Likes
- Marin Sheen as Uncle Ben
- Performances from the Lead Actors
- The Look of Spider-Man
- The Idea of Peter finding out about his parents
- The skateboarding scene
Those were the main things that kept me from really disliking this film. Aside from those 5 things I had problems with almost every aspect of this film. Initially when I came out of the theater I shrugged my shoulders and said it wasn't too bad. Then I got home and the more I thought about it the more I realized how bad the plot and script really are. This is a film that is supposed to be about Peter finding his identity and place in the world. Unfortunately there really isn't any character development here, he starts out as a kid who has a lot of unresolved issues and ends with those same issues. The whole idea that Peter is going to be more responsible that seems to be resolved when he promises to stay away from Gwen Stacey to protect her is completely negated at the end where he states that the best kind of promises are the ones you can't keep. He is still the whiny jerk that he was at the beginning of the film. If this was the only issue I had with the story I could have let it slide and probably still enjoyed the film but unfortunately there was more.
The whole promise this film made was that we were going to finally find out about what happened to Peter's parents. Through the first half of the film we get that, but once the basic idea is set up the story never follows through except at the end of the film with the brief after credits sequence basically saying oh wait we forgot to answer the one question this movie was trying to answer so we will do it in the next film. I'm not gonna lie that really pissed me off because that was the entire purpose of this movie and they basically used it as bait to get people to come back for a sequel.
The next major issue I had with the film is how poorly some of these characters where written. The character of Flash was the one that stuck out the biggest to me, he starts out as this mean bully then Peter bullies him then suddenly he wants to be best friends.They give really no explanation as to how this happens but somehow the character makes a 180 degree change and we are just supposed to accept and understand it. That's the problem with many of these characters, they are not developed enough and then they do things that counteract what you think they might do. This is not the fault of the actors but the result of poor screenwriting.
I guess my biggest problem still is that not only was this poorly written but It was to familiar. It hit a lot of the same notes as not only the 2002 Spider-Man but as many of the other Super Hero films that have come out in the past few years. It seems that a formula has developed for these types of films and this followed the formula. Not only did it follow the formula, but the other films like this just did it better. Throughout the whole film I just kept being reminded of why I loved the 2002 Spider-Man and why this film was so flawed. The Villains in both films follow almost the same arc as well, a good scientist struggling to complete a difficult task for a business/military, he experiments on himself, he becomes bad and Spider-Man has to defeat him. While I liked Rhys Ifans, I still think Williem Dafoe played it just as good if not better. That also brings up another problem I had, the CGI for the Lizard looked pretty bad. Honestly I thought Ted the stuffed bear looked better than the Lizard did. Another area that the 2002 Spider-man handled better was Uncle Ben's death. In this it seemed very forced and happened very quickly where in the 2002 film that became a key action piece of the film.
Obviously I had issues with the storytelling of this film but sometimes that can be made up for by cool action sequences. Unfortunately I had a problem with the majority of the action scenes as well. As I stated before I did not like the CGI of the Lizard but I did think Spider-Man looked pretty slick. I also enjoyed the fight in the school which I thought was the strongest action sequence in the film. Other than that It seemed that most of the fights were poorly choreographed. The fight under water in the sewer system was the weakest by far and the final battle seemed like the same type of end fight we see in all of these Super Hero films.
I could go on and on with my complaints for this film but I think you get the point and while it might sound like I hate this film I don't. I'm just sad because the first Spider-Man was an event movie, it was huge in scale, it was cinematic and it was memorable and this film is just another summer blockbuster that reminds me of films like X-Men Origins:Wolverine and the Eric Bana Hulk film. There are so many Super Hero films out there now that I can't give a film like this a pass any more just because it wasn't terrible. The bar has been raised on these types of films because of the success of The Avengers and Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. I'm sure lots of people will still like this film because these type of films are popular but in the realm of Super Hero movies I can't say this is anything more than mediocre.
MY RATING
3 out of 5
Chris "Da Franchize" Hart
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