Just the Ticket #95: Two-ly Amazing
I was right to be in awe of the Lizard effects. As he was in the 90's Spidey series, Lizard is massive, powerful, and nigh indestructible thanks to that whole re-growing limbs thing he does. The transformation from Lizard to Dr. Connors (Rhys Ifans--change your name to Reese Evans and get it over with) has scales sloughing off his body like a real lizard shedding its skin. The flesh tone around the eyes is kind of a turn-off, but it also gives the impression of a buried spark of humanity amid the snippings, scales, and reptile tails that adds to the menace of this not-so-mindless mad scientist-turned-monster.
I was also right about bringing in Gwen Stacy and making Peter more of an awkward, off-color teen than just an outright stereotypical nerd. Stone and Garfield bring a maturity and a frustrating likability to their on-screen chemistry that can only be described as realistic (the actors began denying that they were dating soon after the movie wrapped). Plus, using a British actor like Andrew Garfield finally brings us a Peter Parker who is a New York kid with a New York accent. Another pleasant surprise.
And finally, I was right about the increased drama and intrigue; the enhanced comic book-ness of The Amazing Spider-Man. True, the back story fails to do anything as mythologically epic as a one-hour weekly serial might be able to grab you with after two-and-a quarter episodes (ASM runs approximately two hours and fifteen minutes of a variety of well-packed, evenly addressed material, including a spoiler featuring Norman Osborn as he was first glimpsed in the comics), but that's all the more reason to continue the franchise as if it were a serialized medium (much as the Avengers is doing now). Whether fans or noobs, everyone needs a reason to go to the movies these days, and serialized cinema is the perfect draw mechanism to ensure the success of big-budget tentpole films like this.
As to the parts I was wrong about....
The cast is far from unrecognizable. I still can't think of a single thing I've seen Andrew Garfield in prior to this, but who (aside from the Amish mentioned last issue) doesn't know who Martin Sheen (Uncle Ben) is? Or Sally Field (Aunt May)? Emma Stone (Gwen Stacy) from The Help? How about Rescue Me's former leading man, Denis Leary (Capt. John Stacy)? Not everyone is given equal screen time (Field's Aunt May just sits at home and cries in a scene or two), but everyone does a great job with what they're given.
The reboot direction that so disgusted me this May took serious liberties with the origin story as I feared, but it turned out to be a rather endearing homage to the comics in the end. Financial difficulties (Peter's original motivation to don the Spider-suit) are sidelined for a more personal, emotional focus on Peter's quest for revenge against the man who killed his uncle. Relegated to the purposes of a mere remake cameo, the wrestling arena where he would have faced Crusher Hogan in canonical Spidey lore comes off as a subtly touching, dramatic tribute not even attempted by the average re-imagineer to this date. The serendipitously named director, Marc Webb, sees to it with an indie filmmaker's eye for powerful understatement, a museum curator's preservationist drive, and a Spidey-geek's attention to detail.
Ultimately, I must also admit my erroneous prejudice against action movie 3D as it applies to The Amazing Spider-Man. Sure, there are the usual objects in slow motion flight towards the camera: broken glass, Oscorp Tower's lightning rod, the occasional wayward web line, Spider-Man himself. But where the usual suspects were just mildly impressive, the nature of ASM invited some new tricks that made me wish I had a 3D television; among them, a few first-person web-swinging sequences worth experiencing in the manner for which they were intended.
So much left unanswered, yet so much more to look forward to. The Amazing Spider-Man is a big-screen comic book, and I can't wait to "read" ASM #2.
A
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!
Director Marc Webb returns, along with now-confirmed-dating leading couple Garfield (Peter Parker/Spider-Man) and Stone (Gwen Stacy), and former cameos Embeth Davidtz (Mary Parker), Campbell Scott (Richard Parker), Denis Leary (the deceased Captain Stacy), and Chris Cooper (Norman Osborn).
Following Norman Osborn's death (which, for reasons I invite you to make evidence of for yourself, I believe should have ironic quotes around it) from a mysterious, seemingly incurable, genetic disease, his son, Harry (played by Chronicle villain Dane DeHaan) inherits Oscorp and all of its dirty secrets (engineering the plane crash that killed Peter's parents, and using the Ravencroft mental institution to create and study supervillains, just to name a few).
Paul Giamatti frames the film nicely in his unexpected turn as Aleksei Sytsevich, a bald, barbed-wire-tattooed, campy, leather-wearing Russian goon in a giant rhino-shaped tank (which would make him the villain known as the Rhino, duh). But the bulk of the action is devoted to Jamie Foxx, who gets a supercharged makeover as Max Dillon, an Oscorp electrician and already mentally unhinged Spidey-stalker who winds up on the wrong end of a tank of electric eels. Apparently, when you fall into such a tank at such a morally-bankrupt science factory, you turn blue, eat electricity, shoot electricity, can become electricity (including the black rubber suit--paradox of all electrical villain costume paradoxes--that you are suddenly wearing with no explanation), can pinball superheroes around a power plant to the tune of "Smoke On the Water," and hear Linkin Park screaming in your head for you to kill all the people who ever lied to you. Oh, and you decide to call yourself Electro. I think I liked him better when he wore green and yellow tights.
The only saving grace about the Max Dillon character is his function as an anti-Spider-Man. When we follow Max home, we discover that he has a shrine-slash-research wall devoted to the "web-crawler" (an unfortunate misnomer of the familiar "wall-crawler" phrase, as used by a reporter at one point). Peter later fashions a similar research wall in his hate- and fear-fueled obsession with his parents' abandonment of him and their subsequent deaths. This obsession feeds into other plot devices and threads, as well.
Rather than having Linkin Park scream at him as Electro does, Peter is haunted by the ghost of John Stacy, to whom he made a promise that he would cut ties with Gwen or risk her life by continuing their awkward, tumultuous, complicated, yet somehow still saccharine romance.
The second plotline that stems from Peter's obsessive investigation (and tragically converges with the first) is that Harry Osborn has begun to die from the same disease as his father, whom we see has injected himself with the Lizard serum in an effort to thwart his own demise. Peter discovers that the spider venom which turned him into Spider-Man was genetically enhanced with his father's blood, and that the cure to the "green disease," the "Osborn Curse," may lie in the Parker family bloodline.
It would seem that Director Webb and writer/producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (the brilliant minds behind Hawaii Five-O and Sleepy Hollow) have borrowed more than the Electro design from Marvel's Ultimate Universe. As in the Ultimate Spider-Man comics and cartoon show (except that in the Ultimate Universe, Harry is the Hobgoblin), Harry becomes the Green Goblin when he injects himself with the genetically engineered spider venom. What results is a veiny, stretchy-grinned, armor-clad homage to the traditional Green Goblin that also manages to look fresh. DeHaan (no stranger to playing a flying, super-powered maniac) brings a cold, desperate, poisonous glee to the character that was somewhat lacking in both Willem Dafoe and James Franco's incarnations in previous films.
Although the trilogy of sequential climactic fight sequences ran too long (with too much time spent on a whimpy, nearly indestructible Electro, and the third fight lacking a climax of any kind, as the film ended before Spidey-versus-Rhino could even begin), Amazing Spider-Man 2 does tell us a few things that invite more questions:
1) Harry Osborn acquires an assistant at Oscorp who is only addressed as "Felicia." With Shailene Woodley tied up by the Divergent films, could a one-shot romance be in the books for Peter/Spidey and "Felicia" (Hardy?)/Black Cat in the next Amazing?
2) Alistair Smythe appears briefly to mock Max Dillon at Oscorp. Is he set to be one of the Sinister Six? And in what form?
3) Harry starts to mutate into something before he steps into the Goblin armor and gets temporarily healed. Furthermore, he is shown to be alive and dealing with an unknown condition that "comes and goes" near the end of ASM2. Could he mutate into the Ultimate Green Goblin in a future film?
4) Electro's voltmeter goes dark after he is defeated, but no one smashes it. Perhaps he will return as a member of the Six as well?
5) Norman Osborn's ironically-quoted "death," plus his creepy reptilian hands, plus a vaguely Norman-like, fedora'd silhouette speaking in a familiar gravelly whine comes to visit Harry at Ravencroft. Could there be a new Lizard in town?
6) The spider serum is frequently referred to as "the venom." Throw on a capital V, and could we be looking at the beginnings of an Ultimate Universe Venom story here?
7) As fan geeks know from the teaser trailer (and from watching the movie), Oscorp's Special Projects division is home to not just the Rhino tank, but also to Vulture's wings, Doctor Octopus' tentacles, and a horde of unsanctioned, supposedly destroyed hybrid animal serums. Who else will fill out the Sinister Six?
8) This is not a question, but it is something the movie tells us about the future of the franchise: that the character of Gwen Stacy will not be in it. Fan geeks have also been clamoring over, and ineffectually booing about, leaked photos of Emma Stone wearing an outfit similar to what Gwen Stacy was depicted wearing in The Amazing Spider-Man #121 and 122, referred to collectively as "The Night Gwen Stacy Died." And in true mind-fuck fashion, pitting common knowledge against all hope, that is exactly what happens.
The main villain (or at least, the villain with the most screen time) may have been a pus
It's a good thing Gwen didn't die flying Talia Al-Ghul's bomb out of Gotham City on the Batwing, because then this movie would have sucked.
B
P.S. - That would have also meant that Gwen Stacy would have been played by Ben Affleck for the rest of the franchise, and that would have really sucked.
Barring an Amalgam Comics movie and the subsequent end of all creation, I shall return with another villain from my head within the next few days.
The Amazing Ticketmaster-Man,
out of webbing,
and just...
out.
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