The Amazing Spider-Man (The Movies)

[Brad]

Honestly, I think it's being too hopeful. Just because ASM2 got mixed critical reception and a disappointing box office doesn't mean the income was bad by any means (good, in fact, just not to expectation) and the amount of money that Sony make off Spider-Man and still plan on making off Spider-Man (another two confirmed films and two spin offs planned, not to mention tie-in video games) during their current financial situation just doesn't make sense at all.

[Tornado]

Honestly, I think it's being too hopeful. Just because ASM2 got mixed critical reception and a disappointing box office doesn't mean the income was bad by any means (good, in fact, just not to expectation) and the amount of money that Sony make off Spider-Man and still plan on making off Spider-Man (another two confirmed films and two spin offs planned, not to mention tie-in video games) during their current financial situation just doesn't make sense at all.

 

Well, that depends. Based on a company's internal goals, "not meeting financial targets" could be just as bad as not actually making a profit. Even sticking just to Sony, we can use the PS3 as an example. The thing was a financial pit, soaking up billions of dollars all by itself in the first couple of years. The reason Sony went into panic mode, though, was because the system still wasn't selling nearly as well as they expected it too, even though it selling better would have meant more money lost short-term.

 

 

 

Though according to the comments he was just fucking with people.

[MegaMan_EXE]

If Sony loses the rights to Spider-Man, maybe we'll get a movie series that people can actually be decisive of.
The Sam Raimi trilogy is being panned for being "too old school," and the Amazing duo has gotten mixed reception, with me finding the first okay, and loving the second one. 

[Tornado]

I dunno. People nowadays seem totally decisive about how awful the Raimi trilogy always was and how you aren't a real Spiderman fan if you think otherwise because of *minute change from the original source material* One need only look at the early pages of this thread to see it.

 

 

 

It reminds me a lot of the Fullmetal Alchemist pretentiousness that boiled over the second they announced Brotherhood.

[MegaMan_EXE]

I dunno. People nowadays seem totally decisive about how awful the Raimi trilogy always was and how you aren't a real Spiderman fan if you think otherwise because of *minute change from the original source material* One need only look at the early pages of this thread to see it.

 

 

 

It reminds me a lot of the Fullmetal Alchemist pretentiousness that boiled over the second they announced Brotherhood.

I personally love Spider-Man 2, as going to see the movie shaped me into the person I am today. Spider-Man 2 has a good share of problems, yet people say how god-like that movie is, and say how awful Amazing 2 is. It angers me. 

[Gabz Girl]

Ohhh, need to find out more to see if this is true but if it is then I'll be quite pleased!

From what I can see, ASM2 didn't do very well at the box office and even critics and audience reaction has been mixed so who knows what will happen next. Is it a good idea to even continue with that Sinister Six movie?

[Mega]

Apparently it's a joke, and the guy apologized on his Twitter. :/ Sucks, but whatcha gonna do?

[Burning Finger]

Honestly, I think it's being too hopeful. Just because ASM2 got mixed critical reception and a disappointing box office doesn't mean the income was bad by any means (good, in fact, just not to expectation) and the amount of money that Sony make off Spider-Man and still plan on making off Spider-Man (another two confirmed films and two spin offs planned, not to mention tie-in video games) during their current financial situation just doesn't make sense at all.

 

Actually, Sony doesn't make any money off the franchise other than box office intake, and of course home video release.

 

Sony relinquished their TV rights, and merchandising rights back to Marvel. In exchange Marvel forfeited their involvement in the films and their cut of the box office when they renegotiated their contract after Disney bought Marvel out. Probably wasn't the smartest decision Sony could've made since at this rate Disney's probably making more money off the merchandise than Sony is at the box office.

[Chaos Incarnate]

Just saw the film today, I'll try to some up my thoughts without going too much into spoiler territory.

