The Amazing Spider-Man

Spoiler:

Also, saw the movie on opening night and I loved it. I don't like how cookie-cutter the ending of the fight was as has been with most superhero movies, but damn if Peter and Gwen didn't have fantastic scenes together and Andrew Garfield was great as Peter.

I rewatched Raimi's Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 over the weekend, and it's remarkable how different they are from ASM. Are Raimi's superior? Taken as a whole, yes. Spider-Man 2 is actually better than the first despite my recollections of feeling a bit underwhelmned by it at the time, though I'm putting that down to being a more-of-the-same sequel to a surprisingly really, really good original. Not that more-of-the-same is a bad thing, it was just a bit familiar.

Still, Raimi's films are much more colourful, as though the characters have jumped from the pages off the comic itself, everything has a sense of hyper realism to it - the good guys are really good, the bad guys are really bad, everything is a caricature of itself. Amazing was much darker and grittier in both tone and style, as though someone had filmed it through the same lens Nolan used for Batman Begins. In fact, I'm sure part of that was deliberate.

In terms of Peter Parker being a completely clueless nerd, Maguire effortlessly trumps Garfield. Garfield's Parker isn't a jock, but he's much more comfortable in his own skin than Maguire's, as witnessed by his deliberate humiliation of Flash once he realises his power. Oddly, despite Garfield's Peter being the more agressive, the fighting styles of the two Spider-Men are notably different, Garfield focusing on raw speed and agility, Maguire seemingly content to trade blows with both Gobby and Doc Ock. Both thrilling in their own right, but Garfield's Spidey feels more true to his roots in that regard.

Oh, and there's no doubt in my mind that Emma Stone's Gwen is both much more likable and hotter than Kirsten Dunst's MJ. Gwen comes across as having the warmer personality as well as being both more intelligent and more ballsy than MJ.

In essence I suppose my ranking of the films has changed a bit, but not by much. I'd argue Spier-Man 2 is the best of the bunch, followed by Spider-Man with Amazing not too far from that. Oh, and lest we forget, Spider-Man 3 being still the weakest of the lot.

SimianWonder wrote:

Amazing was much darker and grittier in both tone and style, as though someone had filmed it through the same lens Nolan used for Batman Begins. In fact, I'm sure part of that was deliberate.

I disagree with this. While Amazing is definitely darker than the original films, I do not get a "gritty" feeling from it and I certainly do not understand the Batman Begins comparisons. Amazing is a dark movie, but the character of Peter Parker is the shining light of hope in the movie, even while everything is in hell he still believes in his Uncle's lessons and grows from his tragedies into the symbol of the American Superhero. Amazing while dark, manages to weave the humor, wit, and hope into the movie to show that Peter's fight won't constitute sacrifices and he can continue smiling. Batman is gritty, the entire city of Gotham is a hellhole and Ra's seeks to destroy it because of the disgusting people in it. Bruce's parents may drive him towards his actions, but his life as Bruce Wayne does not matter past the money, when Bruce becomes Batman, Bruce Wayne is a mask used for Batman.

This is part of what makes Batman a darker, grittier and overall, more line-stepping hero than Spider-Man. Amazing doesn't have the divergence between hero and person, Spider-Man is Peter Parker. Batman however says himself that anyone can be a hero, which is why his identity of Bruce Wayne does not matter to him, he has divorced the person from the hero. That's not to say that either movie has to follow the other one, Amazing Spider-Man is a great film that shows the evolution of Peter Parker as a person, while Batman Begins doesn't really show Bruce grow, he becomes Batman and fights crime. Although, I may need to watch Batman Begins again to be certain about it because I haven't watched it in a long time.

This is just something I felt like adding though, Amazing Spider-Man can be seen that way, I just don't think it should.

This movie wasn't dark or gritty. It just wasn't as campy as the Raimi trilogy.

Well it would've been dark had it ended on the note it seemed to be going for before the whole

Spoiler:

I enjoyed this more than any of the Raimi movies honestly. The fact that they actually handle Peter's teenager life well and don't skip over it like with Raimi's adds to it a lot.

