The Amazing Spider Man, and His Cougar Girlfriend

Synopsis:


A young man acquires unexpected abilities and discovers his calling when he seeks to right the consequences of his irresponsibility.


Review:


OK, so I am rocketing towards becoming an old man and it's interesting to survey my interests to see how many things I dabble in that would be considered childish. I still enjoy video games, drawing "cool stuff", and I find myself continuing to look forward to the super hero movies, based on comics I have, admittedly, mostly grown out of. Now, it's pretty obvious why I grew out of most of the comics I read. While the work of the more talented artists, with Rob Liefeld leading the vanguard of their antithesis, would continue to appeal to my aesthetic sensibilities and appreciation for the skill of the artists, the lion's share of the writing is quite juvenile. So, I rarely read comics any more but I continue to have a strange hunger for the celluloid genesis of many of the characters I can no longer stomach in print.


The Amazing Spider Man was the most recent itch that had to be scratched. I had grown to dislike Sam Raimi's Spider Man trilogy over the ensuing years for their 50's pulpy twists, like close-ups of women screaming into the camera with hands pressed to each side of their face. The horribly over villained 3rd installment removed for pure badness, the first two were too filled with a certain sense of geeky awkwardness that didn't come as much from Peter Parker but from the choices of the film makers who just piled bad choices on until the films became an overbearing pastiche of 50's schlock, self conscious comedy, and the very juvenile writing that ruined comics for me to begin with. Now, admittedly, any comic movie is going to have a large serving of juvenalia that has to be mentally suspended. It just needs to be handled in an intelligent, adult-like, manner. Now, Chris Nolan's Batman movies approach juvenile fantasy with an adult touch.


I was curious to see if The Amazing Spider Man could start over again with a little bit more of a grounded, real world, adult edge to it. First off, I really do dislike reboots. Taking chances on original ideas is just too much work, right? And, sitting through Spider Man's origin story, AGAIN, was pretty tiresome. It makes sense that the film makers need to put their touch on it, but it's such a waste to sit through a good hour, or about $8 in modern movie terms, of a repackaged re-run. There were a few tweaks here and there, but it's mostly the same. The big difference, in this case, is that I actually like Andrew Garfield, as Peter Parker, more than Tobey McGuire. He was awkward, but still brash, and was just more fun to watch. But, again, I wanted to see something truly different.


So, the first real difference in the origin story is that they chose Gwen Stacey to be Peter Parker's paramour instead of Mary Jane Watson. Not a real biggie, but here's where The Amazing Spider Man really bugged me. Emma Stone was chosen to play Gwen and, while Andrew Garfield pulled off playing a teen relatively well and without blaring red lights, Emma Stone felt like she was even more mature than her actual 24 years of age, let alone 17. Now, it's not entirely her fault, but let me lay it out for you, and this is where the juvenile unimaginative writing, that really messes up potentially cool stuff for me, comes into play.


See, Gwen is, as a 17 year old, the main antagonist's right-hand man/intern. She orients visitors to the ground breaking work her mentor is doing with the poise of a woman in her mid-20's, has complete access (24/7) to all of the top secret files and areas of the lab she works in, again as an intern, and understands how all of the sophisticated equipment in the lab works, like a seasoned PhD. It's actually maddening. It makes so little sense, and is so unnecessary to the story, that I want to strangle the writers so badly. How hard would it be to give her the same job, but instead of giving her unfettered access to everything she needs, purely to make her more important and to move the story forward, that she is just a bright intern, with real world access, who uses her basic knowledge of the facilities and what the equipment does to work with Peter, combing their smarts, to break into the lab and "hack" stuff to get the job done? I'm not saying that's super realistic, but don't make it so that your story only works because you magically gift a 17 year old girl with the responsibility, poise, and knowledge, of a woman twice her actual age... It's preposterous and stupid, and it makes Peter's relationship with Gwen feel really off. You look at her and you see a mature woman. You look at Peter and you kind of feel like he's actually a young man who doesn't know what to do around girls. What's that add up to? Gwen goes through the entire movie looking like a cougar instead of a teenager.


A lot of other stuff happened in the movie, but all I kept telling myself was, "she's not 17." There would be a really nicely done sequence of spider FX and then Gwen would appear, and my brain would scream, "she's not 17!" That took me out of the moment quite a few times.


Other than that, and the slightly problematic fact that the villain wasn't that compelling and his motivation, and the visualization of it (in one instance, bunches of tiny lizards multiplying on a computer screen like a computer screen from the 80's instead of 2012)... Wait, that's a pretty big problem. That's what made Iron Man not nearly as cool as it should have been and what made an already bad movie, Green Lantern, even worse. You have to make your villains more villainous... more human... more real. The motivation to do bad things has to be more compelling than a lame 2 minute monologue about how the world's not fair. Instead of spending half of the movie telling a story you've already seen, spend that time making the villain more villainous, so that the moviegoer really wants that man-lizard to go down hard, instead of just enjoying the fireworks of a kind-of cool fight scene.


Spider Man has some real motivation, which most of the people lining up to see The Amazing Spider Man already know about. He screwed up. His indifference caused a loved one to get hurt. He tries to make up for it, at first for himself alone, and then for everyone else. Whatever bad guy the film makers choose, usually disfigured externally or internally, it takes more than ugly bad guy costumes or wild ranting to make the hero's victory feel something more than empty flash. This film fails in that respect, too.


However, I still enjoyed good bits of The Amazing Spider Man. The special effects were more convincing than the first trilogy. I don't think it's only because of improved technology, but art direction and choreography really make a difference, and I think the guys who did Amazing did a better job. There were some really great scenes of Spider Man doing his thing which made the popcorn elements feel rewarding enough to outweigh the obviously bad storytelling elements. The Amazing Spider Man could have easily been much better but I still rate it a...


6.5 out of 10


So, how does my split psyche come out of this? My adult side wants to see more intelligent and compelling script-writing, but my kid side still enjoys the well done WOW moments.