 

• The plot is a jumbled mess, consisting of several threads that very haphazardly tie together. There's loads of stupid moments scattered throughout, like a kid dressing up as Spider-Man and heading into the heat of a very dangerous situation at the end. Electro's motivation is downright laughable, and despite serving as a formidable foe that's fun to watch, it takes massive suspension of disbelief to find an insecure fanboy going evil so soon believable in any sense.
• Visually, the film is a mixed bag. I'm glad it decided to brighten up a bit, the film looks like a Spider-Man comic brought to the big screen perfectly. Spider-man's web swinging scenes are a real treat, and the super villain fights are pure spectacle, with how big and bombastic they are. But at the same time, the effects aren't much to really write home about, as you can see how CG Video game quality they are. It isn't too distracting though, aside from the Electro fight scenes (Which I doubt could have been made to look practical anyway, going by the nature of the character's abilities.
• Biggest disappointment for me was by far the music, sadly. Hans Zimmer's work isn't really anything memorable, and did I really have to put up with listening to "For you" in a Spider-Man film?

This wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be, but the plot leaves a helluva lot to be desired. For every sweet scene of Peter interacting with Gwen or Aunt May, along with laughing along at Spidey's humor, I have to put up with convoluted exposition on Peter's parents, Oscorp's involvement in everything, an irritating fanboy whose turn as a villain comes out of complete left field, and clear signs of Sony trying to beat Marvel at their own game with the upcoming Sinister Six Villain crossover movie. There's loads of fun to be had for me if I turn off my brain and enjoy the stupidity, but I'm still not going to cut it any more slack. 

[Sean]

I just got back from seeing this with a friend today. This post contains spoilers but chances are if you're in this topic you've probably already seen it and don't give a shit.

I really didn't like it all that much. It was a mess of a movie, both plot-wise and thematically. I have no idea where to fucking begin with this so I'm going to cite some assorted complaints off the top of my head. First off, the villains. Now I'm not going to claim that Dr. Conners from ASM1 was a great standard of villain for anyone to live up to, but it says something when each one of the sequel's villains were a massive step-down from Webb's attempts at humanizing Conners. Max was an embarrassing character to watch right from his very first scene and becomes completely one-dimensional the instant he decides that Spider-Man is his enemy. The moment when Spider-Man first confronts him paved the way for some interesting possibilities, especially when Max briefly expresses fear of what he has become. However, he turns into yet another generic villain once his self-delusion gets the better of him. Also, I don't buy Harry's transformation into a bad guy whatsoever, it was extremely abrupt and the entire last third of the movie seemed like an incredibly lengthy and elaborate set-up to a punch-line that falls flat. Rhino? That first scene with him was nothing special, but it re-introduced Spider-Man adequately. The entire last scene was very padded out and I didn't particularly care for it, except Peter's line "and on behalf of all rhinos everywhere" which admittedly did get a chuckle out of me.

And the subplots. So all that fucking build-up about Peter trying to find out about his parents and what his father was researching/why he ran away led to exactly what everyone already fucking knew from watching the first movie anyway: Oscorp is evil and is making evil things and doing evil things with them. Wow I never would have realized! At least the romance with Gwen contributes in some way to Peter's character, but finding out about his father does absolutely nothing except tell the audience what we already know about Oscorp. In fact, everything about Oscorp in these movies pisses me off. This movie might as well have been a two-hour advertisement to future Spider-Man installments, 'cause now we have this big bad corporation who's gonna shit out at least two more Spider-Man movies, a Venom spin-off, and yet another one focusing on the Sinister Six. I literally have no fucking idea how the public isn't picking up on the fact that this company is bad news, everything about it oozes of a necessity to produce a blockbuster regurgitating machine.

