Directed by Marc Webb
Story by James Vanderbilt
Screenplay by James Vanderbilt and Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves
Based on the comic books series by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
Stars: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Chris Zylka, Irrfan Khan, Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidtz, Martin Sheen and Sally Field
Let me warn you folks, I will using some coarse language in my review of this movie. If you don't like strong language, please turn away right now. Only warning.
When I heard that the Spider-Man franchise was being rebooted, I had mixed emotion with it. I enjoyed the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire franchise, expect for Spider-Man 3 -- which I did not see -- so I will not comment on that. I went into this movie with an opening mind and what I saw on-screen was nothing. Was Spider-Man "amazing? " I can certainly say with a resounding no.
Everybody knows about the origin story of Peter Parker that has Andrew Garfield slipping into the red and blue unitard suit which has to be done again for this movie. This movie takes place is a different universe than the other movies. This Peter Parker is a mopey, emo, skater kid that has a knack for photography and chemistry. He has a crush on Gwen Stacy (Stone) who he has a wallpaper of her on his computer. He tries to find what happened to his parents (Scott, Davidtz) and why they have to leave him with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May (Sheen, Field) years prior. He finds his dad's briefcase in the basement with a secret file to a decay algorithm he was working on with a former college, Dr. Curt Conners (Ifans). He tries to get closer to answer when he was bitten by an enhanced spider and blah, blah, blah.
I was warned before I went into this movie that the first half of the movie was going to be repetitive to give the origin story again. I have no idea whose idea it was to make Peter Parker into this cocky emo punk kid, but I fucking hated it. I understand that he goes into a dark place when he Uncle Ben is killed. (That is not a spoiler. Ben dying in the crux of Spider-Man existing.) When Spider-Man dons the costume, he becomes a giant douchebag, playing with the hundreds of guys that look like the guy that killed Uncle Ben.
I didn't understand the point of this movie. I was supposed to be entertained, but making the armrest next to me go up and down was more interesting than this movie. There was no immediate danger to anybody. I did not feel the tension, no suspense. Are these characters going to survive? I didn't care. I thought the dialogue made my eyes roll. I kept exclaiming, "Oh, God.Are you fucking kidding me?" I was in disbelief about how bored I was at the movie. Why was Chris Zylka in this movie? His role was the typical meat head jock bully that serves no purpose.
When you see the inspiration for the costume, I wanted to walk out. There were several times that I wanted to walk out of the movie. It was a waste of time. The sad part is that this movie is going to make a shitload of money. It's a damn shame. Columbia Pictures, you have dropped the fucking ball again.You have great source material and you fucking it all up with a repellent lead, laughable action sequences, a bland romance and atrocious dialogue. I rather look at Josh Hutcherson's audition video for two hours than see this movie again.
My Rating
Nice review. This movie definitely had plenty of fun and exciting moments and characters that we could feel something for. For some reason though, I just kept on thinking about the Sam Raimi original movies and yes, I know they aren't masterpieces by any means, but I still loved them and it just seemed like this whole film was unnecessary, but fun.
ReplyDeleteI think that they made a big mistake doing the same origin story. They should just have Peter Parker being a masked vigilante, be a mystery to the other characters, fall in love with Gwen and fight a bad guy that is scary and not a lame lizardman.
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