Spider-Man Film Debate

I'm not talking about that part. I was trying to keep my post short since I had originally written paragraphs going into what I though. I didn't mean him falling into the vat was his own fault; what I meant was the fact that his odd obsession is what drove him mad and that he didn't stand up for himself was what made him mentally weak.l

I liked Max when he first came on screen because of his interaction with Spider-man. He was star struck and out of the all the people there, he was the one that he saved, which makes him special. I especially love his reaction when to when Spider-man says "I need you. You're my eyes and ears". That's a spark of joy that really made me feel for the character.

However, when they showed him in his apartment, it just didn't sit well with me. You're supposed to get that Max is this shlub who has no friends, and you feel bad for him because he's singing "Happy Birthday" to himself. On paper, that would work very well. I just don't feel that the movie didn't capture the right mood for that. When he was talking to the Spider-man picture, it was creepy and didn't sit well with me.

When he felt into that vat, I wasn't going "Oh no!", I was thinking "Well, time to get to Electro". All that being said, I really loved where he's at Time Square. When he was talking with Spidy, he wasn't Max the Yandere (the only word I can think of to describe him), he was Max who was saved by his hero. All of it came together; the music, the dialogue, motivation, everything. Everything after that though...it just didn't sit well with me.

 

I' m told the original material is a neverending remake of itself anyway, it' s the "somehow still around comics farts" raison d' être.

It so happens that the first Doc Oc story is one of the very few comics I' ve read. That, and the Dark Phoenix arc from X-Men. Let' s just say in both cases "true to the original material" would mean "corny as hell" so I' m not exactly mad at the movies for blowing all the dust away. Mind the cobwebs though, they' re intentional. How bad are the movies faithfulness-wise anyway ? Surely they' re nowhere near DBZ The Movie levels of bad, are they ?

I' ve only watched the first asm so far, I' ll stick with Raimi for now. I suppose I would have enjoyed it much more had it not come both second and too soon.

 

I got to see The Amazing Spider-Man 2 last night. More thorough thoughts here.

I have such low expectations for the rest of the Amazing film series now. Electro and Spider-Man were great, but almost everything else fell flat, especially Harry Osborn, the Green Goblin, the Rhino, the whole parents subplot (that I don't care about still,) and the idea that everything has to be tied to Oscorp.

 

Fun fact about the 90's cartoon: They weren't allowed to punch people. The network set a censor for the series that didn't want any of the characters punching each other. Hence the weird grappling.

 

I remember seeing Sam Raimi's Spider Man as a kid and enjoying it; Willem Dafoe was a pretty good Green Goblin, and the first scenes with Peter discovering his powers were entertaining and fun. The movie has aged very poorly. Toby Maguire is a wet blanket of an actor, a constant reminder that Jake Gyllenhaal (a massively more talented actor) very nearly took the role. The character of Mary Jane is pretty one-dimensional and flat here, and I find Kirsten Dunst totally unappealing as an actress. Really, if you're going to fail the Bechdel test and make your female lead a helpless damsel, you might as well make her desirable in some way. This is where the movie really goes wrong: being Spider Man doesn't seem cool, because I don't see myself in Peter Parker, I see some boring turd. Mary Jane is neither attractive nor interesting. Sam Raimi's direction is so poor in anything that isn't an action scene that he makes James Franco seem like a terrible actor. Good action scenes don't make a good action movie, especially if the action movie is a portrayal of a beloved character.

Spider Man 2 is a frustrating, joyless, illogical train wreck, the best scene of which is a train wreck. Mary Jane is developed as a character here... to be an utterly insufferable ditz. Sam Raimi probably isn't a misogynist, but actions speak louder than words. James Franco is even worse in this movie. Doc Oc is compelling to a point, but so much of his storyline is a retread of the motifs of the Green Goblin plot from the last movie. Peter losing his powers takes up a huge chunk of the movie, and it's not only emotionally hollow (because I still don't like Peter), but utterly illogical and visually uninteresting. Barf.

Spider Man 3... the awfulness kind of speaks for itself. Its gender politics go from dubious to horrendous. Peter Parker gets an emo haircut, does a bizarre hard jazz dance (or whatever you call that debacle) and hits a woman, then cries on a rooftop in a black Spider Man suit. How did this script get greenlit?

