WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.
It's not fair to compare a film from 2012 to an unrelated set of films that wrapped in 2006. But that's more or less the way with comic book movies and probably doubly-so in this case, since The Amazing Spider-Man has rebooted the whole Spidey franchise before most of the world had the taste of Spider-Man 3 out of its collective mouth. And, if anything, ASM can only stand to benefit from the comparison.
First, a word about the Sam Raimi trilogy: poorly-aged (that's a hyphenated word and I'm counting it as one). Like most of the world, I really dug the first two films. On more recent watches, however, the pacing slows, the character motivations seem muddled, and the formerly charming eye-rolling cheesiness is... not so charming. It doesn't help that we've since had Chris Nolan's Batman series and the Avengers franchise, films that strive not only to be good comic book movies, but good movies period. And so while Sony's desire to reboot the whole thing is more than a little transparent (see here and here for the mess that is the film rights to Marvel characters), going back to square one was probably for the best.
Among the more promising aspects of the early ASM trailers was that Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker/Spider-Man seemed actually, well, likable. That's huge for a character whose biggest selling point has always been relateablity, something Tobey Maguire never quite managed in the role. And the trailers did not lie. Garfield almost-perfectly captures Parker's funny and sympathetic qualities, giving us a Spider-Man we want to root for. That's the advantage of hiring a genuine fan of the character, I suppose.
About as good was Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy. If comparing Garfield to Maguire was unfair, then comparing one actress to another actress in a different role is certainly unfair. But screw it. Stone kicks the hell out of Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a female lead when she's not selfish, overly-deified, and used for purposes beyond the distressed-damsel. I don't know if producers plan to "Gwen Stacy" Gwen Stacy, but it would almost be a shame if they did, wasting one of the better love interests a comic book film has ever seen (it's a close competition with Hayley Atwell from Captain America: The First Avenger).
Likable leads, however, are only half the equation. It's at this point that the comparison to the previous films both helps and hurts ASM. Spider-Man's origin story is one of the most iconic among superheroes, so I can understand the desire to rehash it better than I can with most other heroes. And ASM does it much better than Raimi's Spider-Man did, with or without Macho Man Randy Savage (may he rest in peace), in large part because it doesn't fall victim to the pacing issues of that film: making Peter's trip to the location of the accident about more than getting bitten, getting the bite over with, letting his powers manifest quickly. But even though it was moving faster, I was always aware that I had seen Peter do all this previously. This problem continued, up through Uncle Ben's speeches on responsibility and Peter's realizations that being a superhero has its own built-in pitfalls. Even the Peter's parents angle that was supposed to distinguish ASM was never really exploited (why shoot your load now, when there are sequels that need material?). It felt too soon to see Spidey's beginning retold again and while that's not entirely the fault of the filmmakers, it does hurt.
The villain, at least, should've been able to provide a marked contrast, but sadly never quite gets there. Rhys Ifans' Curt Conners/The Lizard calls back to the motivational issues of Dr. Octopus and Sandman in the previous series. He starts out typical scientist-doomed-by-his-creation, with a dash of big business forcing things that should never be, and that works for a while. But the next thing we know Conners is thoroughly crazy (which we know because he's hearing voices, yes, just like Norman Osborne in Rami's first Spider-Man), which is a great excuse for Ifans to put on his evil-guy face; not that Ifans doesn't do that well--he handles the material like a champ--there's just not a lot for him to work with. It would be one thing for Conners' transformation to make him think differently and understand that there could be something (good and ill) in his work that he had never realized. I might even accept an evangelist/drug addict kind of angle, where he determines that everyone should experience the same Lizardy high he gets. But when he's suddenly sympathetic and remorseful again at the end--after he's been cured, conveniently--his whole arc rings hollow.
Sony is now promising a trilogy (stunning, right?). The good news is that they have a decent base to build on and there's a lot in Spidey's world left to explore. The bad news is that they only have the base and there's a lot in Spidey's world left to explore. And while I think this crew has the skill to go places the last crew never could, they have some problems to sort out as they prepare to compete in an ever-improving field of comic book films.
