I'll preface this by saying I have no idea what I'm doing writing this review. It’s my first one actually. So I asked myself a few questions like “Does this movie need to be reviewed by some asshole two years after it came out?” and “Should I actually write this?” The answers to those are “Probably not” and “I’m going to anyway.” So get ready. You guys are in for a treat. Probably. If you actually want to read this. And you probably don’t. So here’s my score for the movie
1/10
Just kidding. Mostly.
Okay, I first saw this movie the summer it came out. To sum up what I thought about it, I thought it was extremely okay. So then I thought it was just 4/10, retreading all the same territory and whatever. And I haven’t seen the movie since and forgot absolutely everything about it. Until today when I decided to watch it. Now I have some actual thoughts. Like how similar the Lizard looks to the weird Shrek-like Ninja Turtles in the new seemingly derivative boring movie. Conspiracy? I think so, but that’s for another uh, review thing.
Anyway the first two original Spider-Man movies blew my mind as a kid. They’re still among the best comic book movies made to date, and the reasons they work so well are because they’re fun adventurous fantasy action films and that’s what they focus on and try to be, not having small details get in the way of the story, fun, and action. They don’t take themselves seriously and that makes things like how Peter just has his costume out of nowhere in the original after drawing a picture of it in his notebook, for example. The original Spider-Man film series is solid because of the things I just said. The third one lost the focus the first two had once all these elements got introduced it turned into a mess.
Some years after the third movie, Sam Raimi decided to make a fourth, which was shaping up to be a good movie. I mean, John Malkovich was going to be the Vulture. That’s perfect. Raimi had too many disagreements with the studio and left the project in 2010 and so here we have The Amazing Spider-Man.
This movie is not terrible at all. I just think that the direction they took the film in was a misstep, which I’m hoping that the new film will correct. This film tries to look at Spider-Man with a realistic premise. The film involved science and technology into Spider-Man and the Lizard’s origin, which in the previous film series was barely mentioned at all apart from what things do and no explanation why, they just went into the web-slinging action we all go to see Spider-Man for. I felt like a dickhead saying “web-slinging action.” Like I’m some guy who writes for magazines or whatever. Anyway. Being realistic is fine and dandy. Look at the Nolan films. For the most part they are all realistic in the approach and stick with it through each film. Batman doesn’t fight a big crocodile man in the sewers of Gotham. Why? Well, I bet Christopher Nolan doesn’t know who Killer Croc is, probably, and that doesn’t fit with the world he was creating for his films. Iron Man however, goes for a realistic approach as well, but not too realistic as to where a guy flying around in a metal suit with the help of his AI butler seems out of place. The Amazing Spider-Man has a problem with this though. The film tries to go for a realistic tone but shoots itself in the foot with having an 8 foot tall lizard monster in it. In the Half in the Bag review for this film on redlettermedia.com, they bring up this point using the scene where Peter tries to explain to Captain Stacy that Dr. Connors is the Lizard. It just makes the idea of the Lizard in this film seem ridiculous, especially with the first half of the film executed in a way that’s more realistic and science based than the original films, and the film does a pretty good job in that. But after the Lizard is introduced into the film, the reality just gets thrown out on the window. This is mainly a problem with the writing. And this isn’t a problem with the writers per se, this seems more like a studio decision. Like Sony said “Make a new origin story and make it like those Batman movies. They really rake in the cash. Make it like dark and realistic or whatever.” I can’t blame the movie for being badly written or executive decisions, the movie has no control over it being made. It’s just a bunch of pictures played through a thing with sound to make it look like real life to our eyes.
Sorry, I rambled there for a bit. So the Lizard is a big problem with this movie. It ruins the pseudo-scientific style this film was trying to go for. But that isn’t his only problem. He’s just a generic villain. I mean, what was his plan anyway? Spray gas over New York, turn everyone into lizard people, and then… the world? I guess that was it. Anyway. We’ve seen this plan in plenty of comic book movies since Batman back in ’89 when the Joker murdered all those people in the street with his creepy balloons. It was in X-Men and it was in Batman Begins, too. The other Spider-Man villains had a reason for being evil and we all understood why they were. Willem Dafoe got fired from Oscorp so he decided to get in a Power Rangers suit and kill everybody. Doc Ock was so obsessed with creating his solar energy machine that he would go to no ends to create it. Sandman needed money for his daughter because she had the “I’m sick in a movie” disease. Eddie Brock just hated Peter because he got him fired so he went to church to ask God to kill Peter for him. Man that’s stupid. Oh yeah, Harry wanted to kill Peter because he killed his dad. Although it’s really debatable if he really killed him or not, because he just dodged the thing but whatever. Why didn’t Harry and Venom just team up because they both just wanted revenge on Spider-Man? I guess Brock didn’t know about Harry, but how did he find Sandman? I mean he had to know from the symbiote right? That’s how he knew Peter was Spider-Man and about Mary Jane. And Peter fought Harry when he was wearing the black suit. I guess the symbiote thought Harry was dead since Peter threw the bomb at Harry and they didn’t see that he actually survived. Why am I talking about Spider-Man 3 so much?
Sorry about that, again. Anyway, the extent of Dr. Connors’ character development is “I have no arm, so I must make a new one.” I guess him working with Peter’s dad is character development maybe, but that’s just to get Peter to Dr. Connors for an actual reason. They don’t show that he has a human side to his lizard Shrek face form. He’s about on par with Eddie Brock in motivation. I would like to see the Lizard going to a church and praying asking to kill Spider-Man.
The performances in the film are all serviceable to great. Like Sally Field and Rhys Ifans are all serviceable performances. They do their job fine, given the material. Martin Sheen is pretty good. He sounds like an old uncle or dad. Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield are very good in this film, because they’re fine actors and Marc Webb is skilled at working with younger actors, just see (500) Days of Summer. My personal favorite is Dennis Leary as Captain Stacy. I’ve loved the guy since I heard him as that ladybug in A Bug’s Life. That movie’s great.
Okay well I think I’ve got everything out I want to say, and two years too late I might add. There’s no “might” about me adding that because I just did. This movie is a misstep and kind of disappointing, but the problems stem from strange tonal inconsistencies and what seems like forced studio decisions, which is no fault of the cast or director Marc Webb, which I think is a fine choice for this apparent multi-film franchise. Two of the three writers from this first movie are not coming back for the sequel, Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci are coming in and Jeff Pinkner is returning, and they have all written pretty quality films. Sure, sure Star Trek into Darkness whatever. How do you know that was them? It could’ve been Lindelof. It probably was. Do you think it was a coincidence that Into Darkness and Prometheus had so many plot holes with that guy writing? Probably is. Maybe not. Who knows? Do you? If you do, tell me. We’ll talk about it. Anyway, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 looks like it’ll be a huge improvement over this first film. I hope so anyway. I just wanted to get my thoughts out on this first film and I did. Jesus this is a lot of text. I’ll just give the thing a rating now.
6/10
This is my first review, so tell me how I did. Thanks for reading if you did, and if you didn’t well, whatever.