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The Amazing Peter Parker
Jul. 5th, 2012 03:24 pmSo I suppose I should codify this into a review at some point, just like my thoughts on Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson and Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy (for instance... MJ has a character arc, Gwen does not). But let's start small.
Building up to the release of ASM, a lot of the concern was on Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker. He was spotlighted in trailers looking like he was auditioning for the Trenchcoat Mafia and slamming people into lockers. So, is he a nerd or is he a "lone wolf"?
Well, both, to the film's detriment. Garfield's actual performance has all the tics and awkwardness of a nerd (almost too many), but there's a bit where Spider-Man discovers his powers through skateboarding that is slap-worthy (the movie doesn't have the wit to have its bullies torment Peter for his dated, uncool interest in skateboarding) and for some reason he wears a hoodie everywhere. I kinda thought Tom Cruise drove that into the ground with Mission Impossible: The Ghost Protocol, but apparently it has a few more years before being as "cool" as leather trenchcoats.
Basically, the old movie had no bones about Tobey Maguire being a nerd. He looked like a nerd (Andrew Garfield wears contacts until he inexplicably decides to swap them out for his father's eyeglasses), he got picked on (Garfield actually helps out other people who get picked on, just ineffectually), he was invisible to girls (even before becoming Spider-Man, Garfield's Parker quickly catches the eye of Gwen Stacy). That's because it was important to Raimi to have the audience emphasize with Peter before he became Spider-Man. If Marc Webb were making Harry Potter, Harry would have a cool bachelor pad in the cupboard under the stairs, and be introduced shoving Dursley off Cho Chang.
Just for comparison, did any of you guys watch 21 Jump Street? That movie got being a nerd. It had characters blowing chemicals up "for science," throwing ninja stars at pictures of General Zod, making dorky in-joke references to Star Wars--that's how most nerds act. (Oddly, the Webb film makes Gwen Stacy a science nerd--I guess?--then doesn't have her and Peter bond over science at all.) The old saw is that geeks are just people who are passionate about uncool things. Garfield's Peter never strikes me as that kind of passionate; he's just sorta obsessed with his parents, and he uses his father's work as a cheat sheet to get into Connors' good graces and become a superhero. (Remember all the hubbub about how organic webshooters made Peter less smart? Well, I'm sure those fans will love the portrayal of mechanical webshooters here; Parker just swipes the formula for Oscorp, not that anyone seems to know or care that a major corporation's proprietary technology is being used for vigilantism).
The original had a pitch-perfect character arc at work. Peter starts off as a nerd, gets power and uses it for chicks and revenge, but with his uncle's death he realizes he's no better than his tormentors. He just lacked the power to be a victimizer before. The only thing that separates him from bullies, high school or supervillain, is responsibility. It's not just a nerd-revenge fantasy; it's something larger and more human than that, and Raimi smartly added bits to make Peter's behavior justifiable throughout. He wants money to buy a car to impress Mary Jane, he fights back when attacked by Flash, he lets a robber get away after the guy robbed someone that ripped Peter off--all less on-the-nose than the Lee/Dikto Peter deciding he was just going to be an asshole from now on.
The Marc Webb film--doesn't get it right. It wants to kinda co-opt the outcast thing, while always keeping Peter fuckable. Basically, it makes him Finn Hudson from Glee. He's a loser, but he's the coolest loser. In its telling, Peter is already acting heroically as a nerd (standing up for people who get picked on), then he gets powers and is worried he'll die for a while, then he stays out late working with Curt Connors, then he gets into a fight with his aunt and uncle, lets a robber steal from someone he doesn't like, exit Uncle Ben. The simple power of the original arc is buried underneath this insistence on tying everything to Peter's destiny and his long-lost parents. You never get the feeling that Peter has grown or changed; just that he's reacting to various giant-lizard-related shenanigans.
What's weird if that the Marc Webb film is basically a beat-for-beat remake of Raimi's Spider-Man at times, it's just that like an ugly kitbash, it glues on a bunch of superfluous 'stuff'. Just like in the original, Peter gets powers and uses them to accidentally beat up some bullies, but this time it's some random jerks on a subway. Then he humbles Flash non-violently on the basketball court (here, Flash has previously sent Peter home battered and bruised, which Uncle Ben knows), only for the same "beat" of Ben reading Peter the riot act to ensue, leading into the "with great power comes great responsibility" speech (only not in those words and attributed to Richard Parker, just to muddle things).