Grade: B-
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Friday, July 6, 2012
Someone Crossed the Streams
That's from the Mitt, Venn and Now Tumblr. More context about the Romney Campaign's ill-considered use of Venn diagrams here.
I suppose, if I had to nitpick, that I could argue about how Batman doesn't hide from his dark and mysterious past so much as he strives to overcome it and keep others from suffering the same fat. And the Joker's past is so mysterious, even to him, that there's actually not much to hide from. But it's Friday and it's too hot for that.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
All The Fireworks Go Off At Once
A few years ago, a friend and I stumbled upon a Bangladeshi street festival on what happened to be Bonfire Night in East London. The show runners clearly had enough fireworks to make
for a ten to fifteen minute show, but they apparently decided to crunch it down
into two minutes and it was the
greatest fireworks show I'd ever seen. That is, until I found these videos from yesterday's San Diego Fourth of July celebration.
Behold the new champion:
Look, when it comes to fireworks--there aren't a lot of surprises left. We've seen the tricks, we know the deal. Bright lights and loud noises for twenty minutes. We're wowed once when we're four years old (those of us who aren't terrified, which is a more reasonable response, anyway) and then pretend to be awed by them every year for the next seventy years. It's time for the farce to end. At the very least, let's not waste so much time anymore. There's no point in building up to a grand finale when the beginning can also be the finale--fireworks shows shouldn't require foreplay. And we're not talking about a subtle medium here--there's no dramatic storytelling element to respect, at least not in the modern American version. So why do we, as a culture, insist on stretching these things out?
As San Diego proved yesterday in a beautiful accident--not unlike a younger sibling--less is more.
Behold the new champion:
Look, when it comes to fireworks--there aren't a lot of surprises left. We've seen the tricks, we know the deal. Bright lights and loud noises for twenty minutes. We're wowed once when we're four years old (those of us who aren't terrified, which is a more reasonable response, anyway) and then pretend to be awed by them every year for the next seventy years. It's time for the farce to end. At the very least, let's not waste so much time anymore. There's no point in building up to a grand finale when the beginning can also be the finale--fireworks shows shouldn't require foreplay. And we're not talking about a subtle medium here--there's no dramatic storytelling element to respect, at least not in the modern American version. So why do we, as a culture, insist on stretching these things out?
As San Diego proved yesterday in a beautiful accident--not unlike a younger sibling--less is more.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Happy Fourth
We've been spoiled the last couple years with a lot of holidays falling on Mondays, Fridays, and weekends proper, giving us natural three to four day weekends. Today we get the Fourth of July on a Wednesday, breaking the week into even halves, neither of which will prove productive for office drones (such as myself). Could be worse, I suppose. Christmas this year will be on a Tuesday, forcing many to take Christmas Eve with their earned time off, or otherwise go in and pretend to work while their minds swim in the void that stands between a not so regular weekend and Christmas Day. That''ll be worse than this. Even so, this midweek holiday is hardly ideal.
Personally, I'm with Mike and Mike's idea of treating the Fourth like we do Thanksgiving--give us the first Thursday of July and let American commercialism create a de facto holiday on that Friday--"Trade-In Old Grill Friday." Yes, it doesn't make as much sense with the Fourth, since the Fourth represents an anniversary/birthday that we can mark on the calendar, while the exact date of the first Thanksgiving is muddier in large part because there was no single Original Thanksgiving. But people do often push birthday celebrations to the nearest weekend for similar reasons: doing it during the week doesn't work as well. And the food hangover that Black Friday is supposed to help with? You mean to tell me that we couldn't use the same for our sun-baked barbecue/beer hangovers, made worse by a late night drive home from the fireworks display?
Anyway, just a thought. Happy Fourth, everybody.
Personally, I'm with Mike and Mike's idea of treating the Fourth like we do Thanksgiving--give us the first Thursday of July and let American commercialism create a de facto holiday on that Friday--"Trade-In Old Grill Friday." Yes, it doesn't make as much sense with the Fourth, since the Fourth represents an anniversary/birthday that we can mark on the calendar, while the exact date of the first Thanksgiving is muddier in large part because there was no single Original Thanksgiving. But people do often push birthday celebrations to the nearest weekend for similar reasons: doing it during the week doesn't work as well. And the food hangover that Black Friday is supposed to help with? You mean to tell me that we couldn't use the same for our sun-baked barbecue/beer hangovers, made worse by a late night drive home from the fireworks display?
Anyway, just a thought. Happy Fourth, everybody.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Ain't None of Us Special
This Open Letter From a Millennial is making the rounds. And, as far as these things go, it's a damn good read. Especially when read in response to the recent high school graduation commencement by David McCulloch, a speech which has, thus far, garnered significantly more attention than this Letter has, a trend which will likely continue. I'll get to the speech in a bit.
Detractors of the Letter will likely say that there's some projection coming from the writer, "Sierra," toward her own parents. And that there's a tinge of rambling, barely focused frustration going on. To the first point: possibly--no one could prove it either way. To the second: yeah, maybe a little, but who can blame her? And in either event, is she wrong?
I don't go in much for blaming parents for the problems of their children. Even in cases where the parent clearly is to blame--which can be often--I feel that it's also a case of "nothing to be done now." We can blame everything around us and, however right we may be, it solves very few problems. But the least I think a generation can ask is a little sympathy and an understanding that no generation is perfect (some far from it); the thing about giving the "you're not special" speech or writing the "you're not special" article/book is that, to retain any high ground, you also have to admit that you yourself are not so special. Our problems may be our own to solve, but when you waltz onto a stage and belch your righteous hand-washing in our faces, it reminds us why we've always sensed an air of anger and resentment hanging about the world you're preparing to give us. As you rebelled against your own parents for not meeting the standards you set, now you blame us for not meeting other, slightly different standards. It's always some other generation and not an issue of human nature itself being annoying. Convenient, eh?
Sierra covers most of the big points, from the expectations that were so high that we were assumed to need a hand-holding that crippled us more than helped us, to a shifting of the playing fields that has left us with disadvantages only pre-WWII generations can rightly scoff at. Part of the reason I don't go in for generation-blaming is that once you start, you can do it forever, but if Sierra failed at anything (she didn't), it was leaving some more specific grievances off the table.
For starters: we get called the tech-generation, and not as a compliment to our relative savvy with technologies that are more and more defining our economies and societies, but as an insult--slurring our unceasing connection to and with video games/smart phones/Facebook/Twitter/whatever else older generations refuse to simply ignore. And this is fair, to a point. We do, in a frighteningly unquestioning manner, embrace means of communication and entertainment that can both enhance and undermine our abilities to function and interact with others. But it begs twin questions: who gave us these devices? And why? If a parent gives their child a video game system, the parent should assume the odds that the child may become addicted to a machine that provides instant gratification and reward for fairly little effort or slightly more reward for a lot (and I mean, a lot) of time and effort. That's called "entrapment." And so when our early attachment to these machines helps foster an attachment to electronic entertainment and connectivity more generally--and when similar devices continue to be pumped out through our formative years and beyond, by companies that our generation does not yet run--is it any wonder that we have such reliance on the machines?
Ours was the generation that inherited the fear engendered by the viewing habits of older generations. The A Current Affair-type programs that dominated early-mid 90s television coincided with our childhoods. The first major world events that I remember getting pounded into my head over and over again from middle school through high school are, in order: The Columbine Massacre and its aftermath in our schools, the Lewinsky scandal, the Y2K scare, the 2000 Election debacle, and 9/11. Every generation has its horrifying and stupefying episodes to endure and I don't want to take away from the generation that experienced My Lai, Kent State, and Watergate. But wouldn't it be more helpful to acknowledge that our baggage is as legitimate as your own, and guide us through shit like that (when you can't stop it happening) with the knowledge you've gained, rather than simply dismissing us?
Remember: we did not set up the lavish high school graduation ceremonies--ostensibly for our benefit--during which self-important prigs like McCulloch tell us that we actually kinda suck. Even when not used for the purposes of insulting us, what kind of attitudes do you expect these farces to instill in us? To say nothing of the middle school, elementary school, and kindergarten graduations that I took part in growing up. If our achievements are so banal, why throw the parties?
We then went to overpriced colleges (I'll let you off the hook for this one and not ask "who made them so overpriced in the first place?") that you told us were necessary. An amazing gambit, that. You tell us we need college, so we all go, and suddenly, with so many degrees floating about, it really is necessary! Those degrees are so necessary, in fact, that a mere bachelor's won't do it in some parts of the country anymore. We have to go back for advanced degrees, deepening our debt and, in many cases, keeping us away for that much longer from the jobs and real world experience that employers also crave.
We then graduate into a shitty economy that we, again, had no hand in making. We have to inherit a debt that previous generations are politically incapable of paying off; the entitlements and tax-cuts that they cannot sacrifice even a portion of become our burdens. We have to watch while Boomers refuse to retire, either because they can't or won't, and watch once reliable industries go abroad because we literally cannot lower our standard of living to the levels that China and India have done. I mean, we could try, but where would that leave us in your eyes? As the generation that let America slip to third world status because we had to eat?
And you wonder why we hide ourselves in video games and Internet message boards.
Much of my generation is intolerable and self-involved and in dire need of an attitude readjustment. You won't hear an argument from me there. The good news is, we're getting that readjustment. We get it every time we apply for fifty more jobs we're not going to get call backs for. We get it every time we receive another notice about overdue student loans. We get it every time our exceedingly patient parents can't quite stifle the eye roll when we have to ask to stay with them a while longer.
The bad news is that every time we try to pick ourselves back up, there's a small and irrationally bitter person like McCulloch, standing there, telling us how bad we are at getting up. You think speeches like that do a goddamned thing for inter-generational relations? Or encourages us to engage with you on your terms and your terms only? How did your generation respond when your own parents grumbled about your lack of respect and initiative? Are our values inherently less important than yours? If they aren't, if our concerns as inhabitants of the same rock are equally valid, then surely you can find a better way, as the older and more experienced generation, to encourage us to push ourselves through a harsh world that you had your own hand in shaping. Something that doesn't involve insulting us.
But if I'm wrong there, and you do believe that your generation's values are more worthy of addressing than ours, then, simply put: you ain't so fucking special yourselves.
Detractors of the Letter will likely say that there's some projection coming from the writer, "Sierra," toward her own parents. And that there's a tinge of rambling, barely focused frustration going on. To the first point: possibly--no one could prove it either way. To the second: yeah, maybe a little, but who can blame her? And in either event, is she wrong?
I don't go in much for blaming parents for the problems of their children. Even in cases where the parent clearly is to blame--which can be often--I feel that it's also a case of "nothing to be done now." We can blame everything around us and, however right we may be, it solves very few problems. But the least I think a generation can ask is a little sympathy and an understanding that no generation is perfect (some far from it); the thing about giving the "you're not special" speech or writing the "you're not special" article/book is that, to retain any high ground, you also have to admit that you yourself are not so special. Our problems may be our own to solve, but when you waltz onto a stage and belch your righteous hand-washing in our faces, it reminds us why we've always sensed an air of anger and resentment hanging about the world you're preparing to give us. As you rebelled against your own parents for not meeting the standards you set, now you blame us for not meeting other, slightly different standards. It's always some other generation and not an issue of human nature itself being annoying. Convenient, eh?
Sierra covers most of the big points, from the expectations that were so high that we were assumed to need a hand-holding that crippled us more than helped us, to a shifting of the playing fields that has left us with disadvantages only pre-WWII generations can rightly scoff at. Part of the reason I don't go in for generation-blaming is that once you start, you can do it forever, but if Sierra failed at anything (she didn't), it was leaving some more specific grievances off the table.
