75
by TC
saw this today...
one of the chief arguments i had against this film was "does this need to be made"? same argument many have. we just had a "successful" trilogy of spidey films ten years ago, why reboot this now? i thought the sam raimi films (well, the first two) were good, second one better than the first, and did the name justice. why make this?
when thinking about this argument, i started thinking about comic books in general. in the world of comics, writers/artists are changed often. major characters have origins retold multiple times over, have simultaneous diverging plot lines, and have decades upon decades of stories to tell. people accept this for the most part. you can't tombstone a title or a character simply because a writer/artist moves on from the title/company. if you did, we'd have a constant influx of new characters and no possibility of any kind of attachment to them. in comics, if the new guy bombs, you get almost immediate feedback and can adjust the next month if need be. it can be a work in progress.
if you're a movie studio and you make the decision that you want spider-man films to continue (at hundreds of millions each), what do you do? you can't get raimi back to continue the story with the same cast, as everyone is 10 years older now and have aged themselves out of the part. the cast was on the older side to begin with, now it would be as silly as andrea on 90210. so you have a decision to make - either quit making spider-man films, or get a new director with a new cast. now, at this point, i can accept this. but there is one more decision - do you acknowledge the previous films and attempt to continue/build off of them with the new cast or do you completely start over independently? if you make the call to attempt to continue, you immediately put yourself in the hole as you are asking the audience to put completely new faces to the established characters/history and putting the actors in a position to mimic the previous cast. it's a tough decision to make.
i was skeptical of this, very. when i walked out of this, i have to say that i found myself thinking that the stills and trailers don't really do justice to what this is. to my amazement, i found that i was thinking that making the decision to go back to high school and start there was perfect and exactly what needed to be done if you were going to continue spidey films. the cast - the entire cast - was spot-on. the story was a great one to pic. they took some liberties with canon here and there but made some very appropriate calls back to the traditional storyline as well. it was all very tastefully done. the action was very impressive. the visuals were very well done, and as promised, more practical swinging and less CGI-looking... well, everything.
given how recent the raimi films were, it's impossible not to make direct comparisons. this spidey is, amazingly, much less emo than the previous (even though the casting would have you believe otherwise). he's more sarcastic in a pleasant way and not so bitter. it's very much like the comics i grew up with. sheen and field are simply perfect as uncle ben and aunt may. leary is perfect as well. stone had me worried in the stills and trailer, but when you see her on screen she is well-cast. her eyes are so large, they are distracting at times - she is almost anime-looking - but the chemistry works. connors is also well cast with ifans. these characters are all much less one-dimensional and wooden than the previous films were, admittedly.
i really liked this, kind of to my dismay. both of my kids say it was the best spider-man film so far. full disclosure, spider-man was always in my top two comic titles. i love the character. as i said above with comics, you have to either make the decision to tombstone the character or "forgive" the occasional re-telling/conflicting histories. while you can (easily) make the argument that such reboots - and comic/video game films in general - indicate that hollywood is truly out of ideas (with which i would agree), i also feel that the film world is a better place with spidey stories/films in it than with simply letting it die because a couple of the many, many, MANY stories that exist in that world have been told before. this is not going to be the batman films that you carry with you, that give you deep things to think about, it's a true entertainment film and if rumors are to be believed the first of at least five more.
this only strengthens marvel's film portfolio and promises to encourage more risk from them, which i welcome.