September 20, 2012

15 Things We Learn From THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN



Starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Campbell Scott, Martin Sheen, Sally Field. Directed by Marc Webb. (2012, 136 min).

1. In Hollywood, it is never too early for a do-over (just ask Universal Pictures, who ‘rebooted’ The Incredible Hulk (2008) only five years after their first franchise attempt, Ang Lee’s Hulk).

2. The fact that the director’s last name is Webb is an amusing coincidence.

3. Other than Ice Age, nobody still knows how to best-use Denis Leary in their movie.

4. Super-huge research corporations are willing to give complete access to their high-tech facilities to a high school girl who dresses like jailbait.

5. Emma Stone likely makes a lot of middle-age male movie-goers feel like dirty old men.

6. Someone must have passed a law requiring all Marvel Comics movies to include an ambiguous, sequel-teasing, post-credit scene (this must really piss off employees charged with cleaning up the theater after a show).

7. Sally Field is aging gracefully.

8. All muscled, blonde, spiky-haired jocks are dumb, violent & insensitive douchebags.

9. A middle-class emo kid can create high-tech superhero gear without spending their allowance.

10. Even though a super-genius scientist may be the smartest guy in the room, he will always make the worst, most-fatal decision of any other character in the movie. On a related note...

11. People get dumber with age, because The Amazing Spider-Man is another movie where only teenagers (those bastions of impeccable decision-making) can save us. The idiotic adults are too busy verbally berating these teenagers and later staring in dumbstruck awe as they do something heroic.

12. A sad fact, but legendary actor Martin Sheen is now best known to younger viewers as either Charlie Sheen’s dad, or the guy who voices Illusive Man in Mass Effect, not for his iconic roles in Apocalypse Now or Badlands.

13. Stan Lee is the Elvis of comic book creators, because at least where I saw it, everyone in the theater knew who he was, and his obligatory cameo the got biggest laugh in the whole movie.

14. Only in Spider-Man movies are the characters not completely-fucking-freaked-out by spiders.

15. We can envision the day when franchises are rebooted before the original film even hits HBO.

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