BEFORE: Superman got his reboot, and tonight I look at Spider-Man's reboot - released just five years after the Tobey Maguire trilogy directed by Sam Raimi. Was this really necessary?
I know I've been bouncing back and forth between Marvel and DC movies, but I do read comics from both companies, and I'm just going in the order that the actor linking seems to dictate. Linking from "Man of Steel", Kevin Costner was also in "JFK" with Martin Sheen (last seen in "Seeking a Friend For the End of the World"). See?
THE PLOT: Peter Parker finds a clue that might help him understand why his parents disappeared. His path puts him on a collision course with Dr. Curt Connors, his father's former partner.
AFTER: I spoke last night about writer's remorse - the simple mistake John Byrne made by starting his "Man of Steel" mini-series on Krypton. I wonder if the overlords of the Spider-Man franchise had similar remorse after the first "Spider-Man" film in 2002. They started with Mary Jane as Spidey's girlfriend, and seemed to have completely forgotten about Gwen Stacy, his first girlfriend from the comic books. Long before there was "Team Edward" and "Team Jacob", male comic-book fans were divided into "Team Gwen" and "Team MJ", depending on when they started reading Spider-Man comics.
So in the do-over, Gwen is a major player, and MJ is absent. For that matter, so is Harry Osborn, J. Jonah Jameson and the entire staff of the Daily Bugle, and all the villains from the previous series. Instead the focus is on Dr. Curt Connors, who comic fans know better as the Lizard, Flash Thompson gets a bigger role, and we get to see the enigmatic Spider-parents in flashback scenes.
The Superman and Spider-Man movies were also both very father-oriented. Superman had to combine the lessons from both of his fathers, the Kryptonian Jor-El and his adoptive father, Jonathan Kent. Peter Parker's father is absent, but he learns his moral lessons from his surrogate father, Uncle Ben Parker.
The Spider-Man story is another framework upon which various writers jump off from, so there are many tweaks made here to update Spider-Man for a new generation. I know it really hasn't been that long, but if you think about it, there's a whole new bunch of high-school kids since the previous trilogy ended, and they're the ones that the story appeals most to. So where Maguire's Spider-Man was quiet and unassuming, the new actor's Spider-Man is more rowdy and troubled, but also more rambling and incoherent. I had a big trouble with the way he stammered through most of his dialogue. Maguire may have been low-key, but at least he could form coherent sentences.
The tie-in here that gets Peter to that fateful OsCorp lab to get his spiderbite is his search for information about his father, who apparently worked in the field of cross-species genetics. It's a clever way to draw a connection between a human with spider-powers, and a villain with lizard powers, essentially making them foil characters, opposite sides of the same coin. Peter and Dr. Connors are friends and compatriots, but Spider-Man and the Lizard are violent enemies. Oh, and it's also a clever way to introduce Spider-Man's webbing, since Richard Parker's work led to a super-strong, super-thin cable derived from spider's webs - so all Peter had to do was design the web-shooter, not the webbing inside. (He has to do this, since unlike Maguire's Spidey, he doesn't have webbing coming out of his wrists...)
ASIDE: I'm not sure how I feel about the depiction of Richard Parker as a scientist. The comic books revealed at one point that the Parkers were some kind of secret agents, who died in the line of duty somehow. This sort of functioned a precursor to Spider-Man's role as a superhero. Of course, the comic books also revealed at one point they were still alive, but then those beings were revealed to be evil robots who somehow didn't set off Spider-Man's spidey-sense. You know what, it was a terrible storyline. Forget I brought it up.
I've got an unintentional extra running theme developing this week - not just superheroes, but bullying. I think it goes back to "Kick-Ass" even. We had Tony Stark's young friend dealing with bullies, and Clark Kent being bullied as a child, and today it was Parker vs. Flash Thompson. Makes sense, since showing heroes being heroic by stepping in to defend the weak and bullied is a very common theme.
