The Amazing Spider-Man
While The Amazing Spider-Man wasn't the best movie I have ever watched, it was a great one (and so far it topped all the other movies I watched this year), not only for the action scenes, but because it allowed me to take note of several interesting things regarding morality. Of course, I was purposely trying to see a bit more of what the movie actually had to offer. Maybe I'm overseeing things, but it's nice to discuss them nevertheless, since there aren't so many movies that allow me to do that. I'll try to follow up with what I tweeted as I was watching the movie and develop the subject as I remember the parts of the movie.
First thing that got my attention was how the bully is portrayed not only in this movie, but in pretty much every teenager-oriented movie. Man of Steel also brought this issue up, but even though I liked Man of Steel, I don't think I saw the subject as something as remarkable as in The Amazing Spider-Man.
First of all, I wonder how much of the movie's depiction is an exaggeration and how much of that really happens in High-Schools. Seriously, how can the directors not notice that this is happening? Getting a group to beat up and humiliate someone who is different from the rest of the group? Really?
Now that I think about it, this may actually not be an exaggeration. As I have mentioned a hundred thousand times in pretty much every kind of social media, I was bullied for being different (and in this aspect it was nice that I decided to date when I was 16 years old, because my ex-boyfriend managed to see how much bully I got and tried to defend me when we were together). When I attempted to complain with the principal, she laughed at me. Said "oh, how cute, I think they like you" (I'm not even joking, she really said that). I can only imagine what happens in other schools.
What really bothers me is how people actually get in groups to watch and laugh at the person who is being bullied. How they do absolutely nothing. I wonder if groupies notice the kind of social problem that we have here. No wonder people only pay attention on how bad this problem is when a kid gets fed up with the humiliation, brings a gun to the school and kills everybody. Even with movies and other kinds of media explicitly showing this kind of behavior, people don't really seem to pay attention to this kind of stuff.
Peter Parker using Bing.
Wow, that's a subtle way to make some Microsoft merchandising.
Peter Parker is a brilliant student. The movie doesn't make his performance in school explicit, but considering that he pretty much perfected the spider web gadget, I would suppose that he would have a comprehensive knowledge of technology and stuff. So... how come he is using Internet Explorer and Bing?
Internet jokes are not without purpose, Internet Explorer is one of the slowest navigators I have ever used. The only occasion in which I use it is when I have to develop web applications at my work. As for Bing, its search indexer is not as good as Google. Not only that, Google usually is better for search by subject relevance. As for why he would pick two of the worst applications is a wonder. But that's a personal opinion. I believe some people might use Internet Explorer and Bing, who knows.
Did anyone notice that Oscorp has no internal surveillance cameras?? How come a company as big and important as Oscorp, with several top secret projects that can threat the entire country NOT have internal surveillance cameras? Not only that, how can doors with critical projects be protected with a simple image-based unlock code? Gosh, even iPods have better password systems.
As I was working in several different projects, I also visited a couple of different offices around the country. Most of them don't work on critical projects, but almost all of them limit and monitor your access through your badge. Peter was using the stolen badge (that, by the way, required no identification) of a trainée who supposedly had limited access to all areas... and yet, he managed to enter a room full of live subjects.
One of my biggest criticisms that I have about this movie is regarding the character's morality, and in this point I thought that it was confusing and subjective. Right after Peter finds out about his own powers, he starts to strike back whenever he gets bullied or when he sees something he doesn't find fair. It's important to reinforce the idea that Peter has been bullied and mistreated since the beginning of the movie, and he was not the only one.
After Flash purposely ruins the work of a girl, Peter comes to rescue and decides to do some payback by showing off in the sports court. Unaware of his own strength, he accidentally breaks the basketball support. And this is where I thought that the movie was quite messed up: Peter gets scolded by uncle Ben. Now comes the big part: why is it that all other guys are allowed to humiliate Peter, but Peter is not allowed to payback behavior? Why is it that a student being bullied must suffer in silence? Why is it that the "forgive and forget" policy is only required on the victim? Why is it that bully is considered "acceptable", but not vengeance?
Another occasion where this becomes evident is in Spiderman's motivations later in the movie. Gwen's father considers Spiderman's actions a "menace to society", and yet Spiderman did not, in any of the occasions, killed or severely injured any of the assailants (at least not as far as I understood what was going on). He merely trapped them in his web and left them for the police officers to capture which, in my opinion, is completely acceptable considering that all the people whom he captured were confirmed criminals.
These matters become contradictory if you consider the discussion uncle Ben had with Peter right before being killed by a thief. Okay, in a way, he was right. Peter had an obligation and left it aside (for reasons that I thought were justifiable - actually, I struggle to understand why Peter didn't mention he was busy doing something important to his career) Ben mentioned that Peter had a responsibility with society as a whole (the dialogue goes more or less like "you are a lot like your father and that's a real good thing, but he believed in a philosophy that if you can do good to other, you have the moral obligation to do those things. That's what's at stake here, not choice. Responsibility."). The big matter is: how much of your own free will must you sacrifice for the well being of the society? Is it really worth it?
I do give credits to Gwen's father when he actually listened to what Peter had to say about the bioterrorism threat, but that scene seems kinda empty when this information wasn't really used in the following scenes. It gave me the impression that it was a last minute change in the script just so that George Stacy wouldn't look like such a jerk. But the fact that there was a giant lizard running free around the streets of New York and the police still decided to go after Spiderman still bothers me.
"NO, YOU FOUND MY WEAKNESS, IT'S SMALL KNIVES"
The Lizard and Spidey swim in one of the cleanest sewers I have ever seen.
One last relevant thing I must mention about this movie: no one can imagine how AWESOME it is not to have Gwen playing a regular role of the damsel in distress. I was a bit worried that the end of the movie might end up taking that path, as it has been done in the first movie of the old trilogy. Still, I have a feeling that they did want to do that, but changed their minds in the last minute (specially if you consider that, even though Gwen does defend herself, she does not fight). There is still a rather long path for girls not to always take the role of the damsel in distress, but I can at least accept the fact that not all women are fighters like the Black Widow or Catwoman (which reminds me that I have yet to write that giant post about Game of Thrones that I've been promising for a while).
Last complaint: Flash. He was an awful jerk at the beginning of the movie and after uncle Ben's death he suddenly became sympathetic. By the end of the movie, he and Peter were, like, BFFs. I would normally find that good, but if you think about it, there wasn't much space for character development, which makes his behavior a bit incoherent. There is no real reason for Peter and Flash to become friends in the movie. Flash was a pitiless bully who humiliated people for no real reason, that part where he talks to Peter to show his condolences doesn't really make much sense.
Overall considerations: I don't really like Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker because the impression I got was the he wasn't able to properly finish any of his sentences, but he made one hell of a Spider-Man. Spider-Man himself was quite well-characterized (if you consider how much I know about him), with all the sarcastic jokes. The movie itself was actually quite fun to watch, and even though it might look like I hated the movie for seemingly complaining about every single aspect of it, the fact that it actually made me take my time to get all my tweets about the movie, re-watch a couple of scenes and think about matters of morality is actually a very good thing.
Oh, and Parkour cameras as awesome.