Escape to the Movies: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - The Movie That Broke MovieBob
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This movie is kinda frustrating to me. There were a few good moments, but there were several more bad moments.
Honestly Bob, I'm kinda surprised that you didn't mention
Anyway, I do have to agree on the whole sequel thing now that you mentioned it. It does seem like this movie's purpose was to set up several sequels and spin offs to make cash off of. And as a result, the movie was just very unfocused.
Although personally, I do like Garfield's performance. I feel he and Emma Stone have really good chemistry, and I do enjoy all the scenes they have together.
As for...
Finally.
To me, this movie had potential. As I actually did like the first movie despite some of it's flaws. But it was just an unfocused mess that had a bunch of good moments be overshadowed by the bad ones.
Honestly Bob, I'm kinda surprised that you didn't mention
How they never bring up the whole Ben's Killer thing. That was a plot thread left hanging in the first movie that was never brought up at all in this one. I just don't get it.
Anyway, I do have to agree on the whole sequel thing now that you mentioned it. It does seem like this movie's purpose was to set up several sequels and spin offs to make cash off of. And as a result, the movie was just very unfocused.
Although personally, I do like Garfield's performance. I feel he and Emma Stone have really good chemistry, and I do enjoy all the scenes they have together.
As for...
Gwen's death. The scene itself to me anyway was actually kinda sad. At the same time though, I didn't really like how they kinda glossed over it at the end of the movie.
Finally.
The whole thing with Peter's dad putting his DNA into the spiders was kinda stupid to me. OH! How convenient for Peter to be bitten by a spider that just HAPPENED to have his dad's DNA in it! GAH!!
To me, this movie had potential. As I actually did like the first movie despite some of it's flaws. But it was just an unfocused mess that had a bunch of good moments be overshadowed by the bad ones.
Oh man. Man, do I get this. This is exactly how I walked out of Green Lantern. Something I love just rendered into utterly worthless crap. I feel for you, Bob. I really, truly do. Honestly, I wouldn't even complain if Marvel got the rights back to Spidey, not because I want Avengers with Spidey or something stupid like that, but because they've proven that they know what do do with the properties they bring to the table and I don't want this kind of thing to happen to more people who truly love these characters. I've all but given up hope that DC can be saved as anything more than action figures at this point, but man do I wish that Disney could somehow just take everything that has escaped Marvel and bring it back to their sandbox (with the possible exception of X-Men at this point, we'll see how Days of Future Past plays out). If you're ever down it Texas I'll buy you a drink, brother.
Got back from it last night, and as predicted I disagree with Bob. Andrew is perfect in the role, his chemistry with Emma Stone is perfect, Dehaan's great, Sally Field is great, etcetera. Narratively it is indeed a cobweb, resembling Iron Man 2 in a lot of ways. Multiple threads going on at once that converge at the end, perhaps not exactly gracefully. They both even have the "long dead father provides the narrative McGuffin" trope. But the movie is fun on the strength of its leads alone; not ideal but certainly not terrible.. Electro's switch from unstable floor mat to megalomania is a little jarring, but like The Lizard before him I can't help but feel there's a lot of him on the cutting room floor. Almost 90% of the deleted scenes for Amazing 1 were all Conners/Lizard stuff. There's almost certainly a lot of Harry on the cutting room floor as well.
So yeah, sorry Bob but I disagree with you. I've enjoyed these two Spider-Man movies far more than the wooden and emotionally shallow Raimi trilogy by a wide margin. I'm not going to be an arrogant prick and tell you you're wrong about subjective media, however.
So yeah, sorry Bob but I disagree with you. I've enjoyed these two Spider-Man movies far more than the wooden and emotionally shallow Raimi trilogy by a wide margin. I'm not going to be an arrogant prick and tell you you're wrong about subjective media, however.
No no, I'm saying it's a problem. I'm just hypothesizing that the problem might be due to editing.JimB said:
Okay. Thanks for answering the question, Master Taffer. I have been in positions where I found myself willing to somewhat forgive a problem because I had an intuition that something better could have happened if not for things behind the scenes (can't remember any examples off the top of my head, though), and wondered if something like that was going on here.
It's potentially happening here fore me. With ASM1 the vast majority of the cut and alternate content was Conners and Lizard stuff, most notably where he interacts with Peter quite a bit. Of note were two scenes; one where Conners waits for Peter at his home to give his condolences to him for Ben and an alternate scene where instead of finding Conners' plan on a video file he actually finds Conners himself. They added a lot to his character and I assume it was cut because of the length of the film (both ASM1 and 2 are pretty long movies already), and if it's a choice between developing protagonist or antagonist in the case of Spidey the protagonist is the obvious choice. I'll have to wait for the movie to come out for home consumption to see if that's the case here as well.JimB said:
Spiderman is still Spiderman and thus far he's always been entertaining.
