Watched it. And it was a good summer movie, if utterly forgettable. I wouldn't say it was bad, it was pretty good.

Garfield feels more like Peter Parker than Maguire ever did. I was never a big fan of the comic but I get that he was a wiseass (to the point of being unbearable for some people if DLP IRC is any indication), and that scene with the car thief showed it perfectly. He also seems nerdier, with him building his web-dispensers (I still prefer organic) and other little gadgets in his house.

But otherwise...like I said forgettable. I'm thinking of something to say and I'm blanking, and this is literally hours after the movie ended.

Oh! That whole "darker and edgier" thing? Total bullshit. It's basically the same in tone as the original Sam Raimi movie. There's also hints in the trailer that they're going to delve into the disappearance of Peter's parents and why he has powers? Nope. We get a few lines of explanation to perhaps set up a sequel baddie and that's it. I went to the toilet, so I might have missed something, but the hints that were in the trailer about what happened to Peter being more than just a random accident were also completely absent.

I liked the Lizard, he literally dominated in every scene that he was in, honestly Spiderman looked like a toothpick at times. It added to the tension

This pretty much sums it up.

He jumps pretty fast between motivations but it does have some thread of logic to it. It helps that he's batshit insane.

Gwen...ugh. Those scenes with Peter trying to interact with her were simply painful. She does little, and adds to the runtime. It doesn't help that I'm not a big fan of Emma Stone. She's basically Mary-Jane, with less creepy romantic tension (well, slightly less)

Honestly I enjoyed the spectacle for it's own sake, but I don't see what this movie did differently besides using a different villain and switching up female leads.

Also, don't buy 3D. I should know better by now, and yet I ended up watching the same movie in dumb glasses. There was more 3D in the Real3D promo than in the movie.

I'm off to watch the Raimi movies and compare them.

 

Just realised: When the fuck did he actually find his uncle's killer? The last car thief wasn't the killer so I was left a bit "WTF" at that..seen it today, again, in 3D. Didn't add much, imo.

 

He didn't find him. Towards the end we saw that drawing the police gave him of the killer pinned on his wall, implying it might be resolved later.

The idea of him never finding Ben's murderer would be interesting. That way he could kind of project him onto every criminal out there, and keep himself motivated.

That's what they do for Batman, anyway, depending on the continuity: sometimes Joe Chill was caught, like in Batman Begins, and sometimes the Wayne's murderer was never identified or caught.

 

I thought that but I wasn't sure. Good setup for the sequel, interested to see if Gwen does die or not via Green Goblin. Would be a bold move.

 

I liked it on the whole. The plot was pretty piss poor, but Garfield and Stone were great leads.

 

Saw it today, and didn't think it deviated too much from the McGuire version. However, they did sort of leave it up in the air where they spider powers came from. I was sort of hoping they'd up and say his father did his experiments on him, because I certainly see it going that direction rather than the mysterious spider bite, but who can say?

 

Maybe I'm biased, but that was one of the best movies I've watched recently. Fight scenes were beautifully done and they did a good characterization of Peter Parker.

Previous one... I never liked that teary eyed guy, and Garfield came of more of a Peter Parker than Tobey Maguire ever did.

On the Gwen subject: I believe there is 3 deaths that makes Peter Parker Spider-man, you know give him the resolution to do what he does: Uncle Ben, Gwen Stacey and Captain Stacey. If they didn't kill her off in the next or maybe the movie after that, it just wouldn't feel the same.

Then there is also Black Cat. It wouldn't be half bad if they included her in the following movie(s?) especially if they're planning to make an arc involving Wilson Fisk.

 

I've seen it twice now. I'm a huge spider-man fan, so I had pretty high hopes for it. I really enjoyed Andrew Garfield as Peter; I think he did a much better job finding that balance between social awkwardness and wit. And Emma Stone is my girl-crush, so yay.

I really, really enjoyed the first half of the movie, and I wanted to love the whole thing. Unfortunately, I had a few problems.

The first was the Lizard. That was not the Lizard--that was Killer Croc. Whoever the concept artist was, like seriously...

The second was the pacing. I understand that with an origin story, you have a lot of pieces to juggle, and the whole mystery about his parents added another level of complication, but I felt like they spent too little time on too many things. The relationship with Gwen felt SO rushed, especially with him telling her his secret on (what seemed to be) their first date. I kind of feel like this was something the first spider-man film handled much better, even if it was simply because it didn't suffer from such a complicated set up.

