THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

[Cpt Kirks 2pay]

I love the way that everyone slags this film off for being so unnecessary and unoriginal, yet all you guys are here talking about sooooooooooo muuuuuuuuuchhh!!!!

As IF you're not gonna go and see it.

Hypocrits the lot of ya. Traitors to your own cause.

The Studios win. Again.

And you all know it.

[Peven]

wow, no activity here since '11?

anyway, I saw the full trailer for this the other day at the theatre and have to say it looks much better than I had expected, though I can also see where it is taking a risk of being too glossy and slick for some people. everything is so shiny in this Spidey world. I'll probably spend the money to catch a matinee after seeing the trailer where I was planning on waiting for netflix prior, if the action scenes are handled well enough to see what is happening instead of a bunch of quick cuts and shaky cam it may actually end up being a decent popcorn movie, though I have very little expectation that it will carry anything close to the emotional weight of Toby's Spiderman. of course, there were those who despised Toby so maybe this new version will click with them

[so sorry]

anyway, I saw the full trailer for this the other day at the theatre and have to say it looks much better than I had expected,

Is there a new one out there?

though I have very little expectation that it will carry anything close to the emotional weight of Toby's Spiderman. of course, there were those who despised Toby so maybe this new version will click with them

Yeah from my personal perspective I have nothing really invested in Spiderman (comics or previous movies) so I'm game for a new one.

[Peven]

anyway, I saw the full trailer for this the other day at the theatre and have to say it looks much better than I had expected,

Is there a new one out there?

though I have very little expectation that it will carry anything close to the emotional weight of Toby's Spiderman. of course, there were those who despised Toby so maybe this new version will click with them

Yeah from my personal perspective I have nothing really invested in Spiderman (comics or previous movies) so I'm game for a new one.

I really haven't been following the movie's press, so maybe the trailer I saw has been out for a while, it was easily the longest trailer I have seen and showed quite a bit. for all the purists who complained about the mask coming off in the previous Spidey movies...get ready to complain again because it is going to happen again in this one at least once from what was shown in the trailer. looks to be a lot of conflict with the police and Dennis Leary as a cop with some rank, and daddy to Gwen. I am also guessing from what was shown that it won't be a radioactive spider that gives Peter Parker his powers but a genetically engineered spider, and it appears that the same experimental project that Peter is helping the good Dr Connor with is the one that ends up giving them both their "powers"

[so sorry]

The thing about the mask/unmasking of Spidey in the movies: IMO, they paid an actor a good bit of money to play a character. The last thing they want to do is cover his face for the majority of a movie with a mask. And not seeing the mouth move while the character talks is kinda weird when watching I think.

[Peven]

it never bothered me a bit, but I was never really tied down to comic canon when it came to Spidey, I really like the first two movies, and didn't hate the third one so much as was unaffected by it, the kind of movie that is forgotten by the time I get home from the theatre

[TonyWilson]

Hey Peven nice to see you're getting on board with this film. Personally I'm now slightly more worried about it being the emo twiilight fest you were worried about last year - I say this only really based on a pic of Parker wearing one of those jumpers where there's like thumbholes

*vomits*

Anyhoo, apart from that I'm digging these trailers, I like they are doing a bit of family backstory, Andrew Garfield is a simply brilliant actor (watch Boy A and wait for the "dropping the pressure" scene if you don't believe me) Spidey looks to be the wisecracking badass we all love and the CGI looks much improved to me, though we've mainly only been shown nightscenes of Spidey action.

[Ribbons]

It's weird because I've actually been a somewhat vocal champion of Marc Webb's since his music video days, but I just can't muster up any enthusiasm for this movie at all.

I saw the trailer in front of The Hunger Games and my reaction was the dreaded "meh." I don't think it looks bad, and it might even be good, but to me it's sort of just... there.

[Peven]

Hey Peven nice to see you're getting on board with this film. Personally I'm now slightly more worried about it being the emo twiilight fest you were worried about last year - I say this only really based on a pic of Parker wearing one of those jumpers where there's like thumbholes

*vomits*

Anyhoo, apart from that I'm digging these trailers, I like they are doing a bit of family backstory, Andrew Garfield is a simply brilliant actor (watch Boy A and wait for the "dropping the pressure" scene if you don't believe me) Spidey looks to be the wisecracking badass we all love and the CGI looks much improved to me, though we've mainly only been shown nightscenes of Spidey action.

