Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man is one of those movies that people (on the internet) just want to hate on.
It’s “too soon” for a reboot. Which is a stupid criticism, because in five or ten more years, a movie isn’t good whether or not it came five or ten years after another movie. It’s good on its own terms.
Marc Webb hasn’t directed an action movie before. His DP has. (Although they’re mostly Michael Bay movies and The Green Hornet, so… maybe that’s not much of a counterargument.)
They’re “Twilightizing” it by making Peter in high school. Parker was in freakin’ high school when he got his powers. He was in high school for the first three or four years of the comic — and he probably would have been in high school longer, except that the first several years of the Marvel Universe (back in the 1960’s) were sort of set in real time. And Pete was one emo kid in those days, too, if you actually read the old comics. It was Spider-Man Nevermore ever other issue, for God’s sake. Come on.
The new costume stinks. Well, I’ll give you that. Anyway, we’re stuck with it for at least one movie, so let’s try to get past that. At least he has mechanical web shooters, right?
Anyway, this teaser has been up for a day or two in a cammed version, and it leaked earlier today before Yahoo! Movies finally put out the official version, and so here it is. (I don’t post bootlegs here, y’all.) I seem to be in the minority about this teaser, but I kind of like it. I’m not in love, but I like it. The tone is good. The cast is good. The first-person stuff isn’t the greatest CG ever, but it’s cool enough for a teaser trailer. I’m optimistic.
The film stars Andrew Garfield, Rhys Ifans, Emma Stone, Sally Field and Martin Sheen, and swings into theaters… in about a year: July 3, 2012.
So… what do you think?
This feeling … it’s similar to the feeling I had when I saw the teaser for the first Spider-Man movie all those years ago. A feeling that says, “Goddamn! Yes!” Especially being a teaser, I’ve finding myself much more excited about this than The Dark Knight Rises teaser from last week.
I had a discussion this weekend trying to explain the point of all the superhero movie reboots that is on display right here, the sense that Marvel is taking the reigns of their properties this time around for a full-on movie universe rather than the past’s ill-fated “hand the characters over to some director and give him flexibility over the origins and plot, weather or not it’ll alienate the existing fans at the risk of trying to pull in new ones, who will only be confused when the origins and stories don’t match up at all.”
It does look like it’s trying to be Ultimate Spider-Man and the animated Spectacular Spider-Man rolled into one, with a slight costume redesign to boot. I’m excited, and from here on I’ll be hoping they don’t go the route of Spider-Man 3 and over-expose us to trailer after trailer after trailer, including entire scenes online for no reason but to just spoil everything for us.
I’m honestly looking forward to this. There are some small things that bug me about it (Peter doesn’t look very nerdy), but I still think that they can do really good job with this. Though I do wish they had waited a bit longer before doing it. I don’t think it will really affect how good the movie will be, I just think people will be less likely to give it a chance.
If the criticism is ‘it’s too ‘Twilight-ish’ because it’s set in high school, that evinces a great deal of ignorance about the character. On the other hand, if it’s too ‘Twilight-ish’ because the characters are weak, unnecessarily dark, and the romantic aspect feels forced…well that’s not invalid. I’m not optimistic about this movie. I haven’t been since they announced it, since they announced the cast (excluding Emma Stone…but BLONDE??? SHE’S A NATURAL F-ING REDHEAD!!!! WHY CAST A REDHAIRED GIRL TO PLAY GWEN STACY??? AAAGGGH!) Woo, I feel better.
As for the costume…well I hated the Tobey Maguire costumes, too. I don’t really know what I would like, you know? Comic book costumes are basically nudes; you have to make changes in the real world unless your name is Batman.
All told, Marvel’s track record on its own properties is fairly strong so far. I look forward to the Captain America: First Avenger release this week for many reasons; not the least of which is to see where they’re taking us in this live-action universe they’re crafting.
Spiderman needs to be several things; he needs to be irreverant, he needs to be down to earth, he needs to temper his angst with optimism, and he needs to web-sling. (Not necessarily like McFarlane drew in the early 90’s, even if that’s become the standard). If ‘The Amazing Spiderman” can deliver that, and this ‘Proto-Goblin’ villain they’re slinging doesn’t insult our intelligence like the Green Goblin/Iron Goblin did…well that’s fine by me.
Personally, I would have gone with Kraven or the Chameleon.
Actually, Emma Stone is a natural blonde. She dyed her hair for Superbad and never went back. Except for this. (Actually, I’m sure they still dyed/highlighted her hair plenty for this, too.)
