Twenty-three years ago, the modern comic book movie genre was invented with Tim Burton's Batman. Aside from the Batman franchise, though, not a whole lot good came out of the success of that first film over the next decade. It wasn't until 2000's X-Men that we started to see that initial promise start to blossom; it wasn 2002's Spider-Man, however, that made the super-hero movie into the Summer juggernaut that it is today. I will admit that I absolutely love the first Spider-Man. It was fun, dramatic, campy, and had a great cast. Not necessarily an all-star cast, but they fit the tone perfectly. To this day, I can't hear the Lord's Prayer without adding "Finish it!" in a Green Goblin voice. Spider-Man 2 is a better story with a less ridiculous villain; it is up to your personal tastes as to which movie is preferable. Spider-Man 3, though, is utter crap. However bad that last entry was, though --- "laughably bad" is too generous --- only five years have passed since its failure and this series reboot. Well, let's be honest --- there was going to be a reboot no matter how good the third movie was. The question remains, how necessary is this movie?
Okay, that's not a bad trailer. It really grabs that portion of the audience who have always thought "Enough of this Spider-Fellow, what about his parents?"
I have some bad newsfor all those audience members who were hooked by the mystery of the Parker Parents. This movie doesn't answer any of the questions that trailer raises. Sorry. Instead, The Amazing Spider-Man introduces us to Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield), a slightly nerdy high schooler with a taste for skateboarding and photography. Peter isn't the coolest kid around, but he's not unpopular, either. He is, though, very bright. When Peter accidentally finds a briefcase belonging to his mysterious late father, he uncovers some scientific papers detailing the possibilities of cross-species genetic bonding; in other words, Pete's dad was interested in splicing animal genes with human genes. Looking into his father's research leads Peter to Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), who was Richard Parker's one-armed research partner. Unfortunately, Peter doesn't introduce himself right away; instead, he sneaks into Connors' research facility and gets bitten by a genetically enhanced spider. Almost immediately, Peter realizes that he now has super spider-powers.
Including the ability to pick on handicapped jocks
After reading up on (and understanding) his father's research, Peter decides to share part of it with Dr. Connors. This leads to a typical comic book situation: an otherwise very intelligent person opts to test an experimental treatment on themselves because it is too dangerous for others.
Yeah. Astonishingly stupid. I know.
Connors introduces a reptile gene splice to his system and he turns into a giant, intelligent Lizard because, you know, comic books. Meanwhile, Peter has harnessed his super abilities to become a costumed vigilante. Why? Because that's what you do when you're a moody teenager and your actions indirectly lead to your Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) dying. I believe it was Ben's dying wish that Peter get shot at by the police while wearing spandex.
Note: Uncle Ben never actually liked Peter
While all this is happening, Peter is also getting himself awkwardly entangled in a teenage romance. The smart, sexy, and apparently allergic to pants Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) finds herself strangely drawn to the ridiculously awkward Peter, especially once his super-powers give him the confidence to be kind of a jerk.
Seriously, no pants, just skirts. That's not a complaint.
In typical Parker luck, Gwen's dad (Denis Leary) happens to be a Captain on the NYPD and he is handling the case of the costumed vigilante, Spider-Man. So, to recap: Peter gains super-powers by trespassing, indirectly leads to the death of his uncle, directly leads to Dr. Connors mutating himself, finds a girlfriend, and his girlfriend's dad is hunting down Pete's alter-ego.
...which isn't hard if you don't wear a mask
The acting in The Amazing Spider-Man is surprisingly good. I mean, yes, the caliber of actors is very solid here, but the performances are good, given the material. As far as I can tell, this is the first real starring role for Andrew Garfield, and I really liked his take on Peter Parker. His awkwardness around Gwen bordered on mild retardation, but aside from that I thought he was believable as A) a teen B) a smart teen and C) a smart teen who would throw on pajamas and fight crime. Oddly, his best moments as Spider-Man came with his mask off. And I liked that they didn't bulk Garfield up too much for this part; it was nice to see a lanky Spider-Man, in line with the whole "Puny Parker" lines from the 1960s comics. Emma Stone definitely impressed me as Spidey's love interest. It was nice to have a female lead in a superhero movie that wasn't vapid or whiny. I would have liked to see more of Stone and Garfield together on-screen, because they have good chemistry, but the script kind of forces them into intimacy and that felt rushed.