you know, Garlfield DOES come across as pretty solid in the trailer, now that you mention it, though I do happen to be in the minority in being sick of Emma Stone, imo a one-note actress that makes Michael Cera seem like he has range, and I am tired of that one note. I like a wisecracking Spidey, just hope it doesn't come across as forced, if they are going to go that route they better have a writer who is funny. I actually think the tone is looks darker than the original, along with all the shinyness in this Spiderman there seems to be a harder edge as well, I am expecting more death and destruction from what i saw in the trailer. I think Leary is a pretty good choice to play an asshole cop, too, all he had to do is tweak his fireman character a little. so little time spent on Uncle Ben in the trailer, i wonder how much screen time Sheen will have before he is offed. and even less on Aunt May, are they going to diminish her role in this version? hhmmm, that would be a disappointment for me. it seems as if Dr Connor and Peter start to go through their respective transformations at relatively the same time, but I am not sure Connor's isn't going to be more gradual and will change as the movie progresses. I am honestly surprised at how much my opinion has changed in the last 6 months, what I see in the trailer is a lot better than what I had expected

[Fievel]

I actually think the tone is looks darker than the original

Nicholas Hammond and I agree.

Behold the Spiderpackage:

[Peven]

I actually think the tone is looks darker than the original

Nicholas Hammond and I agree.

not sure how serious you are about that, because when watching the trailer for the new Spidey movie the contrast to the first Toby Spidey movie isn't that hard to discern, imo. from the color palate and lighting to the actual material presented it seems pretty clear that this new version IS darker and aside from the apparent increased wisecracking from Spidey himself the movie will push closer to the limits of the PG-13 rating, just compare a PowerRangers-style Green Goblin that was more cartoonish than threatening to the Lizardman presented in this new movie.

[Fievel]

I actually think the tone is looks darker than the original

Nicholas Hammond and I agree.

not sure how serious you are about that, because when watching the trailer for the new Spidey movie the contrast to the first Toby Spidey movie isn't that hard to discern, imo. from the color palate and lighting to the actual material presented it seems pretty clear that this new version IS darker and aside from the apparent increased wisecracking from Spidey himself the movie will push closer to the limits of the PG-13 rating, just compare a PowerRangers-style Green Goblin that was more cartoonish than threatening to the Lizardman presented in this new movie.

I fully agree with you. That picture is from the late 70's version with Nicholas Hammond as Parker/Spidey. You had to have seen that back in the day? It's so unintentionally campy (unlike 60's Batman which wore its camp on its sleeve) that it is beyond laughable. Raimi & company dropped the ball with Green Goblin but made up for it with Dr. Octopus in the second. The third.... was a turd, although if they would have just used Sandman and dropped the dance number, it could have been so much better.

The new one? As much as I was against it initially, I am looking forward to watching it more and more.

[Peven]

I must confess that I looked forward to the premier of the TV series like it was second Christmas and watched every episode, not that there were many before it got the ax. the one with the karate dudes was great, and by great I mean bad, lol, where by the end Spidey was their buddy taking pictures with them. I was crushed when it got canceled.

[so sorry]

Japanese trailer. Looks good enough!

[Peven]

yeah, that trailer looks even better than the one I saw in the theatre last week

[Peven]

wow, I admit it seems I may very well be eating my words on this one if the trailer released today is an accurate indication of how good this movie will be. I like the color palate more than the one Raimi used, it is truer to what I envisioned the live-action world of Spiderman looking like as a kid who used to watch the original cartoon series. It seems they have given Spidey more of the sarcastic humor that he had in the old comics I read when young, too. The fx look a bit dodgy here and there, but overall pretty good. most importantly I like what i see of Garfield in this trailer. this movie has gone from almost zero anticipation to among my top 5 movies I'm looking forward to this summer, though "The Dark Knight" and "Prometheus" are still heads above everything else on my radar for the summer.

[TheButcher]

SPOILERS
What Was Cut From The Amazing Spider-Man?

[TheButcher]

BadAssDigest:
Was The Untold Story Cut From THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN?

A few weeks ago a YouTube user took all of the clips and trailers released for The Amazing Spider-Man and made a pretty accurate, beat-by-beat 25-minute long version of the movie. Buried in all of that footage, and in the photos released by Sony marketing, was evidence of a different version of the movie.

Even the most positive view of the movie has to acknowledge the feeling of dangling plotlines and truncated editing. By my count there are two and a half major plotlines that are just left in the wind at the end of the movie: the hunt for Uncle Ben’s killer, the wrap up of Oscorp goon Mr. Ratha’s story and the mystery of Peter Parker’s parents.

Peter’s parents is the half a plotline; while it’s obvious that the mystery is meant to continue into the next movie, the structure of this film makes it feel as if the whole story is simply dropped in favor of a big fight scene. There’s no sense of closure to any aspect of the disappearance of Peter’s parents.

There are enough clues in photos and trailers to hint at what was originally meant for some of these plotlines. Let's go one by one and see what might have been cut:

1. Spider-Man’s War Against Rockers, or, The Hunt For Uncle Ben’s Killer.

The one dangling thread that I can't begin to resolve is the hunt for Uncle Ben’s killer; in the final movie Peter simply drops the quest, without a sense of any completeness. He doesn’t seem to make peace with the idea that the guy is still on the streets and he doesn’t catch the guy - the story just dries up. I’ve heard rumors that an earlier cut of the film included more closure on this story, but I can’t be sure.

