I was not pleased when Sony announced the release of another Spider-Man origin story only ten years after the last. It's not that focuses on origins always bog down superhero movies -- Batman Begins and Iron Man are among my favorites -- but it sounded utterly unnecessary. If Spider-Man 3 was bad enough to induce a reboot, why not try showing him at a later point in his life, like most of the franchise outside cinema? Nevertheless, when I found this title on the library shelf, I got curious to see what changed.
I hope you don't mind heavy, albeit spoiler-free, comparisons and contrasts to Spider-Man (2002) and, to a lesser extent, Spider-Man 2 (2004). It's a bit hard for me to think about the reboot on its own terms, because the original series is something of a sore spot for me. Despite usually liking popular or even middling adaptations from comic books, and despite liking Spidey at least in concept, these entries utterly failed to take my breath away. No way would I check out the threequel. TAS-M has slightly lower ratings across the usual sites, but I knew that I might well beg to differ.
A rough outline will highlight a lot of familiar points: Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a seemingly unenviable New York City high school geek living with his Aunt May (a not-that-old-looking Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (the ever-enjoyable Martin Sheen, not the rice guy). In a lab, he secretly, accidentally gets bitten by a special spider and obtains several superpowers. One night, out of spite for a stingy merchant, he allows a robber to escape unhindered, only to have that robber kill Ben for getting in the way. This gives Peter the motivation to fight crime, which he finds easy enough with garden-variety crooks, but not so easy when an ambitious scientist's experiment goes awry and produces a maniacal monster.
The first sign of a key difference? We actually learn a little about Peter's bygone parents this time -- just enough to make us hungry for more, at least regarding his dad. Richard Parker (not the tiger from Life of Pi) had worked with Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), which facilitates a quick bond between the latter and Peter. As you may imagine, it has further bearings on the plot down the road.
Plotwise, perhaps the biggest change is that Peter has eyes not for Mary Jane Watson but for his first comic book love, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone). The girls are not interchangeable; Gwen has a strong presence in the biology community and a vigilante-intolerant police captain (Denis Leary) for a dad. Yeah, Spidey has legal enemies for a change. Somewhat sadly, I have to say Gwen makes a much better match for Peter. Not only does she share his smarts for science, but she proves courageous, resourceful, and vital. Next to her, actress MJ is just a trophy.
Character-wise, Peter has gotten a lot better in my book. I won't say that Garfield is a better actor than Tobey Maguire -- he mumbles, for one thing -- or that he looks more like my mental picture of Peter (too much Edward Cullen hair for that), but he is more convincing as a regular teen. His early skateboarding in the school halls illustrates a refusal to not be cool at all and a willingness to break a few rules. He expresses plenty of stress, sometimes in dark ways, but doesn't overload on the angst factor. I think he feels more vengeful than guilty for once, and I won't begrudge him that. While his powers are initially far more curse than gift -- sticking to things uncontrollably, not knowing his own strength, and getting jumpy with his Spider-Sense -- he quickly gains self-confidence with practice, to the point that he'll make the kind of wisecracks I sorely missed in previous flicks. Once that happened, I stopped minding the high school aspect altogether. Oh, and in keeping with the comics, he creates artificial web shooters instead of producing his own bodily fluids as a power.
Style-wise, I much prefer Marc Webb to Sam Raimi (tho I suspect that the director known for little besides (500) Days of Summer got the job primarily via his last name). His pacing is more patient, still without greatly risking the inattention of younger viewers. For the first maybe half hour, it doesn't really feel like a superhero movie so much as a quaint drama -- and that's fine by me. In retrospect, I think what bugged me most about Raimi's work was that it looked too much like a comic book come to life, with overly compact dialog, an exaggerated New York state of mind, an ambiguous temporal setting (if not for an ill-chosen line about e-Bay, it could've passed for any era since the '70s), too many tight camera shots, and a sense that R-rated violence was happening just offstage. I had admired above all the perfectly cast J.K. Simmons as newspaper magnate J. Jonah Jameson, but he was actually part of the problem, requiring too much suspension of disbelief. In TAS-M, Peter practices photography but doesn't work for Jonah yet, which I call a wise decision on the filmmakers' part.
This is not to say that TAS-M has no significant weaknesses. Remember my summary of the main villain? It applies to about 90% of Spider-Man's rogues gallery, a monotony I attribute less to an anti-science agenda and more to lazy creators. In this case, Dr. Connors becomes the Lizard, characterized by brawn, enhanced healing, and a face only a mother could love. The last trait doesn't dissuade him from aggressively trying to spread his "boon" all over town. Captain Stacy understandably is inclined to dismiss the Lizard as an imaginary Godzilla knockoff. But while the lack of innovation certainly keeps the Lizard out of my top ten silver-screen supervillains, I say he's an improvement over the tawdry Green Goblin, whose "science" and mentality get too little explanation; and Dr. Octopus, who could easily have been stopped by any competent gun wielder.
A few scenes, especially near the end, get quite heartwarming. Without giving anything away, let's just say here's one super who gets some nonsuper helping hands and doesn't resent it.
TAS-M helped me reaffirm my appreciation of one of the greatest solo superheroes ever conceived. He has multiple powers and some unique tools but not the nigh invincibility of Superman; he takes on strong enemies, yet even ordinary ones can give him a challenge now and then; much of the time, he merely performs rescues or restrains thugs without hurting them and lets the cops take care of the rest; and he's far from the fiscal security of a billionaire. I'm not sure why I so rarely like his stories in any medium, but this is a fine exception.
No comments:
Post a Comment