The worst part is that people are latching onto this movie. Most superhero origin movies, they're kind of awkward. They're adapting comics, after all, which generally consist on an origin issue, then go on for several more issues to introduce the Big Bad and their greatest conflict, so on. So the "hero's origin and his first big adventure" plot arc always flows a little weirdly. People loved the first half of Captain America, where it's just Steve Rogers becoming Cap, but they're not so crazy about him actually being Cap. And people really liked the Batman Begins part where it's beginning, but not so much the microwave bomb plot. Green Lantern and Fantastic Four tried to solve this by basically having the origin be the entire movie, with an ACTION-PACKED THIRD ACT! to balance things out, but it never really works.
What's weird about ASM is that people are going "well, the origin stuff is just a lame retread of the Raimi movie, but then you get to the other half and... it's just lame Lizard stuff. But now the stage is set for a great sequel!" And, you know, I thought the cliche was that origin movies were easy since the superhero has a character arc built-in, but that sequels were hard. Now we're going straight into "okay, it's cool if the first movie is shit, because it's just building to the second one." There's nothing in the first movie to build on. If you just skipped the origin altogether and started off with Peter visiting his uncle's grave; "boy, Uncle Ben, these superpowers are crazy! There's this cute girl named Gwen Stacy I like. I wonder what happened to my long-lost parents?"
Would anyone have minded? I'm serious now; there's nothing that happens in Amazing Spider-Man that can't go backwards. When the second movie comes around, they can just say "oh, he's dating Gwen, that's nice!" or "oh, they're apart, that's sad" and either one will make just as much sense. It's like Basic Instinct. The whole movie is set up to go either way on whether Sharon Stone is innocent, so there's not any point in watching anything but the last thirty seconds. This extends to the long-lost parents. There is nothing revealed about them other than "Oscorp did something shady". The second movie can do anything from "oh, Peter's father is Darth Vader" to "they were both raped by the Kevin Smith Mysterio."
Now, the Raimi films, they had forward momentum. End of the first movie, Harry has a grudge against Spider-Man. Second movie: Harry's grudging on Spider-Man and he enlists Doc Ock to go after him. He finds out who Spider-Man is. Third movie: He goes after Spider-Man/Peter Parker. That's not even mentioning how the Peter/MJ relationship grew.
This is the simplest comic book plotting in the world, but it worked and it engaged the audience. Amazing Spider-Man can't even get that right.
Building up to the release of ASM, a lot of the concern was on Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker. He was spotlighted in trailers looking like he was auditioning for the Trenchcoat Mafia and slamming people into lockers. So, is he a nerd or is he a "lone wolf"?
Well, both, to the film's detriment. Garfield's actual performance has all the tics and awkwardness of a nerd (almost too many), but there's a bit where Spider-Man discovers his powers through skateboarding that is slap-worthy (the movie doesn't have the wit to have its bullies torment Peter for his dated, uncool interest in skateboarding) and for some reason he wears a hoodie everywhere. I kinda thought Tom Cruise drove that into the ground with Mission Impossible: The Ghost Protocol, but apparently it has a few more years before being as "cool" as leather trenchcoats.
Basically, the old movie had no bones about Tobey Maguire being a nerd. He looked like a nerd (Andrew Garfield wears contacts until he inexplicably decides to swap them out for his father's eyeglasses), he got picked on (Garfield actually helps out other people who get picked on, just ineffectually), he was invisible to girls (even before becoming Spider-Man, Garfield's Parker quickly catches the eye of Gwen Stacy). That's because it was important to Raimi to have the audience emphasize with Peter before he became Spider-Man. If Marc Webb were making Harry Potter, Harry would have a cool bachelor pad in the cupboard under the stairs, and be introduced shoving Dursley off Cho Chang.
Just for comparison, did any of you guys watch 21 Jump Street? That movie got being a nerd. It had characters blowing chemicals up "for science," throwing ninja stars at pictures of General Zod, making dorky in-joke references to Star Wars--that's how most nerds act. (Oddly, the Webb film makes Gwen Stacy a science nerd--I guess?--then doesn't have her and Peter bond over science at all.) The old saw is that geeks are just people who are passionate about uncool things. Garfield's Peter never strikes me as that kind of passionate; he's just sorta obsessed with his parents, and he uses his father's work as a cheat sheet to get into Connors' good graces and become a superhero. (Remember all the hubbub about how organic webshooters made Peter less smart? Well, I'm sure those fans will love the portrayal of mechanical webshooters here; Parker just swipes the formula for Oscorp, not that anyone seems to know or care that a major corporation's proprietary technology is being used for vigilantism).