2. The Vanishing Villain, or, The Mysterious Disappearance of Evil Mr. Ratha.

One story that did get tied up in the original cut of the film is Mr. Ratha’s. In the finished film Ratha gets attacked by the Lizard on the bridge and then... is gone. You have to wonder how this guy doesn’t put two and two together and realize the giant rampaging lizardman might be related to the world-class herpetologist specializing in cross-species DNA merging who he has been berating.

What’s weird is that the picture was released only two months ago. Was this scene in the film right up until the last minute? The CGI was certainly finished. Why was it cut?

This was a major scene in the original version of the movie. Spider-Man shows up in the middle of it, and much information about his parents seems to have been given in this sequence. My guess is that this is why Ratha's death was axed - there was no way to recut the sequence because the structure of it was always about giving Peter information about his genetic destiny.

A poster at the Superhero Hype message boards put together images and screengrabs that seem to be all from this sequence. The story of it is laid out pretty well here:

Mr. Ratha finds Connors' sewer lab, is about to kill him and then Connors turns into the Lizard and gets him first. Spider-Man shows up, there's a tussle and then...? I'm not really sure where this fit into the film; it had to take place after the scene where Spider-Man 'hunts' the Lizard in the sewer, but how long after?

Anyway, Ratha died in the original cut. I can't figure out if he was turning into a lizard in that large picture or if it's just an element of coloring.

3. Peter’s Perplexing Parents, or, Why Didn’t They Tell The Untold Story?

Months ago I told you guys that I heard rumors that The Amazing Spider-Man would be making a simple, but huge, change to Spider-Man’s origin. No longer would the spider bite change Peter Parker into a superhero. Rather, the spider bite would activate something already within him that would make him a superhero.

This is not reflected in the final movie. Sort of. The hints of it are still there, and when you add in deleted elements that snuck into the marketing you can see the shape of the thing where it once existed.

The first major hint is still in the movie. Curt Connors is talking about how every other subject upon whom cross-species DNA merging was attempted died. He does not know that he is speaking to the one success story. But how did Peter survive? The movie leaves this sort of dangling there, but the clues are in front of your face. Peter was bitten by a spider... a spider that Peter’s father bred. A spider like the one under glass in the film’s prologue. A spider like the one on the chalk board in his father’s office.

The scene where Connors tells Peter no subject survived looks like it might have been a reshoot. Why do I say that? Because of this sequence in the film’s second trailer, where Peter is showing Curt Connors the missing algorithm in a totally different setting than the final film. He’s filling it in on a chalk board in what I’m assuming is Connor’s home office:

I’m wondering why this changed. In the finished movie Peter gives Connors the alogrithm on a napkin, which feels small and casual. This scene of Peter at the chalkboard is more visually interesting, and ties in with the chalkboard in the prologue. Was there, perhaps, other dialogue that tied into that scene - and into Peter’s genetic destiny?

In the first and last trailers we hear a man - clearly Mr. Ratha - whispering ‘Do you think what happened to you, Peter, was an accident? Do you have any idea what you really are?’ That certainly sounds like a reference to Peter’s genetic destiny, and a clip that I don’t believe is in the finished film. Judging by the whisper I’m going to guess - and this is just a guess - that it is Ratha’s dying words to Peter after the Lizard does him in. This is a movie that seems like it should have at least one info dump dying declaration in it, and this would have been it.

And there’s more! The last two trailers released have Dr. Connors saying, mid-Lizard transformation, ‘If you want the truth about your parents, Peter, come and get it!’ What truth is that? There’s no ‘truth’ in the film, and Connors and Peter never have a good conversation about Peter’s parents. Going by the "ASM Deleted Scenes #1" image that line of dialogue may very well take place during the sewer encounter with Mr. Ratha.

By the way, it would make the end of the film work better if Peter didn’t just give Connors information he found in his dad’s briefcase. Wouldn’t it be more dramatic if some element of Peter himself - maybe his blood - was an integral part of making the Lizard formula work? Wouldn’t that make Peter’s sense of guilt for helping create the Lizard carry more weight? I’m actually not convinced this was ever in any filmed version of the movie, but it feels like the ghost of an idea cut out of a previous draft.

To me this all adds up to obvious proof that at one point The Amazing Spider-Man explicitly had a storyline about Peter’s genetics. That’s the much-hyped ‘Untold Story.’ In an interview with the Huffington Post, Marc Webb denied this. Sort of:


I have heard rumors that you wanted Peter's parents to be the source of his powers, not the traditional accidental radioactive spider bite. There are rumors of a reshoot to incorporate the more traditional spider bite.