For starters: we get called the tech-generation, and not as a compliment to our relative savvy with technologies that are more and more defining our economies and societies, but as an insult--slurring our unceasing connection to and with video games/smart phones/Facebook/Twitter/whatever else older generations refuse to simply ignore. And this is fair, to a point. We do, in a frighteningly unquestioning manner, embrace means of communication and entertainment that can both enhance and undermine our abilities to function and interact with others. But it begs twin questions: who gave us these devices? And why? If a parent gives their child a video game system, the parent should assume the odds that the child may become addicted to a machine that provides instant gratification and reward for fairly little effort or slightly more reward for a lot (and I mean, a lot) of time and effort. That's called "entrapment." And so when our early attachment to these machines helps foster an attachment to electronic entertainment and connectivity more generally--and when similar devices continue to be pumped out through our formative years and beyond, by companies that our generation does not yet run--is it any wonder that we have such reliance on the machines?
Ours was the generation that inherited the fear engendered by the viewing habits of older generations. The A Current Affair-type programs that dominated early-mid 90s television coincided with our childhoods. The first major world events that I remember getting pounded into my head over and over again from middle school through high school are, in order: The Columbine Massacre and its aftermath in our schools, the Lewinsky scandal, the Y2K scare, the 2000 Election debacle, and 9/11. Every generation has its horrifying and stupefying episodes to endure and I don't want to take away from the generation that experienced My Lai, Kent State, and Watergate. But wouldn't it be more helpful to acknowledge that our baggage is as legitimate as your own, and guide us through shit like that (when you can't stop it happening) with the knowledge you've gained, rather than simply dismissing us?
Remember: we did not set up the lavish high school graduation ceremonies--ostensibly for our benefit--during which self-important prigs like McCulloch tell us that we actually kinda suck. Even when not used for the purposes of insulting us, what kind of attitudes do you expect these farces to instill in us? To say nothing of the middle school, elementary school, and kindergarten graduations that I took part in growing up. If our achievements are so banal, why throw the parties?
We then went to overpriced colleges (I'll let you off the hook for this one and not ask "who made them so overpriced in the first place?") that you told us were necessary. An amazing gambit, that. You tell us we need college, so we all go, and suddenly, with so many degrees floating about, it really is necessary! Those degrees are so necessary, in fact, that a mere bachelor's won't do it in some parts of the country anymore. We have to go back for advanced degrees, deepening our debt and, in many cases, keeping us away for that much longer from the jobs and real world experience that employers also crave.
We then graduate into a shitty economy that we, again, had no hand in making. We have to inherit a debt that previous generations are politically incapable of paying off; the entitlements and tax-cuts that they cannot sacrifice even a portion of become our burdens. We have to watch while Boomers refuse to retire, either because they can't or won't, and watch once reliable industries go abroad because we literally cannot lower our standard of living to the levels that China and India have done. I mean, we could try, but where would that leave us in your eyes? As the generation that let America slip to third world status because we had to eat?
And you wonder why we hide ourselves in video games and Internet message boards.
Much of my generation is intolerable and self-involved and in dire need of an attitude readjustment. You won't hear an argument from me there. The good news is, we're getting that readjustment. We get it every time we apply for fifty more jobs we're not going to get call backs for. We get it every time we receive another notice about overdue student loans. We get it every time our exceedingly patient parents can't quite stifle the eye roll when we have to ask to stay with them a while longer.
The bad news is that every time we try to pick ourselves back up, there's a small and irrationally bitter person like McCulloch, standing there, telling us how bad we are at getting up. You think speeches like that do a goddamned thing for inter-generational relations? Or encourages us to engage with you on your terms and your terms only? How did your generation respond when your own parents grumbled about your lack of respect and initiative? Are our values inherently less important than yours? If they aren't, if our concerns as inhabitants of the same rock are equally valid, then surely you can find a better way, as the older and more experienced generation, to encourage us to push ourselves through a harsh world that you had your own hand in shaping. Something that doesn't involve insulting us.
But if I'm wrong there, and you do believe that your generation's values are more worthy of addressing than ours, then, simply put: you ain't so fucking special yourselves.
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