directed by Bryan Singer
screenplay by Simon Kinberg
Anyone who has followed Twentieth Century Fox's film franchise adapting the popular X-Men comic books will know that the franchise, which thus far has had five movies and two Wolverine-oriented spinoffs, has seen its ups and downs. After starting off strongly with the first two movies in 2000 and 2003, both directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects) the series saw a disheartening dip in quality when Singer left to direct a Superman sequel in 2006, resulting in the awful X-Men: The Last Stand, directed by Brett Ratner, compounded by an even worse Wolverine spinoff in 2009 by Gavin Hood. In 2011, Matthew Vaughn's prequel X-Men: First Class surprised audiences and critics by restoring a pretty high standard of quality to the X-Men franchise. Last year's The Wolverine, directed by James Mangold was not quite in its league but it was a surprisingly decent movie as well.
With X-Men: Days of Future Past, however, Singer finally returns to the franchise he started fourteen years ago, and gives not only the best X-Men movie that has ever been produced, but a movie that easily stands shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the very best films of the Disney-owned Marvel Studios, like the first Iron Man, the global phenomenon The Avengers, and the recent Captain America sequel.
The film opens in the year 2023, when mutants have been nearly wiped out by an unstoppable army of extremely powerful robots called Sentinels, built specifically to destroy them and their supporters and which, apart from unbelievable firepower, also have the ability to adapt to any threat. As a result, not even the combined abilities of the remaining X-Men, such as the ice powers of Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), teleportation powers of Blink (Fan Bingbing), fire powers of Sunpot (Adan Canto), armor and strength of Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), enhanced senses of Warpath (Booboo Stewart) the weather powers of Storm (Halle Berry) or even the metal-manipulating powers of Erik Lensherr a.k.a. Magneto (Ian McKellen) are able to stop them.
So far, the remaining X-Men have been able to stay alive thanks to the power of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to project the consciousness of Bishop (Omar Sy) into the past to warn the other X-Men of the attacks in time for them to evacuate their location, but time is running out fast. Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) then has the idea to send someone's consciousness back in time, all the way to the single event that led to the launch of the Sentinel program by the governments of the world, the assassination of Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) by Raven, a.k.a. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence). Professor Xavier theorizes that by stopping the assassination, they can change the future. However, to send someone's consciousness that far back in time could kill them, which is why Logan a.k.a. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), with his healing factor, is the only person who could survive the process, and as a result Kitty sends him back to 1973, where he must enlist the aid of a much younger Charles (James McAvoy) and Erik (Michael Fassbender). It won't be easy; Charles has become addicted to a serum developed by Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) that enables him to walk but has dulled his telepathy, while Erik is incarcerated underneath the Pentagon for supposedly having killed the President of the United States. Logan, Charles and Hank recruit a young man named Peter (Evan Peters) with the mutant gift of super speed in the hope of busting Magneto out of jail, but the challenges that lie ahead are going to be a lot more difficult than that as Trask, initially turned down by the American congress, starts to get too cozy for comfort with the right people in the U.S. government.
As happy as I was to find out that Bryan Singer was returning to the director's chair for the latest X-Men movie after over a decade away from the franchise, I confess my joy was slightly tempered by the notion that he'd be working from a script written by Simon Kinberg, who also wrote the disastrous X-Men: The Last Stand, and whose resume includes other films I really didn't enjoy, like Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes adaptation in 2009. As it turns out, I needn't have worried; Kinberg's script, apart from being surprisingly taut and well-structured, is actually quite reverent to the canon that was established by the previous films, with the exception of the failure to explain why Professor X is in his old body, which got vaporized in The Last Stand while his consciousness was moved into another person's comatose body. The real marvel (pun intended) here is that thanks to the time-travel element, this is easily one of the most complicated stories that has been attempted in any comic-book based movie, and yet with the exception of a few niggles, Kinberg actually pulls it off. If nothing else, such is his and Singer's sleight-of-hand that it's easier to ignore the gaffes, which are inevitable with that kind of storytelling.
Still, even though Kinberg has raised his game, it's still Singer's show, and he extracts electrifying performances from his leads. Jackman's charisma, as expected, is still dialed up to 11 here, but the good news is that he gets to do a lot more than shout and skewer people here; there's some welcome gravitas to his character that was actually hinted at in the last Wolverine solo movie but gets explored a bit more effectively here. The narrative focus, however, is on the newer cast members, in particular McAvoy's younger Xavier, who is a broken man after the events of First Class. McAvoy gets to do more than wear long hair and bell-bottom pants; he does an exemplary job of portraying the younger Xavier as having fallen from grace, a stark contrast from the hopeful young man he was in his first movie. For me, the film's most powerful scene doesn't involve explosions or energy blasts or fisticuffs; it's the scene where, through the magic of telepathy, young and old Charles meet and converse. Fassbender's Magneto was the breakout star of First Class with his overpowering, feral performance, but this time it is McAvoy's turn to shine. Fassbender's Magneto has traveled quite a bit further into full-on bad guy territory this time, though arguably understandably so, but the good news is that his portrayal is no less nuanced than it was the first time around, and his brutality here feels like a natural progression of what came before. Jennifer Lawrence, meanwhile, gets to show off her martial arts skills (when she's not being swapped out with a stunt double) and some pretty impressive linguistic (or at least phonetic) ability when Mystique carries on an extended conversation in Vietnamese and later throws in a smattering of French. She doesn't get quite as much attention from the script as she did in First Class, even though, ironically, Mystique is more central to the plot this time, but the supremely talented Lawrence is able to make the most out of her slightly diminished role. I also enjoyed seeing Nicholas Hoult return to the role of McCoy, also known as the Beast, as well; there was a lot more of his trademark acrobatic fighting this time, and he had a much better makeup job than he did in First Class. Dinklage, as the film's bad guy, turns in a solid, if not particularly remarkable performance, though to my mind that was more down to the writing. He certainly wasn't anything like Brian Cox's somewhat flamboyant bad guy William Stryker in X2: X-Men United, a younger version of whom is played here by Josh Helman. Still, Dinklage's performance is entirely creditable, and it was refreshing that, for a change it did not actually touch on his stature.
Finally, the "future" X-Men get to showcase their powers and little else, though Page's role as Kitty Pryde is fairly substantial even though she plays out more like a plot device than an actual character. I must say, though, that Fan Bingbing is absolutely gorgeous as Blink, and I hope to see more of her in future installments.