Finally, and this may seem stupid, but it was my biggest issue: the music. I don't know how much you guys pay attention to soundtracks in movies, but to me the composer is almost as important as the director or leads. The music makes the difference between a scene that has emotional impact and one that just flops, and there were so many times in this film where the soundtrack either didn't fit the tone of the scene, or actually brought attention to itself in a negative way (not to mention the total lack of any memorable themes). I feel like with a better score, this movie could have really been something great, but instead it was merely pretty good. Tell me if I'm crazy, but James Horner did not fit the bill.

 

You're cray cray.

 

I feel that they should introduce Osborn as the Goblin in the second film, have Peter at college with Gwen and Harry, have Peter beat him, then in the third, kill off Gwen. And if possible, have another three films with Mary Jane.

Or not. Whatever..

 

I'm still confused about where the spider powers came from. I sort of got the impression, given what we're told about Peter's father's work, that Peter himself was some sort of experiment that was simply in remission until the spider bite. Honestly though, we're not given a good answer. The whole movie I was expecting the bad guy to make a mention of how he thought Peter got his super spider abilities, given that this guy had been a friend of his father and also a scientist in that particular field, but we get nothing.

To me, who never got into comics, the spider bite itself giving him super powers is super lame. I mean he can't be the only person who's been bitten by that particular type of spider, especially since in this movie we're shown that there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of them.

I would have liked a more definitive answer.

 

I remember there was also a mystical reason about how the web of life had chosen him, how he was at its center and that in every generation there would be a spider-man, etc... Involving something along the lines of a tribal goddess can't remember her name but anyway I don't think that's the approach they want to go with.

In many other spider-man renditions the spider was somehow radioactively/genetically/etc... enhanced and the power came through there but from what I could see there were too many spiders in there, were they even the same type I don't know but even the spider that bit Peter was still alive...

In the end I agree with you there Howdy it wasn't exactly explained and it makes you wonder if the spider that bit Peter bit some-other guy would it keep giving people spider powers, or if there was something different about him that gave him the power.

Then again I think they missed the chance to explain it. I mean aside from Curt Connors there isn't many scientists involved with these kinds of things. Only other possibility is Osborn and it's really up to how they characterize him, if they want to explain it.

 

The way I saw it, Peter's father had to have been experimenting on him in order for the formula to take; otherwise he would have ended up like the docta and all freakified.

 

Because that's what all loving fathers do - conduct a dangerous experiments on their children.

 

Or on himself and then via sexytimes = Peter Parker

 

That's exactly what they did with Bruce Banner in the 2003 Hulk movie. It wasn't a good idea then either.

Why change something that doesn't need changing?

 

Meh, I wouldn't mind it so much if not for the inherent problems- Peter's dad becomes either an idiot or an abusive prick (and an idiot), but otherwise it does add an interesting spin to things, it is really unlikely that either the Hulk or Peter would have survived to become heroes without any other factors at play.

Alternatively they should never have brought it up.

Went back and saw the original. Jesus, was Maguire bad. Apparently some of the reviewers at the time compared his casting -favorably- to the casting of Reeves as Superman. Putting aside that hilarious tidbit, he was wooden and terrible, the Green Goblin was far too campy and Willem Dafoe pretty much reinvented sneering.

This is the movie they should have made then.

 

I noticed that too. The biggest moment for me was when the Lizard and Gwen were in the lab, and all of a sudden this old timey horror soundtrack started playing. Made me laugh hysterically.

I mostly liked this movie. The characters were good, the action scenes were good, and it had some funny moments. But it just seemed so disjointed at times that it was like someone wrote a teen romcom and mashed it up with a Spider-Man movie.

Biggest standout in that sense was:

Spoiler

The scene towards the climax where Peter sneaks into Gwen's room for... some reason. I'm not sure if it was for help or for a quickie, honestly. But anyway, Peter's laying bleeding on the floor, and we cut away to period jokes. It was funny, but completely murdered the flow of the movie.

Overall, thumbs firmly in the middle.

 

Your plebian tastes are unworthy of criticizing Willem Dafoe. In my opinion, he was awesome as the Green Goblin, and about the only actor in those movies that seemed to care about his role.