Well, I enjoyed the movie, and it was a little more true to the comics than the one five years ago, but I don’t think it was better. One thing that I missed in the movie was the lack of comments or puns that you usually associate with Spiderman saying while he battles the bad guys.
On the other hand, the movie emphasized the intelligence of Peter Parker, and his tragic start in life, which was cool.
Would you say it’s worth it to see yet another origin story if the viewer isn’t a diehard “I’ll watch anything with Spiderman in it” fan?
I kind of want to see it but I’ve read that it’s almost an hour into the movie before he kicks into gear as Spiderman. That’s really putting me off since out of four Spiderman movies in the last ten years, two of them are origin stories. That just seems ridiculous.
I don’t agree with legowarrior at all. It was WAAAY different from the original comic story in almost every way. WTF are you talking about?
And I didn’t really pick up on Peter’s brilliance. In fact, he took a back seat to the brilliant … Gwen Stacy. You know, the Gwen Stacy who was Curt Conners head intern and assistant? LOL.
I really didn’t see any reason for this to exist – I personally could live without ever seeing an origin story again.
But I took the kid to this and really enjoyed it! Nice pacing, great performances, and there’s actually chemistry between Peter and Gwen, something I never really felt from the McGuire/Dunst performances.
It helps those two are dating in real life. :)
My son and I enjoyed this over all, but I was real bummed to have to sit through another 45 minutes of learning about how Peter gets bit, learns how to adjust to his new powers, watches his uncle die, blah blah blah.
I had some other issues with it as well, like the CGI work in general I thought was pretty shoddy and the Lizard looked sort of dumb, but there was some fun to be had. Might have been a better rental than a theatre viewing though. I can only really budget so many theatre movies a summer with the kids, and I’m honestly a little bummed this ate up some of that budget.
Meh, it was entertaining, but…It is just way too early to milk yet another origin story, when the last one was in the same generation. Made no sense to me.
Things I liked: I actually liked the CGI Spiderman versus the acted SpiderMan. CGI angles that used the environment more in the Spidey moves, and imagination on just what you can do with a CGI camera has come a ways in 10 years. Emma Stone is good in everything she touches I think.
Things I didn’t like: Peter Parker suffered from a bit too much “Hadyen Christenson syndrome” for my tastes during his mourning stages. Too soon for a Spider Man Origin Story again. I thought spider man was one of the weaker roles in the film. And who neutered Denis Leary for this?!?
Wait, Denis Leary was neutered for this? Well I’m out, he was basically the only reason I’d even considered seeing this.
I passed on this because I found the last origin story so dull. Why is the Spiderman origin story so lacking? Maybe because the deeply self absorbed Peter Parker is such an unappealing character? It’s not the fact of PP being self centered that pulls it down. Look at how much fun the narcissistic Tony Stark is. But somehow, with PP, it just has never worked for me.
Spiderman, when you boil it down, is a tragedy. In a weird way, it is like Dr. Who. Once in a while, EVERYONE LIVES! In the origin story, you have 2 major deaths that affect Peter, and the movie covers those pretty well. Also, you’ve got Gwen in it, something the original movie didn’t have.
It does cover a lot of ground that the Spiderman did when it comes to the origin, but it gives more in depth background, and I think that will set us up for some great sequels.
As to Dennis Leary, he is an actor, playing a role. So, what you might call neutered, I just call, acting. Is it outrageous, or loud? No, but than the role wasn’t outrageous or loud either.
It’s no Avengers, but if I enjoyed the movie.
While I didn’t have my expectations set all that high, I was pretty surprised at how awful this was. The cast is pretty good, and I’d say Garfield either is a better Spidey than Maguire or has the potential to be given the right script. But this script ain’t it, and it’s one of the worst-paced superhero films in recent memory. 45-50 minutes before any actual Spidey action happens, and even then you’re still retreading stuff we’ve seen in multiple forms already, including the first Raimi film.
The Lizard is a terrible villain as portrayed here, with zero nuance or believable shift in his motives or personality. Connors is good, then he’s desperate, then he’s evil because he’s a monster, then he’s not. No actual transition beyond “mutated by serum” and “not mutated by serum.” At least Raimi remembered that Spider-Man villains need to be thinking people to some degree, not just motivelessly crazy. Also the Lizard design looked like the Goombas from the Super Mario Bros. movie. Really needed a snout or something.