Tending gaping chest wounds = sexxxy
Rhys Ifans was fine as Dr. Curt Connors. He wasn't great, but he played up to the script well enough. Unfortunately, that script didn't make him a particularly effective villain, for reasons I'll detail later. Martin Sheen and Sally Field played Peter's Uncle Ben and Aunt May, respectively, and they were definitely solid. I liked Sheen, but was surprised at how unimportant Field felt in the overall plot. Denis Leary was okay as a hard-line cop, I guess; he was intimidating enough as Gwen's dad, but it's not like his role was all that demanding. I was genuinely surprised to kind of like Chris Zylka as Pater's bully, Flash. Zylka wasn't fantastic, but his character actually seemed human and multifaceted, and at least some of the credit belongs to the actor. That's it for the important performances. There were a couple of noteworthy/bewildering bit parts, though. Irrfan Khan played a vaguely sinister henchman to an otherwise absent Norman Osborn, which is fine, but I would have preferred that he actually seemed mean instead of a bureaucratic jerk. Campbell Scott shows up with Embeth Davidtz as Peter's parents and they don't do very much. I kept expecting them to do more than look concerned in flashbacks, but no.
I was also waiting for Wesley Snipes to kill Edgar Friendly, but again, no.
This is only director Marc Webb's second feature film, after the too clever but charming 500 Days of Summer. This is an interesting follow-up, to say the least. A lot of focus in the advertising campaign for The Amazing Spider-Man was spent on the web-slinging scenes, specifically the point-of-view sequence. That was justifiable, since those were both pretty cool. Webb's biggest strength, though, was definitely the character work. I thought Garfield's performance was very good and the relationships Peter forms in the film, while rushed, still felt genuine.
In this case, genuine confusion
One of the things that I liked best about this movie was the script. It wasn't fantastically witty or remarkably paced --- honestly, I think it tried to fit in a few things too many and there were too many cliches --- but I loved the overall feel of it. In a lot of superhero movies, the hero stands up to the villain because...well, because nobody else can. Here, it is because Peter feels responsible for the villain. I also liked the shift toward a more tightly-knit Spider-Man universe (Spideyverse?), with everything appearing to tie into Norman Osborn. Heck, I even liked the choice to not show Osborn in the film; the Green Goblin is the best Spider-Man villain and deserves to be built up to. I was happy to see the story keep Peter in high school, because it makes his life that much more complicated. I liked the little things that made Peter's invention of his web-shooters less improbable, too.
Not likely, but less unlikely
Basically, I liked the idea behind The Amazing Spider-Man. It is significantly different than Sam Raimi's trilogy and actually deserves to exist and be appreciated. They could have waited more than five years before rebooting the franchise, but this is still a fun and pleasant surprise.
Having said all that, this is still only my third-favorite Spider-Man movie. My biggest problem is the villain, Dr. Connors/The Lizard. Before the transformation, Dr. Connors was a pretty nice character with a very subtle undercurrent of something disturbing or desperate. That undercurrent never really becomes more pronounced as the film goes on. That would be fine, expect for the fact that he is the villain of the damn movie. I didn't like the choice to make the Lizard persona highly intelligent; I honestly would have preferred The Lizard be more of a physical threat that Spider-Man had to outsmart. I didn't like that The Lizard's evil plan was to transform normal humans into reptile people, which is bad because...um...it leads to sitcoms?
Actually, we don't see much of anything bad happening to the people who are transformed. If we saw reptile-people mindlessly tearing up Queens or serving as The Lizard's loyal army, I could see the threat. The way it is presented in this movie is as an inconvenience; one minute, people are transforming, the next they are recovering from the transformation and being happy. The film goes to such great lengths to establish Peter's sense of responsibility, but the personal threat The Lizard poses to him simply is not very compelling. I also hated his lizard face. Terrible design.
