Escape to the Movies: Untangling Spider-Man

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Master Taffer

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Mcoffey said:
Master Taffer said:
I don't take too much exception to Movie Bob's review. i disagree with it whole heartedly as I loved the movie, but him not liking it is something I can't fault him for (even if his reasons seem petty as hell).

What I do take exception to is him wishing for the movie to bomb in his original review. Him projecting this "I don't care" attitude on the cast and crew of the movie and desiring for their hard work to fail is the worst kind of pathetic and petty bullshit, and this coming from someone who claims and presents himself as a professional critic it compounds it to somethign worst. Bob should be ashamed of himself in that regard.
Why was that an issue? I've hoped more than a few movies bomb, dispite how many people worked hard on it. Working hard on a turd doesn't stop it from being one. And if it bombs then maybe fewer turds will be made in the future.

If their "hard work" can't produce something good, then at least it can produce a cautionary tale.
With something as subjective as art, wishing for someone's work to fail falls right to "I don't like it, so f!@# you and I hope it fails." I hate the AvP movies, but enough people out there like them that they got entertainment. It's a petty and disgusting thing to wish failure on another person or people.
 

idodo35

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ya know its really wierd
some people really hate this and others like it...
im somwhere in the midlle i didnt like the movie but i dont think it was that shitty like bob says...
idk anyhow i had fun when my mother (i went with my whole family) kept telling me to stop critisizing mid movie cause she wanted to enjoy the movie while my dad and litlle brother encouraged me to say more :p
 

Don Savik

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I'm a huge nerd, and a fan of Transformers, but I actually liked the Bayformer's movies. They were good popcorn flicks and I didn't expect anything in depth from ROBOTS THAT TURN INTO CARS. Its not exactly a very emotionally deep concept.....

Does that make me someone who is responsible for the downfall of movies like this? Ridiculous. Bob likes to generalize and exaggerate the age old stereotype of jocks and nerds. This movie wasn't anything like Twilight just because it has a broody teen. I can feel the resentment of "NERDY ISN'T ATTRACTIVE?!?!?? BUT I'M A NERD!!! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN MEEEEEEEEEEE COMIC BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKS!?!??!"

Its quite hilarious.

I would hate to be a critic for a living because it turns otherwise sensible people into bitter and overly critical of anything and everything.

Bob, I had a hard time in high school too, but you need to stop looking at everything from that perspective.
 

Trishbot

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May 10, 2011
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While it's not my favorite superhero, or even Spider-man, film, it's a good film.

To me, it's like what happened after Batman Returns; we got the slightly inferior, but largely entertaining, Batman Forever, which was a much more successful film for Warner Bros.

... Here's hoping Spider-man's next film isn't the equivalent of "Batman & Robin" though.
 

Battle Catman

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Celi said:
PhunkyPhazon said:
Battle Catman said:
Is this going to be another of Bob's "Scott Pilgrim/Expendables/Transformers" personality tests, where if you liked this movie then you're an idiot and you embody everything wrong with movie audiences today and Bob places the degeneration of the movie industry squarely on your shoulders?

Because I liked it.
But...he liked Scott Pilgrim. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/1918-Scott-Pilgrim-vs-The-World]
He was talking about how Bob arrogantly sees his opinion of a movie as fact, and anyone who likes a movie he thinks is bad or vice versa is responsible for how well the movie did. In the case of Transformers/Expendables/Amazing Spider-Man, he hates the movies to the point that he thinks they shouldn't exist, and blames the people who liked them for encouraging Hollywood to make more movies he doesn't like. In the case of Scott Pilgrim, it was amazing, and if you saw a brainless action movie instead of it, you're an idiot and directly responsible for stifling creativity in AAA movies. Basically, he ties guilt to what movies you pay to see, rather than just sharing his own personal opinions on them.
Yeah, that's what I was aiming for. I would have elaborated more but I was at the end of my lunch break.
 

