All hail the screenwriters who turned around a rotting franchise by bringing forth a troubled superhero and his conflicted nemesis. The love interest failed.
After enduring Tobey Maguire’s painful Spider-Man three times, I was less than interested in seeing THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN starring Andrew Garfield. I went to see SAVAGES instead.
Garfield can express emotions. He can act.
I watched the real or fake Josh Hutcherson audition for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN. Who paid to stage the basketball scene with a bunch of actors and put together by professional fight choreographer, Larnell Stovall? Is this the new “audition” process? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZH5YgZSAZY. Elijah Wood famously went up into the forest with a friend and a video camera to get his part in LORD OF THE RINGS, but this is a major production.
I hope if I were to raise a child who lost his parents, he would confide in me that he was changing into something else – and not blame puberty. I love Denis Leary, who plays Captain Stacy, but he has too much pancake makeup on to be believable. I hope he gets tougher in the sequel.
IMDb.com credits James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves with the screenplay and James Vanderbilt with the story. I liked the set-up that propels the story and the secretive back-story of Peter’s father.
Temperamental, hot-headed Peter sets in motion a series of events which changes his home life. It’s his fault – he should have never left the house!
He’s a guilt-ridden superhero.
Dr. Connors becomes The Lizard and he likes it.
I liked the origin of the suit which is gorgeous in its details. The spider’s web? Made by Peter! He must have made 100,000,00010 of this stuff. What I want to see in the next movie is other characteristics of spiders that have merged with Peter. Wouldn’t he want his room to be more spider-like?
And, Spider-Man should not be out doing good for the sake of doing right, but because he can’t help it. He’s just expressing his spider nature – hunting criminals as prey.
The special effects are sensational – as they should be, especially in 3D. The audience knows the green screen/wire work/special effects are always improving and then want to be dazzled.
Thanks to the dark screenplay and effective direction by Webb, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN erases all memories of what came before.
End Notes: Stan Lee – 90 this December – who appears in every Marvel comic book movie adaptation with a Hitchcockian cameo, has filmed over 100 such cameos so he will be in every future Marvel movie. It’s in his contract: “…now and in the future in perpetuity throughout this Universe and any other universes found.”
*Whenever someone goes up for another cup of ayahuasca, we say they have taken a “heroic dose”.
Victoria Alexander is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association: www.bfca.org/ and the Las Vegas Film Critics Society: www.lvfcs.org/. Victoria’s weekly column, “The Devil’s Hammer,” is posted every Monday. http://www.fromthebalcony.com/editorials.php.
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