I think there was something on the internet.

I want to clear that up.

It's completely false.

So what we see is the way it was always shot?
Yes.


What he’s denying here is the bite, not Peter’s ‘Untold Story’ of genetic destiny. The original cut of the film ALWAYS had Peter being bitten, which is what Webb is saying in that quote. What it also had was the concept that the only reason why Peter didn’t die was because of something uniquely special about him. Something certainly involving his father.

By the way, I suspect that there’s a change in the movie to make Peter’s parents' disappearance less open ended. If you listen to the dialogue and gauge by Peter’s emotional state, you would guess that his parents vamoosed late one night and no one ever heard from them again. In fact Peter bitterly responds to Uncle Ben’s speech on responsibility by saying he wished his father had some. Which is a weird thing to say when your dad died in a plane crash.

I believe that the newspaper clipping saying Peter and Mary Parker died in a plane crash (seen when Peter is Bing-ing his father. I believe he gets spider powers before I believe he uses Bing) was a late insert. There is nothing else in the film that indicates Peter’s parents are dead. Everything else makes it seem like they’ve simply vanished off the face of the earth.

4. The Connors Family, A Date And Some Other Stuff.

Every movie has scenes that are cut out simply for time or pacing. The Ratha and Peter’s genetic destiny stuff feels like it was cut for larger issues (ie, not fucking the franchise from the reboot). This next stuff feels like it was cut for time.

Curt Connors wears a wedding ring, which we see a number of times. In the tie-in game he has a son. In the comic Connors’ son is actually an important character. There is no wife or child in the movie. Annie Parisse was cast in the film as 'the villain's wife;' at the time we thought it might have been Ratha's wife (he was named Van Alter then, after an obscure character in the comics), but it seems likely she was actually Connors' wife.

At the press junket for the film Andrew Garfield said that his favorite scene was actually cut; it was a scene of Peter and Gwen on a romantic date, including them swinging around a lamppost. The beginning of this is in the movie, and plays as an homage to the ‘Can you read my mind’ sequence in 1978’s Superman.

Was there more with the SWAT Lizards? It's such an odd choice to turn a SWAT team into monsters... and then never go back to them. Could an earlier version of the script have Spider-Man get injured fighting them before his final battle? In the film Spider-Man takes a bullet from a cop with a hearing problem, which doesn't play as dramatically.

There’s evidence in the trailers that the dinner with the Stacy family was longer, and that in particular Captain Stacy asks Peter about his father. The addition of this might have helped the scene feel more natural as Peter gets defensive about his dad; instead the dinner conversation goes from zero to arguing in no time flat. Also cut was the 'intimidating doorman' scene leading into that sequence. This scene was posted online and sucked, so no great loss.

What was a great loss was the the POV swinging scenes. The Comic-Con 2011 footage and the first trailer included a lengthy bit of POV web-slinging that was cut to shreds in the movie. This is the most baffling change in the whole film. I suspect it was done for pacing, but in IMAX and 3D this should have been big time money shot stuff.

It seems to me obvious that The Amazing Spider-Man got a huge last minute recut. Marketing was still using concepts and imagery related to a completely deleted storyline - the ‘Untold Story’ - as recently as May. This fits in with rumors I heard that a spring screening for Sony execs went poorly and changes were made. Excising the ‘Untold Story’ seems to have been the brunt of that change.

I doubt we’ll see much of that stuff on home video release. The studio will decide how much they want to follow up on this stuff as they move into the sequel; if they do want to follow up on it the footage will remain hidden so as to not contradict anything in upcoming movies. If they don’t want to follow up they’ll just hide the footage away for a decade or two.

[TheButcher]

From LR:
‘Spider-Man’ Producers Justify The Spider Bite, Light Another Movie On Fire

I really enjoyed what you said at the press conference, that you got into this property to take comic book characters and make them serious cinematic characters, and I think we’re there and this movie does a good job updating Peter Parker from the Raimi classic Peter Parker to a wise-cracking guy who is on his cell phone who is a serious genius. I guess the big fear in my Marvel fan head or in the Marvel community is something like what happened with the Corman Fantastic Four where they make it-

Avi: I bought it for 2.5 million dollars. And burned it.

That’s a sign of respect! Plant your flag!

Avi: Yeah! It’s respect.

Matt: You’re saying your fear is we would just make it to keep the rights?

Marvel has this huge juggernaut, you guys have this huge juggernaut, and they’re successful being kept away from each other, but the fan group is going to pressure you smash them together like the fan group has an opinion about organic or non-organic web-shooters.

Matt: Sony’s not losing the rights, for real. That’s not the reason – we announced [the sequel was coming] May 2014 way before any rights situation or anything arised just because we believe in it.

