Woe is Spiderman

I know I am late to the party on this, but I just saw Spiderman 2 on DVD.  Ooops, I mean The Amazing Spiderman 2, not the original Spiderman 2.  Sometimes Hollywood’s lack of creativity can be confusing.

I didn’t rush out to see Amazing Spidey 2 at the local multiplex because the reviews were not enthusiastic (Metacritic score of 53) and the first one had basic problems with things like the plot.  Apparently my opinion was shared by many, many people and so now they are going to reboot the whole thing yet again.  That’s it, keep on trying until you get it right.

The one thing I regret about this is that I actually really like Andrew Garfield’s interpretation of Peter Parker.  He does a far better job that Tobey Maguire of capturing the teenaged angst and smart-alec sensibility that defines Spiderman.  Superman was too much of a stick in the mud to pick fights with J. Jonah Jameson, and can you imagine Batman calling himself “your friendly, neighborhood caped crusader”?  Maguire, a fine actor, played Peter Parker as a mopey sad sack; why Mary Jane Watson even paid him the time of day was a mystery.  Garfield, a decade too old for the role, captured Parker’s wisecracking attitude perfectly.

Amazing Spiderman had the same problem as Spiderman, namely it took too long laying out the origin story that most everyone already knew (everybody out there who did NOT know he was bitten by a radioactive spider raise your hands).  Amazing Spiderman was leavened not only by Garfield’s performance but also Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacey, plus Denis Leary as Gwen’s father, but undermined by the fact that the Big Bad was a large lizard.  Godzilla sort of has that plot element to itself.  The plot also had basic “duh” plot holes, like the fact that Peter Parker sneaks into security conscious Oscorp simply by taking someone else’s ID badge for a conference; wouldn’t someone ask to see some ID?  And would science genius Peter Parker be going to this conference anyway?  And why would security throw out the guy who pointed out his badge had been stolen?

This level of stupidity is continued in Amazing 2.  Oscar winner Jaime Foxx (it all seems like a bad dream, doesn’t it?) plays a schmuck who idolizes Spiderman after he is rescued by him, but then becomes a supervillain when he receives an electrical shock at work (why was the power on where he was working? He asked someone to turn it off but they declined because it was 6 o’clock and check out time.  90% of Marvel supervillains are created due to basic violation of OSHA regulations). Why does he now hate Spiderman?  Um, because if he didn’t, there would be no plot.

Amazing 2 has the same problem as Spiderman 3, too many villains and too convoluted a plot.  Spiderman 3 had Sandman, Green Goblin 2, Viper, dark Spidey, and I think Al Capone.  Of the five movie Spiderman oeuvre, only Spiderman 2 rises above the dross to be, in my opinion, the best superhero movie of all time, the Citizen Kane of the spandex set.  It has a great villain, Doc Ock (with a neat retcon of his origin that makes way more sense).  The interaction between Doc Ock and the second green Goblin seems organic and not forced by plot contrivance.  The fight scenes are well choreographed and actually play out in three dimension.  In the end, Spiderman wins not by physically overcoming Doc Ock, but by restoring Otto Octavius’ humanity, a plot twist worthy of Shakespeare.

Marvel Studios has been firing on all cylinders recently.  The pre-Avenger films were successful, and when Joss Whedon assembled the Avengers it was a blockbuster.  Only Whedon could have written the script that wove the characters together instead of merely assembling the pieces.  Whedon also helped start Marvel’s Agents of Shield on ABC.  It took a while to warm up, but Agents is now a neat weekly dose of Marvel between big screen releases.  Daredevil recently debuted on Netflix to mostly positive reviews (Metacritic score of 75).

So, can Marvel fix its biggest franchise, the one where they have screwed up four of the five films they’ve produced?  Third time’s a charm, right?  Can they find an age-appropriate actor who can project Peter Parker’s teen angst and Spiderman’s plucky sense of humor?  Can they find a scriptwriter who isn’t a complete moron?  Time will tell.  AV Club had a notice that they’ve announced that the next Spidey will be back in high school.  I just hope they won’t go through the origin story again; I can only watch Uncle Ben die so many times.