Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The Amazing Spider-Man trailer looks a little Twilight-y

17 comments:

JPX said...

Sorry to interrupt the Caption Contest with this item, but the trailer was just released a little while ago and I wanted you guys to check it out.

JPX said...

I can tell already that I will want to fast forward the first 40 minutes of this film until he dons the Spidey outfit.

Catfreeek said...

I agree, he looks a little too emo for spidey

Johnny Sweatpants said...

Wow, it's nearly a year away and I already have no interest in it whatsoever!

Jordan said...

You're all nuts. It looks awesome.

Steve Ditko brought to life!

JPX said...

I'm not feeling it at all. I'm happy that so many superhero films are coming out these days but I guess I'm simply not interested in seeing Spider-Man's origin again. The Rami series only ended 4 years ago. It's just too soon to see Peter bitten by a spider all over again. I'm also not into brooding teenagers. I dig the POV shots though.

Jordan said...

JPX, you're basically saying you don't want any Spider-Man movie. So they can't win, can they?

JPX said...

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that this trailer looks more like an ABC After School Special about teens with "problems" (yawn) than a comic book movie. I'm saying that I already saw this movie this decade and don't need to see it again. I want a new Spider-Man film to explain the origin in the opening credits and get on with it. We all know Peter Parker was bitten by a spider. I have no interest in what this film appears to be offering. I've read several message boards and they all generally concur with my sentiment.

Jordan said...

Apologies; I misunderstood. Well, we've established that I have peculiar tastes when it comes to superhero origin stories.

JPX said...

Oh don't get me wrong, I don't mind origin stories at all, I just fall in the "too soon" category for this one. I hope it's good because I'd like to see more Spider-Man flicks. I'm excited for Captain America, which is definitely an origin story. I thought Thor was a silly hoot and I had a lot of fun with X-Men, which was almost a pre-origin story. I never saw Green Lantern and yet to meet someone who has.

Johnny Sweatpants said...

I'd be all for a new Spidey movie if it featured a cool villain that hasn't been done onscreen yet - Vulture, Lizard, Electro or Kraven.

JPX said...

It is featuring The Lizard!

Octopunk said...

I'm of two minds about this one.

On the pro side, I liked that actor in Social Network and switching actors mid-franchise can often be a good thing (although what pops into my head is Clooney as Batman, and of course THAT movie is the opposite of all good things.)

A lot of the new actors are encouraging: Emma Stone, Denis Leary, Martin Sheen and Sally Field as Uncle Ben and Aunt May instead of those creaky bastards from the earlier version.

A hipper Ben/May combo is a detail from the Ultimate Spider-Man comic, and indeed they seem to be taking their lead from the that source. In USM, Peter's parents are killed because of dad's involvement in lucrative/ethically questionable scientific research ("I can't let them turn it into a weapon!"). In the comic it led to Venom and indirectly to the entire wave of emerging superhumans. It's a nice way to retroactively de-coincidize Peter's involvement in the whole thing.

Also, significantly, in Ultimate Spider-Man Peter's dad worked out the formula that became the web shooters (didja notice he has web shooters now?), which is, I suspect, what's in that battered old bag. I like this because even as a kid I thought it ludicrous that PP would get his spider powers and then happen to cough up a revolutionary invention to augment them.

The Spidey-cam shot is a really cool idea, and a very good addition to the "emerging super powers" story.

HOWEVER.

It's not the thought of watching a new, fancier getting-bit-by-a-spider scene that fills me with dread as much as slogging through the death of Uncle Ben again. Since the very, very first time I read that I've disliked it; it's a cheap twist on the Batman origin with a too on-the-nose "lesson." It's like Superhero Inspiration for Dummies, as if Peter Parker was too stupid to develop empathy for others or an understanding of cause and effect without having a figurative anvil dropped on his head.

This comment's getting long. More bitching to come.

Octopunk said...

I'm also of two minds on the whole reboot thing. I think they're great (see Casino Royale, Star Trek) when it makes sense to do one, but coughing them out at this rate seems lazy and cynical.

Maybe I'm wrong. It's occurred to me that what we seem to be moving towards is more like actual comic books: different creative teams taking on the same characters with certain variations in the story details. This could be a good thing once you get past the prevailing idea that any given movie version is "the" version (that idea mostly coming from the movie makers who needlessly switch stuff around). But with this it does actually seem like they saw what kind of bling the Twilight series is generating and decided they wanted a bite.

There's also a Fantastic Four reboot kicking around in development, which is downright ridiculous after only seven years and two movies. That's a straight up "do-over." And announcing a Batman reboot before the third Nolan movie is even out makes my head hurt.

To borrow a quote from Jordan, "they should go back to the old system, which gave us six Star Treks and four Lethal Weapons!" His examples don't exactly apply here because they used the same actors throughout, but I'd much rather see a Spider-Man 4 with the new crop of actors than see Uncle Ben get capped again.

No Mary Jane? So what! Just roll with it. It worked for Incredible Hulk, which was a sequel with reboot-like qualities that didn't stick us back in the lab with another freaking origin story.

They didn't reboot James Bond every time they switched actors, either. Not a problem.

JPX said...

The one aspect I really liked about The Incredible Hulk is that they not only did an hommage to the TV show during the opening credits, but that the hommage is basically the Hulk's origin told in 60 seconds.

Excellent point about James Bond.

Jordan said...

You guys have to remember that Sony Pictures owns the movie rights to Spider-Man and X-Men... BUT ONLY if they're using the licenses to put out movies within certain time constraints.

In other words, they have to keep making Spider-Man movies at a certain rate or the rights revert to Marvel Studios. They were all set to do a fourth Raimi when this new production (slated for after the intended fourth Raimi) was dreamed up; suddenly it made more financial sense to just go ahead with the reboot.

But make no mistake! They're churning these out because they don't want to lose their right to the character.

Octopunk said...

I have no problem with that, it's just they should've renegotiated the contract clause that forced them to kill Uncle Ben every ten years.

Malevolent

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