heroism, when he decided to help people instead of just beat up bad guys.) I also buy Captain Stacy’s turnaround because it comes when he sees Spider-Man is Peter: He’s no longer a literally faceless vigilante, he’s someone he’s spoken to and had in his home and who he knows cares about Gwen, so he trusts him to look after her. He trusts him again at the end, but Peter’s right to let Gwen make the choice. Unfortunately, the next film goes out of its way to try and make him wrong.
I did find it amusing that the makers made a big deal about introducing Gwen as “Peter’s first love”, as though they were somehow being more faithful to the comics by using her instead of Mary Jane…even though she was someone he didn’t meet until 1965, long after he’d left high school. It would have been interesting if they’d been brave enough to use Liz Allan, Peter’s actual high school love interest!
@38/cap-mjb: Good points there. I remember a lot of people complained “Hey, Ben didn’t say ‘With great power’ etc., so it’s wrong!” Forgetting that it wasn’t until 1987 that the line was established as a saying of Ben’s in the comics (though a 1972 record album did it first) and originally it was just the closing line of the narration in the origin story. Whether Ben (or anyone) speaks the words or not is beside the point; what matters is that Peter learns the lesson they convey. And as you say, this film approaches that lesson, not as a pat catchphrase, but as a journey that Peter goes on throughout the film. Which is actually a pretty good approach to it.
I remeber when seeing this in theaters figuring out 3 things.
1. The casting was superb, Right down the line I believe every character was cast to be played by a better actor.
2. The script was just bad. For all the conversations about who is the better spiderman/peter parker one was written specifically for the actor chosen to make the most of his talents, and the other was given not much to work with and still pulls off something close the previous. So many weird “just to be different” story moments, In the end there was too much similar to the raimi films yet too much different, as if every decision they made in the script should have been different should have chosen something else.
3. The Rami films hadn’t aged well. Because the MCU had shown such potential, and this film despite being worse that Raimi’s first 2, showed glimpses of that potential, I haven’t been able to force myself to sit through any of the raimi movie since. They were great for the time period, but will just keep fading into the background of the genre unlike the origonal 70’s superman, or Tim Burton Batman( heck even the Adam west Batman). You can argue about holland and homecoming, but the MCU will keep this current version of spiderman propped up in as long as the MCU keeps going.
cap-mjb: My issues with the crane sequence were twofold. One, yes he was injured, but it was a bullet wound to the calf. Swinging would actually be better for him under those circumstances, because he wouldn’t be putting any weight on his injured leg. Plus, of course, if the injury was so bad, why didn’t it affect his ability to fight the Lizard? Also, like every other scene in this damn movie, it took too long. The issue isn’t with what was going on, but rather the execution.
Kasiki: Having very recently rewatched the Raimi films, I completely disagree with your third point. I think the first one still works fine, and the issues with #2 and #3 were ones that were there from jump. I enjoyed the first one just as much in 2018 as I did in 2002, and the parts of #2 I liked, I still liked 15 years later as well.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@41/krad: “Swinging would actually be better for him under those circumstances, because he wouldn’t be putting any weight on his injured leg.”
That’s exactly the point, though. Trying to get to Oscorp Tower across the irregular buildings available would’ve required running and wall-crawling as well as swinging, making it more difficult in his injured condition. The crane path allowed him to travel purely by several long, fast swings. And that reduced the stress on his leg so that he was in better condition once he got to the tower. He was probably fighting the pain of the injury during his battle with the Lizard, but because he’d had that chance to rest his leg (or at least not subject it to further stress) on the way, he was better able to withstand the pain when it counted.
@CLB #37…Been a while since I’ve seen it, but I do seem to recall the “With great power…” quote being used in the origin telling episode of the 1960s cartoon series, some years before the record album…Didn’t quite realize it wasn’t part of the comics continuity until the late 80s…
I forgave a lot about the movie because Garfield was an awesome Spider-Man. He delivered a Spider-Man that was a complete smart ass, as he should be.
Now a great Peter Parker.. not so much.
@krad
Here is the thing with it not holding up. For me Toby just was meh as both. So I never latched on to the point I have latched on to many ofthe superheros that have come since. It is as if they made the part for him, but he never made the part his own.
So I always had a disconnect. At the time it didn’t matter because it was still the best available. It was the best of what we could expect. Then the first Nolan Batman Movies and a few Phase 1 MCU movies come around. They elevate the entire genre. It was elevated to the point that everything I loved in the first 2 Raimi spiderman movies lost their luster. Many of the parts i loved, I now find annoying.( I am not saying Amaxing spiderman is better, it just shed a spotlight on it for me) .
At the time of the Raimi Spiderman movies, 1 and 2 would have been among the best of the genre, By the amazing spiderman a cold bath on my nostalgia made me realize they might not even be in the top 10. It has only gotten worse from there. At this point how many MCU movies are worse that Raimi’s spiderman 1 and 2? To me(and it is subjective) 2 maybe 3?
Did we ever think that those spiderman movies would ever that low? I would need to see a list of all comic superhero movies, but they might not be in my top half of that list now,which is scary on some level, but also proof that as a genre it has exploded in a great way for the fans.