Killing off Gwen. I said a while ago that considering ASM's efforts to flesh Gwen out into her own character aside from just being a one-note love interest, it really would have been nice for the writers to subvert audience expectations and not make it feel like it's a bit of a waste to get invested in her and Peter's relationship when everyone already knows what's coming. For the record, I wasn't particularly into the "chemistry" the two had on screen together to begin with even in the first film, and I would have preferred for her to not die in general, but I would have been able to stomach it if her means of dying weren't so god damn contrived, being a last-minute addition due to an incredibly unsatisfactory pay-off to Harry's character arc. I suppose killing her off somehow ties into whatever theme the movie was trying to explore about Peter having to accept responsibility. I could buy into that, if it weren't for this movie being such a fucking mess that it has no idea what it wants to be and it wouldn't surprise me at all if said theme didn't factor into the writers' minds, and that Mary Jane is inevitably going to be appearing in ASM3 and a good chunk of it is going to be focused on Peter struggling between Gwen's death and his interest in someone else. All I got out of Gwen is that she dies because the comics say so.

I can't think of anything else, I'm too tired right now. The first movie was okay to me but ASM2 just made me tired of watching Spider-Man movies.

[SuperLink]

I don't think it's a good idea to get your hopes up about the Marvel re-attaining Spidey rights from Sony thing. As long as Sony make movies, they will want to make Spider-Man, it's their biggest money making movie franchise, and sure it might not last but.. right now it seems to be doing ok enough for them to maintain some optimism in the series' future. That guy on Twitter was pissing about, and he's said as much himself stuff along the lines of "people sure didn't like my Spider-Man joke" and "I'm sorry about the Spider-Man joke" and stuff.

 

If Spidey ever did go back to Marvel though I'd really like them to keep Garfield as Peter T-T I know that won't happen though. And I'm sure Marvel would find someone good for the role, but man Garfield is just perfect as Peter Parker to me.

[Carbo]

I dunno. People nowadays seem totally decisive about how awful the Raimi trilogy always was and how you aren't a real Spiderman fan if you think otherwise because of *minute change from the original source material* One need only look at the early pages of this thread to see it.

Man Spider-Man 3 has aged better the more I think about it, even if it is a messy movie.

I suppose killing her off somehow ties into whatever theme the movie was trying to explore about Peter having to accept responsibility. I could buy into that, if it weren't for this movie being such a fucking mess that it has no idea what it wants to be and it wouldn't surprise me at all if said theme didn't factor into the writers' minds, and that Mary Jane is inevitably going to be appearing in ASM3 and a good chunk of it is going to be focused on Peter struggling between Gwen's death and his interest in someone else. All I got out of Gwen is that she dies because the comics say so.

That's the kind of baggage you get for bringing Gwen into the mix really. There is almost no other reason why you would want to put Gwen in a movie when MJ was always the love interest with more "character", even if Webb did an okay job with the depiction here.

Honestly the worst part about the whole responsibility thing you mention is that the movie actively tries to act like nothing Peter did is his fault. Gwen insists on "being" at the scene so adamantly that it moves all the blame away from Peter. The fact that they go through so many hoops to justify Peter's lack of responsibility and paint him like a paragon of virtue is completely baffling to me and completely destroys the core concept of the character. "Responsibility" isn't a word that exists in his vocabulary. I mean, moving to fucking England? Seriously?

Peter is a grade-A asshole in these movies and the narrative goes out of it's way to pull wool over that fact.

[Candescence]

That's the kind of baggage you get for bringing Gwen into the mix really. There is almost no other reason why you would want to put Gwen in a movie when MJ was always the love interest with more "character", even if Webb did an okay job with the depiction here.

Honestly the worst part about the whole responsibility thing you mention is that the movie actively tries to act like nothing Peter did is his fault. Gwen insists on "being" at the scene so adamantly that it moves all the blame away from Peter. The fact that they go through so many hoops to justify Peter's lack of responsibility and paint him like a paragon of virtue is completely baffling to me and completely destroys the core concept of the character. "Responsibility" isn't a word that exists in his vocabulary. I mean, moving to fucking England? Seriously?

Peter is a grade-A asshole in these movies and the narrative goes out of it's way to pull wool over that fact.

 

This is really what everyone should've expected when they brought in Kurtzman and Orci in to write this thing, especially after the last two Star Trek movies. As Film Critic Hulk noted, the subtext of the film, intentionally or not, is that Peter Parker is a goddamn asshole, but that's okay, because everything he does is awesome and that he doesn't even need to bother with 'responsibility', and that his horrible human instincts are secretly right, especially considering Orci is also a harcore 9/11 truther, which doesn't help in the slightest.

