Okay, before I begin this entry let me get one thing straight: I haven't seen the new Amazing Spider-Man movie yet. In fact, I'm still not sure I'm going to catch this one while it's in theaters. The reviews so far have been pretty mixed from what I've seen, and I'm already a couple of movies behind this summer since I still need to catch Moonrise Kingdom and Brave (and The Hunger Games, if I can find a place where it's still playing).
The most important thing keeping me on the fence about the new Spider-Man movie, though, is how unnecessary it seems. It's not that I wouldn't like to see another Spider-Man movie... I wasn't head over heels about the first set of movies when they started coming out a mere ten years ago, but they had some great aspects to them, and I caught all three in theaters (although the third one was stretching it a bit). What bothered me about those movies was all the angst and brooding they brought to a character who really would be better off without it. Sure there's the whole morality play of the origin story, with Peter Parker callously ignoring the criminal whose capture could have saved his Uncle Ben's life. (Ooh, I'm sorry, did I spoil that for you? Are you among the handful of people in this country who haven't seen that play out yet either in the comics or on the screen? Well then maybe the new movie is for you after all) But by and large Peter Parker is a wiseass: a guy who cracks jokes while fighting for his life. Maybe it's a defense mechanism, but it's a hell of a lot more fun than watching Tobey Maguire brood all over the place. He's not tortured, he's neurotic! In a sense that makes him more of a New Yorker, because lord knows how much harder it would be to get by in this city if we didn't have our senses of humor.
So now the new movie, from all accounts I've heard, is not only going to bring back the brooding, but it's going to bring back the origin story as well. The origin story that I first read over two decades ago in my grandparents' basement from a volume called The Origins of Marvel Comics. (I wish I knew what happened to that book over the years; besides Spider-Man it also had Thor, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange... man those were good times)
Granted, there are new actors this time, and they're actors I've enjoyed in the past. Andrew Garfield is great at getting emotion across without overselling it, and he pulled off a flawless American accent in The Social Network (although he is NOT AT ALL a nerdy outcast type). Emma Stone is continuing the Sony decree that all redheaded actresses playing Spider-Man love interests must become blonde, and vice-versa (see Kirsten Dunst and Bryce Dallas Howard; I've heard that Stone is actually a natural blonde, but how many people know that?). Then there's Sally Field and Martin Sheen as Aunt May and Uncle Ben, to remind baby boomers how old and close to the grave they are (or, alternatively, because some executive thought the characters should be younger and more attractive...sigh).
The point I'm trying to get to, in my usual long-winded way, is do we really need to see this story play out again over the course of half a movie yet again? It doesn't even sound like the writers spent a lot of time planning out what comes after...some business with the Lizard, from the sound of it, which I guess could be interesting if they gave the relationship between Parker and Curt Connors more time to develop, but that's not what I've been hearing from the critics.
Maybe I'm relying too much on critical opinion here. I took a film class once where I was told not to read any movie reviews at all, and just form my own opinions about what I was seeing. And I'll admit that there have been times when I went into a movie bracing for the worst based on what I'd heard from critics, only to be pleasantly surprised. But what bothers me so much about the reviews I'm seeing this time around is that they're confirming all of the issues that I was already worried about, and unlike some Hollywood blamemongers I don't believe that critics actually have vendettas against certain projects (or even the power to sink multi-hundred-million-dollar movies if they did). Maybe if I had the time to watch more movies this summer I'd be more inclined to give ol' Spidey a try, but like I've been saying over and over here, time isn't exactly something I've got buckets of right now.
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