@krad and @CLB
Okay, noting that we’re talking a comic-book injury that in no way acts like a real injury probably should, but swinging at the end of a line will not “rest” an injured leg. If anything, it will make it worse. Think of a line of skaters “snapping the whip”. The folks on the end are under the greatest stress, which if you’re swinging on a line, is your legs and feet and the bottom of the swing. The longer and faster the swing, the more pressure and stress the legs wind up taking. Maybe different from “putting weight on the leg” in the traditional sense, but the force is definitely still there and actually far greater at points than if the guy was on the ground walking. And you can’t just let your injured leg rest as dead-weight during the swing, because it’s your legs that you use to guide and control the swing in the first place, and give you an extra “kick” in your momentum. (Also, given the forces operating on the bottom of the swing, pushing your blood towards your toes, while you have a big hole in your lower leg for it to leak out of?) Wall-crawling and jumping from building to building, on the other hand, you could pretty conceivably do by three points, both hands and the good leg, thus actually resting the injured leg. The downside being it would take longer to get to wherever you were going.
@43/captpaul: The “with great power” quote was the final line in the narration of Spidey’s debut story in 1962, so the line itself has always been there. But it was originally just the writer speaking to the readers, and then was later used as part of Peter’s own internal monologue. What I’m saying is that the words weren’t attributed to Uncle Ben specifically until the 1972 record and then the 1987 comic. So the people who complained that it was wrong for Uncle Ben not to say it in this movie were off-base, because it doesn’t matter whether Ben says the words, it matters whether Peter learns the principle they convey.
@47/CLB Gotcha, thanks for the clarification!
Count me among those who still find the first two Raimi films better than this one or even Homecoming. For me, the first couple Raimi films definitely captured the heart of the Lee-Ditko-Romita era of Spider-Man, which is for me the best Spidey ever got in a lot of ways. I still maintain that this film has a lot more of Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man in its DNA, which is perfectly ok.
I have to say That though I liked Homecoming a lot and found that Tom Holland was great in the role, I’m not quite sure where some of the creative decisions came from. Sure, the Tony Stark mentorship comes from Civil War and Ned is basically Ganke from the Miles Morales book, but the young Aunt May and some other choices felt a lot like they were done just to be different from the other flicks. I get that marvel knew they could count on the fact that after 5 otheer films, fans knew the basics. Still, Peter felt a LOT like Tony Stark Jr., and I’m not sure that that was a great look on him.
@49/Twels: Marisa Tomei is in her early 50s. As Keith said, back in the 1960s, people in their 50s were often fairly aged and frail, while these days, they tend to be much more healthy and young-looking, because we aren’t prematurely aging ourselves with tobacco, alcohol, and air pollution to the same extent anymore. So the change isn’t about doing things differently from the previous movies, it’s just about accurately reflecting what a teenager’s aunt is likely to look like in modern times.
Tony’s mentorship of Peter predates Civil War in the comics. It developed during Spidey’s stint in the New Avengers, which started a year or so before Civil War in real time. And I think that was building on a prior history they’d built up gradually over time, since both characters are among the Marvel Universe’s numerous genius-inventor heroes.
@50: Yeah, Ms. Tomei’s over 50, but I’ve always seen Aunt May being past her 50s. She’s always presented to me as a woman at least in her late 60s, especially based on the number of heart attacks ol’ Doc Bromwell had to fix back in the day – plus the fact that in the comics, she went and married J. Jonah Jameson’s father. I’ve always assumed that Richard Parker was likely a “change of life baby” given that Ben was so much older.
That said, I do know what you mean about 50 being younger than it used to be (and not just because I’m less than 5 years away from it). Consider that Rain Wilson is a full 20 years older than Roger C. Carmel was at the time he played Harry Mudd on Star Trek and yet Wilson is convincingly playing a version of the character that is 10 years younger than Carmel’s version …
@51/Twels: “but I’ve always seen Aunt May being past her 50s.”
But that’s exactly my point. She looks older to us today than she did to readers in the ’60s, because assumptions about aging have changed so much. We don’t see 50s as old anymore, but people back then did.
A prime example is Star Trek: “The Deadly Years,” and I talked about this in Keith’s rewatch for that. When Kirk was aged to the point that he was physically decrepit and suffering severe mental impairment, the computer assessed his physiological age as “between 60 and 72.” But Picard was 60 in TNG’s second season (a decade older than Patrick Stewart) and 74 in Nemesis, and he was portrayed as physically and mentally robust the entire time. That shows how much our expectations of aging changed in just a generation or two.
What I don’t understand is that Peter was only a high school student in the comics for the first few years after he was introduced. For most of the character’s history, he’s been a college student or a full-blown grownup. So why does every movie series have to reset him back to the beginning? This film would have been so much better if it had forgotten about the origin story and started with Peter in grad school or whatever.
If I had to guess, they keep resetting Peter Parker as a teenager for the movies because these movies — and movies in general now — are largely marketed towards and consumed by teenagers.
Leo: What’s funny is that the one onscreen version that didn’t have Peter in high school when he got bit is the 1977 Nicholas Hammond TV movie. He was a graduate student there.
https://www.tor.com/2017/08/24/with-great-power-comes-great-boredom-spider-man-1977-and-dr-strange-1978/
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Even if flashbacks seemed to point to him having been bitten during high school (or not? He was still pretty jacked back then), Peter Parker was also a college student for the whole duration of the 1994 FOX Spider-Man animated series, which for many was a defining incarnation of the character, for all its flaws. For a long while it was the longest reaching cross media depiction of the character until the Sam Raimi movies.