[Sean]

Yeah I agree and I personally don't believe that Gwen's death had anything to do with some theme surrounding Peter's responsibility or has any meaningful impact other than that was simply her fate in the comics. I really do not see how this, or anything else in this version of Spider-Man, is going to have any such impact on Peter, and although Garfield's performance is admirable, the handling of his character is so much worse than anything I've seen in the Raimi trilogy.

I thought sleeping on it would have softened my opinion of this film, but no. Hell, I think this movie as far as all Spider-Man films go has hit rock fucking bottom. If it wasn't already apparent that ASM1 was little more than Sony desperately holding onto the rights, then the sequel is basically a flashy means of dangling no less than four fucking sequels in our faces.

Though personally I don't give a shit about whether Marvel ever gets the rights back. I don't care about Spider-Man anymore.

[Candescence]

If they wanted to get Gwen's death right, they should've included the part where Spidey accidentally snaps her neck when he manages to catch her. That would've been far more tragic and would've actually worked fine with the 'theme' of responsibility. They even had Pete learn his lesson from that tragedy in the comics when he's subjected to multiple similar situations across the course of his career, such as using several links of webbing (much more than necessary, in fact) to support the target's entire body, and to let them decelerate rather than stop them abruptly, which was pretty cool.

[Killtank]

I haven't seen The Amazing Spider-Man 2 yet, but I don't have my hopes up for it given its lukewarm response from critics. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sold with its predecessor. I should give it another shot, but I don't know if that is the right path to take. I think I'm being a little too generous with this reboot series. I can't tell if it's superhero fatigue or what, but I'm beginning to lose interest in this deluge of movies concerning masked heroes. I know why these films were made in the first place, so that isn't much of an issue for me. I know why Sony would want to milk this cash cow franchise while they still had the chance, but it's still weird to me. I can't help but compare and contrast both sets of movies with each other. That's how I felt watching The Amazing Spider-Man. I just kept lamenting on how Raimi did this and that better. Granted, his films weren't perfect [not by a long shot], either, but I think his vision of the character in Spider-Man was considerably better. That's just my opinion on the matter, so feel free to disagree with me. I was up for a reboot of the series, but I wish it got off to a better start. I just wasn't impressed with The Amazing Spider-Man when I first saw it. However, I still want to try and see if maybe I can enjoy it as a movie in its own right. I think I might enjoy it if I see it again with an open mind. On the other hand, I'm skeptical about its sequel. I want to give it a fair shot, but I haven't heard the best of news regarding its quality. 

[turbojet]

Yeah I agree and I personally don't believe that Gwen's death had anything to do with some theme surrounding Peter's responsibility or has any meaningful impact other than that was simply her fate in the comics. I really do not see how this, or anything else in this version of Spider-Man, is going to have any such impact on Peter, and although Garfield's performance is admirable, the handling of his character is so much worse than anything I've seen in the Raimi trilogy.

I thought sleeping on it would have softened my opinion of this film, but no. Hell, I think this movie as far as all Spider-Man films go has hit rock fucking bottom. If it wasn't already apparent that ASM1 was little more than Sony desperately holding onto the rights, then the sequel is basically a flashy means of dangling no less than four fucking sequels in our faces.

Though personally I don't give a shit about whether Marvel ever gets the rights back. I don't care about Peter Parker anymore.

Fixed because you made this little nigga angry

[Tara]

Fixed because you made this little nigga angry

Might be nice if you explained why this upset you instead of just throwing it out there.  Seriously, this is hardly your first time doing this, and you're lucky we've not taken disciplinary action for it.  Last warning:  Posts must be contributive to the conversation at hand and must contain at least a few sentences worth of explanation.  Any more posts like this will result in a strike.

[Willsy]

I think The Amazing Spiderman is still my favourite Spidey film. It just had something of a better feel to me. The Amazing Spiderman 2 was really good, but something felt off to me. I think it might be that the first is still quite young, with it not even being two years yet since it's release. I think it would have been better if they waited another year, and then released it when the first is nearly three years old.

Also, Electro/Max really didn't feel fleshed out enough to me, I think it would have been nice to see more of him as he's an interesting villain. I think if they left Goblin for TASM3, it would have been much better.

[Gabz Girl]

text

 

Ditto! I haven't seen ASM nor its sequel but I have seen the Raimi trilogy and I enjoy it for what it is, at least the first two movies anyway. Sure there were cheesy moments, CGI was dated in the first movie (but that's cos it came out in 2002, duh!) and Toby Maguire cries a lot but from what I've seen in the numerous trailers and clips from the ASM movies, doesn't Andrew Garfield do the exact same thing? It bothers me when people defend their precious reboot by saying things like "Peter cries more in the Raimi trilogy" or "the dialogue was lame" when the reboot has similar problems. Again, this is from what I've seen in trailers and stuff. Andrew's Peter also comes off as an asshole at times which Toby's Peter doesn't. Yeah yeah I know, teh comix. But do you really want to root for someone who's a dick and acts like he's the best thing since sliced bread? I certainly don't!

 

As mentioned before, I have yet to see the ASM and its sequel but every time I want to I just sort of change my mind and ignore it again. Could it be superhero fatigue or is it just because Spiderman, who used to be my favourite Marvel hero, has become less fun to watch and more annoying? Instead I'll stick to the Raimi trilogy. Okay maybe not the third but you know what I mean! I do hope I get a chance to watch ASM soon, but I'm not sure if I will like it. =[

[Chaos Warp]

It makes me sad that the ASM movies in general have divisive/iffy storytelling because like Andrew Garfield IMO is great and better then the first guy for the role of Spidey and the Spiderman movies he's in deserve to be better. 

[Gabz Girl]

Oh I'm sure Andrew Garfield is great in these movies! Hell he's a great actor in general and has far more acting ability than Toby Maguire, but I don't like this new characterisation for Spiderman. Not his fault he has to act that way though lol. XP

[turbojet]

I dunno. People nowadays seem totally decisive about how awful the Raimi trilogy always was and how you aren't a real Spiderman fan if you think otherwise because of *minute change from the original source material* One need only look at the early pages of this thread to see it.

 

 

 

It reminds me a lot of the Fullmetal Alchemist pretentiousness that boiled over the second they announced Brotherhood.

That is not the same because Raimi's trilogy was loathed by fans of the comic books because of how he simplified entire themes and origins as well as characters just to streamline it for the movie. Raimi's Spider-man is for fans who just get a summary of Spider-man that could fit into a nice paragraph while Amazing Spider-man at least tries to cater to the comics(rather poorly) by incorporating events and dialogue from established comic books into some overly convoluted mess. Raimi's Spider-man had a boring romantic interest and a complete fuck up in interpretation in character, Mary Jane, while ASM took elements from Ultimate Mary Jane(just as much as a grade stickler as Peter, revealed his secret identity to rather early into his career, pretty much his only friend) and 616 Mary Jane(gregarious personality) and put them in a Gwen Stacey archetype that's only ties to the character was that she was blonde and was killed in a Green Goblin/Spider-man fight(not even the same Green Goblin). Raimi's Spider-man literally came from nowhere with characterization such as Doctor Octopus(making him sympathetic and then tying him to Peter somehow for the sake of Drama).

