The Amazing Spider-Man

"The Amazing Batman" is a weird and confusing movie that completely ignores the proper Batman mythos.  It just gets everything WRONG.  Absolutely WRONG.  For some reason Batman is dressed up in a ridiculous red and blue costume, and he has super powers which he just kinda gets from a radioactive spider.  His parents aren't rich, they don't get gunned down in front of him, they only disappear, so instead Batman's adoptive father, Uncle Ben, has to get killed way later in the movie.  Batman isn't scary, he's instead flying around dressed like an idiot, not using any gadgets other than this hookshot Tarzan-vine swing web stuff.  And he's yet another awkward Hollywood teenager, as if Batman needed that.  I don't know why there's this running obsession with spiders, when the character is called BATman.  No Alfred, its New York instead of Gotham, Commissioner Gordon is totally wrong, there's no recognizable Batman villains and instead this new villain called the Lizard.  The movie was okay, and it would have been great if it were named anything but "The Amazing Batman".  How did Christopher Nolan get it so wrong??

Oh wait crap, this isn't actually a Batman movie, is it?  I've been doing Batman for so long I can't seem to let him go.

"The Amazing Spider-Man" is actually the best Spider-Man movie ever made.  And I know this is going to be a controversial call since the previous three Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies are so well-received and beloved (at least the first two are), but no, this one is by far the best. Yeah, "Spider-Man" in 2002 might have helped save Superhero movies in the public eye after "Batman and Robin" did so much ill to the genre, but still, I don't like that movie.  And I hate "Spider-Man 2", and like everybody else I really hate "Spider-Man 3".  After I saw this movie, I even tried to rewatch "Spider-Man 2" and got so annoyed with the goddamn pizza delivery and Toby Maguire whining endlessly about how being a superhero means he can't have a girlfriend.  Oh fuck you, Toby Maguire, shut the Hell up.  You're a superhero, goddamnit!  Shut up, grow some balls, fight crime, and quite whining!  Well, luckily that's what happened here, a new actor came along, Andrew Garfield, who played Peter Parker as a stronger character.

I knew coming into this movie that it would be the weakest superhero movie of the big three of 2012, the other two being "The Avengers" and "The Goddamn Dark Knight Rises".  And yeah, it is pretty clearly weaker than "The Avengers", but not by a whole lot.  The movie is somewhat bogged down by the fact that it has to tell a whole new Spider-Man origin story, when I think by now we all know the drill.  There's definitely room for improvement with "The Amazing Spider-Man", but Mark Webb's* re-imagining of the Spider-Man story seems to work far better than Sam Raimi's universe.  What really matter is that Webb got the main characters right, everything fits, especially Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy.  So altogether I'm ready for a sequel.  This is a solid superhero movie, when far too many superhero movies feel just horribly mediocre lately.

My first thought upon seeing the trailers for "Amazing Spider-Man" were two things:  1) the new costume is terrible, and 2) why the heck is Emma Stone dying her hair blond to play Mary-Jane?  Well, as it turns out she's not MJ, she's instead this other Spider-Man love interest called "Gwen Stacy", who I only remembered as this pointless secondary love interest in "Spider-Man 3".  Turns out Gwen Stacy is actually hugely important for the comic books, which is funny because every cartoon, comic, and movie I've seen of Spider-Man before always had Mary-Jane as the love interest.  Turns out Gwen Stacy was tragically murdered decades ago, and is much beloved because of it among comic book fans.  Also she fucked Norman Osborn and had kids with him, apparently.  You learn new things everyday.

So anyway, "The Amazing Spider-Man" was created mostly because Columbia Pictures is contractually obligated to keep making Spider-Man movies forever, lest they lose their license and then Spider-Man would have to join the Marvel Movie Universe.  I'm glad Columbia kept their license, because Marvel appear to only be decent when they want to make real movies, instead of ninety-minute trailers for other bigger films, thus you get disappointments like "Captain America".  Fortunately for everybody, Sam Raimi realized that his Spider-Man series had pretty much crashed and burned in disastrous fashion with "Spider-Man 3" so instead of making another shitty movie, he let Mark Webb come in.  Toby Macguire was out, Andrew Garfield was in.  Emma Stone is Gwen Stacy instead of Mary-Jane, I guess partially to differentiate these movies from the old ones, and partially because no actress alive can ever be as hot as Mary-Jane Watson (or ever physically sit in that pose).  The new costume is terrible-looking, but they couldn't use the old one because... its old?  Mark Webb even gave a BS excuse for why the Lizard is the villain in this movie, because supposedly he speaks directly to the themes of this movie (of loss and loneliness or something), when in fact the Lizard was picked because all of Spider-Man's more memorable villains have already been used in previous films.