Avi: We care too much for the characters…what you think I’d spend…I spent $2.5 million on a $700,000 print with Halloween costumes. And when I understood what happened just as I took over Marvel, this guy Bernd Eichinger had the rights and he was pushed by stupid lawyers saying “if you don’t start the movie on September 1st you lose the rights.” I’ll never forget, I was in Puerto Rico and one of the kids who was helping me said to me: “Hey Avi, you going to Seatle to see The Fantasic Four?” I’ll never forget it, I said: ‘What?” He said: “Yeah, they’re releasing the movie.” I called Germany right away and said to Bernd: “You’re not going to- I just got here, I’m here with my family on vacation. You know what, forget that [release]. How much did it cost you?” He told me, like $3 million and I’m: “Bernd! How much did it cost you?” He said: “Give me $2 million and-” And I said: “I’ll tell you what, I’’ll give you two-and-a-half, because 2 sounded like it was between him and whats-his-name…

Matt: Corman. It was Corman.

Mmmm-hmmm

Avi: Yeah! So I told him I’d have someone do the papers, it was over Christmas, and we just burned – DESTROYED – the negative, then you go to Comic Con and-

Matt: People are selling it.

Well, I mean, I found it on a VHS tape in -

Matt: You’ve seen it?

Oh, I’ve seen the Corman Fantastic Four.

Avi: It wasn’t bad actually.

Eh, I mean…what I’m hearing that I’m really enjoying is that there’s an integrity that you two personally feel for these franchises.

Avi: Love.

It feels weird to do a reboot later, but it worked out well, because this is presenting something completely different?

Avi: It’s also, you know this, my biggest issue was dealing with all the angst of “reboot,” “no reboot,” “it’s only been 10 years.” The timeline, if the story is different is irrelvant because 10 years in life is a new time. We’re talking about millions of new people. What am I talking about, probably billions because of new markets like China. Brazil became a whole new movie company in the world. There’s really nothing weird about it if we didn’t do our job. If we did our job right, there’s no timeline. Literally one day, if you can make a movie for half a million dollars that looks like what we made, then you print it like you do with comics: different episodes.

Like the Star Wars Live Action series, if they can ever make that budgeting work.

Avi: And you know what, if I were him, I would do it. Because Battlestar Galactica – I can still watch it, it still feels fresh to me.

Matt: When making movies, you can’t ever take yourself out of the position of being the audience and all I can tell you is, as me, if I had never met him and had nothing to do with this franchise, I’d be fucking lining up to see another Spider-Man movie.

And I’m glad you’re holding on to that because you’re deep into the dollars and cents-

Matt: Otherwise go into another business! It’s too hard! If you don’t actually like what you’re doing, then fuck it because this job is 24/7.

Avi: My people wanted to kill me: “What do you mean spend $2.5 million and what are you going to do?” Burn it. Thankfully I’m quite the dictator when it comes to the Marvel characters. And it was the best decision that we ever made. it was good for Bernd who did it out of desperation not to lose the rights, but it was the right thing to do. Hopefully the future will bring an excellent Fantastic Four movie to the world and, you know, these chapters will never end.

[Ribbons]

I saw The Amazing Spider-Man tonight and I have to say... weak sauce. There was nothing especially bad about it, but it was just an assembled-by-commitee piece of fluff. If your primary reason for seeing this is a love for Spider-Man then you might like it, but if your primary reason is the desire to see a good movie, prepare to be disappointed.

[ironic name]

not each single movie has to be the end of the fucking world - this was just a fun movie. I liked it and think the director's cut should be good.

[so sorry]

I kinda liked it. I'm not a spiderman fanatic or anything. I liked this one as much as I did the first Tobyman one at the very least. Good start to the new franchise, hopefully the next one will be a bit more fun.

[Ribbons]

not each single movie has to be the end of the fucking world - this was just a fun movie.

Lovely. I can see you've learned from your recent feuds.

Fortunately I don't expect everything I watch to be "the end of the fucking world." But I don't know what to tell you except that I gave it a shot and I didn't like it. There were scenes here and there that were nice, but they didn't add up to a satisfying whole for me.

[ironic name]

not each single movie has to be the end of the fucking world - this was just a fun movie.

Lovely. I can see you've learned from your recent feuds.

I'm sure if that meant something, I'd feel - I don't know - offended?
anyways I was just saying that in the last 20 years each single movie has been presented as 'your new God' [to take a page from they live] - but only 2 or 4 have actually been all that exciting - LotR, dark knight, maybe har ry potter, and avengers - that's it. and I'm glad. this was not a world changing event, it was a movie about a boy who can stick to walls, alls I wanted was to go to the movies and forget my responsibilities for 2 hours, ya know?