As for The Amazing Spider Man, it had a whole host of problems. The writing was a mess. The villain was totally generic and bland, and his evil plot was stupid. Peter was written as a semi-abusive ******bag. Yet, for all this, it did the very basic function of what a Spider Man movie should do. It made being Spider Man seem kind of cool; Andrew Garfield just has a charisma and affability that Tobey Maguire lacks, and it makes Peter more relatable, despite some questionable lines/actions. There was a real, believable connection between Peter and Gwen. Speaking of which, Gwen Stacy is way more interesting than Mary Jane, and Emma Stone is not only funnier and more charismatic but way more attractive than Kirsten Dunst (these things matter in a good-ol'-fashioned action movie). I honestly just wish that the first trilogy had been done better, with different leads. But if I were to pick a Spider Man movie to watch right now, it's doutblessly to ASM I would go.

 

I'm going to enter this thread real quick and run like hell because I know the reaction I'm going to get...

Sam Raimi's movies did a great job carving the path for superhero movies, but they really didn't age well. None of the movies feel like classics, rather they feel like trendsetters. I prefer the Mark Webb duology (so far). I find Spider-Man is way more likable, I find the actors more natural, and the second one is honestly one of the best action movies I've ever seen and the flack it gets is downright nonsensical. It does amazing things and we should praise how it tries to blend choreography with music compositions and not just play the two at once. We should be having talks about how it's interesting to see such a divided character repress everything so he can bring hope, fight crime, and even stop bullying and still find moments to crack wise- he truly loves what he does no matter how many terrible events it brings into his life. I'd love to live in a world where viewers saw TASM2 and realized that the five major characters were all analogous for stages of grief- a theme set by Gwen in the beginning. These new movies have a lot of heart and while a reboot of the franchise was early and unnecessary, I'm glad it happened. This new character is a lot more like Spider-Man and these new movies actually feel like comics. Every time I've seen one of these movies it's blown me away and even left me feeling exhausted from excitement.

 

Wow, I knew lots of people liked the new Spider-Man movies, but actually disliking the first two Sam Raimi films...that's new to me, and pretty disappointing, not gonna lie. I found them so much more heartfelt and engaging, even if ASM2 had some great moments :\

But I guess I should have expected that anyway. Different opinions will be different.

 

Trust me, I'm shocked too. KHV just happens to be a minority where people don't like the Raimi films. The majority still prefer the Raimi films, but I just don't anymore. It doesn't help that they've had quite a bit of over-exposure and the second movie was better as a game than a movie.

Also, I edited my first post here. Just wanted to make sure you saw it.

 

Excellent point, Spider Man 2 was an awesome game. Maybe the best movie-to-video-game adaptation ever (not sure, haven't played all of them). Even the first game was fun, if heavily flawed. Never played the third game, but I heard it was kind of a mess, which is definitely apropos. Still, if the video games were submitted as part of the Raimi trilogy, its stock would certainly increase in my book.

 

But Spider-Man's not suppose to be cool
He's a dorky nerd
The whole appeal is that making corny jokes and one liners is exactly what Peter Parker thinks "cool" is.

 

i love you


though i would say 2 has aged fairly well. not great but not bad. at the time it was released it was the best superhero film made, though it has since been eclipsed multiple times over. its clearly got flaws but its also clearly trying much harder to be a good story than anything that came before.

1 is the definition of formulaic. it could serve as an outline for anyone trying to make a by-the-books origin film. still fun at times for what it is (and at the time it was huge) but its not something i ever feel the need to rewatch. even for nostalgia.

i dont even want to think about 3.

 

That's natural, embrace it.

 

Peter Parker's not cool.
Spider-Man is.

 

But so is The Amazing Spider-Man :\ (and when it's not being formulaic, it's doing annoying sequel set-ups instead of focusing on Peter's story. Does anyone seriously care about Peter's parents?)

Except with Spider-Man 1, I at least know that Peter Parker had developed emotionally over the span of the story (hell, just look at the first shot compared to the last shot.) I didn't get the same feeling at all with the Peter Parker of The Amazing Spider-Man. Hell, besides obviously getting superpowers, Peter seemed like the exact same person at the end of that film as he was at the beginning. At least with The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I could see he clearly had changed with what happened in that film.

I dunno. The original Spider-Man films (the first two, at least) are classics to me, and they definitely stand the test of time, except obviously for the CGI and a few unnecessary Evil Dead-esque extreme close-up shots. The music is instantly memorable, the train scene in Spider-Man 2 is to date one of the best scenes of super heroics put on film, the battles against Green Goblin and Doc Ock are still fun to watch, I honestly feel like I went on an emotional journey with Peter Parker from the beginning to the end and saw him change into a better person, and...yeah I could heap on more praise, but I think my view has been made clear.