Wasn’t he already a high school graduate in the Ralph Bakshi series too? I honestly don’t remember.
While I don’t have a problem with the movie versions of Peter being a high-school student, I decided to look up when he graduated, just for context.
Peter graduated high school in Amazing Spider-Man #28, dated September 1965. There’s some evidence that in the first years of Marvel, Stan and company were trying to stick to real time, and the Marvel sliding timescale didn’t take effect until later. The only supporting characters who Peter went to high school with are Liz Allen and Flash Thompson.
In contrast, he graduated college in Amazing Spider-Man #178, dated October 1978 (an issue I had when it came out, as six-year-old me had a subscription as a gift from my grandmother). Note that although he attended the graduation ceremony in that issue, he didn’t actually receive a diploma, as he was a credit shy of his Phys. Ed. requirement, because of his habit of cutting class to fight super-villains. (See the discussion of “Parker luck” earlier in this thread.) He made it up later. Classic characters Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborne were Peter’s college classmates, and although Mary Jane wasn’t attending college, Peter met her during that period.
You can make a good argument that there’s not a lot of textual evidence to support the idea that Peter Parker is a character who belongs in high school. However, the Ultimate version of Peter Parker spent much longer in high school, and we’ve noted that the movies often draw from the Ultimate versions of the characters.
@57/Brian: I’ve noted this pattern across all of Marvel Comics. In the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, the trend was usually to keep moving forward with the characters’ lives. In things like the X-Men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and so on, you’d get ongoing changes in team composition and the characters’ status quo. And characters who died generally stayed dead, though not always. But then you got more and more comics creators coming in who were nostalgic for the comics they’d grown up reading, so they started resetting the teams and the characters back to their classic status quo. And ever since then, that tendency to periodically reset everything has dominated over the older practice of allowing permanent change to occur.
Something similar happened at DC. In the Silver and Bronze Ages, the characters went through ongoing, lasting change — Clark, Lois, and Jimmy moved from the Daily Planet to Galaxy Broadcasting, Jimmy became a successful and world-famous investigative reporter, Robin joined the Titans and became Nightwing, Batman moved from Wayne Manor to a skyscraper penthouse, etc. But when they did eventually reset things, they reset everything, rebooting the whole universe with Crisis on Infinite Earths and then several more times since then. And whatever change was made in one reboot is usually rolled back in a later reboot, because you still get waves of new creators who are nostalgic for the comics of their youth and want to bring back what was lost.
So comics used to move mostly forward, but for the past few decades they’ve been in a loop of constant resets driven by nostalgia. There’s some hope that may change, with the surge in popularity of new characters like Miles Morales, Kamala Khan, Damien Wayne, and the like, but it may only be a matter of time before the next generation of fans-turned-creators tries to push things back toward the classic characters. Sometimes I think fans are the last people who should be allowed to become creators of the things they’re fans of, because their nostalgia and favoritism tends to push the storylines in artificial directions.
@58: I definitely agree with your point about the reset button being heavily used of late. I used to love the fact that there was a ton of history behind most Marvel and DC books, with numbering in the 100’s of issues. Now, every time a new creative team takes over a book at Marvel, it’s time for a new No. 1 issue (and then when they figure out that they’re near a centennial Mark you jump from #5 to #700).
I definitely understand your feelings about the fans as creators problem – or as I like to think of it, “the Geoff Johns Syndrome.” Johns did more to erase progress in the DC Universe than any other creator. Kyle Rayner and all his progress as Green Lantern? Gone in favor of bringing back Hal Jordan. Wally West as Flash? Gone. The Justice Society? Gone. He hit the reset in both Infinite Crisis and (especially) the awful Flashpoint. Funny enough, right before all that, with JSA, he was one of my favorite creators, but still …
On the other hand, a guy like Dan Slott, who was a genuine Spider-Man fanboy, managed to come up with one of the better Spidey runs of my time reading the book.
For me, these types of movies would do well to go the James Bond route and just swap out actors when they get too old or uninterested in carrying on …
@59/Twels: I don’t really mean to say fans shouldn’t get to write the things they love — that would be pretty hypocritical coming from me, since I’ve been a Star Trek tie-in writer for 15 years and a Star Trek fan for 45 years — but it’s important to resist one’s fannish impulses, one’s affinities and nostalgia, and put the needs of storytelling first. Writers often need to “kill their darlings” for the good of the story, but fandom is about nurturing one’s darlings, so it’s something a professional writer needs to be able to turn off when it comes to doing the job.
@60: I’d also say, though, that sometimes fans themselves get hung up with what they expect a property should be like. I’m recalling the furor over Daniel Craig becoming James Bond or even some of the freak outs over alleged violations of canon on Star Trek: Discovery (and Enterprise before that). And on the uglier side, of course, there are those fans who were so vehement in their dislike of the direction of the new Star Wars films that they hurled insults (and worse) at the actors.
