Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Vidreoview: The Amazing Spider-Man
It’s difficult to argue that this is not an objectively better film than Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies, but it lacks the weird, quirky charm of those movies. This one’s sensibilities are firmly modern, whereas Raimi’s films still incorporated the innocence and optimism of the 1960s. This Spider-Man seems much more rooted in reality rather than being a filmed comic book, which is an interesting feat.
Andrew Garfield makes an excellent Parker/Spider-Man, though he is WAY too old to convincingly play a high-schooler. He is much more convincing delivering Spider-Man’s witty banter than Tobey Maguire was. And I really liked the fact that he is actually really bad at being Spider-Man for pretty much the length of the movie. He just started out; of course he’s gonna make mistakes and do things the wrong way. I also liked the speed-skater origin of the spandex costume, though I missed the professional-wrestling aspect of his origin (it is given a token nod as to the origin of the Spider-Man mask).
The romance between Parker and Gwen Stacy is endearingly geeky and awkward. The Lizard is perhaps not the most engaging of villains, but his scheme is large in scope and he’s a sufficient physical threat to get some rather good fight scenes in. But why doesn’t Captain Stacy bring a whole fleet of cops up to the roof with him at the end of the movie?
Conclusion: I was very skeptical, but I liked it a lot.
Categories: Vidreoviews.