Bars can only improve The Lizard's appearance
And then there's the action. While the web-swinging was fun, a lot of the action sequences --- particularly the ones with Peter Parker doing things out of costume --- were not that cool. They added a little comic relief, sure, but they were oftentimes too over-the-top for my taste (anything with Peter and sports, I'm looking at you). Another issue that ties into the action sequences is the inconsistent CGI effects. As good as Spider-Man looked when traveling around the city, I was not very impressed by him in the battle sequences, particularly the final fight. The scenes aren't bad, but they lacked the essential cool factor that fight scenes need. I thought the fight scenes paled in comparison to some of the more creative small moments, like the cleverness of Spidey's web in the sewers. I also saw this in 3D and I can assure you that the 3D is completely useless in this movie, save for the truly awful freeze-frame ending.
So how does Amazing compare to Raimi's Spider-Man? It's not as good because it doesn't deliver the complete package. Amazing has a better cast with an overarching story that promises to be better than that of the adjective-less trilogy and a Peter Parker that doesn't feel dated and stereotypical. But Raimi's movie came out swinging and didn't hold back the best characters for a future installment. The film, as a whole, is also less fun; I know for a fact that I have quoted Willem Dafoe dozens of times from that first film, but there is no single character that I loved this time around. Still, The Amazing Spider-Man managed to make me not resent its existence and I enjoyed watching it. Who knows? With a proper villain, the next sequel might be the best Spidey film yet.
Oh, if you have any theories who the mystery man in the credits sequence was, leave a comment. I own a few hundred Spider-Man comics, and even I can't make a convincing argument for any particular character. What a waste of a teaser scene.
I love science fiction movies that can teach me about my nation's past. Remember the epidemic-level gang wars in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s that resulted in the notorious Simon Phoenix annexing a large portion of the city as his own fiefdom? Good times, man. What about the time we cryogenically froze Jeffrey Dahmer instead of sticking him in prison to get beaten to death by a broom handle? Or the massive earthquake of 2010 that devastated Los Angeles and somehow lead to the remains of the city melding with San Diego to create San Angeles? You don't remember that? Me neither. You would think the merging of two cities that are 120 miles apart would have been newsworthy, but it must have flown under the radar; I definitely recall the awful attempt to merge Chicago and cheese heads into Chicaukee. Lake Michigan was green, yellow, and red that summer.
Of course, I have all this knowledge of our past thanks to the historical document Demolition Man. Back in 1996, LA police bad-ass John "This Is" Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) performs a one-man raid on the headquarters of Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), a homicidal sociopath that was holding a busload of civilians hostage. Because sending in a one-man SWAT team is standard protocol for the LAPD. Well, Spartan manages to kill off Phoenix's evil henchmen and capture Phoenix, but he blew up the entire building complex in the process. Spartan performed a body heat scan on the complex before entering and found only a handful of people; the handful accounted for Phoenix and his men, so the hostages must have been kept somewhere else. Or were they? In the wreckage of the building, dozens of bodies were recovered; Phoenix attested that Spartan blew up the building knowing that the innocents would die. And because the 1996 LAPD put their trust in known terrorists, Spartan was arrested, tried and convicted of a few dozen counts of manslaughter. His sentence is to be cryogenically frozen for seventy years (that sounds like an inexpensive solution); Phoenix is to be frozen forever, which seems rather silly to me.
..and the award for "Least Amount of Effort in an Album Cover" goes to...Sting!!!
Fast-forward to 2032. The city of San Angeles has been devoid of crime and violence for so long that nobody can even remember such things. Except for the people who are old enough to remember. Because, seriously, it was less than 36 years ago, at the absolute longest. This utopia is run by Dr. Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne), who has decided what is good for society (unthinking, unquestioning compliance) and what is bad (spicy and other unhealthy foods, curse words, sexual intercourse, etc.). However, Cocteau's San Angeles has its disgruntled citizens, too. Edgar Friendly (Denis Leary) is the leader of a literally underground society that lives in the sewers and cherishes personal freedom, although at the risk of starving to death. For some reason, Simon Phoenix was thawed out for a parole hearing, despite his eternal sentence; even stranger is the fact that he knew voice commands to free himself from his restraints. Phoenix proceeds on a murder spree, something that the SAPD are not equipped to handle. So, how do they catch Phoenix? By thawing out the man who did it last time, John Spartan. Explosions and fish-out-of-water jokes ensue.