I'm just glad this movie didn't look as visually dark, gloomy and boring as that first trailer made it out to be. It would have sucked to see it saturated with that vomit-tinted filter plastered all over throughout the whole film. Instead, the movie is pretty colorful and it matched the not-so-dark tone the film wound up having. Even the night time scenes were more bright and colorful than in Raimi's ones.

The crane scene is incredibly hilarious, I like the bridge scene from the first movie more when it comes to people helping Spidey, felt right
"This is New York" and "You mess with one of us" lines are corny and unnecessary, but they're guilty pleasure

I still don't like the artificial webbing.

You don't like a lot of good things, Moose.

It's just pitiful that a superhero with spider powers doesn't have his own webs.

Where they would come from, Moose? It's not like spider can form webs from his own body, nor is it like radioactivity gives you the sack to do that. I mean, I know they're superpowers, but Spider-Man's have always been more tame compared to others and having a sack for webbing in his body would be really weird compared to everything else.

Were you thinking that all throughout the Raimi films? It's a superpower. He got bitten by a weird spider and then he could shoot webs out of his wrist. It made as much sense as any of his other powers.

No, cause I was a child to early teens when those movies came out and didn't have any semblance of rational thought when it came to Spider-Man.

It's not rational to call a superhero Spider-Man when he lacks the most obvious ability a spider should have. Sticky-Man would make more sense.

The way the webs came about in this particular film annoyed me though. Parker being smart enough to just make his own ebs from scratch is strange, but at least it explains why only he has them. In the film he just modified an existing industrial product.

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

It's not rational to call a superhero Spider-Man when he lacks the most obvious ability a spider should have. Sticky-Man would make more sense.

What? Moose, he swings from webs. He doesn't need to shoot the webs out of his arms to shoot webs, that's why he has shooters for that. It doesn't matter if Spider-Man can produce them from himself or from other materials, as long as he climbs on walls, has great agility, and swings from webs he's Spider-Man. I mean come on, do you need Batman to be blind and use sonar so he can navigate the landscape to be Batman?

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The way the webs came about in this particular film annoyed me though. Parker being smart enough to just make his own ebs from scratch is strange, but at least it explains why only he has them. In the film he just modified an existing industrial product.

This product came from OsCorp and from the same spiders Peter got stung by, the main difference is he was able to turn them into shooters, while OsCorp does something else entirely with them... it also sort of explains why he doesn't just try to get rich off of it too since another company already has it.

Stan Lee always intended Spidey to have organic webbing, but they were too much like cummies. Fuck all these comic book nerds who need things to be like tbe original.

The webbing should have come out of his ass.

That would be so gritty realism.

Batman doesn't have any superpowers. Spider-Man does. Just not the most important one. It's dumb.

I don't really care if it's from the comics or what Stan Lee says, organic webbing is stupid in any capacity, because the fact that Peter can create his own webs is supposed to show that Peter is just more intelligent than some common science whiz. Not just that he knows a lot of stuff, but can also apply it properly into a working formula and create something out of it and even in ASM, him hacking OsCorp's technology and modifying to do something like that shows it off too. The mechanical web-shooters are meant as a way to dramatize Peter's intellect, something that's a pretty big part of his character. If you put web powers with the package then that sort of devalues part of his character. Now that's to say you can't compensate for that, but Raimi's movies really didn't try to show off Peter's intellect at all or that he really had it, he was sort of just nerdy at the start, then becomes Spider-Man and fights bad guys.

Spoiler:

I'd say the stick 'em powers and hyper agility are more important considering without those he probably wouldn't even have any practical use for the web-swinging abilities since he'd either slam into the walls or not be able to maneuver around the city very well and without the super strength he couldn't really pull heavy things towards him, the most he could do is create nets and really, that's only got so many practical uses. It's not like Spider-Man's most important feature is web-swinging, unless you really think that's the only thing he can do.

He didn't seem particularly smart in ASM either. I got the impression the spider bite made more intelligent, as well as stronger and faster and so on.