She told MTV: “My hair is naturally blonde, so it’s kind of nice. I look in the mirror and say, “Oh my God, it’s me again, it’s been so long!” http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/11/24/spider-man-emma-stone-gwen-stacy/
Oh, and people have been accusing it of being “Twilight-ish” for far longer than this trailer has been out, so I don’t really know what the “rationale” is, other than high school. If you can call it a rationale. I’m not sure that term applies, because you would need to have reasons for it to be a rationale.
The romantic angle isn’t forced; he has to fall for Gwen, and how unnecessarily dark is it when you know the girl is going to die (eventually, maybe not in this movie), his parents are dead, and it’s his fault that his uncle dies, you know?
i sit here corrected, sir.
That’s my problem with the use of Gwen as the love interest in ANY Spidey adaptation. We all know she’s going to die. In fact, I defy you to show me one Spider-Man fan from the past fifteen years who knows anything about Gwen besides the fact that she’s dead.
Maybe that’s a good argument for using Gwen? Get a generation of fans up to speed on her story and not just leave her as the dead girl.
I know I’m excited.Andrew Garfield is a decent actor, they seem to be taking a “closer to the comics” approach. I like that they’re using Gwen Stacey, not MJ. The first person is odd and reminds me of the game Mirror’s Edge, but I’m happy to wait and see.
Spiderman is one of my favourite Superheroes and I’m looking forward to this.
I got huge chills when it went into the Spidey POV. I love a good web-slinging scene, but this just took it to a whole new level. Over all this was a really good teaser. It showed a lot compared to others we’ve seen recently, *cough* Dark Knight Rises *cough*
If nothing else, I like Andrew Garfield about 100% better than Tobey Macguire. People keep saying they didn’t wait long enough to make a reboot, but… what about Batman? Batman had 3 sequels before rebooting. AND IT WAS THE BEST DECISION EVER.
They’re going to use the “Peter’s parents were government spies, killed on a secret mission” plot? Â Really? Â Wow.
Maybe, maybe not. But whatever the cause, you can bet their deaths tie into the main plot — or that footage wouldn’t have been important enough to include in the teaser.
So long as they don’t use the Chameleon and a small army of shape-shifting androids, I don’t have a problem with it. They need to be taken out of the story somehow, and it doesn’t hurt to give Embeth Davidtz some screen time.
Wasn’t he in high school in the first movie with Tobey Maguire too? Kind of a silly complaint
Wasn’t he in high school in the first movie with Tobey Maguire too? Kind of a silly complaint
College, if I recall correctly.
Pretty sure at the start of the film he was still in high school, with MJ breaking up with her boyfriend at their graduation. To be fair, I guess he was only in high school for the first half hour or so of the film, but still.
Yeah, he was in high school at first, but by the point he got an apartment in the city, he was in college. They sort of skipped right past the high school stuff. :1
At first, I thought they were going to say this film was set in that period during the first film — more like a soft reboot, just jumping back in time to tell an untold story. But the mechanical web shooters nixes that.
To early for a reboot? They said that about X-Men to and First Class was just that so I hold out hope that this will be just as awesome.
It looks good, it seems like they’re possibly blending some “classic” Spider-Man with Ultimate Spider-Man, but it’s great to see them start off with Gwen instead of Mary Jane. I’m just a little to young to have read the issues where Gwen died when they came out (I was 2 years old at the time,) but I definitely remember her influence on Peter once I started reading comics. While I liked the first two Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies (I like to pretend the 3rd one doesn’t exist,) I’m looking forward to this reboot, even more so now that X-Men First Class was much better than I expected.
My biggest issue? How the hell does he fit all that hair under the mask?
Definitely look up the first 3 or 4 volumes of Essential (Amazing) Spider-Man. They are awesome, awesome comics. Unlike a lot of the early Marvel stuff, I think it holds up really well, despite Stan Lee’s constant, cornball shtick. (I don’t think most of the early Silver Age Marvels hold up very well.) And at $20 a pop, they’re a steal!
The arc where Gwen Stacey died is included in volume 4, I think? (It’s all chronological, anyway.) It was pencilled by Gil Kane and inked by John Romita Sr.; they’re my favorite Spider-Man art team ever (much more than when Romita was on pencils, even).
Yeah, Kane and Romita Sr. did some really brilliant work, and (besides the Stan Lee idiocy you noted,) well worth the price and the read.