Swarmcrow

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I know people hate spider man 3 , but god! did I had such good time laughing at dancing through the steet Parker
 

Strain42

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Someone may have said this by now, but this is just something I want to tell Bob (assuming you're reading this)

Thank you for this follow up episode.

Your actual review of the film was...well lets not mince words, pretty freakin' harsh (not saying the film didn't deserve it) but given how many comments it's managed to collect, I'm going to guess that you had people flaming you for just kinda ranting.

This episode I thought really was a nice calm collected follow up to the anger. I really felt like it gave us two sides to your perspective of this movie.

On one hand we have the beefed up super review with uses words like weapons to defeat the evil forces.

On the other, we have the nerdy, well thought out bit by bit train of thought as to why it doesn't work.

Powerful and Nerdy, I suppose is what I'm saying.

...Like Spider-Man >_>
 

xaszatm

That Voice in Your Head
Sep 4, 2010
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Dastardly said:
xaszatm said:
Gwen: "You shouldn't make promises you cannon keep"

Parker: "But those are the best kind of promises."

That smacks us in the face of immaturity. Obviously, it was set up on purpose because Gwen is now on a one-way track towards death due to Peter's arrogance, but it could be handled better.
This is setting up a major storyline, though. It's supposed to be Peter going back on his word. And, yeah, we can all understand why he would do that: Love is so intensely important to us, especially as young adults. But this starts things down a road that leads somewhere seriously bad later on (if you don't know from the comics, I won't spoil it. Just know that it was something that changed Spider-Man just as much as Uncle Ben did).

This movie isn't about the heroic fall. This is the start of the journey. Uncle Ben's death pushes Spider-Man to use his powers to fight crime... but for perhaps the wrong reasons at first. Dr. Connors's transformation pushes Spider-Man to fight crime for more than just himself, and starts to teach him about unintended consequences. His interaction with Capt. Stacy is an attempt to drive home that point...

...but as we all know, Peter Parker has a habit of not learning his lesson until someone dies from it. In fact, death-guilt is Spider-Man's primary moral fuel. The Spider-Man we all know has learned this over and over, but re-boot Spider-Man hasn't learned it yet, not completely.
Sorry for the late reply but...

*sigh* I'm not an idiot. Even if I didn't know that Gwen Stacy was going to die. The movie flat out makes it obvious with the last scene. You already listed the reasons why she is going to die so I won't repost them here. I really feel like that last response sounded like someone scolded a child that "doesn't know better." Don't know if that was the intent, but it sure felt like it.

Yes, the movie is about Peter Parker's journey to heroism. However...I'm not seeing his change. Don't say that the changes are subtle and I am just not seeing them. Subtle gives us hints. Subtlety is shown in quiet moments, in small gestures, in tone. Nothing he does shows subtlety. There isn't any change to his character at ALL. He is still looking for Ben's killer (there is no evidence pointing that he isn't and he still has the wanted poster pinned on his wall at the end of the movie). He still is just as arrogant as he was when he first got those powers. He doesn't change. Everyone around him changes, except him.

You know, I'm starting to see why moviebob flipped out. It seems that everyone is determined to praise this movie for stuff that isn't there. Even here, people are determined to ignore the MANY problems of this movie and simply act like it is the greatest movie of all time, acting like it isn't an average-decent popcorn movie and announcing to the high heavens that it is the Picasso of movies (that isn't an exaggeration, someone told me that...). I too feel like screaming "Stop ignoring the flaws" at the top of my lungs... Ugh...
 

Deathninja19

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The Great JT said:
I miss Emo Peter. Yeah, I said it. I miss him for two reasons. One, he's not Edward Parker, two, at least he was smiling a couple of times. That's my problem with The Sub-Par Spider-Man, it's just a real joyless flick.
Did you actually see this film or are you taking your impressions from what other people are saying, because Peter smiled a lot in this particularly when in the presence of Gwen and their little flirts at the beginning of the film.

The only time he 'moped' was when he started to think about his parents deaths and after uncle Ben, who was basically his father, was killed which I think are perfectly good reasons to mope.
 