I make fun of Demolition Man, but it's because I care. Most movies like this are shallow, boring, and predictable. At the very least, this film is not boring. As far as action movies go, there is a lot to like here. Things go boom, there are some pretty sweet fires, and they even manage to incorporate freezing as an action device --- and not in a way that directly rips off Terminator 2.
In this dystopian future, the "Yo Quiero Taco Bell" dog never went away.
The movie is actually kind of cute, too. I won't say that it's terribly funny, but there are a lot of clever ideas in the script --- Taco Bell being the only restaurant in the future, high fives not requiring physical contact, and toilet paper giving way to three seashells, for starters --- and you rarely hear "clever" being used to describe a Stallone movie. I also liked that Sandra Bullcock's character takes her name from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The film is by no means perfect, but it's funnier and smarter than most action movies, even if the ultimate point of the story is simple enough to insult a child.
Now, as far as the acting goes...well, it goes. Sylvester Stallone does his typical thing; he's barely monosyllabic, but he looks pretty good when he's shooting and punching stuff, so I'm not going to judge the man too harshly. I thought he handled the humor in the script pretty well, even if he never spat out the marbles in his mouth. Wesley Snipes was extremely entertaining as the supervillain of the film; he out-overacted most comic book villains, but I'll be damned if he didn't do it just right. If absolutely nothing else, his fashion sense should be applauded. Not just anyone can pull off pirate pants, you know.
"Eyes to see you." - not actually a quote from this film.
Sandra Bullock is surprisingly likable as the clueless but friendly sidekick to Stallone. It wasn't a hard part to play, granted, and she doesn't really bring anything special to the part, but this is a nice, simple, and uncomplicated performance of low-key comedy. Pre-nose job Benjamin Bratt has a small supporting role as a typically wimpy SAPD officer; he's kind of wooden, but being the straight man is a thankless role, so I'll let him off the hook. If you're familiar with Denis Leary from his work on Rescue Me or his frequent interviews on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, his performance here might be a little on the raw side; on the other hand, if you remember his work circa-No Cure For Cancer, then you should know what's in store for you --- rants, namely. I actually don't mind him here, but his rants are only "edgy" if you're still stuck back in 1993. Despite having a few lines and a pretty visible character, Rob Schneider is not credited in this film at all, which is especially strange since he was on Saturday Night Live at the time and this is probably my favorite film role for the guy. You might recognize a number of other minor characters in the movie, as well. Jesse Ventura, Toshiro Obata (Shredder's sidekick in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies), and Billy D. Lucas (famous for being Schwarzenegger's stunt double) all play Cryo-convicts, like Simon Phoenix. Jack Black has about two seconds of screen time as one of Leary's henchmen. MTV alum Dan Cortese and Lara Harris (not the one from Mulholland Drive) are both background characters in the Taco Bell scene. Bill Cobbs (the guy who takes all the "wise black man" roles that Morgan Freeman turns down) and Grand L. Bush (one of the Agent Johnsons from Die Hard) play the same character, thirty-six years apart. You will definitely recognize Glenn "Otho" Sadix as an effeminate assistant. And last, but not least, Bob Gunton does his typical thing as a jerk authority figure. Are any of these supporting performances particularly revelatory? Not at all. Everyone plays their part (sometimes, they even over-play it) pretty well, making this a surprisingly well-rounded movie, acting-wise.
I never played it, but I assume that the lack of physical contact made this a waste of quarters.
One of the mysteries of Demolition Man (and there are several) is exactly what happened to director Marco Brambilla after making this film. He has only three more credits on IMDb, and none of them are what I would call career-killers, even with an Alicia Silverstone movie under his belt. Whatever the reason for his retirement (forceful or otherwise), I think Brambilla made a perfectly acceptable action flick, designed to entertain and make you crave popcorn. Was his direction subtle? Hell, no. But who is looking for subtle in a Stallone action movie? The action looked good, the plot made a decent amount of sense, and none of the jokes were wasted (even the lame ones). That's not a bad job for a big budget action movie.
Do tough guys wear berets just so they can punch anyone who smirks?
