Marvel Preview: Avenging Spider-Man #17

I think the new Superior Spider-Man storyline from Dan Slott has been pretty interesting so far, and it’s kind of intense watching Ock-Spidey interact with the supporting cast, waiting to see who’s going to realize that’s not Pete first. Of course, right alongside Superior is Chris Yost’s Avenging Spider-Man, where we basically get to see Ock-Spidey interact with the rest of the Marvel U., which is actually kind of amusing while still a little upsetting, as Otto is managing to pull it off so far.

Spider-Man Sequel Confirms Return Of Director & Star

In probably the most groan inducing and obvious news to ever surface, a sequel to this year’s The Amazing Spider-Man is in the works. After the first one came out to a generally positive reaction from audiences, this money grab new franchise reboot seems determined to follow through with its shameless planned effort to make a new Spider-Man trilogy. At the time however, director for the first film, Marc Webb, was unconfirmed for a return. Now it seems like we’ll have to endure get to see another film starring the wonderful Mr. Garfield and his spectacularly lame portrayal of the hippest, least relatable, and most lame-sauce version of Peter Parker yet. [Editor’s Note – I totally disagree, Garfield > Maguire]

Aren’t I tortured?

Now if it wasn’t clear, I’m not a fan of the movie. I found myself trying really hard to stay positive about the movie right up until I actually saw it, but boy was I ever let down. I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece of epic proportions, nor was I even expecting a knockout, drag down epic superhero film. What I got instead was probably one of the stupidest, most uninteresting, boring superhero films I’ve ever seen. As I was watching it I found myself groaning in disgust or facepalming at the inanity of everything, literally every 5 minutes. Not to mention the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in a movie since the Hulk Dogs from Ang Lee’s Hulk; The goddamned lizard mouse. Plus the sweaters Peter wears, oh GOD the layers on this guy! What is he anemic? Dude wears at least 4 layers of clothes in every scene where he’s not in his Spider-Man garb.

4! Four layers of clothes! Ah! Ah! Ah!

I’ve never seen a film with such a perfect mix of boring, dumb, and redundancy. I kept trying to forget all of the previous things in the film that I found retarded, for lack of a better word, but they just kept coming. Eventually I realized the true meaning of this film lied in it’s franchise value, and the lack of any substance, or anything new or interesting was because of this. People often talk about who is or isn’t a hack in Hollywood, and the guys who wrote this, god bless them for trying. They’re obviously fans of the character, who had to deal with immense studio pressure to make the film as toyetic, commercial, broad and franchisable as possible. What I mean by this, is that it’s the case of a studio counting its eggs before they hatch. The whole film felt like an attempt to make a movie, solely to make other movies, rather than actually tell an interesting, coherent, original story.

Script? Story? Just make the damn movie, we need that Spider-Cash!

So hearing that Andrew Garfield and Marc Webb are coming back isn’t exactly a surprise, but leaves me with no real feelings of joy either. I had no huge problems with Garfield, although he did seem to be sleepwalking through the scenes that didn’t have to have him crying, skateboarding, or crying while skateboarding. He’s not the blame for his character being utterly shit-tastic. I’ve never seen a guy whose shit was so ruined despite looking cool, having a hot babe be obviously into you, being rad at skateboarding, and being a goddamned genius. Furthermore all of the awesome camerawork that was promised by Marc Webb was mostly absent, as I recall a big hooplah being made about the POV swinging sequences, of which I can barely remember. I don’t mean to trash them both, because they did what they could with what they had. The entire thing was a massive failure on every level, except for monetary gain. Which it was made for to begin with, so in that regard it’s a success. I know I’m in the minority with that opinion here at GB, (4.5/5) but It’s how I feel.

Seriously, look how tortured he is!

Will I be looking forward to seeing the new Spider-Man film? No. Will I see it? If somebody else pays for the ticket, snacks, and then is willing to sit through my rant after the film is over? Yes. Will I be continuing further coverage of the sequel as plot details are released? Yes, but only because my editor hates me. [True.]