I see alot of arguing going on here over which of the two series is objectively better but personally I don't see alot of difference between them, they share alot of the same problems and whatever version you happen to prefer really just comes down personal preferences.
Personally I prefer the Amazing Spiderman films over the originals for various reasons but their all still fun to watch, as I said before Spiderman is always entertaining.
I see alot of arguing going on here over which of the two series is objectively better but personally I don't see alot of difference between them, they share alot of the same problems and whatever version you happen to prefer really just comes down personal preferences.
Personally I prefer the Amazing Spiderman films over the originals for various reasons but their all still fun to watch, as I said before Spiderman is always entertaining.
Welcome to my world, Bob. I've been here since 1997. Frankly, I hated the Raimi Spider-man movies. I detested the Nolan Batman movies. And I can't wait for my favorite obscure Marvel hero, Star-Lord to get ruined in Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm just sick of super hero movies in general.
This side of the nerd abyss isn't so bad. There just isn't much about it that makes you happy. It's a lot like growing up.
This side of the nerd abyss isn't so bad. There just isn't much about it that makes you happy. It's a lot like growing up.
I am able to ignore Episode I, II, and III (which, to me, is the worst of the lot for lore reasons) because they barely had any affect on the Expanded Universe and the characters I grew up with over the past twenty-five years. The authors just sort of went, "Yeah, that happened, but whatever," and kept telling stories about Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, Jacen, Anakin, Jaina, Zekk, Tenel Ka, Raynar Wedge, Hobbie, Face, Jenkins, Piggy, Admiral Ackbar, Tahiri, Ben, Mara Jade, and everyone else. Now that Disney has decided none of that happened, I am very worried.Jim_Callahan said:
And for the sake of my sanity, and preventing a pointless fight on the internet, I'm going to pretend that you said this in jest, in a good humor sense of way. Because if you didn't--if you truly are serious when you say that someone doesn't have a deep connection to something because they don't feel the same way about one part of it that you do--then that is a very good way to get yourself into fights, either verbally or physically. It's like saying to a girl, "Prove it," when she says she's a gamer or a nerd about something.
I really enjoyed the movie. It wasn't any sort of classic but I had a lot more fun with it than I did the original 3. I'm really hoping for more, and I can't stop listening to the Elecro music from the movie. So I guess my point would be to watch it for yourself instead of assume it's bad because a critic said so.
I hope my opinion doesn't occur the wrath of a guy I see harping on everyone for going against the critic here though, I just feel like it was a decent film.
I hope my opinion doesn't occur the wrath of a guy I see harping on everyone for going against the critic here though, I just feel like it was a decent film.
I just got back from watching ASM2, and WOW, the only word coming to mind is WOW. Bob, you couldn't be further off the mark if you tired, but I expected that after you raged on the first movie despite how great it was.
My review? ASM2 is not just better than ASM, but it blows it out of the water in just about every way, so much so I think it's even surpassed the Avengers in many ways. The characters are brilliantly written, the feel and character personalities closely mirror the comics especially the Ultimates version, the actors are great in their roles, the character's motivations make perfect sense, the plot feel natural, instead of that "3 act structure" crap that so many call the epitome of good writing when it's actually terrible, (note: real life is pretty disjointed and chaotic, it's buildup to action to more action to buildup to nothing happening to action out of nowhere etc. and plots should follow that) the action was great while the CGI did a good job of not looking fake, and it didn't get bogged down every other scene by lovey dovey scenes (they were there yes, but they didn't dominate the whole movie like with the 3 Raimi movies) nor did they make just about all the motivation for everything Peter did especially fighting the super villains be about impressing or rescuing the girl like the Sam Raimi movies did. Also, once again just like the previous movie the damned love interest actually DOES something besides get kidnapped and used as a hostage, and doesn't go out of her way to cause problems, despite how she ends up at the end.
One last thing, I'll say it, Andrew Garfield is the best person to portray both Spider-Man and Peter Parker since the 90's animated series. He makes horrible quips constantly as Spider-Man as the character should but knows when to drop it and get serious, and as Peter Parker is delightfully awkward and bumbling around other people but not to a ridiculously played up extent like the Raimi movies were. Probably the most important though, is that whether as Spider-Man or Peter, Andrew Garfield actually sounds like he cares about what's going on, while this Spider-Man KNOWS HOW TO HAVE FUN and not worry too much about his problems, which to be fair he doesn't have much of yet. With Tobey Maguire either because of bad acting or just because he just naturally sounds like that he never sounds like he gives a damn about what is going on or like he's so depressed he's 2 minutes from cutting his wrists, even when his face emotes his voice doesn't.
