Peter Parker is an outcast high schooler abandoned by his parents as a boy, leaving him to be raised by his Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Like most teenagers, Peter is trying to figure out who he is and how he got to be the person he is today. As Peter discovers a mysterious briefcase that belonged to his father, he begins a quest to understand his parents' disappearance – leading him directly to Oscorp and the lab of Dr. Curt Connors, his father's former partner. As Spider-Man is set on a collision course with Connors' alter ego, The Lizard, Peter will make life-altering choices to use his powers and shape his destiny to become a hero.
09 Feb The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Genetic Splicing
Watching this after ‘’Dark Knight Rises’ is like moving from Saudi Arabia to Monaco.
One is the vision of one man through close, very close collaborators. It takes chances, risks darkness. It has motion and noise, but as part of the world we happen upon.
This is the product of a production committee. No one wants to do anything that matters; the goal is to have a the tastiest candy on the block. It takes no chances. It has noise and motion not because of the world we visit, but because the channel we see that world through imposes it on us. The colors are primary. The grunge, where it appears seems to be decals applied to smooth unshadowed surfaces. It has nothing that cannot be found on any other committee- populated shelf.
There are two things I noted. They both kill all the fathers. But Batman peppers the world with adult sex of a few different kinds. The way this is woven (the sex and the fathers) is how we encounter the weave in real lives: confusingly entangled. Sure, the Catgirl suit and its corset registered in one familiar way, but the manner of the girl was hardly the conventional model (waif or seductress).
On the other hand, Stan Lee’s girl was about as sexless as possible. The fatherlessness in this case drives the superhero’s soul into a different type of emptiness than Bruce Wayne’s condition does, one more monastic. I believe that the world of viewers may be equally divided on which is the more superficial.
The other thing concerns a criticism I have noted in many previous Marvel films, but especially the Raimi projects. They just don’t understand how to use the third dimension. The first three were lost opportunities to spatially thrill. Now, well after some exciting techniques have appeared in big films, they finally capitulate and use state of the art dimensional flight. I believe the problem was the the original comics did not understand this either all Marvel worlds are flat, and fidelity to the comic vision was paramount.
But here they do what everyone else is. And that is the problem. They parcelled action scenes out to different effects houses and bought every motion technique on the shelf. So we get a hodgepodge of space, depending on who the production crew was for each segment. I saw this in IMAX 3d. The whiplash was extreme, not from the spatial effects — many of which were fine. But from the shifts in how the space was constructed.
Like eating ice cream and tasting steak, then coconut, then tar.
Posted in 2012
Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
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