Another weird coincidence, both this film and "Iron Man 3" had characters trying to use science to enable people to grow back lost limbs. What are the chances of that, unless all of these movies are just copying from each other? If you've lost an arm, though, I'm not sure that an injection of lizard DNA would be the go-to solution. Have you tried a prosthetic arm? The technology is getting quite good these days... I also had problems with the design of the Lizard character, he just looked like a guy with bad skin - but in the comics he's got those great big alligator-like jaws, I wish they could have done something more like that.
Something else that's common to the Spider-Man movies - there's usually a blurring of the lines between good and evil. I mean that it's tough to tell if the villains are truly evil, or just under the influence of a particular toxin, or serum, or alien suit mechanical tentacles. General Zod was evil, without question - but Green Goblin, Lizard, Dr. Octopus, Sandman, Venom? They were clearly villains in the comic books, but in the movies it's tougher to say. Where does the human personality begin and where do the outside influences take over? Or since Spider-Man is also a product of radiation/chemicals, do these influences change them, or just bring out the person that they secretly wish they could be?
Unfortunately, throughout this film, I got mostly the feeling I had watching "Man of Steel" the other day - that was not my Superman, and this is not my Spider-Man. (I reject your reality, and substitute my own...) The Spider-Man I followed in the comics between 1983 and, umm, last year, I guess is not really here. This Spider-Man doesn't learn moves from a wrestler, he just seems to magically gain them with his Spider-sense, and he hones them by going to a warehouse and practicing skateboard tricks, dangling from chains, and dancing around like Kevin Bacon, "Footloose"-style. Then he works in a bunch of free-running moves - so I guess you can call him "Peter Parkour".
NITPICK POINT: Also, as in "Man of Steel", I kept getting the feeling that most things were just way too convenient, everything is found or discovered or developed at the exact moment that it is most needed. The algorithm/"magic formula" that Peter finds, the ease with which antidotes to things are produced, just by pushing a button! This movie makes science look as simple as basic math, and I don't think that it is. Not in cross-species genetics, anyway. Penecillin and antibiotics seem like simple ideas now, but they took decades to be discovered and developed.
Anyway, my Spider-Man no longer exists in the comics, since he was married to Mary Jane, and that marriage got erased by a deal with the devil that saved Aunt May's life. This was a terrible move on Marvel's part - if the new writer didn't want to write about MJ, there were much simpler and more dramatic ways to accomplish this - divorce or separation, for example, or faking her death (I guess they did that one before, though). But having a hero make a deal with the devil should have some negative repercussions somewhere - heroes shouldn't even TALK to the devil, let alone make deals (look what happened to Johnny Blaze in "Ghost Rider").
And in case you haven't heard, the comic-book Peter Parker is dead (well, comic-book dead, which is "mostly dead", which is slightly alive) after Dr. Octopus switched bodies with him just before he died, meaning Parker died in the villain's body and Doc Ock is running around as Spider-Man, trying to be a better hero. Reviews are mixed, so if the audience rejects this storyline, I'm sure they'll find a way to bring Petey back.
Or maybe you read "Ultimate Spider-Man" comics - well, he's dead there, too. But there is a new hero that took up the costume there, named Miles Morales. I read an interview with the star of "Amazing Spider-Man", and he was making an argument for freshening up the franchise by saying "Peter Parker is now half-black, half-Hispanic now". Umm, no, Ultimate Spider-Man may be that, but Peter Parker is not. How can someone so connected to the franchise make such a blatant error?
Yep, any way you slice it, Spider-Man is dead. Long live Spider-Man.
Also starring Andrew Garfield (last seen in "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus"), Emma Stone (last seen in "Crazy, Stupid, Love."), Sally Field (last seen in "Smokey and the Bandit II"), Denis Leary (last seen in "Recount"), Rhys Ifans (last seen in "The Five-Year Engagement"), Irrfan Khan (last seen in "Life of Pi"), Campbell Scott, Embeth Davidtz (last seen in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo"), with cameos from C. Thomas Howell, Stan Lee (last seen in "Iron Man 3")
RATING: 7 out of 10 construction cranes
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