For me, however, the breakout star of this movie was Evan Peters, who played Peter Maximoff, also known in the comic books as Quicksilver. A bravura sequence in which he puts his super speed on full display is easily the best action set piece of the entire movie, and lays down a serious marker that I suspect was intended for Fox's rivals over at Marvel studios, who through some curious legal development will also be able to feature Quicksilver in their Avengers sequel next year, to be played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whom I actually found to be insufferably bland in the current hit Godzilla. It was also a stroke of genius for Singer to set the scene to the sound of Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle" although that has fooled at least one reviewer into thinking that Quicksilver's power is to stop time. The only thing truly wrong with this iteration of Quicksilver is that he is gone from the movie way, way too soon, and for no good reason, really. I can already see the "How It Should Have Ended" skit on Youtube in which he plays a bigger role and simplifies everyone's problems. Still, even without him around the movie has plenty of highly-impressive action sequences.
It's hard to talk about the specific things I enjoyed about the film without spoiling plot points, but I will say that, apart from enjoying the film on its own merits, I was decidedly struck by how faithful Singer and his crew managed to be to the atmosphere of the original comic book series, which was extremely effective in juxtaposing the bleakness of the future and the tumult of the end of the seventies, even though in the movie Singer has turned back the clock a few years. There's even a highly memorable, if decidedly grim moment involving Storm and a sentinel that feels like it's been ripped right out of the comic book, albeit with more visceral impact here.
For me the honor of top Marvel-based movie of the year still goes to Marvel Studios' Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but this comes a very, very close second and only loses out because of some quibbles I have with the script. I will say that of the two, this is definitely the more ambitious film, comparable even to what Marvel did by putting together The Avengers two years ago. One thing the X-Men franchise definitely has going for it is that it is the longest running comic book film franchise whose makers haven't actually pushed the reboot button, although the time travel story device serves a similar purpose.
I can actually foresee nerds in the future debating what the better Marvel movie was: this, or The Avengers. It's that good.
8.9/10
[mild spoiler warning]
Oh, and I am happy to report that people unhappy with certain plot points of X-Men: The Last Stand will be very happy with this film. That is all.
[end spoiler warning]
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Casting for Cash?
About fifteen years or so ago, a little-known Australian actor named Hugh Jackman was cast to play one of Marvel Comics' most famous characters, the mutant superhero known as Wolverine.
For years before and thereafter, that was basically the rule, with few exceptions: cast low key, not-so-well known (or sometimes completely unknown) actors in superhero roles so that the larger-than-life persona that actual movie stars such as Tom Cruise or Leonardo diCaprio would bring would not overshadow the characters themselves. Sure, fairly well-known actors like George Clooney and Val Kilmer played Batman at one point, but it was when the lesser-known character actor Christian Bale played him that the character really shone. Casting Hollywood stars as comic book characters rarely works out well, with probably the most famous exception being Robert Downey, Jr., the one-time up-and-coming prince of Hollywood laid low by drug abuse who belatedly fulfilled his potential superstardom thanks to a red-and-gold suit of armor.
Things are changing, though. Many of the current generation of young actors currently eyed for superhero roles, even the so-called "A-listers" actually grew up on superhero comic books and loved the adventures of the characters they read. Many of these actors, like Nicolas Cage and Ryan Reynolds, as a result, eagerly court roles in the adaptations of these books to the big screen. The latest such actor to chase, and land such a role is white-hot "A-lister" Channing Tatum, who, in 2012 alone, starred in three movies that grossed $100 million at the North American box office, which, inflation notwithstanding remains both a benchmark of a movie's success, and the bankability of its actors. Tatum had a misstep last year with White House Down, but is still very much regarded as a hot Hollywood property. Arguably as a result of that success, 20th Century Fox and producer Lauren Schuler-Donner have agreed to have Tatum play the mutant Gambit, a popular X-Men character who previously appeared in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as played by Taylor Kitsch.
As far as Tatum's acting talent goes, about the best thing I can say about him is that he isn't a terrible actor or necessarily even a bad one. I can probably think of one of two people I'd rather have in that role.
As far as commercial prospects are concerned, though, I can hardly argue with the logic Fox and behind the decision. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to figure it out; the guy's movies make lots of money. Full stop. Imagine if the Gambit character, by virtue of his X-Men connection, could attract about $240 million worth of fans to the theaters around the world without Channing Tatum. Now add everyone who paid to see Magic Mike who would not be caught dead near a comic-book-based movie, and that's a boost of nearly another $200 million. Boom.
I actually liked Tatum in 21 Jump Street, and I was basically blown away by X-Men: Days of Future Past (review coming next) so I remain cautiously optimistic that Fox will maintain the standard of quality they have rediscovered in 2011 with X-Men: First Class, and have even improved on with their latest movie.
For years before and thereafter, that was basically the rule, with few exceptions: cast low key, not-so-well known (or sometimes completely unknown) actors in superhero roles so that the larger-than-life persona that actual movie stars such as Tom Cruise or Leonardo diCaprio would bring would not overshadow the characters themselves. Sure, fairly well-known actors like George Clooney and Val Kilmer played Batman at one point, but it was when the lesser-known character actor Christian Bale played him that the character really shone. Casting Hollywood stars as comic book characters rarely works out well, with probably the most famous exception being Robert Downey, Jr., the one-time up-and-coming prince of Hollywood laid low by drug abuse who belatedly fulfilled his potential superstardom thanks to a red-and-gold suit of armor.
Things are changing, though. Many of the current generation of young actors currently eyed for superhero roles, even the so-called "A-listers" actually grew up on superhero comic books and loved the adventures of the characters they read. Many of these actors, like Nicolas Cage and Ryan Reynolds, as a result, eagerly court roles in the adaptations of these books to the big screen. The latest such actor to chase, and land such a role is white-hot "A-lister" Channing Tatum, who, in 2012 alone, starred in three movies that grossed $100 million at the North American box office, which, inflation notwithstanding remains both a benchmark of a movie's success, and the bankability of its actors. Tatum had a misstep last year with White House Down, but is still very much regarded as a hot Hollywood property. Arguably as a result of that success, 20th Century Fox and producer Lauren Schuler-Donner have agreed to have Tatum play the mutant Gambit, a popular X-Men character who previously appeared in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as played by Taylor Kitsch.
As far as Tatum's acting talent goes, about the best thing I can say about him is that he isn't a terrible actor or necessarily even a bad one. I can probably think of one of two people I'd rather have in that role.
As far as commercial prospects are concerned, though, I can hardly argue with the logic Fox and behind the decision. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to figure it out; the guy's movies make lots of money. Full stop. Imagine if the Gambit character, by virtue of his X-Men connection, could attract about $240 million worth of fans to the theaters around the world without Channing Tatum. Now add everyone who paid to see Magic Mike who would not be caught dead near a comic-book-based movie, and that's a boost of nearly another $200 million. Boom.
I actually liked Tatum in 21 Jump Street, and I was basically blown away by X-Men: Days of Future Past (review coming next) so I remain cautiously optimistic that Fox will maintain the standard of quality they have rediscovered in 2011 with X-Men: First Class, and have even improved on with their latest movie.
Friday, May 16, 2014
All Sizzle, (Almost) No Steak: A Review of Godzilla
The last Godzilla movie I walked into with any sense of anticipation was the 1998 big-budget remake by disaster-master Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) which turned out to be an unmitigated catastrophe. As a result, I wasn't particularly looking forward to this new installment, directed by relative newcomer Gareth Edwards, though early buzz and sneak peeks indicated that if nothing else, this would at least be better than the Emmerich-directed fiasco.
There are things I liked about this movie, to be fair; I loved Bryan Cranston's performance. The only real poignancy in the film came from his story, in particular his relationship with his family. Also, while his histrionics may have seemed over the top at some points, of all the actors assembled, and there were quite a few notable ones, he brought the most conviction to his role; it was from his performance that one got the sense of urgency, that there was something terrible about to happen to all of mankind. That he was written out of the script as early as he was really robbed the film of some genuine emotional heft.
Instead of Cranston's Joe, a truly tragic figure seeking redemption through the truth, the focus and intended emotional center of the film is his son Ford, played in adulthood by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who basically looked to me like he was sleepwalking through the whole damned movie. Olsen, as his wife Elle, is good at looking scared and running away, and little else. Between the two of them, these two actors don't come anywhere near what Cranston could have brought to the film had they kept him in longer, and yet it is on them that the filmmakers spend most of the film's running time. I get that the idea was to give the story a human core, and to get audiences to care about the people caught in the mayhem of Godzilla's titanic battles, but that only works when the leads are engaging, and neither of the two leads really is.
Also, Watanabe's Serizawa comes across as downright silly; there's something laughable about his belief that Godzilla (or "Gojira" as he correctly calls him) is some kind of benevolent force of nature. He's supposed to be a scientist, after all, and yet there's no evidence to support his theory of Godzilla's inclinations. His view seems more like a matter of religious faith than of actual scientific principle, a notion bolstered by the fact that Graham refers to the giant lizard as "a god."
It's not a total loss; the depiction of Godzilla is utterly magnificent, and allayed my fears that for all the filmmakers' efforts, he would still look like a guy in a rubber suit. No, the sight and sound of this creature are downright awesome, and I know that description may come across as trite, but I can truly not think of a more apt description. I missed seeing this in IMAX but I imagine that must be a special experience. Given, however, that he's barely ever on the screen in a two-hour movie, though, I wouldn't recommend spending the arm and a leg required to watch in IMAX theaters. Still, I applaud the folks at WETA Digital for rising up to the difficult task of visually updating such an iconic character, as well as the folks responsible for designing his distinctive roar. The creatures he faces off against, the Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms or MUTOS, are similarly imposing, though not nearly as impressive to behold. The time Godzilla and his foes are filling the screen was quite a lot of fun to watch, which made the dearth of his screen time all the more infuriating.
One small touch I appreciated was a fairly novel use for the 3-D format which played around with the audience's point-of-view. Sometimes the mayhem is viewed through Ford Brody's goggles as he skydives, and other times through a car windshield, and other times still through an office window.
For me, the movie fails on two crucial points; it fails in terms of human drama due to actors who, for the most part, turn in utterly tepid, unconvincing performances, and as a monster movie considering that the title character is on the screen for less than ten percent of the total running time. Compared to Pacific Rim and especially King Kong, which were generous both with the development of their human characters and their creature exposure, this movie just fell woefully flat for me.
Last night, when confronted with a choice between killing time watching the new Godzilla and wading through several kilometers of heavy traffic, I chose the former. Truth be told, I'm not really sure that was the better decision.
The opening credits feature some archival footage of nuclear testing from the 1950s, glimpses of a mysterious creature and the repeated appearance of the name "Monarch" before the film segues to 1999, when Dr. Ichiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his associate Viviene Graham (Sally Hawkins), fly to a remote location in the Philippines, where miners have unearthed what appears to be the bones of a giant creature several feet underground. Startlingly, they also discover what appear to be eggs of enormous creatures, one of which has hatched, with its occupant having cut a swath of destruction out to the sea.
Not long after, in Japan, American engineer Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) who lives in Japan with his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche) and their son Ford (CJ Adams) and works at a nuclear power plant, is concerned regarding seismic activity happening right under the plant, but he cannot get his superiors to listen to his theories as to what is happening, until it is too late and a catastrophic meltdown occurs, with particularly terrible consequences for Brody.
Years later, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), now grown up with a wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and a son (Carson Bolde) of his own, lives in San Francisco and works in the U.S. Navy as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician. For all the time that has passed, however, Joe Brody has never let go of his obsession with finding out what really happened at the nuclear power plant. He gets arrested attempting to enter what has become a quarantined zone, where his old house, and the data disks it contains, are, and Ford has to bail him out of jail. Eventually he prevails on Ford to return to the quarantined zone, where the two of them discover something even more terrifying than Joe could have imagined in his all of his paranoid speculation. Soon a race is on to protect humanity from a threat they have never known before.
I'll be direct; I did not like this movie.
I walked in hoping for a giant creature movie in the vein of Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim and Peter Jackson's King Kong, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed, and instead I got a disaster movie with a grand total of, by my estimation, about six or seven minutes of actual screen-time for the title character. To say I felt cheated would be an understatement of monstrous proportions.
There are things I liked about this movie, to be fair; I loved Bryan Cranston's performance. The only real poignancy in the film came from his story, in particular his relationship with his family. Also, while his histrionics may have seemed over the top at some points, of all the actors assembled, and there were quite a few notable ones, he brought the most conviction to his role; it was from his performance that one got the sense of urgency, that there was something terrible about to happen to all of mankind. That he was written out of the script as early as he was really robbed the film of some genuine emotional heft.
Instead of Cranston's Joe, a truly tragic figure seeking redemption through the truth, the focus and intended emotional center of the film is his son Ford, played in adulthood by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who basically looked to me like he was sleepwalking through the whole damned movie. Olsen, as his wife Elle, is good at looking scared and running away, and little else. Between the two of them, these two actors don't come anywhere near what Cranston could have brought to the film had they kept him in longer, and yet it is on them that the filmmakers spend most of the film's running time. I get that the idea was to give the story a human core, and to get audiences to care about the people caught in the mayhem of Godzilla's titanic battles, but that only works when the leads are engaging, and neither of the two leads really is.