 

"But they felt like more complete movies." So? I am a fan of Spider-man. I have read so many Spider-man comics and watched several adaptations that I appreciate a movie that actually gave a shit about the nuances of the characters over a movie that does things for the sake f his arrogant assdirector. Instead for the first trilogy, I get a butchered and shallow Mary Jane, a Peter Parker who has his priorities ridiculously skewed than usual, and characters that ruined the entire theme of the character. Things like the idea of webshooters get thrown out because of some inane justification such as "why is he even called Spider-man if he does not shoot his own webs. This bothered me because it ignores a reoccurring theme called priority. Spider-man runs out of webs because so much is happening his life that he conveniently forgets to restock on them. It is a plot element that it is used to show that the emotional stress of being a vigilante and wanting to still keep a normal life is starting to wane in on Spider-man and show the dangers of his head not being in the game or him being distracted. Can't necessary do that with organic web shooters as it is a lazy element of "stress."  Then you have Raimi's Spider-man's informed intelligence while Web's Spider-man regularly showing how intelligent he was(another element lost on the webshooters being organic) and Raimi's Spider-man being neurotic and whiny. Does Peter cry? Yes, Peter is the classical anti-hero. He does doubt himself. He does want cry about his life being a curse, but crying because he no longer wants to help people? Crying because he wants to be happy with Mary Jane(a character who in the movie does not deserve to be happy) and giving up a cause that he would no sooner give up because all of what he lost and what he valiantly fought for? No. That is not Peter Parker. That has more in common to do with his clone Kaine, than Peter. Peter is tragically heroic, not heroically pathetic.  Doctor Octopus had no business being sympathetic.  

 

Raimi's fucking trilogy took entire themes out of the character of Spider-man and told a completely different story and people rightly pissed about. Full Metal Alchemist simply told two different stories for the sake of time to complete a series which compared to Spider-man which already had 40 years worth of character to tell a story that at least made fucking sense to the movie. Even then, I did welcome a new reboot mainly to do with Raimi's previous handling of the series and I am no way happy with Amazing Spider-man either, but to get on folks for hating Raimi's Spider-man due to this film's shortcomings? Yeah, no. Fuck Raimi. 

 

As for the conclusion that Gwen's death did not teach Peter responsibility in the comics, yeah, it did. Amazing fucked that up. One of the key differences between the "Gwen Stacy"s is that Gwen did not know Peter was Spider-man so she died because Peter did not tell her. Of course, it was not in his best interest to because Spider-man had a hand in the death of her father. The moral of her death was supposed to teach Peter that just like his inaction to do something causes pain for other's(Uncle Ben), his action causes it as well. Of course, it was a rather inane lesson simply because it reduces Peter to a bout of consequentialism, but her death does serve a purpose. Amazing Spider-man 2 screwed it up because there was nothing Peter could learn from it. It was literally beyond his control. He did everything right and just like the audience, no one could see Harry going nuts and just seemingly throwing Gwen Stacey down the Clock tower for seemingly no reason(Norman Osborn had the same reason as Harry, but Norman had years of built up frustration with Spider-man's meddling to build a criminal empire. Harry just threw one fit with Spider-man after he said no to a simple request that wasn't really a no, it was more of "maybe we should do more research before we do something rash"). So yeah, color me a bit annoyed with Sony at the moment.

[Sami]

Sigh. It's impossible for me to ignore the issues these movies have now, and being unable to come up with actual plausible defenses for the criticisms people have has proven to me that my love for the character has unfortunately clouded my judgment a fair bit. It makes me sad to see so many people just not care about Spider-Man anymore thanks to the films because in spite of everything I still think the new ones at least did capture a lot of what makes the character himself so fun, entertaining, and compelling in his own right in my opinion. He's engaging, funny, and easy to identify because in spite of his mistakes he still does his best to do the right thing and protect the people he loves without relentlessly pushing them away like Raimi's Spider-Man always did. 

 

I at least enjoy the Webb films more than the Raimi ones because I have a very pronounced preference for their source material and inspiration (Ultimate) over Raimi's (60's Amazing), but yeah... I'll finally admit it, they're just not very good if you don't already care about Spider-Man. 

 

Hopefully Spidey gets a great movie without any corporate bullshit in the way soon, but I still don't think Marvel Studios is the right studio for it. Literally the only other superhero whose films I've ever been able to really get invested in was Nolan's Batman. Marvel just doesn't interest me.

 

Bleh.

[Kuzu]

Welp, saw the movie just now; and shit, I actually like it. I'll give a full review later when I let the hype settle.

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