In the immortal words of ‘Cabaret’ “money makes the world go around” and it is the supposed‘root of all evil’ that is the main reason ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ exists.
You’re probably wondering ‘what's the point of rebooting a franchise whose first film came out only 10 short years ago?’. The answer boils down to money; not wanting to pay it out but also wanting to make lots of it.
Sony, who own the rights to Spider-man, want to make lots of money from new Spider-man films but they don’t want to pay Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire an increased amount for sequels to the original trilogy. They also don’t want to lose money by giving the character rights back to Marvel (which they'd be contractually forced to do if they didn't make enough Spider-Man movies over a certain time period) and so some executive types got together and decreed that a reboot was on the cards.
Let’s see how this finance driven venture translates to the silver screen.
‘The Amazing Spider-man’ is the story of Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) who lives with his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field) after the death of his parents in a plane crash. Peter attends Midtown Science High School where he’s a quiet, photography loving, science Geek with a crush on the clever, beautiful Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone). After discovering that his Father had connections at Oscorp and desperate to find out more about his work, Peter sneaks into their headquarters and enters a lab where a "biocable" is being created from genetically modified spiders, one of which bites him giving him spider-like superpowers.
I can’t talk about this film without talking about ‘Spider-man’. I just can’t. 10 years is not enough time to forget that film and watch this one without drawing comparisons. That might seem unfair on ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ but actually, I think it compares quite favourably.
For starters I like how this film totally focuses on Peter Parker's High School life. It takes it’s time establishing the character and with the proposed trilogy of films it’ll be nice to watch Parker grow up across them. The film’s focus on Gwen and Peter’s High School romance plays to the Twilight teen-girl market but there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s an audience that has been abandoned by the mainstream save for silly films about sparkly Vampire boys so they deserve something new to watch.
Another thing this film has over its 2002 counterpart is the cast. The cast in ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ is far superior with one exception (which we’ll get to later).
I much prefer Sally Field as Aunt May, she still worries about Peter but there’s a lot more personality and humour to her character than we’ve seen previously. Martin Sheen is the ideal male relative; you want him as your Dad/Uncle/Grandad; after watching this I can’t imagine a better Uncle Ben. Together they portray a couple who live in blissful domesticity.
I adore Andrew Garfield and infinitely prefer him to Tobey Maguire in both the roles of Spider-man and Peter Parker. He’s playing much younger than he is and nails it with a healthy dose of teenage angst. For me Maguire’s performance in‘Spider-man’ is too earnest and he plays Peter Parker as too much of a goofy, goody two shoes. Garfieldplays Peter as an outsider and I prefer that approach. He’s still super clever and a bit of a geek (I squealed when I saw Peter Parker had the same Richard Feynman desktop background as me!) but there’s also isolation to him. Admittedly it was slightly over-egged but generally I liked the moodier angle on the character.
Garfield also differentiates between Spider-man and Peter Parker which Maguire never really did. He transforms when he puts on the red mask, from quiet and isolated to a wise-cracking, smart-aleck that annoys the hell out of his opponents. For me this was much truer to the original source material and put a lot more emphasis on the power of anonymity and how it helps Parker create his alter ego.
The best top-trump card ‘The Amazing Spider-man has is Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey. Her performance absolutely wipes the floor with Kirsten Dunst’s Mary-Jane Watson. She doesn’t get masses of screen time (a failing on the film’s part) but Gwen is clever, cute, fun, sexy, vulnerable and has a brilliant wit. Ryan Gosling said that Stone “is everything, all the time” and in this she really is. Be you man, woman, gay, straight or bi, if you see this, walk out and you’re not in love with her there is something wrong with you. Stone and Garfield (who are a real life couple) bounce off each other and their on-screen chemistry is a major factor in why I enjoyed this film as much as I did.
One cast member that made me cringe big-style was Rhys Ifans as Dr Curt Connors/The Lizard. It’s not his fault, Rhys Ifans does his best but the character isn’t fleshed out very well and his motivations fall apart when you question them even slightly. It’s such a disappointment because at the beginning you have sympathy with him but his decent into full on cackling baddie just doesn’t hold up; I don’t get the jump from wanting to re-grow your arm to wanting to destroy the world. And the CGI… Oh the CGI! It’s awful, I was sat there and I thought I could draw a better Lizard using Microsoft Paint... THAT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN IN A SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER MOVIE! I read a review that says “he looks like a Goomba from the Super Mario Brothers movie” and yes, that is exactly what he looks like.
However, the main problem with ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ isn’t really one of cast or bad CGI, its main problem is 2002’s ‘Spider-man’. The trouble is that whilst I prefer this version, ‘Spider-man’ did some good things that ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ hasn’t matched up to.
‘The Amazing Spider-man’ treads the same origin story and in places feels like it’s trying to be different for the sake of it. A perfect example is the immortal line from the 2002 film “with great power comes great responsibility”. It’s a great line. The version of that line in this film is “If you can do good things for other people, you have a moral responsibility to do it.” EURGH! WHAT?!?! It just sounds like the writers have said “We need someone thing to rival ‘with great power comes great responsibility’… I know! Let’s get out the Thesaurus and rehash that line without using any of the original words! Genius”. No. Not genius.
It’s hard not to sit there and think what might have been. I think if you got the two films to run at each other really fast and when they collided they merged together you’d have the perfect Spider-man film. Take the cast, characters, high school story line and a pinch of Peter’s moodiness from ‘The Amazing Spider-man and mix it with the fantastic baddies and colourful comic book aesthetic of the Raimi movies and you’d be onto a winner.
It's a good film, I really enjoyed it, it's just a shame that whilst we all dream of an imaginary, perfect Spider-man film we must accept the reality of two imperfect ones.
Finally, Marc Webb… the director of ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ has the surname WEBB… If you know of any other actors or directors with movie appropriate names leave them in the comments, they’ll amuse me no end!
So, after all that web-slinging action let’s have some…
Reason to be Cheerful :-)
1. Its ‘Doctor Who’’s 50th Anniversary next year and to celebrate all-round beacon of talent and loveliness Mark Gatiss (GATE and then HISS but without the H, say it with me… GATE-ISS) is writing a drama to look at how the show came to be. I imagine it’ll be along the same lines as the brilliant ‘Holy Flying Circus’, the Monty Python drama that aired on BBC4 but with Gatiss’s brilliant writing. I for one can’t wait to go on an ‘Adventure in Time and Space’ :-)
2. More ‘Who’ news! We’ve got a trailerfor the 7th series! It looks A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! DINOSAURS…ON A SPACESHIP!!!!!
3. The Great and Powerful Joss Whedon has been confirmed to direct Avengers 2! Everyone that loved ‘The Avengers/Avengers Assemble’ breathes a sigh of relief! I’m so happy about this I can’t begin to tell you. Judging by the new characters (cough…ROCKETRACCOON…cough) it’s going to be an interesting sell but for me Whedon is the man for the job :-)
There you go. Doctor Who and The Avengers. What more do you need to bring a smile to your face?!?!
Goodbye till next time :-)
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