All in all, Demolition Man is darn near perfect for what it is meant to be. It could be more intentionally funny, sure, and it could certainly be more unintentionally funny, but those are two flaws I think most eighteen-year old action movies would be willing to live with. As a legitimate movie, I think the balance of solid action with remedial satire deserves
...and yet, I enjoy this movie on so much more than a legitimate level. I encourage you to watch this movie again (perhaps with some booze? Side note --- don't do drugs, kids!) and laugh at the more ridiculous moments. Demolition Man more than earns the Lefty Gold rating of
For some reason, when I did a Google Image Search for "Demolition Man," I came across this screenshot from Pulp's "Common People" music video. I have no idea why, but I love Pulp and felt obligated to include it here.
I love when competing movie companies make films that have nearly identical premises and are released around the same time. Some of my favorite examples include Deep Impact and Armageddon, Dante's Peak and Volcano, Finding Nemo and Shark Tale, The Illusionist and The Prestige, Indiana Jones and Oregon Harrison...the list goes on and on. In this case, A Bug's Life, the second Pixar animated film, competed directly against Antz, the first DreamWorks animated film. What does that have to do with the actual movie? Nothing. I just like pointing out when movies have twins. And just like in real life, there's always a good twin and a bad twin. Which is which? Well, I don't see anyone in A Bug's Life with a goatee, do you?
A Bug's Life is the story of Flik (Dave Foley) and his attempts to save his colony from some vicious grasshopper bullies, led by the cruel Hopper (Kevin Spacey). You see, Hopper's grasshopper gang forces the ant colony, led by The Queen (Phyllis Diller) and her heir apparent Princess Atta (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), to pay tribute every year in the form of food. After offering their tribute, the ants then have to hurry to gather enough food to support themselves over the coming rainy season. Flik is an amateur inventor who accidentally ruins the tribute and angers the grasshoppers. As the colony rushes to gather enough food to satisfy Hopper, Flik is sent out on a fool's errand to keep him from accidentally ruining this tribute, too. His task is to find some fighting bugs that will protect the colony. He finds some bugs, but, under a mutual misunderstanding, he ends up with a group of circus performers who thought that they were going to perform for the colony, not protect them. Whoops.
The story clearly borrows heavily from The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven (which makes sense, since it's a remake of Samurai), with the colony being protected by a motley crew facing impossible odds. Unlike those films, though, this is a kid's movie, so there is a lot less death. There are a lot more sappy "The More You Know" moments, though. The film's themes include the contributions of the individual, how size does not equal strength, and the power of numbers. You might wonder at the wisdom of having a movie point out how important an individual is and then turn around and point out how important it is for a group (that includes that individual) to work together, but that conceptual problem is ignored in the film. I mean, the points were made more than ten minutes apart --- that's practically a separate movie!
Once again, Pixar does a great job with their voice casting. Dave Foley as the nervous Flik and a young Hayden Panettiere as little Princess Dot were both particularly good. Kevin Spacey was imposing as the evil Hopper and Julia Louis-Dreyfus was obnoxiously whiny as the Princess. The supporting cast was as colorful as ever, with Denis Leary being the standout as the male ladybug, but John Ratzenberger, Roddy McDowall, Brad Garrett, Bonnie Hunt, Madeline Kahn, Phyllis Diller, and David Hyde-Pierce all do good work here.
Being a Pixar movie, the animation is, of course, amazing. While they weren't ready to pull off any human animation just yet, I liked the way primary writer Andrew Stanton played with his small scale; it's fun for kids to see ordinary things becoming huge dangers for tiny creatures, a la Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and this is one of the film's strengths. I don't like how obviously indebted the film is to The Seven Samurai, but that's a film buff's gripe when compared to the much more serious issue of the film's lack of emotion. In the best children's movies, one of the characters has a major epiphany and goes to great lengths to keep what they now realize is the most important thing to them. A Bug's Life still tries to do that, but it spreads the emotional payoff across several characters (Flik, Atta, Dot, and Denis Leary's ladybug), diluting its effect.
I'm sure that this movie will please most kids. It's not bad, by any means, but it's lacking the depth that makes movies like this more endurable for adults. Instead, it takes the easy route for cute jokes (the "outtakes" during the credits are a good example of this), and I was left a little bored.