Deathninja19

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xaszatm said:
You know, I'm starting to see why moviebob flipped out. It seems that everyone is determined to praise this movie for stuff that isn't there. Even here, people are determined to ignore the MANY problems of this movie and simply act like it is the greatest movie of all time, acting like it isn't an average-decent popcorn movie and announcing to the high heavens that it is the Picasso of movies (that isn't an exaggeration, someone told me that...). I too feel like screaming "Stop ignoring the flaws" at the top of my lungs... Ugh...
You can turn that on it's head and say people are determined to hate the movie because they think it goes against what Peter Parker should be when really the Peter Parker character is a cypher. Sure Spider-Man himself has a defined personality as a joker but Peter himself is rather characterless and basically any motivation revolves around his supporting cast.

Spider-Man is a great character but Peter Parker is anything the writer wants him to be and that is especially true for the comics.
 

Twilight_guy

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Nov 24, 2008
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Huh. I didn't get any of that. Peter seemed like an outsider what with his lack of obvious friends and hanging out with his uncle and aunt. In fact when he gets his powers he hangs out alone and is even more of a loner. He wasn't the best Peter Parker ever but he wasn't Tobey Maguire, Mr. emotion-less. I found it to be good to mediocre. Oh well, I've know my opinion conflicts with Bob's for a long time now.
 

SilverHammerMan

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I've seen a lot of people saying how the way the updated Peter Parker was necessary due to the current geek chic culture, and I find it kind of odd. I mean, yeah, liking Star Trek and making Hans Shot First jokes might be cool now, but that was never what Peter Parker was about. Peter Parker was always depicted as a nerd, not a geek, and there is a profound difference. Sure, on the internet there are plenty of webcomics and so on that make physics jokes and so on, but in real life, I've never actually seen a genuine nerd held up as cool. So to me, Peter Parker being an outcast because he's a massive nerd isn't an anachronism, it would be an anachronism is he was an outcast because he watched Game of Thrones and made jokes about Captain Kirk.
Nerds still aren't cool. At least not in high school.
 

medv4380

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Feb 26, 2010
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Noelveiga said:
medv4380 said:
Noelveiga said:
It's at $125 worldwide right now. Even if it has a budget comparable to Transformers, which the whole thing was engineered NOT to do, this one is at the very least recouping expenses which, in turn means sequels are coming up, since the point of the exercise was to not let the franchise rights go to waste.

...
The Bet only concerns Domestic numbers. International numbers always make strange bed fellow anyways. Alice in Wonderland goes from an OK film to making over a Billion.
I have it on good authority that the rest of that billion can still be traded for goods and services. Pretty sure that Sony (which happens to be a Japanese company, by the way) will still greenlight a sequel if the movie makes money worldwide, even if it doesn't in the US alone.

I'd still take your bet on US figures, though.

And again, my point had nothing to do with your bet, I said that the film will make money and then you jumped into a paralel dimension where most of the money it'll make doesn't count because you made a bet with some people about this not reaching 130 million this week in the US, which it will totally do.
Under your logic then The Green Hornet was good, and almost made twice its money back. When the number that's always used is the US domestic 98M vs the 120M budget. If you can't make your money back on the domestic market then the movie is viewed as a failure, and that looks like if it does many any money domestically it will be by the skin of its teeth.

You're free to place a bet as well, HSX is free and doesn't carry any of those risks of actual loss of real world money. Theirs another one where you can bet real money but that's much riskier.
I never equated the quality of the movie with the amount of money it grosses. Even then, yes, a lot of movies considered a failure in the US actually make a ton of money because they get a 30/70 split with the non-US market, which is why The Chronicles of Narnia got sequels, why Tintin was made and why The Amazing Spider-man opened first in Japan.

