The Amazing Spider-Man (3D) / *SPOILERS*
136mins / Dir. Marc Webb
Watching the film again with the addition of a third-dimension has really only underlined its faults. It's still a good film, but it's not standing up to repeated viewing.
• The 3D's okay. Not 'great', but not as bad as it could have been. Useful in a couple of sequences, but just mostly background-depth apart from that.
• Why is Embeth Davidtz getting her name mentioned in the 'starring' lines promoting the film? She's got one proper line over two scenes and is about as important to the story as the Stan Lee cameo. Was it in her contract to be up with the main cast? Did she have a lot of scenes cut?
• Spidey's webbing is "stronger than steel", and yet when he cocoons The Lizard in it during the school-fight, he just tears if off like it's candy-floss. That's fine, maybe it's a device to show how insanely powerful Connors' alter-ego really is. Because obviously, large animals have no problem at all getting out of steel enclosures, that's why there aren't any zoos.
• And how did Parker come to be in the posession of a box-load of webbing anyhow? We see the OsCorp box on Peter's desk at home, but that amount of industrial-application tech would set Peter back a fortune (not that they'd sell a 'civilian' a box of the stuff anyway). So did he swindle or steal it?
• Connors grows a new arm before he transforms into Lizard for the first time. I can accept that in a comic-book/movie context, but why would it disappear when he reverts to his human form? That doesn't make any sense, even in a movie like this.
• Where does Peter get his Spidey-suit from? One minute he's hand-sewing an ill-fitting sex-pest mask to wear with his regular street clothes, the next he's got a full suit, which has clearly been 'designed', eye lenses an' all. I don't mind that the suit exists, it just appears suddenly with no explanation.
• I can't believe they just abandon the subplot with Spidey wanting to apprehend Chad Kroeger for killing his uncle Ben. I know they wanted to leave something for the sequels, but it just seems like it's been forgotten about (even with the wanted-poster in shot at the end). It's understandable that the story with Richard Parker and OsCorp will unwind into the forthcoming films, but not closing out the Milton-Out-Of-Drive-Angry thread seems sloppy.
…but those questions are nothing… nothing, compared to the one that really bugged me watching the movie a second time…
• You know that bit with the cranes? Where Spider-Man has previously rescued a crane driver's son, and he's crowbarred back into the story to illustrate that the man on the street supports Spider-Man (not like the Police! Boo!), and he really is The People's Arachnid™? The crane driver notices that Spidey's in trouble (since the TV news reporters suddenly stop speaking like they're on TV and start broadcasting in concerned, conversational tones), and he gets All The Guys™ to swing their cranes out in a line over Sixth Avenue, so that the injured web-slinger can get to OsCorp Tower quickly and without obstruction? Well, when Spider-Man is limbering up for his initial run/jump/swing, a helicopter is hovering overhead. A fucking helicopter. That's what Spidey needs, not a series of fucking cranes! Save the boy a bit of energy (and ridiculously expensive webbing), and give him a lift, you bastards! I can't work out if it's a Police helicopter or a news-channel one, but either way this sequence is ridiculous. Even my brother-in-law (an old-school Spidey fan) thought it was over the top.
But don't let all that put you off, it is a good film, it's just flawed slightly.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
This is a very entertaining film but the whole time I was watching it, I couldn’t stop thinking of the original series that was still bright and fresh in my mind. Then again, how couldn’t you think of Tobey, Kirsten, James, and Willem when you have a story that seems like it was written for the screen, just for them? Either way, it’s still a good movie. Good review.
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