The Amazing Spider-Man Review (Spoilers)

[mattzimmer]

Also reviews for the latest episodes of Arrow, The Looney Tunes Show, MAD, Once Upon A Time, Revolution, Fringe, Grimm, The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Haven, The Office, Parks And Recreation, 30 Rock, American Horror Story: Asylum, and 666 Park Avenue

Comments

[stinkingbishop]

I had similar thoughts about ASM - not bad, just rather redundant. The makers did a pretty good job of differentiating the film form Raimi's, but even so, it was inevitable that there'd be deja vu. The fact that so much was just setting up for the sequel just made it that more unsatisfying.

The choice of the Lizard as a villain was odd - Raimi had already turned Doctor Octopus into a benevolent mentor for Peter who unwillingly becomes evil, so it was strange to see this film going over old ground unnecessarily when otherwise it'd done a good job of avoiding that.

And yeah, Peter labelling his camera was embarrassing. Did he learn nothing from Bart Simpson?

[mattzimmer]

Yeah, if they were gonna tease big answers for Peter's parents they were obligated to actually give us some. There was NO guarantee going in that there would even BE a sequel for sure.

Curt Connors makes a better mentor figure for Peter than Doc Ock. I think Spider-Man 2 was ten times the film this was but the Peter/Otto relationship never made sense to me.

I cannot believe they actually kept that nonsense in the movie. They could have come up with a dozen different ways for Connors to find out Peter was Spidey. The first one off the top of my head would be that Lizards have an excellent sense of smell and that he could tell Peter and Spider-Man's scents were identical. They were originally going to have him "smell" Gwen in the climax in the lab to ferret her out in the animatics (he recognized her perfume) and it's totally stupid that once they dropped that they didn't use that explanation for Peter. Sloppiest writing ever.

[90scartoonman]

Arrow "Legacies" - I love the very grounded Year One approach this show is taking. A real life vigilante would only have a single target and then that's it, right? Well, Oliver has multiple, so he has to keep going out and hunting down the men on the list. He was so obsessed with that, why should bank robbers cross his mind? It's great that they actually took an episode to address that fact

[mattzimmer]

Arrow: Fair enough. I'm just surprised it never DID cross his mind.

Grimm: THERE'S a silver lining for ya! :)

The Simpson "Penny Wiseguys": Best guest star in years. By far.

Family Guy "Yug Ylimaf": The only reason I can think of is that reboots are all the rage these days. Even Matt Groening threatened one for Futurama when it returned.

Family Guy "Joe's Revenge": Sometimes the simplest approach is the best.

American Dad: Remember the episode of Lost where Charlie found that small plane crashed in the jungle loaded with Virgin Mary statues stuffed with herion that turned out to belong to Mr. Eko's dead brother? The plane crash in the forest reminded me of that.

Parks And Recreation: It truly does. And you KNOW the writers would do it too. Leslie is an equal opportunity suck-up (see the picture of Sarah Palin next to Hillary Clinton in the early episodes).

[90scartoonman]

Family Guy "Yug Ylimaf": The funny thing is, it'd be impossible to tell what's been rebooted unless there's a MAJOR change to the show. I remember people thinking it was going to happen during "Stewie Kills Lois", but nope.

American Dad: Oh yeah, I see it now.

Parks And Recreation: Yeah, they would've.

[mattzimmer]

Family Guy: True, true.

Parks And Recreation: It's been hinted at that Leslie is a Democrat but the writers do her a real disservice by always having her be wowed by Republicans too. Just because someone is IN Government doesn't mean they are good for it. Since Leslie believes in Government so strongly they shouldn't have her looking up to people who want to drown it in a bathtub.

[90scartoonman]

The Amazing Spider-Man - Waited for this to come out on DVD too, and I don't regret it. Here's the weird thing, I like taking things on their own rather than compare them to other things, but in this case, comparing it to Raimi's first film actually makes me go EASIER on this film and the unnecessary changes it made to the Spider-Man story (if this came out first, I'd be PISSED there was no Jameson, but I understand them not wanting to use him because of how awesome Simmons was). I still like Spider-Man and Spider-Man II much better than Amazing Spider-Man, though. I found this movie hard to get into, and while the cast is strong, I actually had a similar problem that you had with Spectacular Spider-Man, in that I felt this Peter Parker was too selfish and even when he was standing up to Flash, it's not as though he himself were directly bullied. And Spider-Man was almost a non-entity, whereas in the Raimi film, he was a clear presence among New York everyone was talking about. Maybe it just took too long for him to get his

[mattzimmer]

Simmons was the best portrayal of Jameson of all time. He is the only version of Jameson I actually like. The character is usually destestable. And yes, there was more than a little Spectacular Spider-Man selfishness to Peter here. You make excellent points about when and where that happened in the film.

I don't think the dual identity thing was even on the film's radar. It was an interesting choice but I don't think they botched it because they never even really attempted it.

Flash was one of the best things about the movie. I did NOT know he was the best man at Peter's wedding. THAT is awesome.

I don't even understand WHY they have to kill Gwen. They took LOTS of liberties with her in this film. Why should they even HAVE to kill her off?

Spider-Man 3 wasn't horrible. It wasn't as good as the first two movies but it wasn't terrible, just so-so.

Agreed about the camera.

[90scartoonman]

Another thing about the changed origin I didn't like was there was no abuse of power. In Raimi's film, when Peter gets his powers, the first thing he does is try to cash in on it, and that SAME night, he does the irresponsible thing and doesn't use his powers to stop the guy who eventually killed his uncle. In TASM, the spider powers weren't a factor, and Peter doesn't really seem affected by the spider bite one way or another until Ben's death

[mattzimmer]

I also hated how Uncle Ben never outright said "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility". What were they thinking when they left that out?

I just don't see WHY Gwen has to die. The films and cartoons take liberties with comics all the time. Why not about this?

Excellent summary of Spider-Man 3's problems but I STILL liked it better than this film.