And The Green Hornet is a terrible example, it barely made any more money overseas. Due to the localization and local marketing costs, plus exchange rates and other tidbits, non-US releases actually return less money to the production company, so that 50-50 split in Green Hornet was probably seen as a failure. Tintin making almost 80% of its 400 million gross overseas, though, is a good reason why there will be another one despite only making 77 million in the US.

Wait, am I wasting my time here? Have you been talking to yourself this whole time? Because you've certainly not been responding to me, so there is a chance that all this doesn't really matter at all...
I've just been selectively responding to you. No sense in responding to a WOT with a WOT. If you want to exclude people like Bob, my Father, and myself as having a valid opinion against this film because it doesn't mesh with your view that's your loss not mine.

Tintin is arguably a foreign film just made by a domestic company. Just like Iron Man 3 will be a Foreign Film in China just in part made by a domestic company. Narnia depends on what you look at. The first did well in the US which prompted the rest. I'd place it more in the category of them wanting a working franchise more than anything. If the first had failed in the US then it wouldn't have had any more. There is still an pretty big IF as to whether another Narnia film will be made. Any news on it date back to over a year.

If TASM can't beat the budget domestically Sony will have to rethink their plans yet again.
 

SnakeoilSage

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I always saw Spider-Man as the everyman in the superhero community. Teenaged Peter Parker would see them they way we do, as super heroes that he looks up to and admires. To have Captain America turn to Spider-Man and ask him to join in would be that fanboy geek-out moment that all of us would feel, and when he weathers Tony Stark's derisive comments while other team members stand up for him we'd feel the way he feels, among giants as it were. When Spider-Man comes out to save the day when everyone else was too big to do it, we'd feel vindicated right beside him. When he gets scared and uses snark to hide it, we understand him.

I guess what I mean is Spider-Man isn't a "super" hero. He's us, wanting to be a superhero. When he wins we win, when he's down we're down, when he steps up, we cheer for him. He needs his underdog personality or he isn't Peter Parker or Spider-Man.
 

gorfias

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More soon but, I am advised to review the movie I saw, not the movie I wanted to see. I did that. While the new Spidey movie lacks stuff I would want, it was not just a cash in. I liked it more than Spidey 1 and maybe 3 (spidey 1 followed comic close enough that there were almost no surprises for me. I like it well enough, but I would write I enjoyed this better).

Go with an open mind. If you like Spiderman and super hero movies, I think you'll really like this.
 

Ramzal

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Dastardly said:
MovieBob said:
Untangling Spider-Man

MovieBob gives us a more detailed look into The Amazing Spider-Man.

Watch Video
I still get this feeling that you're going out of your way to hate this movie. Like, far out of your way. And I think you're allowing your (totally justified) hatred of Sony cash-in to color your perception of the folks that actually worked on the movie.

1. The "dangling plot threads" you've mentioned are a result of this movie not being conceived as a one-off. If the movie had introduced and resolved every thread, you'd be complaining that it's too cluttered. Believe me, I'm not a fan of the Parker-Parent-Conspiracy storyline as a whole... but I can see that they're laying out breadcrumbs to lead down that road later. Connors is one of those, in some ways.

2. I'm really, really not seeing your problem with Peter Parker. He's still an outcast geek here. He's just not the 60's "lie down and take it" kind of geek. If you get any opportunity to interact with high schoolers (and recent graduates, who aren't much different), you'll see that in this modern age, geeks don't feel quite so powerless. They're more likely to react with a bit of anger, and to fight back even knowing they don't physically stand a chance. They're also more likely to hide any fear or embarrassment behind sarcasm, and to start slacking off in academics. You're wanting Parker to be a sort of nerd or geek that, by and large, doesn't exist anymore.

3. The lesson he learned was the same power/responsibility spiel, just played out differently. Instead of being explicitly told that, he learns it via consequence -- by acting in a self-serving way he not only got Uncle Ben killed, but he also accidentally created the Lizard (via a failed attempt to resolve his parental abandonment issues), which resulted in a lot of destruction and ultimately a very important death (no spoiler). (See, his spider powers weren't the only powers he was misusing.) The power/responsibility theme is really just a "selfish vs. selfless" dichotomy -- The more you have to give, the more you have to give.

