Movie Defense Force: The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Better Than Broody Gritty Wah Wah
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
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Jim usually has really solid arguments but since when is comparing a movie to Batman & Robin supposed to be favorable?
I can't recall for sure where I first came by it. Screen Writer Syd Field? Roger Ebert? Do you know?Scrumpmonkey said:
That helps a lot when I sit with my geek buddies and analyze a movie which we do a lot and is a lot of fun. But fan service, I think, is important too. At one point, they were going to make a Rambo 5. It would be a cross between Predator and John Carpenter's, "The Thing" with Rambo fighting for his life against a monster in an arctic station. They could make it terrific, but I know I'd have had my chin on the floor scratching my head thinking, WTF?
You can't become a slave to fan service or your end up very bland. Even so, I'd hope the powers that be at least have the topic on their radar.
I just saw the first one and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
And THANK YOU for the Tobey Maguire comment! Now I know I'm not the only one who thinks of Arnold at the gas station learning to smile in T2 every time he gives that death's-rictus grin of his. Woo!
And THANK YOU for the Tobey Maguire comment! Now I know I'm not the only one who thinks of Arnold at the gas station learning to smile in T2 every time he gives that death's-rictus grin of his. Woo!
I'll admit that ASM2 was okay, unlike the first one it was sorta about something besides just retelling the Spiderman Origin story again in a less interesting way. It wasn't good, but at least it held up somewhat. But better than all 3 of the originals? It's maybe on par with Spiderman 3 if I'm being generous. At least Spiderman 3's Green Goblin was well built up across several movies and had some payoff in the end, and unlike Electro, Sandman had an actual motivation.
I find myself agreeing with both Jim, and Bob. The action in the film was amazing fun and some of the best I'd seen in a superhero movie since the Avengers, and Cap 2, but the plot was incredibly stupid/contradictory, and everything Bob said about the movies only existing for rights, and the creators not "getting" Spider-man also rang true. If there's one thing I'd have to disagree with Jim on it'd be the comedy, which was better physical than vocal. Anytime any sort of conversation or exchange was supposed to make me laugh it ended feeling unfunny, stilted, and awkward, very bad rom-com kinda stuff, whereas anytime Peter tripped over something, or webbed something into his own face, I found myself rolling on the floor laughing. The last film also had this going for it, like in the scene where Peter accidentally squeezes too much tooth paste, breaks his own alarm clock, or accidentally sticks to a random women's clothes. Comedy gold.
I do believe I just heard the sound of Jim throwing down the gauntlet at MovieBob's feet. It's on. Do you hear me? IT IS ON!
I'm sorry, the defense that the movie was camp is not enough. Have you seen what Marvel Studios has putting out? That's how you do slightly campy fun action movies. And they're still good movies. But what do you know, they're rolling in money and affection while mentioning Man of Steel or apparently even the Dark Knight Rises (which was a good film and a fitting end to the trilogy as I see it , certainly better than this fucking mess) in a positive context will get you as much lashback as liking any contentious movie. So no, it's not that people want superhero movies have to be too dark and gritty, if anything the opposite is true, it's that ASM2 was an absolute fucking shambles of a movie, a twenty foot step down from the first one, which in and of was pretty mediocre, if fairly inoffensive. We should demand more of films than an hour forty of bright flashy action sequences and "witty" quips, even when they're just summer blockbusters meant for fun.Scrumpmonkey said:
Great looking visual effects and a decent cast clearly doesn't mean shit when glued together by the left over saliva from the dribbling, idiotic duo that "wrote" this trite. Kurtzman and Orci need to get out. Now. Before I cannot resist the urge to force them.
What's sad about this is that ASM1&2 even need a Movie Defense Force episode. Both movies fit Spider-Man to a T, it's probably the best that's been done since the 1994 animated series. The plot makes plenty of sense, the movies don't get to ridiculously bogged down with the romance plot, the lead girl is actually useful and has more brains than a lamppost, the villains are fun and their motivations make sense, (as much as the motivations of superpowered psychopaths ever make sense anyway) and this Spider-Man manages to perfectly balance the oh-woe-is-me guy and the silly quipping superhero, what's not to like?
Honestly? If you don't like these movies, you wouldn't have liked Spider-Man to begin with, or if you are a fan you've grown out of it apparently.