I do think, though, that this film – and it’s truly terrible sequel – are doomed to the dustbin of film history. The first series had the benefit of setting up things on the silver screen. The new series has the advantage of bringing Spider-Man into the incredibly successful MCU. It’s a shame that the sequel was so terrible , because there was a lot of potential for an interesting continuing series of films established here. It wouldn’t be too hard to imagine the Venom symbiote coming out of Richard Parker’s research, a la the Ultimate Spider-Man comics.
@61/Twels: Well, those are extreme cases that get amplified by the Internet. People who actually manage to become professional writer-producers are usually more stable than that. But they can still be prone to fannish self-indulgence.
And it wasn’t just Enterprise, Kelvin, and Discovery. Plenty of TOS fans (and actors) vehemently objected to TNG and weren’t won over for years. And I once saw a 1982 letter to Starlog insisting that the two Trek movies that then existed couldn’t possibly be in the same reality as the TV series because everything looked so different. There is nothing new under the sun.
Doctor Who fans in 2005: “They can’t possibly replace Christopher Eccleston! This David Tennant guy is just a mod poofter! He’ll suck!”
Doctor Who fans in 2009: “They can’t possibly replace David Tennant! This Matt Smith guy is just an emo teenager! He’ll suck!”
Doctor Who fans in 2012: “They can’t possibly replace Matt Smith! This Peter Capaldi guy’s so ooooooooooooold! He’ll suck!”
Nothing changes………..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I haven’t seen the film, and probably won’t given the review. So the only thing of interest I can add is recalling that there was quite a bit of hype for this film, which is unusual as studios nowadays play down the hype when they have a dud film on their hands. Maybe they thought spider man films would have a good audience anyway.
@64 – on further reflection, you might be trying your hand at sarcasm, but if you’re serious: the movie was hardly a dud. It’s got 72% on Rotten Tomatoes and made over $750 million worldwide. It’s flawed, but it wasn’t a catastrophe.
Seeing some comments and reflecting on my own feelings about the movie (generally good), I’ve just come to wonder how the film would have been percieved if Raimi’s version (or no previous version) had been made. I suppose the only real difference would be that Webb would have been freer to do a more traditional origin story with it not having been previously done. IMO, seems all along coming so soon after Raimi’s version, lent itself too much to comparisons, however fair or unfair. As noted, did well enough at the box office, though not fully embraced by fans, really wonder how different perceptions would be if this really was the first Spider-Man theatrical/feature film…
@66: as noted above, the movie got a pretty warm reception at the time of its release. There was generally the sense (rightly or wrongly) that the Raimi films and Tobey Maguire had generally run their course.
I think where Sony made two big mistakes following the release of this film. The first was in creating the VASTLY inferior sequel, which undid all the progress in terms of differentiating ASM from the Raimi flicks by bringing Harry Osborn and the Green Goblin back. The second was in immediately making it known that they were planning a “cinematic universe” based solely on Spider-Man characters.
I do think that this movie holds up well to multiple viewings. Some things, it does better than the Raimi movies (Aunt May and Uncle Ben), some it does worse (main villain and his motivations). If it had been the first Spider-Man film ever, I’m still not sure that it could’ve oversome what came next in the series though. ASM 2 is genuinely awful.
I still maintain, as I said in the rewatch, that this should’ve just been the fourth movie in the series, taking place after Spider-Man 3. You could have established that Peter and MJ broke up and she moved to California to pursue her acting, and Peter meets Gwen in college (just like he did in the comics). You could slice out the origin stuff, keep in the stuff about his parents (since they were a non-factor in the Raimi films), and still do more or less the same movie without twisting into a pretzel to avoid repeating what was done ten years earlier.
Really looking forward to reading people’s comments on Friday about ASM2. (Spoiler alert: my review is not positive……)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@68: Then we could’ve had a moment where Spidey gets beat up early in the film, then whips off his mask to say to the audience that “This never happened to the other fella” prior to a smash cut to the credits …
I mean, Andrew Garfield at this point is the George Lazenby of Spider-Man, right … ?
For some reason I never saw this movie when it came out. I will say, though, that I remember the word on the street at the time being that this was a very “amazing” movie. Remember talking to my sister on the phone – she had a mega-glowing review, mainly focusing on Peter & Gwen’s chemistry and just how “fun!” the movie was. So at least some people really enjoyed this movie at the time! I eventually saw it and I thought it was…fine? Serviceable at least. I have a soft spot for Raimi’s films, since they came out when I was in high school…and so the nostalgia is strong with them! I still enjoy popping in Raimi’s films now and again. This one…haven’t rewatched it since seeing it once. I still don’t think it was terrible though.
KRAD, agreed they could’ve gone the route of recasting and creative team changes and kept some form of continuity, similar to the aforementioned Bond and the Burton/Schumaker Batman and have success with that…Though speaking of the latter, Nolan rebirthed Batman on screen less than ten years after the original Warner series fizzled our, maybe Sony/Marvel saw that as influence to blow up the Raimi series and start a new one relatively so soon after…
capt_paul77: Not really a similar thing, as the Bat-franchise was actually crying out for a reboot, or at least to pretend that Joel Schumacher never actually made Batman movies. The Nolan reboot was inspired by Batman Forever and Batman & Robin being soul-crushingly horrible. The Webb reboot of Spidey was inspired by, er, um, Sam Raimi not being involved anymore? It just didn’t have any good impetus. I mean, yeah, Spider-Man 3 was dire, but not that dire…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This film is the poster child for misguided executive meddling. Who reboots a successful franchise less than five years after the last film?
Keith already pointed it out, but I’ll reiterate. There is no reason this shouldn’t have been Spider-Man 4. We’d been following Dylan Baker – a terrific actor – as Curt Connors for two films. I was primed to see him becoming the Lizard. It could have been a great film about betrayal and regret, seeing Maguire’s version of Peter coping up with seeing a friend and mentor becoming someone he’d have to ultimately destroy.
Instead, we got this. There was no discernible reason for Sony to just drop all the hard work and progress made on the Sam Raimi films. This wasn’t a Batman and Robin/Begins scenario. Spider-Man 3 had flaws, but it also had strengths. Most importantly, the film made a LOT of money for Sony. Everything implied it was to continue. They could have even killed Dunst’s MJ in the fourth film (using the plot device meant for Gwen).
Alas, we’re saddled with these two Marc Webb entries. And given they’re so close in age to the Raimi films, you can’t help but feel the repeating story beats as it tries yet again to do a needless origin story. There’s a sense of been there/done that.
It’s a credit to Webb and the actors that the movie isn’t a disaster. In fact, it is quite watchable and does manage to capture the spirit of the comic books. And Horner delivers a very satisfying score.
But there are a lot of story contrivances and coincidences (how does a high-school girl have an internship in a major corporation, with complete security access?). And let’s not even mention that atrocious crane wielding sequence (which is a major ripoff of the bridge sequence from the first film, in terms of trying to recapture the whole ‘you mess with NY, you mess with us theme’, with Spidey getting help from civilians).
And is it just me or does this film try too hard to beat audiences over the head with a number of plot points and themes? The Spider-Man films were never really subtle, but this one really goes for overexplanation.
And despite all that, it’s not nearly as bad as it could have been. I don’t think Webb is half as good a visual director as Raimi, but he is capable of making the movie watchable, with plenty of charisma and personality. And surprisingly, I liked the sequel a bit more (not by much, though).
Final note: this came out in 2012. And Denis Leary’s Captain Stacy looked indistinguishable from Matthew Modine’s police captain from Dark Knight Rises.
(how does a high-school girl have an internship in a major corporation, with complete security access?
You’ve really never heard of summer internships in New York have you? They pay us teens a LOT these days
I was really loyal to the Raimi movies (and had loved Tobey as Spider-Man, although I do admit on re-watching them, there are a few times he does come off as a bit too…mopey and creepy Nice Guy-ish even if that’s totally unintentional. Sometimes that intense, longing stare is a little too intense…) and in general scratched my head at a reboot when we had a perfectly good rendition already that was still pretty fresh in the public consciousness- it seemed too soon.
Your description of the movie reminds me of so many of the reasons this movie didn’t make much of an impression, although I LOVE Emma Stone (and as much as I like Kirsten Dunst in general, I do think Emma’s Gwen is a much more compelling character), and I really like Andrew Garfield, and their chemistry together was amazing. I can appreciate that Garfield gives us a slightly more snarky Spider-Man but ultimately concur with a lot of the other discussion here on his characterization. He’s maybe not *quite* put upon enough as Peter Parker and seemed a little too ‘cool’ even if he was supposed to be a nerd. I do remember my husband liked that he showed more of the inventor-qualities. Overall though, I prefer the McGuire take on the character (I’m not a comic reader, for what it’s worth). (Holland ended up completely winning me over though…)
Oh, and I’m SO glad you mentioned the whole thing with the guy who got kicked out of his internship because that’s the kind of thing that bugs me/keeps me up at night. I guess I just tell myself that it got straightened out in the end
Having read the comments, I’ll just add a few more things:
1)It will be interesting to revisit the sequel, because I remember liking the sequel more than the original (I’ve only seen each of them once, years ago). The original, as I mentioned, I remember almost no details of. I didn’t even remember who the villain was until reading the review. I still remember quite a bit about the sequel (although there are some plot elements I’ve changed my mind about in the intervening yeras…)
2)All the talk about Parker luck, etc in the comics makes me immediately think of George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life, who is kind of my go-to character for the ‘grudgingly does the right thing’ trope.
@73/Eduardo: I guess I don’t understand the objections to doing a rebooted continuity shortly after the previous one, since it happens all the time in animation. Both Teen Titans and The Batman premiered while the DC Animated Universe was still around in Justice League Unlimited. Then after The Batman ended, we got Batman: The Brave and the Bold the following year and Young Justice two years after that, another case of two different continuities airing simultaneously. Then Beware the Batman the year after TB&TB ended, then Justice League Action 3 years after BtB ended. Heck, when I was a kid, Filmation’s New Adventures of Batman with Adam West and Burt Ward was running simultaneously with Hanna-Barbera’s Superfriends with Olan Soule and Casey Kasem as Batman and Robin.
