The Amazing Spider-Man

I'm about as big a fan as Spider-Man as they come. I've read close to every issue of Spider-Man ever published. Not just The Amazing Spider-Man comic, but also the various other titles, Spectacular Spider-Man, Web of Spider-Man, blah blah blah. As a kid, my mom had my uncle paint a picture of Spider-Man on my bedroom wall. It was awesome.

When Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man movie came out a decade ago, I saw it three times on opening weekend. I know it was a flawed movie, but Sam Raimi got so much right, and even more right the second time around. Well, I guess I feel the same way about Marc Webb's reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man. Despite many plot holes and flaws in the narrative, he got a lot right, including some things that Raimi didn't. And I hope this movie might pave the way to an even better sequel.

The broad strokes of the origin have stayed the same: Peter Parker is a quiet high school kid, who gets bitten by a spider in a science lab that imbues him with spider powers. He is inspired to fight crime when he loses his Uncle Ben through an act of his own negligence. There are some slight alterations, but for the most part, nothing too surprising happens. Now Peter's parents are involved in his origin. His father's work as a scientist is somehow tied to his powers. How, we don't know yet, I suppose it will havve to wait until the sequel.

What I really liked about The Amazing Spider-Man was the cast and their performances. Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker/Spider-Man isn't much like Tobey Maguire's at all. I like aspects of both of them. Garfield's is a little more believable as a high school teen, rather than Maguire's more dweeby, classical geek. He's a lot more angsty and, you know, going through teen things. In fact, he stays a teen all the way through the movie, unlike the Raimi version, who is done with high school within the first hour of the first movie.

Emma Stone plays Peter's love interest, Gwen Stacy. I was worried she would just play the role as Mary Jane with blond hair, but she did great. She was Gwen Stacy. She even looks like an old John Romita drawing. She and Garfield were great together, and by the end of the movie, I was totally into the romance between the two of them. One of my favorite scenes was when Peter fumbles through asking her out on a date.

Martin Sheen and Sally Field play Uncle Ben and Aunt May. They get a lot more screen time this time around, which I thought was nice, because they both do great. Denis Leary is really good as Captain George Stacy, Gwen's father, a cop on Spider-Man's trail. Rhys Ifans' Curt Conners/The Lizard is adequate, but from what I've seen online, his character suffered a lot of cutting and re-editing.

Some things I didn't like as much as Raimi's version. Obviously, the familiar origin scenes didn't feel very fresh the second time around. There's no real sense of awe or excitement in the web swinging, since we've already seen it so much before. I preferred Raimi's bright color scheme and comic booky, more comedic tone. I don't mind the slightly more muted, realistic take on the world, though. They've done it both ways in the comics over the years, and there's room for both in movies too.

There are also too many ticking digital clocks in the movie's finale. That's par for the course for this kind of movies, I guess, but what really bothered me was the lady's voice on the computer telling us how much time is left. The lady announcing how much time is left at the very end seemed especially forced, as it was coming out of some device that The Lizard rigged together. Why would he give it that voice?

During the credits, they try to do the post-movie sequel tease now expected at the end of superhero movies. When done correctly, like all the Avengers teases, they get everybody talking. (OMG THAT'S NICK FURY!) (THOR'S HAMMER!) (THANOS!!!) But this one doesn't work at all. I won't spoil it, but it's nothing very interesting, so, you know, don't get your hopes up for that post credits scene. I guess we'll just have to rely on the actual movie's merits to get us excited for a sequel.

As for the complaint that it's too soon for a reboot, I suppose that's probably true, but they tend to update and retell the origin in the comics every decade or so, too. There have been a lot of different versions and takes on Spider-Man over the years in all kinds of different styles, and this is just one more. I can live with it.

Overall, I thought The Amazing Spider-Man was pretty good, but not as good as the Raimi movies when they were at their heights (half of part 1 and all of part 2). The cast really elevated this movie for me. I'll be happy to watch Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Sally Field in future installments, and I look forward to meeting the new Mary Jane Watson, Norman and Harry Osborn, and maybe J. Jonah Jameson. There's a lot of groundwork in place for them to knock it out of the park next time. I hope they pull it off.

The Avengers

I have been waiting four years for this. Marvel Studios announced the Avengers movie the Monday after the first Iron Man came out in 2008. Heck, they announced it even earlier by putting Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury at the end of the credits. Now four years later, having seen The Avengers, I can't believe they not only pulled it off, but knocked it out of the park.

Admittedly, I'm a lifelong comic book reader, so I don't know how that colors my opinions. I'm also a part of the cult of the movie's writer/director, Joss Whedon, whose career I've been following since the first episode of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show aired when I was in 9th grade. The Avengers was pretty much made for me.

But Marvel and Whedon didn't just target the nerds with The Avengers. They crafted a giant event film for the largest audience possible. An event film that truly feels like an event. Not since the Universal monsters started meeting Abbott and Costello has a studio so successfully combined characters from four separate movie franchises into one movie.

For those of you that live in a cave, The Avengers is the story of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and The Hulk all team up to defeat a world-threatening evil. Rounding the team out are superspy Black Widow, crackshot archer Hawkeye, and Nick Fury, the morally ambiguous director of SHIELD, a global peacekeeping organization.

The Avengers are not well known for how well they get along. These guys have big egos, and wildly clashing personalities. Part of the fun in the first half is watching the good guys duke it out with each other, in basically the most epic pissing contest in cinema history, before things start going crazy in the second half and they have bigger fish to fry.