Honestly? If you don't like these movies, you wouldn't have liked Spider-Man to begin with, or if you are a fan you've grown out of it apparently.
Better yet, I'd like to see Jim and Bob write a debate column about Spider Man 2, kind of like the "Extra Consideration" articles that this website used to have.Goliath100 said:
And how has the movies not gotten "with great power comes great responsibility" right? Peter is busy juggling his school, family, relationships, and superhero life in both movies. The difference here is that he's still able to balance them in these movies without having to sacrifice one over the other at this point. Just because Peter isn't manically depressed because he's forced into doing a thousand things at once while failing at most because life keeps putting through the meatgrinder doesn't mean "with great power comes great responsibility" isn't being done well. Quite the contrary, thus far they have been treating the whole concept a lot more realistically than even the comics have ever portrayed it, not throwing ridiculous amounts of crap at Peter all the time and having Peter just put up with it all.JimB said:
What are my standards? Fine, I'll tell you. Here's the main things:
1. The personalities of the characters must be true to most portrayals of them. Spider-Man for instance is a fun loving wisecracking superhero while Peter is a genius but overall is an average down to earth guy (not a nerd BTW, Peter hasn't been portrayed like that in anything but the Sam Raimi movies for decades) that people can identify with. The villains are much more flexible in that regard though, they've been portrayed differently in just about every adaption they've been in.
2. The "with great power comes great responsiblity" mentioned already.
3. The plots must make sense, the motivations for the characters must make sense, and when something happens, if you think "what would Spider-Man do?" that's more or less what actually happens. Making the characters into useless idiots just to make the plot work is probably my biggest problem with all fiction, especially when it comes to things like love interests, and that's something the ASM movies have avoided doing thus far.
Again, I haven't seen the second one, so maybe they fixed it somehow, but in the first movie, Peter did not become Spider-Man because he had a responsibility to use his power. He did it for vengeance. His purpose was very clear: he wanted to get revenge on whoever killed Uncle Ben, not to atone for his own failure allowing that murder to occur. Later in the movie, he fights the Lizard and I guess that kind of feels like a responsibility, but it's weird and confusing to me because him suddenly being responsible comes out of nowhere. There was no build-up to it, just him suddenly telling Gwen he's responsible, and I get the unshakable feeling it has nothing to do with character growth and only happens because that justifies the character's presence in the film's scripted climax.immortalfrieza said:
...Nothing you just described has anything to do with responsibility. Responsibility is owning your actions and the consequences of your actions, not being depressed and failing at things. Peter never owns his part of Uncle Ben's death, and the thing he does own--the Lizard's origin--is just kind of nonsensical in terms of the character's portrayal up to that point.immortalfrieza said:
Well Christ, don't hurt yourself.immortalfrieza said:
I feel like for you to make any of those statements, you have to have not read anything Dan Slott has done with the character in the last however the hell many years Mr. Slott has been writing him. I mean, even ignoring the Superior Spider-Man arc, let's look at his current run on the Amazing Spider-Man. In four issues, Spider-Man has had his suit ripped to pieces so he had to make underwear from his own webbing just to stay decent, had those images blasted across the internet while he begged the crowd not to do it, got stuck in the underwear because the webbing wouldn't dissolve as quickly as he wanted it to, and had to do the pee-pee dance in front of the Avengers because he couldn't urinate through them; then he goes to his office, tries to institute a Casual Friday and to be the "fun boss," and all his employees start laughing at him behind his back for being a dork.immortalfrieza said:
I agree with the bit about Spider-Man loving fun, but for him it's a way of combating the oppression of a world that keeps grinding him down. His humor is like gallows humor, an attempt to keep his head above water. He's one of the most depressed heroes out there, but he keeps trying and keeps putting on his game face, which is absolutely commendable and not to be diminished; but still, he does those things because he needs them as a defense, not for their own sake.
I disagree with this, for reasons previously stated.immortalfrieza said:
What are you talking about? Peter's entire character development in the first movie hinges around him learning to let go of his petty vendetta and use his powers for the good of everyone else. The second movie focuses on Peter struggling to reconcile his responsibility to his friends and love ones with that of his responsibilities as a superhero while recognizing that he's putting them at risk by being a superhero.JimB said:
I get the distinct feeling that those who hate on these movies either never watched them or never really paid attention when they did.
As mentioned, a big part of Peter's character development is learning the responsibility that comes with having the powers he does. Peter doesn't own up to anything involving Ben's death because he recognizes it doesn't matter.
How is it nonsensical? Peter spends most of the movie helping Connors complete his research, and afterwards when the guy goes nuts he goes to stop him because he's the only one who can and he was responsible for making the problem happen to begin with.
Considering Dan Slott has been butchering the character in every way he possibly can ever since he started with Spider-Man, I'm not surprised.
If I have forgotten something, then by all means enlighten me, but as I remember it, he spends the first half of his time in costume just hunting down and beating up criminals in a manhunt for Ben's killer, gets into a fight with Captain Stacy defending his right to do so, and only starts caring about responsibility the minute a supervillain shows up and hucks a few cars off the side of a bridge.immortalfrieza said:
Then he is not being responsible.immortalfrieza said:
I don't know another way to say it that I didn't say already. I find the shift in his character paradoxical because he ducks any accountability for his own actions throughout most of the movie, then suddenly decides out of nowhere he's responsible for the Lizard's existence and has to go punch him. It feels like his character was rewritten at the last minute, possibly while editing the movie, because people realized that as he'd been written, he would not know or care about the Lizard unless the Lizard got in Peter's way.immortalfrieza said:
So when you talk about the character, you have a greater right to determine the character's essence than his writers? Uh huh.immortalfrieza said:
So Peter is a teenager who gets powers and decides to use said powers and decides to use them for his own personal revenge trip like a stupid irresponsible teenager that got powers would very likely do, but much bigger problem than the fact that some guy killed his uncle comes around and he realizes that he's one of the few who can and should do something, so he does. That certainly is much more realistic than one guy getting killed and Peter suddenly deciding the entire world's problems are his problems. People BECOME responsible, they aren't responsible right out of the box, and if that is what you wanted then you have incredibly unrealistic expectations.JimB said:
How so? Peter recognizes that going out of his way to find his uncle's killer is selfish of him when he could be doing so much more so he drops it and starts doing more isn't being responsible? It would be VERY irresponsible of Peter to do otherwise.
You somehow watched a very different movie from Amazing Spider-Man 1 and thought it was Amazing Spider-Man 1 then, because I can't otherwise see how you could possibly think that. The entire movie is about giving reason for the very same shift in Peter's character you are talking about, going from only giving a damn about himself and his own problems to helping others and stopping the Big Bad because that's the responsible thing to do.
When his writers decide to show a complete lack of respect for the character, his history, and his supporting characters and their history, unlike the Amazing Spider-Man movie writers BTW, you damn well bet I do. Just because they're the writers doesn't give them the right to stamp all over the character any more than anyone else has the right to, as in nobody has that right.
That you would dismiss his uncle, the only father figure he has any clear memories of, as "one guy;" that you would diminish the personal loss and the visible pain his mother-figure endures because of his own selfishness, as being irrelevant toward teaching a lesson about responsibility, makes me think you and I may be too far apart to have any common ground here. The thought of someone being devoted to an ideological position without giving weight to immediate and personal expressions of it, like a feminist not caring about a woman she knows getting sexually harassed, is just bizarre to me.immortalfrieza said:
Are...are you arguing that watching your father-substitute die in the street because of your actions and learning a lesson from that is being responsible "right out of the box?" Is that what you're saying?immortalfrieza said:
I said, "Responsibility is owning the consequences of your actions." You said, "Peter refuses to own the consequences of his action." I provide you with a definition of the word, and you tell me how Peter does not fit that definition.immortalfrieza said:
God damn it, stop that. I have already once explicitly invited you to tell me where I am mistaken if you think I am, so please don't just give me some glib crap about me having watched another movie and then tell me, "No, you're wrong because it happened." Tell me when and where it happened; tell me what scenes I either didn't see or have forgotten.immortalfrieza said:
Leaving aside that you have not illustrated or demonstrated how anyone has "stamped all over the character," you are factually incorrect here. The people who own the character have an absolute and unassailable right to do with their fictional character whatever they want, and the writers of the comics have as much of that rights as the owners grant them. Anything that is published is published with the owners' permission; therefore, the writers had the right to write what was published.immortalfrieza said: