Film Diary 2012: The Amazing Spider-Man

For Marvel it was the release of Blade in 1998 that gave them their first real taste of cinematic success and they licensed X-Men to Fox, who released Bryan Singer's hugely successful film in 2000. This began to show that there was an appetite with audiences for superhero fare, even with characters who were - to a general audience - largely unknown.

Of course, that's not a problem that the distinctive character of Spider-Man has to contend with, he is, most likely, the Bronze medallist on the distinctive superhero list, but it seems unlikely that Columbia Pictures realised quite how successful their 2002 Spider-man movie was going to be. Raimi took his cue from Richard Donner's Superman movie, dividing the film neatly in two, the first focusing on Peter Parker's (Tobey Maguire) high school days and how he gained his powers and then moving onto struggling to make ends meet in New York whilst facing his first formidable adversary the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe).

Two sequels followed, the first brilliantly playing on the soap opera of Parker's life and the ever more complicated love triangle between Parker, Mary-Jane (Kirsten Dunst) and Harry Osborn (James Franco). Unfortunately the third film became something of a mess, with the character of Venom being forced upon Raimi by the studio eager to capitalise on its marketability, which sadly side-lined the narrative looming in the background of the three films involving Dr. Curt Connors (Dylan Baker) and his inevitable transformation into the Lizard.

Well, Spider-Man 3 had barely left theatres, grossing over $890 million worldwide - though the budget was a massive $258 million - and Columbia announced that rather than continuing with Raimi and Maguire they were instead looking to reboot the series. Perhaps spurred on by the success of Batman Begins and then its wildly successful sequel The Dark Knight, they wanted to give Spider-Man a new beginning and move away from the bright, sometimes corny world that Raimi had created.

Enter Marc Webb, whose sole screen credit is indie rom-com 500 Days of Summer, now handed the reins of a $230 million summer tentpole, and a chance to re-invent Spider-Man.

Re-invention is nothing new to the comic book world, characters are constantly being redrawn, reshaped, or taken into experimental spin-offs such as Superman: Red Son or Marvel 1602. But, the question is, how to take Marc Webb's version of events?

The thing with Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins is he chose to dwell on aspects of Bruce Wayne's story that, in film, had previously been brushed over, such as the deaht of Wayne's parents, how he changed from a billionaire playboy to crime fighting vigilante and the relationship between Wayne and Commissioner Gordon.

Posters for this new Spider-Man movie promised 'The Untold Story' and lines in the trailer such as Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) saying: "Do you have any idea what you really are?" and "If you want the truth, Peter, come and get it!" seemed to support this. However, it's noticeable that these two lines do not appear in the finished film. Even more jarring is how three major plot strands are just left hanging by the film without any sense of resolution.

To avoid comparing this new Spider-Man movie to the other three I will instead compare it to Batman Begins. Whilst I am not as much of a Bat-fan as many others, and, personally, I prefer Tim Burton's 1989 movie above all the rest, I thought Christopher Nolan did a great job on Batman Begins, reinventing the world of Gotham, balancing the more ridiculous elements of Batman and placing them into a tweaked reality. He also, very commendably, told a complete story. Sure there was the notion of continuation, but it wasn't like he left gaping holes for any potential sequels, just a nice little teaser at the end.

With The Amazing Spider-Man there is no resolution, it feels like two halves of two different movies sandwiched together, and, rather unfortunately the sandwiching of those two movies adds up to almost, beat-for-beat, the narrative of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man.

Yes, it's hard to get away from the origins of a character as written in the original comic books, but, surely re-booting a franchise whilst the previous attempt is pretty fresh (10 years since the first film, 5 years since the last) in the memory allows the film-makers an opportunity to take some risks. Isn't that what the 'untold' aspect was supposed to be about?

Instead, without wishing to get into spoilers, we have a prologue that shows Peter's parents leaving him with Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen). We then jump into the future and meet Peter Parker at roughly the same age we met him in Raimi's movie, here's still a bit of a nerd, socially awkward and bullied by Flash (Chris Zylka, the only character in the film with a decent and interesting arc). Here, Mary-Jane has been replaced by Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) and rather than Norman Osborn turning into the Green Goblin we have Dr. Curt Connors turning into the Lizard in pretty much exactly the same fashion.

However, none of the moments that resonated in Raimi's film have the same impact here, the death of Uncle Ben feels almost meaningless and barely leaves a shadow, there are scenes with Ben where the writers make painful efforts to try and say "With great power comes great responsibility." without putting those words in that order, it's laughably contrived. Parker discovering his powers is clunkily handled in a string of scuffles, where Parker fast becomes snarky and arrogant, sure, the Spidey of the comics enjoyed a good quip, but there's something mean-spirited about this new Spider-Man that isnt' really addressed as an issue and something he should try to avoid, in fact, later in the film he is particularly brutal to a major character that seemed quite out-of-step with the general good natured philosophy of the character. You could argue that this is part of Parker learning about 'responsiblity', but there isn't any sense of that within the film, it is something you would have to force upon the film.

This is why I believe this movie lacks resonance when judged on its own merits, it seems to expect the audience to carry the goodwill of the old films along, but at the same time asks you to ignore all of that. Raimi's gift was to, in a very short space of time, make us relate to the problems his characters were facing, the drama of his Spider-Man films came from an emotional place, and his villains were as tortured and strangely sympathetic as his heroes. These things don't seem to occur to the film-makers here, they shoe-horn in some last minute character reversals that are out-of-the-blue and jarring.

Elsewhere the film flip-flops tonally, it seems to want to be a slightly edgier, angstier vision, yet it throws in a goofy basketball scene with 'comedy music', and a third act call-back that on the one hand does echo the cheesier moments of Raimi's Spider-Man, but, here's the rub, they fit right into the world of Spider-Man that Raimi created, it had that gee-whizz Superman vibe, whereas they stick out like a sore thumb in this 'darker' world and, in the screening I saw, ellict derisive laughter from audience members when they should inspire excitement and tingling spines.

Ultimately, the cast - who aren't bad - are let down by the film's unfocused plotting, its flimsy emotional beats, soggy and uninvolving action scenes and a general tonal inconsistency that never allows you to really invest in the film's world. This feels distinctly like a company trying to keep a brand alive, a cynical cash grab, a cold empty exercise and one that practically makes Sam Raimi's rather dire and compromised Spider-Man 3 look like a gem. This film is shockingly bad.

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