My review? ASM2 is not just better than ASM, but it blows it out of the water in just about every way, so much so I think it's even surpassed the Avengers in many ways. The characters are brilliantly written, the feel and character personalities closely mirror the comics especially the Ultimates version, the actors are great in their roles, the character's motivations make perfect sense, the plot feel natural, instead of that "3 act structure" crap that so many call the epitome of good writing when it's actually terrible, (note: real life is pretty disjointed and chaotic, it's buildup to action to more action to buildup to nothing happening to action out of nowhere etc. and plots should follow that) the action was great while the CGI did a good job of not looking fake, and it didn't get bogged down every other scene by lovey dovey scenes (they were there yes, but they didn't dominate the whole movie like with the 3 Raimi movies) nor did they make just about all the motivation for everything Peter did especially fighting the super villains be about impressing or rescuing the girl like the Sam Raimi movies did. Also, once again just like the previous movie the damned love interest actually DOES something besides get kidnapped and used as a hostage, and doesn't go out of her way to cause problems, despite how she ends up at the end.
I actually liked Gwen's death scene better than the one in the original comics because the writers made it so that she died more or less the same way she did in the comics, but the "Spidey shoots a web and breaks Gwen's neck" scene was done in such a way that he literally had few if any other options at the time nor the time to think up one like the original comics scene had. Probably the only thing in the movie that I didn't like was the fact that they went with the utter predictability of killing her off when anybody who knows ANYTHING about Gwen Stacy knows about that. Having Gwen NOT die would have been much more surprising.
One last thing, I'll say it, Andrew Garfield is the best person to portray both Spider-Man and Peter Parker since the 90's animated series. He makes horrible quips constantly as Spider-Man as the character should but knows when to drop it and get serious, and as Peter Parker is delightfully awkward and bumbling around other people but not to a ridiculously played up extent like the Raimi movies were. Probably the most important though, is that whether as Spider-Man or Peter, Andrew Garfield actually sounds like he cares about what's going on, while this Spider-Man KNOWS HOW TO HAVE FUN and not worry too much about his problems, which to be fair he doesn't have much of yet. With Tobey Maguire either because of bad acting or just because he just naturally sounds like that he never sounds like he gives a damn about what is going on or like he's so depressed he's 2 minutes from cutting his wrists, even when his face emotes his voice doesn't.
Probably because A. they didn't care to use the time for it and B. it would be both stupid and lazy of them to do so, as a significant portion of Peter's character development in the first movie was learning to let go of his vendetta and use his powers responsibly. Peter going after Ben's killer (who if I were him would have left the city long ago anyway) now would have largely invalidated this character development. It doesn't particularly matter what happened to Ben's Killer in either movie anyway.scorptatious said:
Having Peter give up being Spider-Man for 5 months and spend that time staring at her grave on apparently a daily basis is glossing over it? I don't know how they could have done it better without devoting half the movie to it.
How so? Since he created those spiders to begin with and needed human DNA to do it it's only natural that either Richard Parker or one of the people on staff would have been the donor, especially if he wanted to ensure that his work couldn't be properly reproduced without him. It also gives a good excuse as to why the spider venom worked with Peter but not with Harry.
Just saw ASM2, and I have to say... it was excellent. Best Spidey movie of the five we have so far.
While I love the Raimi trilogy dearly, they feel like "Sam Raimi's Spider-Man". The ASM films feel like "Marvel Comics' (occasionally Ultimate) Spider-Man", and I much prefer that in a Spidey film.
All I'll add is that the ending (everything: Gwen, Rhino, all of it) just plain worked, and when the movie was over, the theater applauded. Haven't seen that happen in a theater since Avengers.
While I love the Raimi trilogy dearly, they feel like "Sam Raimi's Spider-Man". The ASM films feel like "Marvel Comics' (occasionally Ultimate) Spider-Man", and I much prefer that in a Spidey film.
All I'll add is that the ending (everything: Gwen, Rhino, all of it) just plain worked, and when the movie was over, the theater applauded. Haven't seen that happen in a theater since Avengers.
Just got back from seeing this. I don't get it Bob. Did you see a different movie then I did? I really enjoyed it. I didn't think I would, but I really did
My theater applauded at the end as well.
My theater applauded at the end as well.
The way I see it a good critic should divorce themselves from their own disinterests, but bob is a comic book fanboy and thus it's not right unless it fits with his little niche. Practically ever videa he holds up the avengers like some sort of pinnacle of movie making. His boyhood fantasy of the sort of movie he always wanted to see. That's fine for him. Personally I found the avengers incredibly dull, boring, badly written badly cut and lacking. It's his show, his format and he can say whatever he wants. The constant omg the avengers gets is getting as irritating as omg johnny depp in a weird hat thing though.Nowhere Man said: