It’s a movie review,
I don’t really seem to do them that often considering how many movies I
actually watch but I saw this today and I felt compelled by the spirits of
blogdom to write this for you the reader, are you there? This might contain
what may be considered spoilers, but to be honest if you don’t know the basic
premise of Spider – Man then you have probably never paid attention to popular
culture, because even the aliens on Mars know that Uncle Ben dies...oops
Aaaaaanyway, as you will all know the popular franchise has
been the subject of a reboot, in my opinion this was done in the shadow of
Christopher Nolan’s Batman series which has seen the comic book movie enter a completely
different stratosphere.Marvel are clearly keen to get on that particular
gravy train, which I suppose is fair enough, they certainly aren’t doing it
purely for the money given the fact that The Avengers made a gajillion pounds
this year.
Now, as has been seen many times before, the origin story of
any superhero/masked vigilante type can be notoriously difficult to transfer to
film. Nobody really wants to see the difficult journey from normal guy to person
with super abilities and these films run the risk of being boring in the first
half. Thankfully for Spider – Man though the origin of how Peter Parker becomes
spandex laden hero is kept tight and constantly moving forward, from the bite
from the genetically engineered spider it doesn’t take long before he gets his
suit made and starts taking down various street thugs.
Rather than give primary focus to Parker’s transformation,
more time is instead given to the background of his family life. It turns out
that Parker’s father was involved in some straight up evil scientist stuff in
which he and his partner Dr Connors, played by Rhys Ifans set about mixing the
genes of various creatures with others to try and create species without any
sort of weakness. Connors who is missing an arm hopes to cross human DNA with
that of lizards who can regenerate limbs if need be. Inevitably, Parker comes
up with the missing link of the scientific equation and Connors thinks he can
now grow back his arm. However upon injecting himself with the formula he
instead turns into a giant murderous lizard and chaos later ensues with only
Spider – Man capable of stopping him.
Overall the film holds its own and fans of Spider – Man probably
won’t be too disappointed with the reboot. I feel that Parker is a bit more
identifiable than the Tobey Maguire incarnation of before. Andrew Garfield
offers up a much cooler and quick witted Spider –Man. Sure Peter Parker is
still beaten up at school by a bully whose stereotypical tough guy act is only
matched by his equally stereotypical nickname ‘Flash’,but he isn’t quite the
total dork of the previous movies, I mean he rides a skateboard and everything
and wears a hoody. Those expecting drastic changes though will be slightly disappointed,
the biggest difference I can see is the fact that the classic Mary Jane
character is replaced by Gwen Stacy played by Emma Stone, and thankfully we aren’t
forced to endure her getting captured over and over again with Spiderman forced
to save her, she is in fact much stronger and strong willed. I say replaced, I have been reliably informed that Gwen Stacy actually comes first in the comic books, so the movie is actually truer to the comics in that sense.The most
interesting difference I feel is the fact that Spider – Man doesn’t actually shoot
webs from his wrists, instead Parker creates a device that can shoot a web like
substance that his dad had been working on. This means that should these
devices break he cannot jump of buildings and swing all over the place (HINT
HINT) and so the character is slightly more vulnerable than before. It is these
subtle differences that I liked about the film, had they completely changed
everything it would probably run the risk of alienating some fans, which this
should not do.
I wasn’t really blown away by the movie, but then again I
have never been the biggest Spider - Man fan, as I said before it is thoroughly
in the shadow of Batman and I just feel it lacks something, but the inevitable
sequel might offer up something a bit more exciting. We shall see dear reader,
we shall see...
Still I would recommend this movie; you don’t need to be a
huge Spider – Man or Marvel fan to enjoy it, though those who are will enjoy
the obligatory Stan Lee cameo, which is probably the most amusing one I have
seen yet. Nevertheless, this movie was enjoyable at least and I think you
should see it, don’t make me turn this car around and take you now!
No comments:
Post a Comment