[tapehead]

Care to elaborate? You seem to be talking about the way Blockbusters are marketed (judging be the way you refer to the way the film was 'presented' and your comparison to a bunch of other Genre movies with little else in common other than they are all Blockbusters), and Ribbons was discussing the film. So, you're at cross-purposes with the person you are attempting to communicate with, no?

Surely you don't literally mean 'each single movie', right? 'cos that would be stupid.

Also, in 'They Live'. it's money that reads 'This is Your God' when "Rowdy" Ronny Piper has the special Ray Bans on, so your analogy is a little confused.


No entirely sure how I'd sum up my own feelings yet - I always thought the weak link in Raimi's Spiderman was Dopey Maguire, And Garfield runs rings around his performance in the first half hour, for mine. Also Emma Stone is a Hot piece of red-haired gingery hotness and She and Garfield are fun to watch together.
Rhys Ifans? no Slouch.
Better action in stere-ere-o! in the web-slinging and hanging from a thread business than Raimi? Well pretty good, maybe not better, but fun and spectacular and good use of the 3 D's IMO, with the exception of a couple of slightly confusing shots towards the end.
Ad-hoc storyline and feeling of disjointedness and a slightly cobbled together story as it progresses? er, check that home boy.
Vague feeling of pointlessness and moments spent wondering why this films actually exists now rather than say, in another decade from now when another big-screen Blockbuster budget iteration of this character might actually seem necessary? Uhuh, that too.
It's not that the movie is shit or even just ok - it's quite good, at times...

Here's my take; after Burton's excellent pair of dark and funky, slightly chintzy and baroque Batmans, and then the execrable sequels that nearly killed the character for audiences ('the franchise' as they call it) may years passed, and then on day, when it was timely and when a worthy director was found to take on the legacy, Nolan's eventual and quite masterful reinvention brought Batman back in triumph. Possibly, nay probably, unless numero trio is a stinker the general consensus will be that Nolan's films are better than Burton's (but hey, for some, no one will ever do it like Adam West and Burt Ward).
My point being, and without even mentioning Superman (which Snyder will most probably fuck up for decades, IMO, although I hope I'm wrong, and please let's talk about Superman III and IV and they are so overlooked in favour if interminable discussions of the Singer movie) is that these things, These Spiderman Movies, these Super Hero Movies, hey even these Blockbuster movies all exist in time in relation to each other. So, If we accepts that, faults aside, Raimi's first two Spideys are pretty good, leaving aside the divided opinion on '3', then maybe a reboot that is merely completely fine and entirely acceptable might just be, in the overal scheme of things, something slightly less than good enough for some movie fans.

[ironic name]

your mom is confused!

but really, what I mean is that I'm quite glad this movie is smaller and less 'epic' - sadly it might be the last movie that isn't exhausting in it's attempts to be the new big thing that rocks your world - not just how these movies are being marketed, but also in terms of a simple story.

those movies I mentioned are considered 'genre' movies, and I'd rather have a simple genre movie like shaun of the dead sometimes, rather than over marketed greek epics like green lantern or john carter.

I was paraphrasing - that's why I said 'to take a page from they live'.

ribbons is totally right about this movie not being a satisfying whole, but I was just saying how glad I was to see a 'small' movie - no fucking michael fassbinder crying or optimus prime flying through a building.

[ironic name]

I should also say: I didn't mean for it to come off as an attack on ribbons's opinion: in fact that was so the oposite of my thinking that it only just occurred to me that maybe that's why ribbons left a sarcastic[?, I can't tell] post. if so I'm really sorry, ribbons.

[tapehead]

I'd rather have a simple genre movie like shaun of the dead sometimes

I can see that you're trying, but you're doing it wrong.

[ironic name]

I'd rather have a simple genre movie like shaun of the dead sometimes

I can see that you're trying, but you're doing it wrong.

well, at least you're attempting a witty quip. keep at it!

[Ribbons]

I should also say: I didn't mean for it to come off as an attack on ribbons's opinion: in fact that was so the oposite of my thinking that it only just occurred to me that maybe that's why ribbons left a sarcastic[?, I can't tell] post. if so I'm really sorry, ribbons.

Yeah, I assumed you were giving me a "give me a fucking break"-type response. It's not a big deal though, so no worries.

I am actually fine with a small-scale love story and I think the general consensus is that those scenes work the best. Garfield and Stone are good young actors with obvious chemistry, and that also seems to be where Marc Webb's interest lies. But the problem is that they belong in a different movie. It's possible to put all the backstory with Peter's parents and Oscorp on the backburner for now, but when it cuts back to Connors ranting about supermen and turning cops into lizards it's hard not to feel like those scenes are competing against each other. I might have been able to let it go and take it at face value, only The Lizard's motivation was confusing at the best of times. And it's frustrating because you keep wanting to compare his own story to Peter's vigilantism but there's just nothing there. So I pretty much checked out every time he showed up.