Tons of plot points are left hanging with zero resolution. Nothing related to Peter’s parents is dealt with beyond the setup of the first half of the film, which apparently is due to the entire storyline being left on the cutting room floor for some reason. The evil Oscorp guy the Lizard grabs at on the bridge disappears and never returns or is even mentioned again. Spidey’s quest to find the Kurt Cobain lookalike who killed Uncle Ben simply evaporates about 2/3 of the way through. All this extraneous stuff that they clearly didn’t feel like providing any kind of closure on could have been excised and saved us 20 minutes or so of the interminable runtime.
It wasn’t all bad, of course. Some of the fights have very inventive choreography, and I did like that Spider-Man was pretty damn creepy in this one. The cross-species hybrid idea is definitely capitalized on, in that he seems to have more spider-like behaviors to him rather than just the abilities of a spider. As such I actually find it pretty odd they went with mechanical web shooters, but it’s not really a big deal. I appreciated the handful of shots of the Lizard wearing his labcoat and the fact that he was still a scientist when he was mutated. Peter and Gwen have good chemistry together, although I still think a girl would be more creeped out than anything by a guy who climbed 20 stories of fire escape to avoid the doorman of her building on his first visit.
Disappointing overall, and certainly a lot of wasted opportunity, but I think Garfield really has what it takes to be a great Spider-Man with the right material. Here’s hoping the sequel will live up to the property’s potential, now that they’ve gotten the origin slog out of the way.
Well, I thought it was the best Spider-Man movie yet.
As for Peter’s parents, did you not stay for the teaser 1/2 way through the credits?
The teaser that told us nothing, teased nothing and mainly served to remind the audience that a plotline disappeared halfway through the film? Yeah, I saw that. Not much help. There was actually an audible “Huh?” from the audience at my showing after the teaser.
This thing was simply not in the same league as SM1 and especially SM2. The Doc Ock fights are still the Spidey gold standard for action. It’s better than Spider-Man 3, but that’s not much of an accomplishment.
I liked this movie, better than the last time I had to watch a spidey origin pic.
There were some familiar actors for old farts (“you like me, you really do”), plus the guy from Apocalapse Now was there as an old fart, plus my teenaged kid knew one of the other actors (probably the spiderman actor but who the hell knows, I’m an old fart now).
I liked it a lot, I thought it was pretty well done, though it did take a while to get to teh spiderman parts (big build up). If I were the director, I’d have had somebody smash into a '73 Oldsmobile (tip of the hat/mid-finger to Sam Raimi!).
I saw it in 3D, and that was good–occasional sight gags regarding web spraying out, building pinnacles jutting out, rain barfing down.
Really fun, and they did a great job all the way around. I didn’t see avengers yet, but this was great fun for the 4th of July, and compared favorably to the 3000 previous Spidey movies I’ve sat through.
It saddens me you saw this and not Avengers.
I pretty much agree. Watching the trailers leading up to the release, I had zero interest in the film. Another origin, a darker and broodier Parker, ret-cons to the ‘canon’ origin, etc. Yet, I enjoyed this overall much more than the other films. All thanks to the strength of Garfield and Emma Stone’s performances and chemistry, as the plot was about as weak as Keil described.
I’d still say my top Spider-Man film moment is in the 2nd Raimi film, when he saves the subway car, but this is now my overall favorite of the four Spidey flicks.
Anyone know who the actor was playing Osborn in the final teaser?
Ebert said it was decent, the second best Spiderman movie after Spiderman 2. My daughter really wants to see it, so I guess I’ll suck it and give the MPAA some cash.
I didn’t know the corpse of Marlon Brando was in this.
Saw it, dug it. I’m no fan of the Raimi movies, but this was much more my speed. I did think that it ran about half an hour too long, and that it did a bad job balancing the exposition and the action. I really enjoyed all the lead up to becoming Spider-man, but there was a point where it just seemed to become and endless blur of fights with the Lizard, which became tiresome quickly. This seems to be a common issue in superhero movies, so I accepted it. By far a better cast in every respect than the Raimi movies. Garfield and Stone were superb.
According to the imdb it was Michael Massee, best known for playing Funboy in The Crow.