The second half is where The Avengers really takes off. It's a slow build, but once the last 45 minutes come along and the heroes battle an alien army, ravaging New York City in the process, the movie provides one huge crowd pleasing moment after another. I think just about every thing you ever wanted to see done with these characters is done.

Joss Whedon is a lifelong fan, too, and he understands what we, the viewers want to see, and he delivers it with wild abandon. The characters are imbued with all the complexity and humanity that made them endure in the first place. Downey Jr. shines as always as Tony Stark/Iron Man, and the Chrises Evans and Hemsworth bring it with Captain America and Thor. Scarlett Johannson gets a whole lot more to do this time around as Black Widow, the spy with Red in her past. But the characters who stole the show for me were Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner/The Hulk, finally done right in a movie, and Tom Hiddleston's Loki, the perpetually monologuing, pompous Norse God of lies and mischief.

Also, did I mention the movie is extremely funny? The dialogue is endlessly witty, and there are several big comedy moments throughout. The audience laughed more at The Avengers than a lot of comedies I've seen.

I could go on and on and on about The Avengers, but I feel like I would be in danger of falling into one of those "and the part where this happened... and then the part where THIS happened..." situations, where I just list everything. I loved it. And I don't think you need to know the comic books to love it too. The Avengers is a real-deal phenomenon.

Captain America

It's been a long summer of event movies, and at this point, I have to say, I'm kind of sick of them. Event movie fatigue is the summertime equivalent of seasonal affective disorder. Among those event movies (a few of them were pretty good), were many superhero movies. First up was Thor, which I thought was a lot of fun, if maybe a bit brainless. Then came X-Men: First Class, which I thought had some really cool stuff, but maybe turned on the nitpicky part of my brain too much. Then came Green Lantern, which was, frankly, a piece of crap.

And so ends this summer's superhero season, not with a whimper, but with a bang. Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel Studios' second entry of the year, is their strongest entry since the first Iron Man. It manages to break a little from the mold of the superhero origin story, tell a crazy sci-fi WWII period piece, and set up next summer's Avengers movie, all the while never losing track of the characters.

Captain America is Steve Rogers, who starts the movie as a skinny kid from Brooklyn, too sickly to serve in the military. His perseverance and spirit is noticed by Dr. Erskine, a brilliant scientist who has developed a Super Soldier Serum and believes Rogers is the perfect candidate to try it. The serum works, but circumstances follow that Steve can be the only successful subject. Meanwhile, Johann Schmidt, AKA the Red Skull has gotten his hands on the Cosmic Cube, an Asgardian artifact that can power his Nazi war machines indefinitely and turn the tide of the war.

The movie is good-spirited, fun, and full of adventure, reminiscent of the Indiana Jones movies, which is no surprise, since the director is Joe Johnston, who actually worked on the Indiana Jones movie. Johnston is also no stranger to period superhero pieces; he directed The Rocketeer, another well regarded comic book adaptation.

Chris Evans stars as Steve Rogers/Captain America. He plays it with an old-fashioned pure-heartedness that is difficult not to be won over by. He doesn't want to go kill Nazis, he just wants to be of use, do his part. As lucky as he was in getting the Captain America treatment, you get the sense he would have been just as happy getting shipped overseas in his earlier, sickly condition. There's a great moment when he's at a theater watching a morale-boosting movie serial he's starring in with an audience of kids. You see this lovely, complex look on his face that shows a little bit of embarrassment at what he's been put up to, but also some pride that he still gets to serve his country in some small way. Evans pulls that kind of stuff off excellently.

Hugo Weaving is awesome as the evil Red Skull, playing it with a dead-on Werner Herzog impersonation, an absolutely inspired acting choice on his part. Besides Heath Ledger's Joker, he's easily the best villain we've seen in a superhero movie in quite some time. Definitely the best of the Marvel Studios series. It's so fun and easy to hate Nazis, and this guy is a crazy super-Nazi. His army has energy weapons that can disintegrate victims in a burst of blue light.

The cast is rounded out by several more colorful and interesting characters. Stanley Tucci leaves an impact as Dr. Erskine, a good man who gives Steve Rogers a moral compass to guide his actions by. Tommy Lee Jones gets a lot of great one-liners as Cap's commander. Toby Jones plays Red Skull's weaselly mad scientist lackie, Arnim Zola. Not to mention Cap's buddy Bucky Barnes, his unit The Howling Commandos, his love interest Peggy Carter, and Tony Stark's Howard Hughes-esque father, Howard Stark. Everybody in the cast has at least one good moment.

Captain America also is the final building block in Marvel Studios' ambitious plan of setting up The Avengers, and as such, there are crosses and references to the other movies. Howard Stark gets a great intro, mirroring a memorable Tony Stark scene in Iron Man 2. The Red Skull is on a hunt for an Asgardian artifact, referenced months ago in Thor. And if that little teaser after the credits doesn't get you pumped, I don't know what will.

A minor issue, early in the movie, is the special effect of putting Chris Evans' head on a skinny body. Half the time, it looks pretty damn convincing, but the other half, the head tilts in a slightly strange angle, or the shading seems a little wrong. Whatever it is, it was enough to pull me out of the movie a bit whenever my brain picked up on it.

So in conclusion, if you're going to see one superhero movie this summer, then this probably came along too late for you. But if you're not sick of them after three, then Captain America is worth your time, and will certainly wash away the stink Green Lantern left in your mind.