Similarly, in animated Spider-Man shows, there was only a year between the John Semper Spider-Man and Spider-Man Unlimited, only 2 years between the end of SMU and the MTV New Animated Series, 5 years between that and The Spectacular Spider-Man, 3 years between that and Ultimate Spider-Man (even thought Spectacular was cancelled prematurely in order to clear the way for Ultimate, more or less), and less than a year between the end of Ultimate and the start of the current Marvel’s Spider-Man, all in different continuities. Not to mention that the MTV series purported to be a sequel to the first Raimi movie but was then ignored by the sequels.
@27/31 — As a guy whose oldest brother is twenty-one years older than me and whose oldest nephew is only two years younger, I’ve learned to tell store attendants that “I’m shopping for my nieces” when I’m shopping for my grand-nieces at Christmastime, simply to save the looks of confusion and math. So, yes, the Parker family tree makes sense to me (like me, Richard was likely a late surprise for his and Ben’s parents)
Woah! TLDR. I got to the mid 20’s (I wasn’t even paying enough attention to notice how far) before skipping to the end.
Suffice it to say, I wasn’t a particular fan of the Raimi movies and I’m not a major fan of this one either. I enjoyed them all at the time, but subsequent watches have felt hollower for all of them.
Things I liked about this one though:
– Spiderman becoming Spider-Man.
Garfield’s performance is much more akin comic book Spidey than Maguire’s was in the previous movies (and they wrote the name right too!).
– Peter Parker being Smart.
Maguire’s Spiderman was always being touted as smart, but he never really did smart. He doesn’t perform any feats of logic or intuition or do smart. Garfield’s Spider-Man is shown being clever. Using his powers in clever ways: doing clever things: Making things.
It might not seem like a lot, but at the time, those things made it a much better Spider-Man movie than Raimi had ever made. Of course, most of your ‘nit picks’ above hold water, it isn’t the greatest movie after all.
And then we get TASM2, which is apparently dire, but I was already so over Spider-Man films I still haven’t bothered to see it (and an amazing review from you, KRAD, will probably be the only reason I ever do).
Then came Tom Holland in the MCU, who really is an AMAZING Spider-Man, and I’m back actually on the bandwagon now.
@78. One of my father’s uncles is actually seven years younger than he is! Though, to be fair, that has as much to do with my great grandfather refusing to admit his age, even to himself. But hey, what self respecting septogenerian is going to knock the chance to shack up with a 20-something hottie? Especially when said hottie is demonstrably digging for your affection, not your gold.
@32 Christopher: Off-topic, but you’ve made me curious: did your friend know growing up that his mother was his mother? And if not, how old was he when he found out?
@81/Wyvern: I don’t remember the details. I lost touch with that friend decades ago. I think he told me that he found out in his teens, maybe. I met him in 9th grade and he told me this a few years into college. He sounded rather casual about it when he told me, and I don’t remember him going through any major existential crisis in the intervening years, so he probably knew before I met him.
@77/Christopher: I guess you could say it’s easier for me to overlook the constant rebooting that happens in animation. I recall X-Men Evolution came out only 3 years after the original animated series wrapped up.
At least to me, I tend to consider live-action entries as somewhat definitive ones (especially given there are gaps between films that sometimes go for years).
And seeing that illusion being broken in such a direct way can harm the experience a bit for me. It didn’t bother me as much with the Batman films since enough time had passed for me to embrace a new take on the character (and I enjoyed Forever despite the problems with the sequel). But there’s this sense that studios will toss a lot of hard work aside for little reason, and that to me only reinforces the fact that these films are made first and foremost for money, wrecking my personal illusion that it’s all done in service of the story, and just how consistent that story can come to be across multiple films.
And in some cases, animation is as subject to this same need for consistency as live-action To take a more current non-superhero example, this attempt at consistency will have to be looked carefully on Star Wars. Despite having the freedom to tell their own stories, the current films are very much embracing elements that have been established and developed in the animated series. My strongest lasting memory of Solo is the Darth Maul cameo, and how it sets up a sequel. Clone Wars and Rebels are very much canon, so there’s a case of animation and live-action coexisting, therefore any thoughts of soft rebooting on that particular universe might as well be tossed aside.
@83/Eduardo: I don’t sympathize with the attitude that animation is somehow less “real” than live-action — especially when we’re talking about live-action adaptations of characters that originated in comic books. I mean, surely the definitive version of Marvel characters is the one that exists in drawings and speech balloons on the printed page.
Besides, there have been plenty of instances of different live-action versions of the same character existing in close to the same time. Think of Sherlock, Elementary, the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies, and Ian McKellen’s Mr. Holmes all coming out within the past decade. Or the Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies coming out while the Doctor Who TV series was on the air. Or live-action TV series based on recent feature films but changing the details so that they aren’t quite in the same reality, like Starman or Stargate. The practice is no more unprecedented in live-action than it is in animation.
“But there’s this sense that studios will toss a lot of hard work aside for little reason, and that to me only reinforces the fact that these films are made first and foremost for money, wrecking my personal illusion that it’s all done in service of the story, and just how consistent that story can come to be across multiple films.”
That doesn’t follow. The primary value of any story is in the story itself. Continuity with other stories is a bonus, not the exclusive purpose of the exercise. Is Casablanca an inferior movie because it didn’t set up a cinematic universe? If anything, you’ve got it backward. Often it’s the original standalone movie made only for its own value that’s the worthwhile one, and the sequels that are soulless, mercenary exercises done only for a quick buck — e.g. the original Psycho vs. its first two sequels (though Psycho IV was pretty good), or the original, profoundly powerful Godzilla vs. a lot of the cheap, superficial sequels in the ’60s-’70s.