Also, Watanabe's Serizawa comes across as downright silly; there's something laughable about his belief that Godzilla (or "Gojira" as he correctly calls him) is some kind of benevolent force of nature. He's supposed to be a scientist, after all, and yet there's no evidence to support his theory of Godzilla's inclinations. His view seems more like a matter of religious faith than of actual scientific principle, a notion bolstered by the fact that Graham refers to the giant lizard as "a god."
It's not a total loss; the depiction of Godzilla is utterly magnificent, and allayed my fears that for all the filmmakers' efforts, he would still look like a guy in a rubber suit. No, the sight and sound of this creature are downright awesome, and I know that description may come across as trite, but I can truly not think of a more apt description. I missed seeing this in IMAX but I imagine that must be a special experience. Given, however, that he's barely ever on the screen in a two-hour movie, though, I wouldn't recommend spending the arm and a leg required to watch in IMAX theaters. Still, I applaud the folks at WETA Digital for rising up to the difficult task of visually updating such an iconic character, as well as the folks responsible for designing his distinctive roar. The creatures he faces off against, the Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms or MUTOS, are similarly imposing, though not nearly as impressive to behold. The time Godzilla and his foes are filling the screen was quite a lot of fun to watch, which made the dearth of his screen time all the more infuriating.
One small touch I appreciated was a fairly novel use for the 3-D format which played around with the audience's point-of-view. Sometimes the mayhem is viewed through Ford Brody's goggles as he skydives, and other times through a car windshield, and other times still through an office window.
For me, the movie fails on two crucial points; it fails in terms of human drama due to actors who, for the most part, turn in utterly tepid, unconvincing performances, and as a monster movie considering that the title character is on the screen for less than ten percent of the total running time. Compared to Pacific Rim and especially King Kong, which were generous both with the development of their human characters and their creature exposure, this movie just fell woefully flat for me.
5/10
Friday, May 9, 2014
Hoping for Spidey's Skyfall (Spoilers)
The year 2002 was when which the Spider-Man film franchise kicked off in fine style, ending the year as the highest grossing film at the expense of such formidable opposition as the second Star Wars prequel, as well as sequels in both the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises. It was also the year in which another popular film franchise continued its downward spiral into virtually terminal schlock. Die Another Day was the twentieth film in the long-running (then 40 years) James Bond film franchise, and the fourth starring Irish actor Pierce Brosnan. After the first, well-regarded film Goldeneye in 1995, the subsequent films starring Brosnan got progressively worse, with Die Another Day representing a creative nadir. It got so bad that the solution was to start all over again from scratch, with a new bond in Daniel Craig, and a new timeline, though it retained Judi Dench from the Brosnan era as "M." Casino Royale was a commercial and critical success.
It was not all smooth sailing, however; the next installment, Quantum of Solace, notwithstanding the goodwill generated from the Bond reboot, was not as well received as its predecessor and was seen as a creative misfire, notwithstanding the fact that there was clear narrative continuity between Casino Royale and itself. The new Bond series was conceived as a trilogy, but the second part, which was left conspicuously hanging for a third, sagged, leaving doubt as to the viability of the next installment.
So Sony cut their losses and made Skyfall, which had nothing to do with either of the two films that came before it, although they did retain Craig as Bond and Dench as M. They told a new story, unsaddled by previous baggage, and one conceived entirely as its own thing, and the results were dramatic.
Skyfall made a billion dollars at the worldwide box office, nearly twice the grosses of its immediate predecessor, garnered critical acclaim, and won a passel of awards, including two Oscars.
In the span of ten short years, the James Bond went from a creative low with Die Another Day to a creative high with Skyfall.
In that same period, the Spider-Man film franchise, which saw the release of the acclaimed, award-winning blockbuster Spider-Man 2 in 2004, has apparently gone in the opposite direction with this year's release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, quantifiably the worst-received film of that entire series.
Now, when Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man films went the way of Die Another Day with the disastrous Spider-Man 3, Sony correctly decided it was time to start anew, and two years ago produced the flawed but nonetheless highly watchable reboot The Amazing Spider-Man, which wasn't quite Casino Royale to Die Another Day but which nonetheless provided the studio with a much needed clean break from the past.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is arguably the Quantum of Solace of this new series of Spider-Man movies, and even though it's still making money, to my mind the producers really have to start rethinking their approach to the series, which they apparently already have planned out for the next several years, just as the Bond producers did. Their plan is for Spider-Man to face off with the Sinister Six, his fabled team of enemies from the comic books. So confident are they, apparently, that they even have a spinoff planned for the supervillians. The underwhelming grosses and vicious reviews, however, should get them to seriously rethink their long-term plan.
My (admittedly unsolicited) advice for them is to keep things simple; focus on Peter's core relationships, which was one of the things they did well, even, in this widely reviled new installment, and they should never let another whole movie go by without Peter Parker ever mentioning Uncle Ben by name. That was just wrong on every narrative level. They should also make it a point to have his villains and supporting characters played by actors who play them less like cartoon characters and more like human beings. Jamie Foxx (Electro), Paul Giamatti (Rhino) and Marton Csokas (Dr. Kafka) all went extremely heavy on the camp, and it was extremely distracting to watch. Imagine how horrid Captain America: The Winter Soldier would have been if Robert Redford's character had abruptly started speaking with a German accent.
As Batman and Robin showed back in 1997, all it takes to bury a film franchise is one bad film, but as Skyfall showed back in 2012, the converse is also true: an outstanding film can really turn things around for a franchise in freefall. I'm still holding out hope that the next Spider-Man film is the latter type of sequel.
It was not all smooth sailing, however; the next installment, Quantum of Solace, notwithstanding the goodwill generated from the Bond reboot, was not as well received as its predecessor and was seen as a creative misfire, notwithstanding the fact that there was clear narrative continuity between Casino Royale and itself. The new Bond series was conceived as a trilogy, but the second part, which was left conspicuously hanging for a third, sagged, leaving doubt as to the viability of the next installment.
So Sony cut their losses and made Skyfall, which had nothing to do with either of the two films that came before it, although they did retain Craig as Bond and Dench as M. They told a new story, unsaddled by previous baggage, and one conceived entirely as its own thing, and the results were dramatic.
Skyfall made a billion dollars at the worldwide box office, nearly twice the grosses of its immediate predecessor, garnered critical acclaim, and won a passel of awards, including two Oscars.
In the span of ten short years, the James Bond went from a creative low with Die Another Day to a creative high with Skyfall.
In that same period, the Spider-Man film franchise, which saw the release of the acclaimed, award-winning blockbuster Spider-Man 2 in 2004, has apparently gone in the opposite direction with this year's release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, quantifiably the worst-received film of that entire series.
Now, when Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man films went the way of Die Another Day with the disastrous Spider-Man 3, Sony correctly decided it was time to start anew, and two years ago produced the flawed but nonetheless highly watchable reboot The Amazing Spider-Man, which wasn't quite Casino Royale to Die Another Day but which nonetheless provided the studio with a much needed clean break from the past.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is arguably the Quantum of Solace of this new series of Spider-Man movies, and even though it's still making money, to my mind the producers really have to start rethinking their approach to the series, which they apparently already have planned out for the next several years, just as the Bond producers did. Their plan is for Spider-Man to face off with the Sinister Six, his fabled team of enemies from the comic books. So confident are they, apparently, that they even have a spinoff planned for the supervillians. The underwhelming grosses and vicious reviews, however, should get them to seriously rethink their long-term plan.
My (admittedly unsolicited) advice for them is to keep things simple; focus on Peter's core relationships, which was one of the things they did well, even, in this widely reviled new installment, and they should never let another whole movie go by without Peter Parker ever mentioning Uncle Ben by name. That was just wrong on every narrative level. They should also make it a point to have his villains and supporting characters played by actors who play them less like cartoon characters and more like human beings. Jamie Foxx (Electro), Paul Giamatti (Rhino) and Marton Csokas (Dr. Kafka) all went extremely heavy on the camp, and it was extremely distracting to watch. Imagine how horrid Captain America: The Winter Soldier would have been if Robert Redford's character had abruptly started speaking with a German accent.
As Batman and Robin showed back in 1997, all it takes to bury a film franchise is one bad film, but as Skyfall showed back in 2012, the converse is also true: an outstanding film can really turn things around for a franchise in freefall. I'm still holding out hope that the next Spider-Man film is the latter type of sequel.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Out of Ideas
I was originally planning to write a long, derisive post about Warner Brothers' announcement that they will be making a Justice League movie, immediately after their Superman vs. Batman film, which has yet to even start filming, but someone's comment on the internet summarized what I was thinking in less than ten words: I'll believe it when I see it.
What I can't quite believe, however, is Sony Pictures' announcement that they actually intend to make a Sinister Six spinoff, or, for the uninitiated, a whole movie about six of Spider-Man's deadliest enemies. Basically, Sony is betting that audiences, a large chunk of them families, will pay to see an expensive, two-hour movie about bad guys whose mission in life it is to kill Spider-Man.
I understand Sony's quandary; Spider-Man is the only Marvel property they have left, with the X-Men and Fantastic Four belonging to Twentieth Century Fox, and EVERYTHING else having reverted to Marvel, now owned by the Walt Disney Company. Once upon a time, Sony had rights to as many as THREE Marvel properties, including Spider-Man, but after squandering their resources on two Ghost Rider movies, both critical failures, the second a commercial failure, they let that property go. They were supposed to have a Killraven movie in the pipeline at one point, but that has since fallen through, and all they have left now are Spider-man and related characters.
Of those related characters, only one of them can even be remotely considered a "superhero;" the character Venom, originally conceived as a villain but which took on a life of its own as some sort of twisted anti-hero. Venom was originally the "marriage" of an alien parasite that grafted itself onto Spider-Man, only to be rejected by him, and Eddie Brock, a reporter whose sensationalized stories Spider-Man had unknowingly discredited by catching a criminal and exposing his stories as fraudulent. Marvel has since experimented with the alien costume by giving it a different host; for years it was supervillain Mac Gargan, a.k.a. the Scorpion, but since 2010, the alien has had as its host war hero and double amputee Flash Thompson, a longtime member of Spider-Man's supporting cast who finally joined the ranks of Marvel's superheroes. Whether or not Marvel deliberately took this direction with the character to make him more "movie friendly" or not, the fact of the matter is that "Agent Venom" is now a more viable big-screen hero than the creepy Eddie Brock incarnation of the character would ever have been. One could even imagine the character being featured in a spy-thriller akin to the Bourne movies or even the current Marvel Studios smash hit Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
With the Sinister Six, however, the options are a lot more limited; these guys are straight-up bad guys. They are criminals, basically. Thieves and killers, every one. While this might make the stuff of a great neo-noir movie, like a super-powered version of Reservoir Dogs, the fact of the matter is that a huge part of Spider-Man's target demographic is children, and neither children nor their parents will pay to see a movie about bad guys, so as bad ideas for blockbuster movies go, this one's kind of a doozy.
Avi Arad, who was no longer part of the Marvel Cinematic brain trust by the time Iron Man launched the studio in 2008, has boasted that Sony would only resort to a crossover between Spider-man and the Avengers if they had "run out of ideas."
Time to get on the phone, Avi.
What I can't quite believe, however, is Sony Pictures' announcement that they actually intend to make a Sinister Six spinoff, or, for the uninitiated, a whole movie about six of Spider-Man's deadliest enemies. Basically, Sony is betting that audiences, a large chunk of them families, will pay to see an expensive, two-hour movie about bad guys whose mission in life it is to kill Spider-Man.
I understand Sony's quandary; Spider-Man is the only Marvel property they have left, with the X-Men and Fantastic Four belonging to Twentieth Century Fox, and EVERYTHING else having reverted to Marvel, now owned by the Walt Disney Company. Once upon a time, Sony had rights to as many as THREE Marvel properties, including Spider-Man, but after squandering their resources on two Ghost Rider movies, both critical failures, the second a commercial failure, they let that property go. They were supposed to have a Killraven movie in the pipeline at one point, but that has since fallen through, and all they have left now are Spider-man and related characters.
Of those related characters, only one of them can even be remotely considered a "superhero;" the character Venom, originally conceived as a villain but which took on a life of its own as some sort of twisted anti-hero. Venom was originally the "marriage" of an alien parasite that grafted itself onto Spider-Man, only to be rejected by him, and Eddie Brock, a reporter whose sensationalized stories Spider-Man had unknowingly discredited by catching a criminal and exposing his stories as fraudulent. Marvel has since experimented with the alien costume by giving it a different host; for years it was supervillain Mac Gargan, a.k.a. the Scorpion, but since 2010, the alien has had as its host war hero and double amputee Flash Thompson, a longtime member of Spider-Man's supporting cast who finally joined the ranks of Marvel's superheroes. Whether or not Marvel deliberately took this direction with the character to make him more "movie friendly" or not, the fact of the matter is that "Agent Venom" is now a more viable big-screen hero than the creepy Eddie Brock incarnation of the character would ever have been. One could even imagine the character being featured in a spy-thriller akin to the Bourne movies or even the current Marvel Studios smash hit Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
With the Sinister Six, however, the options are a lot more limited; these guys are straight-up bad guys. They are criminals, basically. Thieves and killers, every one. While this might make the stuff of a great neo-noir movie, like a super-powered version of Reservoir Dogs, the fact of the matter is that a huge part of Spider-Man's target demographic is children, and neither children nor their parents will pay to see a movie about bad guys, so as bad ideas for blockbuster movies go, this one's kind of a doozy.
Avi Arad, who was no longer part of the Marvel Cinematic brain trust by the time Iron Man launched the studio in 2008, has boasted that Sony would only resort to a crossover between Spider-man and the Avengers if they had "run out of ideas."
Time to get on the phone, Avi.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Bloated: A Review of The Amazing Spider-Man 2
directed by Marc Webb
screenplay by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Jeff Pinkner
I will be candid: this review will be quite a bit longer than most of my reviews because of my affection for the Spider-Man character. To my mind, more than any other character in the Marvel pantheon, Spider-Man deserves a perfect movie, or as near as one can get to it, and it saddens me that, this time around, he did not get the masterpiece he deserved.
A lot has been said, much of it bad, about the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man Sony Pictures' 2012 reboot of the cinematic saga of Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man, who once upon a time sat atop the cinematic roost as king of comic book heroes and Marvel-based heroes in particular until he was displaced by the concerted efforts of six of his fellow Marvel heroes in a little movie called The Avengers. The movie has, so far, gotten worst reviews of any of the films in the series (yes, even including the much-reviled Spider-Man 3) and the cacophony of fanboys calling for the failure of this film is at a fever pitch. Notably, these are no longer even just the DC comics fanboys cheering for their Nolan/Snyder produced "horses" but actual Marvel fanboys wanting Sony Pictures, who have had the rights to make movies on this property for the better part of two decades now, to lose money on this movie so that they will willingly cede the property back to Marvel, who now have their own film studio.
Since the Avengers stopped an alien fleet from destroying the world (or at least New York City), it seems to me that Sony Pictures felt they had to up the ante somehow from the flawed but entertaining first reboot with some really over-the-top flourishes. I can just imagine the meetings: "Let's shoot the whole movie in New York and not having Los Angeles or Toronto double for it!" or "Let's have two or more villains, one of them with the capacity to mess up the whole city!" or "Let's give Peter's parents their own action scene!" or "Let's hire the guys who wrote the Transformers movies!"
As a result of what I strongly suspect is an effort to outdo Marvel studios in the fireworks department, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is at least twenty minutes too long and feels a little bit cluttered at many points.
The movie picks up from where the last film has left off; Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) is about to graduate from high school, while struggling with the secret behind his parents' disappearance as well as his on-again, off-again relationship with girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), mainly due to his promise to Gwen's departed dad, Police Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary) to keep her out of Spider-Man's dangerous life. Things get even more complicated for him when Gwen is offered a scholarship into Oxford University...which happens to be in England. Then, shortly after mentally-unbalanced electrical engineer Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) has a little workplace accident that transforms him into the deadly Electro, and an old friend, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) returns from an extended visit to Europe to visit his dying dad Norman (Chris Cooper), only to discover somewhat troubling secrets about himself, Spider-Man comes face-to-face with challenges that will change him forever.
The subplot involving Peter's parents was always suspect, even when the new Spider-crew introduced it with the reboot, and here it simply takes up too much screen time and pays off in a revelation that seems meant to be important but feels utterly superfluous. By itself it's already ten minutes of the film that could have been cut right out, leaving the rest of the film none the worse for its removal.
Another misstep the producers took this time was the realization of Jamie Foxx's Max Dillon, a.k.a. Electro. I'll grant that Dillon is painted as a lonely, maltreated, mentally unstable electrical engineer before he transforms, courtesy of a rather silly accident into Electro, but to my mind the transition from disturbed individual to full blown psychopath feels extremely abrupt. The script's approach to Electro, as well as Foxx's portrayal of the nerdy Dillon, feel unnecessarily campy, and as fantastical as the character's origin is, I had a particularly hard time suspending my disbelief here. I groaned in the theater when Max called a colleague of his to shut down the electrical grid where he was working so that he could repair a broken cable, only to be told that this man was calling it a day and could not be bothered to help him. So, Oscorp, a multi-billion dollar company has only one person working its whole power grid, who would rather rush home than help another employee fix a building's broken power cable that could potentially screw up the entire building? That's the kind of contrivance one could expect from a 1960s comic book, but not from a contemporary feature film. The consolation, though, is that once Foxx goes into full-on villain mode, he is quite convincingly menacing, and the effects that go into visualizing him are absolutely top-notch.
My final major gripe is the story arc of this particular version of Harry Osborn, played by Dane DeHaan. Truth be told, I quite enjoyed DeHaan's performance. In fact, of the two new kids on the block, him and Foxx, I have more praise for DeHaan, who takes a decidedly different approach to the Osborn character from that of his predecessor James Franco. There are still the daddy issues, to be sure, but DeHaan's Harry, who learns he is virtually terminally ill, does a good job of conveying desperation on top of the pathos of a neglected child, and DeHaan channels a younger Leonardo diCarpio, not just because of the physical resemblance but on account of more than a few of his mannerisms. Most importantly, however, his screen chemistry with Garfield's Peter is palpable, so that even if their friendship isn't quite as close as it was in the Raimi's films, there's still a genuine sense of tragedy when things inevitably go sour. What I did not at all appreciate, however, was the corporate mutiny plotline that the filmmakers rehashed from the very first Spider-Man movie. It was, in a word, irritating. Surely, I thought, there are other ways to motivate a character other than by taking away his money and power.
I have a minor quibble too, and it is with the presentation of the character eventually known as the Rhino, but without spoiling too much I can categorically say that he has hardly any screen time and therefore hardly any bearing on the story. What I sincerely disliked about the character, though, was Paul Giamatti's over-the-top, utterly hammy performance, which depressed and annoyed me in equal parts considering that Giamatti is one of my very favorite character actors and could have done so much better, no matter how small this role was. Heck, legendary actors like Robert Redford and Anthony Hopkins have taken their supporting roles in comic-book-based movies much more seriously, with Hopkins even having to wear garish costumes and speak flowery English, so Giamatti could have at least tried to act like he was in something other than a Saturday morning cartoon.
Yes, there is a lot that is wrong with this movie, but I will not join the bandwagon of hate against it because to my mind, Sony got the most important things right, starting with the title character. To my mind, Andrew Garfield IS Peter Parker, just as much as Robert Downey, Jr. IS Tony Stark and Tom Hiddleston IS Loki. He made a pretty good argument for his casting in the last movie but basically solidified it here. He has struck the delicate balance between Parker's inner loneliness and sense of guilt and responsibility on the one hand, and the unbridled cockiness and snark he assumes when he puts on the mask on the other, a duality that has been a hallmark of the character for fifty-two years, and which Tobey Maguire never even came close to accomplishing in any of the Sam Raimi movies. I cannot emphasize this point enough; for three movies I put up with Maguire's squeaky voice and misguided, at times borderline-condescending portrayal of Spider-Man. I didn't yearn for better because frankly, that was the hand I, along with all other movie viewers in the world, was dealt. What Garfield has done with the character, therefore is virtually miraculous; he has made this Spider-Man almost everything that Maguire's was not in the ways that truly count, and when this film is at its most ridiculous he remains its saving grace.
More than just Garfield's portrayal of the character, however, his relationships with his supporting cast also go a long way towards carrying the film. Peter' interactions with characters such as Sally Field's Aunt May, Gwen, and Harry, are defining moments in the film that come across as truly heartfelt stuff, and manage to give the film an emotional center of gravity even when the big-budget craziness threatens (as it does, many, many times) to carry the whole enterprise away like a runaway tornado. Full credit goes to Webb and all of the actors involved for getting this crucial aspect of the film right, but Garfield is at the heart of it all. His chemistry with real-life girlfriend Stone, as embodied in their dialogue and the body language they share, is utterly magical, and again, is far superior to any of the romantic sparks that flew between the Maguire's take on Peter and Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson, his squeeze in the old movie series. Also, I think Field's Aunt May is a lot more convincing than Rosemary Harris' ever was. In terms of the smaller, more intimate moments, this movie offers scenes that are just as good as, if not better than the very best that the Raimi movies had to offer. Every time they have these scenes it feels like a well-scripted independent movie about family and relationships has wandered onto the screen.
Not only that, but clearly a lot of effort has gone into making Spidey more convincing than he's ever looked; digital Spidey is looking slicker than he ever has before, and nearly every gravity-defying action sequence with him in it is utterly breathtaking, especially in 3-D. It helps that the filmmakers have outfitted Garfield and his stuntmen with the best Spider-Man costume that has ever been filmed, which brings back the best aspects of the Raimi-era suit and adds some welcome touches, like the snazzy oversized eyepieces which hearken back to the Spider-Man I grew up with: the McFarlane-era Spidey. Also, as overblown as many of the action sequences are, I genuinely appreciated the fact that one of the most impressively-staged ones involved Spider-Man using his head and his lightning-fast reflexes to save a whole bunch of bystanders from getting both squashed by a flying car and fried by one of Electro's blasts. More than being just an orgy of computer-generated imagery, this scene punctuated something very important about Spider-Man: his sense of responsibility extends to all civilians caught in the crossfire of his titanic battles and he will do everything in his power and skill to save them.
All told, to my mind the film's biggest problem was that its makers were constantly trying to one-up the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut that is Marvel Studios in the slam-bang action department, and so rather than let this film be its own thing, like the Spider-Man films of old used to do, they tried to make almost everything "bigger," from the multiple bad guys to the work of composer/fanboy god Hans Zimmer and his "Magnificent Six." I appreciated Zimmer's work here, though at some points of the film it struck me that he was repeating his new theme for the character as often as he was in order to drum out of the viewer's head the music that his predecessor James Horner had written for the character. Well, sorry Zimmer, but I for one am still partial to Horner's music, mainly because, like the parts of this film that work, it feels more intimate, and more personal.
In closing, I think that Sony would have done well to learn from Marvel's most recent, acclaimed blockbuster Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in which the massive CGI-laden climax was practically a footnote to a film that had already spent the majority of its running time building up its plot and characters. In crafting the sequel that is probably all but a foregone conclusion at this point, I hope Sony remembers a valuable lesson from this film: while good characterization and awesome CGI will always have a place in a Spider-Man movie, bigger isn't always better.
6/10
screenplay by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Jeff Pinkner
I will be candid: this review will be quite a bit longer than most of my reviews because of my affection for the Spider-Man character. To my mind, more than any other character in the Marvel pantheon, Spider-Man deserves a perfect movie, or as near as one can get to it, and it saddens me that, this time around, he did not get the masterpiece he deserved.
A lot has been said, much of it bad, about the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man Sony Pictures' 2012 reboot of the cinematic saga of Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man, who once upon a time sat atop the cinematic roost as king of comic book heroes and Marvel-based heroes in particular until he was displaced by the concerted efforts of six of his fellow Marvel heroes in a little movie called The Avengers. The movie has, so far, gotten worst reviews of any of the films in the series (yes, even including the much-reviled Spider-Man 3) and the cacophony of fanboys calling for the failure of this film is at a fever pitch. Notably, these are no longer even just the DC comics fanboys cheering for their Nolan/Snyder produced "horses" but actual Marvel fanboys wanting Sony Pictures, who have had the rights to make movies on this property for the better part of two decades now, to lose money on this movie so that they will willingly cede the property back to Marvel, who now have their own film studio.
Since the Avengers stopped an alien fleet from destroying the world (or at least New York City), it seems to me that Sony Pictures felt they had to up the ante somehow from the flawed but entertaining first reboot with some really over-the-top flourishes. I can just imagine the meetings: "Let's shoot the whole movie in New York and not having Los Angeles or Toronto double for it!" or "Let's have two or more villains, one of them with the capacity to mess up the whole city!" or "Let's give Peter's parents their own action scene!" or "Let's hire the guys who wrote the Transformers movies!"
As a result of what I strongly suspect is an effort to outdo Marvel studios in the fireworks department, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is at least twenty minutes too long and feels a little bit cluttered at many points.
The movie picks up from where the last film has left off; Peter Parker a.k.a. Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) is about to graduate from high school, while struggling with the secret behind his parents' disappearance as well as his on-again, off-again relationship with girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), mainly due to his promise to Gwen's departed dad, Police Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary) to keep her out of Spider-Man's dangerous life. Things get even more complicated for him when Gwen is offered a scholarship into Oxford University...which happens to be in England. Then, shortly after mentally-unbalanced electrical engineer Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) has a little workplace accident that transforms him into the deadly Electro, and an old friend, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) returns from an extended visit to Europe to visit his dying dad Norman (Chris Cooper), only to discover somewhat troubling secrets about himself, Spider-Man comes face-to-face with challenges that will change him forever.
The subplot involving Peter's parents was always suspect, even when the new Spider-crew introduced it with the reboot, and here it simply takes up too much screen time and pays off in a revelation that seems meant to be important but feels utterly superfluous. By itself it's already ten minutes of the film that could have been cut right out, leaving the rest of the film none the worse for its removal.