Grizzly Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

It has a few flaws, but for a first installment of the rebooted Spiderman franchise it is better than any of the original films, especially Spiderman 3! The characters especially where far better this time around with Andrew showing Toby how to play Peter Parker. I will be looking forward to the next films in this great new Spiderman reboot. But I would love to see flaws I found fixed, they are so small though that a sequel would be able to see and fix them.

The Amazing Spider-Man is the story of Peter Parker (Garfield), an outcast high schooler who was abandoned by his parents as a boy, leaving him to be raised by his Uncle Ben (Sheen) and Aunt May (Field). Like most teenagers, Peter is trying to figure out who he is and how he got to be the person he is today. As Peter discovers a mysterious briefcase that belonged to his father, he begins a quest to understand his parents’ disappearance – leading him directly to Oscorp and the lab of Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans), his father’s former partner. As Spider-Man is set on a collision course with Connors’ alter-ego, The Lizard, Peter will make life-altering choices to use his powers and shape his destiny to become a hero.

To start off let’s talk about the acting. The acting was very passionate which was a little surprising as it’s a super hero film, but you could really feel the emotional responses from its main characters (Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone) when various emotional scenes play out, beyond that would be a spoiler. Now for the main character who’s name I forget, nah only joking its Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) who I must say is the best interpretation of New York’s friendly neighbourhood Spiderman I have seen in a film. But as his competition is a cheap 80s film and Toby Maguire it was an easy win.

The best part about Garfield was that he looked and sounded the part, nerdy kid from Brooklyn. He was a teenager who had enormous power and treated it like a toy as you would. But my main compliment to this Peter Parker was that he made jokes even during battle’s which was always missing from the last Spider-man.

Sadly the thing many of us worried about was it feeling too soon for a reboot and it was lingering about. Mainly I would say in the origin of his powers but I don’t see how it could be avoided, at least with this film they tried to explain a very clever excuse for the radioactive spider what with using spider silk to create super strong cable.

Think I have talked enough about people and their silly human emotions. Now let’s talk about something more fun like the visuals. The special effects, physical props and visual landscape shots where excellent viewing as expected of a web slinger film. There’s nothing quite like being taken around New York through the eyes of Spiderman.

The lizard looked good and I am one those people who commented on him not having a snout but thinking about it now am not sure how they would get him to talk using a snout without it looking absolutely stupid, but at times the lizard looked more creepy than scary (Picture above for example).The best thing I felt about this films look was the way that the set of action scenes and spidey web slinging took place at night which was what Spiderman should be doing since he fights crime and it’s easier to keep a secret identity when you are fighting crime at night (don’t ask me how I know that).

My favorite scene without giving anything away would be the fight scene in the high school between the lizard and Spiderman, because it shows a great physical fight which plays with the effects and also shows a lot of the Spiderman humour whilst in the fight, which was never used in the original Spiderman. But of course this scene also includes my favorite Stan Lee cameo yet (you’ll see) The Avenger cameo was good this one is better.

What I liked about this films origin of the hero and the villain was that both a very much in development today, for example splicing technology used on the lizard has been in development a lot recent with plants to make super strong and big vegetables. Now another good point we see more spider-like creativity with Spiderman, this time for example in the pic above he sends out webbing in all directions and senses for vibrations much like a tarantula does to catch its prey plus he makes his own web shooters, I love clever stuff like that and it’s more true to the comics. Finally it’s a small flaw but it grinds my gear, why didn’t Uncle Ben state the legendary life lesson for Peter “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” to be far there was some variation of those words but I don’t see why they couldn’t just do the damn line! But finally it’s a good film with strong characters.

4.5 grizzlies

‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ Looks…Good?