And I don’t see what the Star Wars example has to do with anything. Just because one story does things a certain way, that doesn’t create even the slighest shred of obligation for any other story to copy it. It’s good for different storytellers to approach their work in different ways.
@84/Christopher: it’s not that I necessarily consider animation to be lesser in any way. It’s more to the notion that movies will ultimately reach a wider audience, have more media coverage, and be more subject to long-term discussion than the average animated show. They’re not as subject to scrutiny as a result, which gives them more freedom to experiment, rework and reboot as it may.
I can’t speak for Dr. Who (never saw a single one), but as far as Sherlock is concerned, I’m of the mind that it’s a property that’s been beaten to death by this point, adaptation-wise (even though both Elementary and Sherlock are laudable adaptations worth recommending). I once browsed IMDb, and found over a dozen results for the Hounds of Baskerville alone. To me, it gets tiresome seeing the same story being retold this frequently. I’m surprised they’re even continuing the Downey/Ritchie-verse with a third film. I was convinced the second film had buried any further notions for that particular universe.
The way I see it, in a more ideal world, the Spider-Man films would have continued with another couple more Raimi/Maguire entries before being retired. Then took a 10-15 year break in order to clean the slate and start anew, while keeping the property alive in the interim through other media. I know Dr. Who had an extensive break period. Better yet, the near 40 year gap between the last Westworld feature (which was an abysmal sequel itself) and the current series. And I know Star Trek could have spent more time in stasis between Enterprise and the Abrams/Kelvin films.
And I’l admit I’ve never seen any of the Psycho films besides the original Hitchcock version.
@85/Eduardo: I don’t believe in the trope that franchises need a “rest period” before they can be revived. That’s just part of the bizarre need people have to attribute the success or failure of a project to every conceivable explanation except the obvious one of how good or bad it actually is. Many’s the time that pundits have bloviated about how a stumbling franchise “needed” to be laid to rest for 20 or 30 years before anyone dared try again, only for a new version to come along less than 5 years later and be a big hit that revitalized the thing. Because elapsed time has not one blessed thing to do with it. The only thing that matters is whether the new version is good.
As for Sherlock Holmes, he holds the record as the most frequently adapted literary character in history, and there’s a reason for that. He and Watson are great characters and they deserve to have stories told about them perennially. As for the Ritchie films, I liked them both, and I’m glad the series is continuing. I don’t know why you’d think the second film killed the series; it got mixed reviews but was a box-office success, one of the 10 top-grossing films of 2011 in the US.
@86: Ah, “franchise fatigue …,” how I’ve missed this discussion … For what it’s worth, I think that part of the issue with this film is that there WASN’T any fatigue or even deep-seated dissatisfaction with the Raimi films. Sure, the third one dropped the ball, but it wasn’t to the level of Batman and Robin” or “Superman IV.” As I said earlier, one of the reasons I think that this series didn’t get any traction was that immediately after setting off in a new direction, the creators did an about-face and brought back a very familiar bad guy. And when I look at who wrote ASM 2, imagine my surprise that the same guys who immediately brought Khan into the Kelvin-Trek universe after the previous film had set up a whole new status quo essentially did the same thing with this series.
@87/Twels: “And when I look at who wrote ASM 2, imagine my surprise that the same guys who immediately brought Khan into the Kelvin-Trek universe after the previous film had set up a whole new status quo essentially did the same thing with this series.”
You’re wrong there. It was Damon Lindelof who insisted on using Khan in Into Darkness, while Roberto Orci argued for using an original character. Orci insisted that they break the story with an original villain, so that they could construct a story that would work on its own merits rather than riding purely on nostalgia, and only once he was satisfied with the story did he relent to Lindelof’s insistence on using Khan.
Christopher is correct — Orci and Kurtzman were against using Khan, but were overruled.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Even though it’s a serious off-topic digression, I do often wonder how would Star Trek Beyond have turned out had Paramount gone with Orci’s original take (whatever the original story was).
It’s interesting how much of the conversation in this thread about the first movie has consisted of complaints about the second movie. The sequel really did overshadow this one, which is unfortunate, because the first one isn’t that bad.
@88: Not trying to split hairs here, but they still have their names on the Star Trek Into Darkness screenplay. It may not have been their idea to bring Khan back, but they still participated in it.
I also agree that it’s a shame a bad sequel overshadowed this film. Frankly, it does some things better than either the Raimi films or Homecoming.
@92/Twels: Of course they participated in it, but that’s not what you said before — don’t shift the goalposts. Your clear intent was to imply that the choice to do it in two different movie series originated with them, and that is factually wrong. You’re blaming the choice to use Khan on the people who resisted that choice and lost the argument, which is completely unfair to them.
Really, there are so many different people involved in the writing process of any given movie, most of them uncredited, that it’s impossible to judge where the ideas came from based on the nominal screen credits. And in feature films, screenwriters have essentially no power to dictate the shape of a film; only directors, producers, and studio execs do, and screenwriters are just contractors hired to follow those people’s marching orders. So to blame the credited screenwriters for the decisions that shape a movie is likely to be off-base.
