The Amazing Spider-man

 

The Amazing Spider-Man
Marvel/Sony
2012

I don’t get it. Maybe this movie was just made for the new comic book audience, the ones who learn all their comic book knowledge from these superhero films. First off, if you haven’t seen the movie this review will have slight spoilers within it, so if you don’t want to know then you should click to another post.

So long to secret identities. Let’s just tell everyone that Peter Parker is Spider-man. Seriously could he have let more people know that he’s Spidey? This really bothered the crap out of me, why, why, why would he give up that he is Spidey, especially in the first movie? It’s like a fast food film, you get it all at once, and it’s usually not so good.

Let’s count how many people he told:

1. Gwen Stacy
2. Captain Stacy
3. Aunt May
4. the kid in the burning car hanging off of the bridge.
5. Curt Connors/The Lizard

Plus after his encounter with The Lizard at Midtown Science High School, he was running around the school in costume with his mask off. Peter Parker goes to Midtown Science High School, just look at the name of the place, do you think this school has no video cameras in it? And everyone these days has a phone with a camera, do you really think no other kids would have been wandering the hallways of the school scattering around trying to takes pictures and video of the fight between The Lizard and Spider-man? And still be hanging out in the school after? Of course they would. Someone had to get a picture of Peter Parker as Spider-man, just saying..

In this film we find out a few interesting tidbit’s about Peter Parker/Spider-man like what happened to Peter’s parent’s and why he was ditched all those years ago with Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and we find out the answer to one of the ultimate Spidey questions, what the hell are his webs attached to when he is swinging through the city. Of course we know Spidey swings off of buildings, but how about when he is swinging through the middle of the city, in between the buildings. His webs can’t stick to the sky or clouds, well with some help from C. Thomas Howell we see exactly how Spidey does it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then just check out the intro to The Amazing Spider-man 1966 cartoon which is posted below.

The great thing about the 1966 Spider-man cartoon is that it didn’t drivel far off from the comic book, characters were the same, origins were kept in tact, and so on, not like the later cartoons of the 1990′s where stories and characters began to get slight retcons to who they are or what actually happened. Plus the animation was just as bad as the art in most comic books of the 1990′s, just take a look at this crap in the video below.

Besides the 1966 Spider-man cartoon, I thought that the 1980′s cartoon wasn’t too bad, Spider-man and his Amazing Friends, where Marvel Comics took the idea behind the sitcom Three’s Company and made it into a show with three superhero roommates(Spider-man, Ice Man and Firestar). Remember this one? The idea was stupid but the cartoon was sort of fair in some aspect’s to the characters. If you haven’t figured it out their is another video below.

As far as the movie goes, I think that Andrew Garfield is a better Peter Parker/Spider-man than Tobey Maguire, this kid is tall, lanky and nerdy just like Peter Parker is in the comic books, I also like the new costume, it’s kind of old school with a new flavor to it.

I thought Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors was perfect, but when he became The Lizard, he looked and sounded exactly like Killface, the bad guy in the animated Adult Swim series Frisky Dingo. The only difference is that he is green and scaly and has a tail instead of a pale white complexion like Killface.

We as fans had waited long enough for The Lizard, I mean Curt Connors was in all three Sam Raimi Spider-man films, so Raimi must have been buttering us up for a movie to include The Lizard. I guess Sony just wanted to get there first, with wanting to hold on to the the Spider-man property and keeping it away from the hands of Disney.

Out of all the Raimi Spider-man movies, I think the best one was Spider-man 2, Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus was awesome! I hated the Green Goblin in the first Spider-man movie and I thought that Spider-man 3 just had too many characters, it should have just been Spider-man and the Sandman, no need for Venom or the new Green Goblin, which both happened to suck. Thomas Hayden Church as the Sandman was the best bad guy in a superhero film besides the Alfred Molina Doctor Octopus in my opinion.

So now let’s go even lower into the history of Spider-man movies and television. If you’re old enough you’ll remember this, it’s the trailer for the original “The Amazing Spider-man” TV series which also spawned two movies, they were put straight to television in the USA to go along with the live action TV series, but if you lived in places such as South or Central America, these movies were theatrical releases.

While visiting Bogota Colombia as a kid my parent’s took me to see these at the movies, they are “Spider-man and the Dragon’s Challenge, and “Spider-man Strike’s Back!” both of these films star Nicholas Hammond who played Peter Parker in the 1970s live action Spider-man TV series. The biggest problem with both the series and the movies is that Spider-man never fought any villains other than thungs, ninjas or drug dealers, exactly the same types of people that the Hulk took on in The Incredible Hulk TV series which starred Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. What’s up with that?!

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