Also, Spider-Man for some reason now uses webshooting technology instead of just naturally having these as a superpower.  Apparently for insane comic fans, it is HUGELY important that Peter Parker invent his webshooters instead of growing them, even though that makes very little sense.  Spider-Man got his powers from a radioactive spider bite, what is he also a stupidly genius inventor?  Its like if Superman also was the last son of Kryton and yet had to invent laser glasses to have laser vision.  Its stupid.

Anyway, now that I'm done comparing this to the movies that came before, maybe I can actually review "Amazing Spider-Man".  Once again Peter Parker is an orphan raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben in New York City where he's an awkward kid longing for Mary-Jane, I mean, Gwen Stacy.  This time, however, Peter's parents actually function into the plot, because they were big time scientists working on an equation that would allow super easy gene splicing science stuff, until they had to run away from evil Oscorp.  Peter Parker tries to learn about his parents, which leads him to Dr. Mad Science, this science dude at Oscorp who is trying to regrow his arm using science.  That same science results in Peter Parker getting bitten by a radioactive spider, and thus sciencing into Spider-Man, superhero.  Then Uncle Ben gets murdered, so Spider-Man must of course fight crime, as one does whenever a family member is killed.  Dr. Science meanwhile adds too much spice to his science and then sciences into the Lizard, a big crazy monster that does crazy monster stuff.  Spider-Man and the Lizard then fight a lot.

Mark Webb previously directed "(500) Days of Summer", a great faux-romantic comedy, so its actually the romantic and interpersonal relations that he really cares about.  This is why it takes almost forty-five before Spider-Man is out fighting crime, when before everything else is setting up relationships.  Its particularly the work of Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben and Emma Stone as Mary-Jane, goddammit, GWEN STACY, that really works here.  I mean, Martin Sheen is Martin Sheen, he's a perfect Uncle Ben.  And Emma Stone is an amazing actress, and she works with even the most insufferable of high school awkwardness material and makes it shine.  Andrew Garfield comes off better under the mask than out of it, and he mostly mumbles and stumbles through his lines, while Emma Stones shines.  Pretty much everybody is excellent here, even Dr. Science, even when he goes totally nuts and decides in proper "Blood Waters of Dr. Z" fashion lizard-people are just better and that everybody should be a lizard.  Then there's Dennis Leary as Commissioner Stacy.  All you need to know is that its Dennis Leary, this movie is already better.

However, what really matters for a superhero movie is the action.  And again, this is where "Amazing Spider-Man" succeeds far better than the old Spider-Mans.  Neo Spidey is far more acrobatic and fast than his old counterpart, this is mostly due to the advances of CG over a decade.  You can actually see Spider-Man's skills of speed and agility and strategic use of webbing to knock an enemy down, its a fast and exciting movie.  Plus its helped because the new Spider-Man is a snarky bastard with really funny lines.  Spider-Man's heroics are really effective this time, nothing will get me to endear to a hero more than him rescuing a little kid from a burning car.  Even when this movie gets really cheesy - which it does BIG TIME - I felt the movie still earned its cheesiness, unlike "Spider-Man 2" with that ridiculous scene on the train.  Yeah, I'm a hypocrite, deal with it.

Ultimately "The Amazing Spider-Man" is actually something of an... amazing movie.  Spider-Man definitely needed a fresh jolt to the system, a full restart, much as "X-Men: First Class" gave us last year with the X-Men franchise.  There's definitely room for improvement here, pretty much the same tone problems that all superhero movies always seem to have.  Hollywood still doesn't have the superhero formula down, which is amazing considering how many of these things they've made, and they still keep falling into the same pacing issues of finding room for both an origin story and a battle against a big villain thing.  Peter Parker's character is something of a selfish teenage brat half the time, but a hero the other half of the time, I guess he still has growing to do.  But as a superhero movie, "Amazing Spider-Man" was far more enjoyable than "Captain America" or fucking "Green Lantern" or the other seventy-five mediocre superhero films I've had the misfortune to see in my life.  I think "Amazing Spider-Man 2" might get the formula exactly right.  Or maybe it will suck.  Either way, here's yet another decent movie to fill up your 2012 movie year.

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* How awesome is the director's name?  Mark Webb.  He's perfect.  When Batman gets rebooted after "Batman 3" they should find a director with the last name "Wayne".