This feeling of characters being unfocused? I really think it's a matter of wanting too much archetype. Consider that, in many countries, candy and soda aren't as extremely sweet as ours in the US... and that can lead us to find their candy or soda "bland." When we're hyper-saturated with hyper-saturated flavors (or characterizations), we can lose our "taste" for subtlety.

In this case, I don't think you're not capable of detecting subtlety, I just think you're very much against assigning any of it to this movie. Perhaps subconsciously, you're dismissing even the possibility that it could be happening.
^So very very true.

Seeing as how I am STILL reading The Amazing Spider-man after 20+ years and up to the most recent releases let me say this, and I will challenge movie bob on this point:

MovieBob doesn't know -anything- about Marvel comics that date after 1992 short of Wikipedia posts, and back talk. If he did, he would have clearly---VERY clearly seen that they nailed Peter Parker's personality and character in this movie. Gwen is a bit shaky because she's been dead for years and needed a slight update. He seems to remember Peter from the 1970's onward, which no longer exists as times changed and the writers need to keep up to date with their characters.

In 1980's prints of The Amazing Spider-man, Peter Parker would not willingly go to a bar or a club to dance. However, after his split up with Mary Jane that was the first place him and Harry Osborn went to find him a girlfriend. Times change, and Bob needs to accept that and get over his demand for everything to stay the way he remembered it and adapt like humans normally do.
 

Dastardly

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Apr 19, 2010
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xaszatm said:
*sigh* I'm not an idiot.
Someone's a bit sensitive.

Even if I didn't know that Gwen Stacy was going to die. The movie flat out makes it obvious with the last scene.
Some people also reading this discussion haven't read the comics, and might not be aware of such major milestones. I chose not to make the known. But if you're going to be so oddly sensitive about that, I'll just out with it. Seriously, there is absolutely nothing about my previous post that would in any way indicate what you're claiming you feel, so the source is somewhere internal. That fact is important because:

Don't say that the changes are subtle and I am just not seeing them.
You're projecting a whole lot onto other people. It's entirely possible you're just missing hints and subtlety. Why would you? I have no idea. Conjecture would tell me it's because a part of you was already determined not to like this movie, but that would be (as noted) conjecture.


I too feel like screaming "Stop ignoring the flaws" at the top of my lungs... Ugh...
You've got to step back and ask yourself, "Who has a reason to misrepresent this movie?" Not intentionally, mind you, that's kinda the whole point. Which side would, without even realizing it, be more likely to heavily slant their own view to reinforce a preexisting belief?

Would it be the side of non-fans, who (like me) are aware of Spider-Man but not long-time die-hards? Or would it be those long-term die-hards, who have strong feelings attached to Spider-Man's story and established canon?

Seriously. Which side has motive? Every likes to think they're objective, because we're all standing in "the middle" in our own world. But me? I'm not a Spider-Man die-hard, but I'm aware of the character's major arcs and features, and I'm a big fan of Sam Raimi's work... so for me to step back and say, "Well, really, I think this movie did it better than Raimi did," carries some weight.

Upset fans who hate Sony, due to previous grudges and tons of press surrounding this movie, have a bit more cause to be biased against the movie. The mixed response bears that out.
 

Dastardly

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Apr 19, 2010
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Ramzal said:
Times change, and Bob needs to accept that and get over his demand for everything to stay the way he remembered it and adapt like humans normally do.
Professionally, I'm inclined to agree. Personally, it's also important to remember the true meaning of "nostalgia." -algia means "pain." Nostalgia is "pain from an old wound."

When people see a beloved character or story changed, it gets compared against the old. And for some people, those differences are felt as almost personal injuries. And it can cause people to overreact quite a bit. The deeper the connection, the more pronounced the pain.

So, it's a natural reaction. Of course, after we get our tantrums out of the way, however natural, it's good to go back and attempt a more objective assessment.