Another misstep the producers took this time was the realization of Jamie Foxx's Max Dillon, a.k.a. Electro. I'll grant that Dillon is painted as a lonely, maltreated, mentally unstable electrical engineer before he transforms, courtesy of a rather silly accident into Electro, but to my mind the transition from disturbed individual to full blown psychopath feels extremely abrupt. The script's approach to Electro, as well as Foxx's portrayal of the nerdy Dillon, feel unnecessarily campy, and as fantastical as the character's origin is, I had a particularly hard time suspending my disbelief here. I groaned in the theater when Max called a colleague of his to shut down the electrical grid where he was working so that he could repair a broken cable, only to be told that this man was calling it a day and could not be bothered to help him. So, Oscorp, a multi-billion dollar company has only one person working its whole power grid, who would rather rush home than help another employee fix a building's broken power cable that could potentially screw up the entire building? That's the kind of contrivance one could expect from a 1960s comic book, but not from a contemporary feature film. The consolation, though, is that once Foxx goes into full-on villain mode, he is quite convincingly menacing, and the effects that go into visualizing him are absolutely top-notch.
My final major gripe is the story arc of this particular version of Harry Osborn, played by Dane DeHaan. Truth be told, I quite enjoyed DeHaan's performance. In fact, of the two new kids on the block, him and Foxx, I have more praise for DeHaan, who takes a decidedly different approach to the Osborn character from that of his predecessor James Franco. There are still the daddy issues, to be sure, but DeHaan's Harry, who learns he is virtually terminally ill, does a good job of conveying desperation on top of the pathos of a neglected child, and DeHaan channels a younger Leonardo diCarpio, not just because of the physical resemblance but on account of more than a few of his mannerisms. Most importantly, however, his screen chemistry with Garfield's Peter is palpable, so that even if their friendship isn't quite as close as it was in the Raimi's films, there's still a genuine sense of tragedy when things inevitably go sour. What I did not at all appreciate, however, was the corporate mutiny plotline that the filmmakers rehashed from the very first Spider-Man movie. It was, in a word, irritating. Surely, I thought, there are other ways to motivate a character other than by taking away his money and power.
I have a minor quibble too, and it is with the presentation of the character eventually known as the Rhino, but without spoiling too much I can categorically say that he has hardly any screen time and therefore hardly any bearing on the story. What I sincerely disliked about the character, though, was Paul Giamatti's over-the-top, utterly hammy performance, which depressed and annoyed me in equal parts considering that Giamatti is one of my very favorite character actors and could have done so much better, no matter how small this role was. Heck, legendary actors like Robert Redford and Anthony Hopkins have taken their supporting roles in comic-book-based movies much more seriously, with Hopkins even having to wear garish costumes and speak flowery English, so Giamatti could have at least tried to act like he was in something other than a Saturday morning cartoon.
Yes, there is a lot that is wrong with this movie, but I will not join the bandwagon of hate against it because to my mind, Sony got the most important things right, starting with the title character. To my mind, Andrew Garfield IS Peter Parker, just as much as Robert Downey, Jr. IS Tony Stark and Tom Hiddleston IS Loki. He made a pretty good argument for his casting in the last movie but basically solidified it here. He has struck the delicate balance between Parker's inner loneliness and sense of guilt and responsibility on the one hand, and the unbridled cockiness and snark he assumes when he puts on the mask on the other, a duality that has been a hallmark of the character for fifty-two years, and which Tobey Maguire never even came close to accomplishing in any of the Sam Raimi movies. I cannot emphasize this point enough; for three movies I put up with Maguire's squeaky voice and misguided, at times borderline-condescending portrayal of Spider-Man. I didn't yearn for better because frankly, that was the hand I, along with all other movie viewers in the world, was dealt. What Garfield has done with the character, therefore is virtually miraculous; he has made this Spider-Man almost everything that Maguire's was not in the ways that truly count, and when this film is at its most ridiculous he remains its saving grace.
More than just Garfield's portrayal of the character, however, his relationships with his supporting cast also go a long way towards carrying the film. Peter' interactions with characters such as Sally Field's Aunt May, Gwen, and Harry, are defining moments in the film that come across as truly heartfelt stuff, and manage to give the film an emotional center of gravity even when the big-budget craziness threatens (as it does, many, many times) to carry the whole enterprise away like a runaway tornado. Full credit goes to Webb and all of the actors involved for getting this crucial aspect of the film right, but Garfield is at the heart of it all. His chemistry with real-life girlfriend Stone, as embodied in their dialogue and the body language they share, is utterly magical, and again, is far superior to any of the romantic sparks that flew between the Maguire's take on Peter and Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson, his squeeze in the old movie series. Also, I think Field's Aunt May is a lot more convincing than Rosemary Harris' ever was. In terms of the smaller, more intimate moments, this movie offers scenes that are just as good as, if not better than the very best that the Raimi movies had to offer. Every time they have these scenes it feels like a well-scripted independent movie about family and relationships has wandered onto the screen.
Not only that, but clearly a lot of effort has gone into making Spidey more convincing than he's ever looked; digital Spidey is looking slicker than he ever has before, and nearly every gravity-defying action sequence with him in it is utterly breathtaking, especially in 3-D. It helps that the filmmakers have outfitted Garfield and his stuntmen with the best Spider-Man costume that has ever been filmed, which brings back the best aspects of the Raimi-era suit and adds some welcome touches, like the snazzy oversized eyepieces which hearken back to the Spider-Man I grew up with: the McFarlane-era Spidey. Also, as overblown as many of the action sequences are, I genuinely appreciated the fact that one of the most impressively-staged ones involved Spider-Man using his head and his lightning-fast reflexes to save a whole bunch of bystanders from getting both squashed by a flying car and fried by one of Electro's blasts. More than being just an orgy of computer-generated imagery, this scene punctuated something very important about Spider-Man: his sense of responsibility extends to all civilians caught in the crossfire of his titanic battles and he will do everything in his power and skill to save them.
All told, to my mind the film's biggest problem was that its makers were constantly trying to one-up the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut that is Marvel Studios in the slam-bang action department, and so rather than let this film be its own thing, like the Spider-Man films of old used to do, they tried to make almost everything "bigger," from the multiple bad guys to the work of composer/fanboy god Hans Zimmer and his "Magnificent Six." I appreciated Zimmer's work here, though at some points of the film it struck me that he was repeating his new theme for the character as often as he was in order to drum out of the viewer's head the music that his predecessor James Horner had written for the character. Well, sorry Zimmer, but I for one am still partial to Horner's music, mainly because, like the parts of this film that work, it feels more intimate, and more personal.
In closing, I think that Sony would have done well to learn from Marvel's most recent, acclaimed blockbuster Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in which the massive CGI-laden climax was practically a footnote to a film that had already spent the majority of its running time building up its plot and characters. In crafting the sequel that is probably all but a foregone conclusion at this point, I hope Sony remembers a valuable lesson from this film: while good characterization and awesome CGI will always have a place in a Spider-Man movie, bigger isn't always better.
6/10
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