The original had a pitch-perfect character arc at work. Peter starts off as a nerd, gets power and uses it for chicks and revenge, but with his uncle's death he realizes he's no better than his tormentors. He just lacked the power to be a victimizer before. The only thing that separates him from bullies, high school or supervillain, is responsibility. It's not just a nerd-revenge fantasy; it's something larger and more human than that, and Raimi smartly added bits to make Peter's behavior justifiable throughout. He wants money to buy a car to impress Mary Jane, he fights back when attacked by Flash, he lets a robber get away after the guy robbed someone that ripped Peter off--all less on-the-nose than the Lee/Dikto Peter deciding he was just going to be an asshole from now on.
The Marc Webb film--doesn't get it right. It wants to kinda co-opt the outcast thing, while always keeping Peter fuckable. Basically, it makes him Finn Hudson from Glee. He's a loser, but he's the coolest loser. In its telling, Peter is already acting heroically as a nerd (standing up for people who get picked on), then he gets powers and is worried he'll die for a while, then he stays out late working with Curt Connors, then he gets into a fight with his aunt and uncle, lets a robber steal from someone he doesn't like, exit Uncle Ben. The simple power of the original arc is buried underneath this insistence on tying everything to Peter's destiny and his long-lost parents. You never get the feeling that Peter has grown or changed; just that he's reacting to various giant-lizard-related shenanigans.
What's weird if that the Marc Webb film is basically a beat-for-beat remake of Raimi's Spider-Man at times, it's just that like an ugly kitbash, it glues on a bunch of superfluous 'stuff'. Just like in the original, Peter gets powers and uses them to accidentally beat up some bullies, but this time it's some random jerks on a subway. Then he humbles Flash non-violently on the basketball court (here, Flash has previously sent Peter home battered and bruised, which Uncle Ben knows), only for the same "beat" of Ben reading Peter the riot act to ensue, leading into the "with great power comes great responsibility" speech (only not in those words and attributed to Richard Parker, just to muddle things).
The worst part is that people are latching onto this movie. Most superhero origin movies, they're kind of awkward. They're adapting comics, after all, which generally consist on an origin issue, then go on for several more issues to introduce the Big Bad and their greatest conflict, so on. So the "hero's origin and his first big adventure" plot arc always flows a little weirdly. People loved the first half of Captain America, where it's just Steve Rogers becoming Cap, but they're not so crazy about him actually being Cap. And people really liked the Batman Begins part where it's beginning, but not so much the microwave bomb plot. Green Lantern and Fantastic Four tried to solve this by basically having the origin be the entire movie, with an ACTION-PACKED THIRD ACT! to balance things out, but it never really works.
What's weird about ASM is that people are going "well, the origin stuff is just a lame retread of the Raimi movie, but then you get to the other half and... it's just lame Lizard stuff. But now the stage is set for a great sequel!" And, you know, I thought the cliche was that origin movies were easy since the superhero has a character arc built-in, but that sequels were hard. Now we're going straight into "okay, it's cool if the first movie is shit, because it's just building to the second one." There's nothing in the first movie to build on. If you just skipped the origin altogether and started off with Peter visiting his uncle's grave; "boy, Uncle Ben, these superpowers are crazy! There's this cute girl named Gwen Stacy I like. I wonder what happened to my long-lost parents?"
Would anyone have minded? I'm serious now; there's nothing that happens in Amazing Spider-Man that can't go backwards. When the second movie comes around, they can just say "oh, he's dating Gwen, that's nice!" or "oh, they're apart, that's sad" and either one will make just as much sense. It's like Basic Instinct. The whole movie is set up to go either way on whether Sharon Stone is innocent, so there's not any point in watching anything but the last thirty seconds. This extends to the long-lost parents. There is nothing revealed about them other than "Oscorp did something shady". The second movie can do anything from "oh, Peter's father is Darth Vader" to "they were both raped by the Kevin Smith Mysterio."
Now, the Raimi films, they had forward momentum. End of the first movie, Harry has a grudge against Spider-Man. Second movie: Harry's grudging on Spider-Man and he enlists Doc Ock to go after him. He finds out who Spider-Man is. Third movie: He goes after Spider-Man/Peter Parker. That's not even mentioning how the Peter/MJ relationship grew.
This is the simplest comic book plotting in the world, but it worked and it engaged the audience. Amazing Spider-Man can't even get that right.