It’s that time again where an old-yet-familiar intellectual property gets the time tested, sometimes proved, sometimes failed reboot. As many of you are assuredly aware, The Amazing Spider-Man gets brought to the silver screen, only now it’s more of an adaptation of the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, in which he was younger, in high school, but still trying on the tights. This Spider-Man seems to be focused around getting us to watch this origin story yet again. This time they’re dangling the elusive prospect of “hidden secrets” about Spider-man we’ve never seen before. From what the preview material would have you believe, it has something to do with his parents and how they died, and implies they were murdered. Were his parents cruel Colombian drug lords? New Yorker mob hits? Genetic scientists experimenting on human/spider DNA fusion? Well, probably not that last one, I hope. Whatever the reason,  they’re deliberately trying to bring some freshness and possible subversion of expectations this go ’round.

This Spider-Man totally loves dubstep bro. WUB WUB WUB.

I have to admit, I’m still skeptical about the direction of the whole thing. For every moment or line that they get right, another rubs me the wrong way. I suppose it’s a feeling similar to the much ballyhooed “event fatigue” that many Marvel fans claimed to be suffering from, starting with 2006’s Civil War, continuing now with Avengers VS X-Men. I think we’ve had a lot of Spider-Man in our media, from that terrible third movie and it’s subsequent terrible third video game, to the main Marvel comic being published 3 times monthly, to the Ultimate comics where he “dies”, to the current Spider-man movie being a re-telling of a re-telling. They say you can only skin a cat so many ways, although why they say that I don’t know, because that’s a creepy idiom, but I believe it stands in this case. That’s not to say that I don’t find the interpretation of this actual Peter Parker and Spider-Man character welcome. The wisecracking Spider-Man/shy Peter Parker dynamic is kept, and done much better than it was. On the flip side, you’ve got things like the Lizard, who is a B-villain at best, who has been mentioned many times by the internet crowd out there, to look like a Ninja Turtle.

Pizza Power!

All that being said, the one thing I’m definitely looking forward to, is finally getting some good acting from a female lead in these movies. Kirsten Dunst could never hang, (oh god awful pun) but Emma Stone seems certainly more than capable of pulling off Gwen Stacy, which is a story I’m glad to see come to fruition, as the famous issue from the comics concerning her and Spidey is one of the best. I know spoilers are a big point of contention here on the internet, but when the story she’s famous for centers around and is literally titled “The Night Gwen Stacy Died”, I don’t think it’s too bad to say I’ll be looking forward to Andrew Garfield finding the right balance of pathos and energy to mourn his doomed new girlfriend. Check out an interview with both Peter and Gwen over on Splashpage. Spider-Man is British now. DEAL WITH IT.

Wot? Why, you Mewling Quim you.

The other good thing, that not many seem to be mentioning, is that Marc Webb is directing the movie, which may or may not excite and/or frustrate you, depending on what you thought of 500 Days Of Summer. I loved the movie, and thought it was a brilliant and accomplished directorial debut, although I admittedly really really love Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The guy has done a lot of music videos for… well terrible bands like P.O.D, My Chemical Romance, Jimmy Eat World and even Hoobastank. So I will be expecting a terrible soundtrack from the movie, if his work is any indication of his musical tastes. The amount of videos he’s directed indicates that he is capable of working with a broad spectrum of creative input and meshing it into a whole, which is something Spider-Man definitely needs. Fresh ideas like the creative depiction of POV aerial work as well as a more realistic approach to his web slinging will help keep it from the cheesy looking CG-fest every web slinging scene was in the previous three.

Check out 6 Minutes of footage, for as long as it stays up:

Despite the inherent tiredness of yet another Spider-Man movie, it definitely appears this one is shaping up to take back its source material and forge its own identity in our theaters. It could possibly pave the way for other, better films where we can see our favorite villains given a new life with their proper due, instead of being quick afterthoughts. *COUGH* VENOM *COUGH* I am cautiously optimistic about the movie, and initially I would have dismissed this, though the talent involved, and the direction it’s taking has proven to look interesting. The final verdict on it being Amazing however, will have to wait until it’s July 3 release.

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