Like tapes said these movies don't exist in a vacuum, so when I see them go through the whole process of Peter getting bit, Uncle Ben getting shot, the doodles in the notebook and the crappy costume prototypes all over again I'm going to question whether it did any of those things better than the 2002 Spider-Man and also question the necessity of re-doing them in the first place. Issues with The Lizard aside, I honestly think that this movie would have been a lot better if they had skipped the origin story and handled the exposition in flashback. All the stuff I liked wasn't in those scenes anyway.

[ironic name]

Like tapes said these movies don't exist in a vacuum, so when I see them go through the whole process of Peter getting bit, Uncle Ben getting shot, the doodles in the notebook and the crappy costume prototypes all over again I'm going to question whether it did any of those things better than the 2002 Spider-Man and also question the necessity of re-doing them in the first place. Issues with The Lizard aside, I honestly think that this movie would have been a lot better if they had skipped the origin story and handled the exposition in flashback. All the stuff I liked wasn't in those scenes anyway.

I see what you mean, but I would have actually liked to see some more about peter making the suit and maybe an explanation of him sticking to walls [is it still tiny sharp hairs?].
sorry again - you're a real mensch.

[Spandau Belly]

Can I ask you Spidermaniacs something? Is Mysterio not a popular Spiderman villain? I really can't explain this, but for some reason I've always loved Mysterio as a character. I've never read a Spiderman comic, but I used to watch that 60s cartoon when I was a kid and I always thought he was the coolest of the villains. Yet after four Spiderman films, he never even seems to be considered as a villain. I haven't played any of the Spiderman videogames, but I don't even remember any of them featuring him in the marketing if he was in the games at all.

So do people not like him? Why don't the filmmakers want to use him? I figured his illusion powers could make for some really neat visuals in a movie. It would give them an excuse to use that CGI stuff they love so much.

So yeah, that's how you get me to see another Spiderman movie. Make Mysterio the villain.

[ironic name]

bruce campbell claims he was mysterio is the last 3. while he was joking - it kinda makes sense.

[caruso_stalker217]

I went and saw this today and I enjoyed it a lot, despite those pesky dangling threads discussed in the Feraci post up there. It's the characters that carry this thing here. My love affair with Andrew Garfield continues. He is easily the best thing about the movie and I thought he was a much better Pete Spiderman than Tobey Maguire was. I thought the whole cast was good really. And Emma Stone is quite pretty and wears a skirt. Martin Sheen's Uncle Ben is a kindly old man who can also bust out with an Angry Grandpa when he needs to. And that Stan Lee cameo was pretty cool. I also liked that the Flash Thompson character was portrayed as a real human being and not just a one-dimensional jock douchebag. And C. Thomas Howell surprised the shit out of me because I assumed he had died with his career sometime in the early-nineties. I figured his role was just gonna be a bewildering cameo, but I was happy to see him return at the end to save the city.

The non-punching scenes are the best scenes, but the scenes where there is punching are well-executed. I really liked the scene on the subway when Peter accidentally beats everybody up and tears that Third Watch chick's shirt off. I really liked the portrayal of "spider-sense" in that scene, too.

Also, I was really happy with James Horner's work. I think this is his best and most original-sounding score in years, although I definitely heard some TITANIC in there. Oh James. I'll be ordering the CD pronto, because don't have an Podman or whatever the kids listen to music with these days.

Overall, I think this movie has an edge over the Raimi pictures and my first impression is that this is the best so far. The emotions feel more genuine and the romantics leads are people I actually wouldn't mind see having sexual intercourse. And the acting is better and shit. I guess the best version of this movie would be the one that tells the untold story that we were promised but I guess was dropped because the movie was too fucking long or something? I don't know.

Okay, Marc Webb. I'll watch your Zooey Deschanel movie now.

And the best part of the whole film? No cutaways to pedestrians who can't act.

[travis-dane]

Well, I saw this yesterdy and I did not like what I saw.

The only good thing is the cast, but nobody comes out of this mess lokking good. The movie really lost me after Peter gets to walk around the Osborn building like he had a clearence as a top manager, but he was just there for an internship. Jesus, the whole scene goes on forever and gets stupider and stupider.

There are so many mistakes in the script, they should have called the movie "The Amazing Lazywrittenman".

Everything is a mess, Ifans character gets fired, but he hangs around Oscorp as nothing ever happend, he even sends his people home for a week.
There is a Oscorp manager in the movie who is early on setup to be the bad guy, but in the middle of the movie, the dude just disappears. Just like that, he's out and never mentioned again.

The whole ending makes not a lick of sense, Peter could have stop'd Reptileman and saved Tommy Gavin, but for dramatic convinience he just fails at everything so that he can lose three fatherfigures in one movie.

There are at least ten more idiotic and random choices in the script, but I am sure that it is more fun for you guys to find out about those for yourselfs.