Speaking from experience?
No, I’ve never written for the screen. But I’ve been interested in the process of making film and TV ever since reading The Making of Star Trek as a kid, so I’ve read a lot over the decades about how the business works.
And yet this is the version that my older stepdaughters like the best. They really connected with Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Peter Parker/Spider-Man (in both of his movies) and were quite upset when they found out that the part was being recast yet again following Garfield’s second movie (even before Tom Holland was announced as his replacement). My girls were 11 and 12 years old when the first “Amazing Spider-Man” came out in 2012, 13 and 14 when “Amazing Spider-Man 2” (2014) came out, just to give you perspective. I think Garfield may have appealed more to certain younger/teen age viewers than he did to some older ones (although I really liked him in the part, myself, as well).
This movie was a complete dud IMO, but it did have a couple of scenes that really stood out and made an impression, and both emphasized the ‘Spider’ in ‘Spider-Man’:
1) The scene in the sewers where Peter lays a web-like trap to detect Connors, and
2) The fight scene in his high school where he covers Connors/the Lizard in webbing and actually crawls all over and around him just like a spider would around its prey.
As for the rest (besides Stan’s cameo of course) – yawn.
I get the feeling KRAD found out his movie irksome in many levels… :)
So, with this movie, I liked how he does some spider-like things: the web-trap to locate Conners in the sewers, the cocoon during the fight, etc.
I also like wise-cracking. That’s an essential part of the character for me, that was missing from Raimi’s movies. Each superhero that has a masked identity should have a compelling reason for it, beyond “to protect their loved ones”. To go off an a tangent (relevance to be shown, your honour), part of why some cosplayers cosplay is that by donning the costume they get a sense of liberty, a license to say things and act in ways that they feel too constrained to in their “normal” clothes. (Which is a possible reason there appears to be more female cosplayers than male). When they feel like they’ve perhaps crossed the line, they can always blame it on “playing the character” and (at least in theory) leave the consequences behind when they take off the costume. Anyhow, as ChristopherLBennett points out, Peter Parker has a lot of repressed feelings, which he’s kept bottled up with no way to vent them. Then he gets a costume. In some versions of the origin, he’s even wearing the costume when he lets the criminal, who then kills his Uncle, escape. So once he’s got the costume on, he has an outlet. Not just for the desire to violently lash out, but for all the stuff he’s been to polite to say. It’s not Peter Parker disrepecting his elders, it’s Spider-man telling the middle-aged authority-figure that his moustache looks ridiculous, etc.
Also, as an aside, the BBC did an audio drama for Spider-Man back in the ‘90’s. In that, his moment of epiphany comes not with Uncle Ben’s death, but when he’s surprised by a couple of Police Officers in the middle of beating Uncle Ben’s murderer to death. The cops have cornered the murderer in a dark warehouse, but Spider-man gets to him first. It’s only as the cops drag the murderer out of the warehouse into the light (with one of the cops specifically stating if they hadn’t arrived when they did, they’d be hunting a second murderer) that he realises it was the criminal he let get away at the wrestling show earlier. Cue angst and epiphany. Spider-man wise-cracks in that as well. I like how the movie takes (more or less) the same approach.
I don’t think the movie correctly captured how isolated the nerdy and geeky Parker should be (at least for my mileage), but it was a good effort.
@6 and others – it’s been a while for me, but I thought Betty Brant was Peter’s first love – not Gwen Stacy…
@97/Lawnbuddha: Yes, of course, Peter had at least a couple of major romantic interests before Gwen, but they weren’t as deep or enduring, certainly in retrospect. Gwen and MJ are the big two, above the rest of Peter’s many, many love interests, and Gwen came first of those two. (Well, in terms of when Peter was with them romantically, not in terms of when they debuted in the comics.)
Lawnbuddha: Strictly speaking, his first romantic interest was Liz Allan, his classmate at Midtown High, then Betty Brant.
Christopher: Depends on how you define “debuted.” Mary Jane first appeared (with her face completely hidden) in a single panel in Amazing Spider-Man #25. But she wasn’t fully seen (the famous “Face it, tiger, you just hit the jackpot” panel) until ASM #42, while Gwen first appeared in ASM #31. (It’s easy to forget, since those characters are more associated with the Romita era of the title, but both Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy first appeared in the Ditko era.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@99/krad: “Strictly speaking, his first romantic interest was Liz Allan, his classmate at Midtown High, then Betty Brant.”
Well, kind of. Peter was into Liz, but she was Flash’s girl and dismissed Peter as a nerd, though she later developed a crush on Spider-Man. Peter then started dating Betty, whereupon Liz started to notice him and became Betty’s rival for his affections, though Peter didn’t take her interest seriously since it didn’t start until after he was with Betty. So it’s a question of whether you define a character’s romantic interest as an unrequited crush or someone they actually have a relationship with.
And it just struck me (after consulting the Marvel Wiki to refresh my memory) that both of Peter’s first two competing love interests had the full name Elizabeth.
“Depends on how you define “debuted.””
Which is why I added the parenthetical, to preempt anyone saying “Well, actually, MJ was introduced as an off-camera character well before Gwen appeared…” etc. (Though admittedly the person here most likely to say something that pedantic is probably me.)