But again, the cast is great.

Oh and one more thing: The Lizard's head looks like a fucking PEZ dispenser!!!

[TheButcher]

From Hero Complex June 27, 2012:
‘Amazing Spider-Man’ No. 121: Brutal 1973 bombshell echoes anew

“The Amazing Spider-Man” arrives July 3 with Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, a character that moviegoers barely know. Gwen was also in “Spider-Man 3″ (the role then belonged to Bryce Dallas Howard, later Stone’s co-star in “The Help”) but her screen time was limited. In the world of comics, however, Gwen is a major figure and connected to a traumatic milestone: It was “Amazing Spider-Man” No. 121, a bombshell issue that landed 39 years ago this month. Avi Arad, coproducer of the new film and a pivotal figure in Marvel’s Hollywood history, talks about that 1973 flashpoint in the final answer of the Q&A below — but if you’re unfamiliar with the classic story you might want to leave that secret on the shelf for now.

HC: Spider-Man brought so many unprecedented things to comics — the sense of ongoing melodrama, the hard-luck outsider ethos, the idea of a very young hero with age-specific motivations, etc. What do you think about when you reflect on that?

AA: Spider-Man is really a story about Peter Parker. A young man living with his aunt and uncle and searching for identity and trying to understand the loss of his parents. Peter brings to comics an everyday kid with extreme intelligence and goodness in his heart. He is an outsider, probably by choice, and extremely devoted to his aunt and uncle. His choice to use his newly found powers to protect citizens makes him a hero, which is more powerful than a superhero. We need heroes. We love heroes and that’s what makes this boy so important. You would want him to be your best friend and you hope he is on the ledge on a dark night.

HC: With great power comes responsibility — but sacrifice as well, right?

AA: He has to give up a lot. His social life is totally interrupted by now-you-see-him-and-now-you-don’t, and living with secrets is an emotional burden. There is a Peter Parker in all of us and, therefore, we all relate to him. There is a hidden hero in all of us, but sacrifice is a more difficult task. Peter is the embodiment of dealing with adversity and handling power, which is the most dangerous quality one may have.

HC: Steve Ditko and Stan Lee brought such different energies to the creation of this hero back in 1962. What would you point to as one of their key decisions?

AA: I think one of the great achievements of Lee and Ditko was choosing a spider. On the surface, most of us shy away from spiders. We don’t really like them. They represent edge, danger and an ability to live a life under cover. Yet without Peter inside the suit, and readers, television viewers and movie audiences falling in love with Peter, a spider figure may have been the wrong choice. They both have a duality that make us trust a man in a mask and cheer for him. Spider-Man is a dichotomy of living alone and being just a simple boy; and the bravado of the superhero. Spider-Man in a suit represents the ultimate wish fulfillment: the ability to leap, climb and maintain a great sense of humor. In spite of these amazing abilities, he chooses to do good. Just imagine these powers in the wrong hands.

HC: Is there a Spider-Man cover, story or era that is particularly special to you?

AA: My favorite cover is “The Night Gwen Stacy Died.” This is a classic story where our hero is doing all the right things, willing to jeopardize himself, and give his life for justice, yet, inevitably, creates a complication and danger to people around him. He’s just a boy. He cannot anticipate all the dangers that come with the territory. Peter and Spider-Man have to learn that the hard way. The loss of the most beloved girl in his life will take away his ability to become comfortable with relationships, always thinking about the death of Uncle Ben and the night Gwen Stacy died.

[TheButcher]

Sam Raimi on Oz, The Avengers, and Two Huge Movies He Never Made

I hope enough time has passed that you feel comfortable talking about Spider-Man 4, which was in preproduction and began casting but fell apart before shooting began. What happened there?
It really was the most amicable and undramatic of breakups: It was simply that we had a deadline and I couldn't get the story to work on a level that I wanted it to work. I was very unhappy with Spider-Man 3, and I wanted to make Spider-Man 4 to end on a very high note, the best Spider-Man of them all. But I couldn't get the script together in time, due to my own failings, and I said to Sony, "I don't want to make a movie that is less than great, so I think we shouldn't make this picture. Go ahead with your reboot, which you've been planning anyway." And [Sony co-chairman] Amy Pascal said, "Thank you. Thank you for not wasting the studio's money, and I appreciate your candor." So we left on the best of terms, both of us trying to do the best thing for fans, the good name of Spider-Man, and Sony Studios.

I know you'd been pursuing Anne Hathaway to star in Spider-Man 4 … she was going to play Felicia Hardy, right?
Yes.

Did you see her comic-book movie debut in The Dark Knight Rises last year?
I didn't get to see Batman yet, because I've been working nonstop on Oz, but I hear she's great in it. I'm not surprised, because I loved what she was doing with the auditions for Spider-Man 4.