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[191] Thwip thwip
So I finally got around to seeing The Amazing Spider-Man 2! And have thoughts?
Which is kinda surprising, in and of itself, I didn't have any real strong feelings about the first one one way or another. It was all right, and I didn't much think about it ever again after seeing it? But this one, man... I just don't know. For the most part, I felt the same about this one. Not a very good movie, but not terrible, and I enjoyed parts of it. But that ending, man. Or rather, one of those endings, because that was some serious Lord of the Rings style "oh my god, there's seriously more? how many times is it going to seem like the last scene?" going on.
Okay, first up, stuff I liked: Jamie Foxx! Completely unsure about how I feel about this weird take on Electro, but he fucking nailed whatever it was nevertheless, so great. The big action setpieces were a lot of fun, the whole Times Square sequence was phenomenal. Ummm, Garfield and DeHaan somehow having enough chemistry to make me buy their friendship in the... one scene they gave it? And of course COLM FEORE, MY MAN FOREVER. Seriously, back when he was rumoured to be playing Norman and then it turned out he was just some random dude, how could I have known that it would result in him getting twenty times as much screentime? Delightful.
Then there's the rest of it. I just don't understand this franchise? They straddle this bizarre line between not giving a shit about the source material (Electro, doing away with Norman entirely, Russian gangster Paul Giamatti and his pet transformer, etc. etc. etc.) and being really weirdly slavish to it (distancing itself from the original trilogy by having Gwen come first + web shooters, Richard and Mary all over the damn place, THAT FUCKING ENDING)? IT'S SO WEIRD, IDK. You can have movies that are relatively faithful to the comics and are amazing (the entire MCU), and you can have movies that don't give a shit about comic canon and are good on their own merits (the decent half of the X-Men films), but this strange half-and-half mush of faithfulness and random bullshit is just so odd to me.
But yes, anyway, there was way too much going on in that movie, and yet parts of it still managed to be aggressively boring and pointless, but whatever, if that was all there was to it, it would already be on my mind's backburner like the first one was. As it happens, though... I'm really fucking upset about Gwen dying?
WEIRD, RIGHT? IDEK. I always figured I'd be impressed if they did it when the whole Stonefield thing seems so bankable, but... fuck, that was terrible. Like, not the scene itself, that in a vacuum was quite well done, my heart was racing even though I knew how it was gonna end, but it was SO FUCKING POINTLESS? I just don't feel like it fit in with the rest of the movie at all? They beat Electro, it was big and climactic and satisfying, and then oooooh yeeeeeeah, Harry's a thing, too, we all forgot him in this jumbled mess of a film. And then this character that they've just spent two hours meticulously establishing as being smart and capable and useful and brave and chock-a-block full of her own agency gets snatched and damseled and killed.... why? The movie started with Peter being all "baaaaaaaw, I can't be with you because you might get hurt like ghost Leary, I must pull away" and then they worked through it and got over it and she proved herself and then.... NOPE, HE WAS ACTUALLY RIGHT ALL ALONG. GOSH, HOW VERY SATISFYING.
I don't thing it's as simple and dumb a matter as 'better fridge the love interest to angst things up'. Gwen dies because she dies in the comics. That's the only reason. This is just one of the random bits of canon they HAVE to be faithful to because The Night Gwen Stacy Died is just SO ICONIC, and how can they pass that up? Having a woman kick ass with science in the big final fight of your Spider-Man movie? That's cool. Having her be a co-lead in the franchise proper? Well, that's just not done. You couldn't possibly have her go to Oxford, have Peter go with her, and have ASM3 take place in England, because that would actually be unexpected and surprising, and if there's anything these movies are dead set against being? It's interesting and innovative (as further evidenced by that one "LOL A MILES MOVIE AS IF NEVER GONNA HAPPEN" interview that was just going around). So Gwen dies. Because she just fucking does, okay, read the damn comics. And ignore how hilariously different everything else is, SHE'S WEARING THE SAME OUTFIT, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?
Other than a big action scene featuring Richard Parker, of course, who WASN'T clamouring for that?
In conclusion: The strange crush that Saving Mr. Banks somehow gave me for B.J. Novak lives on, Gwen is dead, long live Gwen, and Menken is definitely gonna be the Vulture in the next movie, right?
HAVE A POLL! Seriously, you guys? A three-way tie already? Dice roll says we're gonna cast a spell.
Which is kinda surprising, in and of itself, I didn't have any real strong feelings about the first one one way or another. It was all right, and I didn't much think about it ever again after seeing it? But this one, man... I just don't know. For the most part, I felt the same about this one. Not a very good movie, but not terrible, and I enjoyed parts of it. But that ending, man. Or rather, one of those endings, because that was some serious Lord of the Rings style "oh my god, there's seriously more? how many times is it going to seem like the last scene?" going on.
Okay, first up, stuff I liked: Jamie Foxx! Completely unsure about how I feel about this weird take on Electro, but he fucking nailed whatever it was nevertheless, so great. The big action setpieces were a lot of fun, the whole Times Square sequence was phenomenal. Ummm, Garfield and DeHaan somehow having enough chemistry to make me buy their friendship in the... one scene they gave it? And of course COLM FEORE, MY MAN FOREVER. Seriously, back when he was rumoured to be playing Norman and then it turned out he was just some random dude, how could I have known that it would result in him getting twenty times as much screentime? Delightful.
Then there's the rest of it. I just don't understand this franchise? They straddle this bizarre line between not giving a shit about the source material (Electro, doing away with Norman entirely, Russian gangster Paul Giamatti and his pet transformer, etc. etc. etc.) and being really weirdly slavish to it (distancing itself from the original trilogy by having Gwen come first + web shooters, Richard and Mary all over the damn place, THAT FUCKING ENDING)? IT'S SO WEIRD, IDK. You can have movies that are relatively faithful to the comics and are amazing (the entire MCU), and you can have movies that don't give a shit about comic canon and are good on their own merits (the decent half of the X-Men films), but this strange half-and-half mush of faithfulness and random bullshit is just so odd to me.
But yes, anyway, there was way too much going on in that movie, and yet parts of it still managed to be aggressively boring and pointless, but whatever, if that was all there was to it, it would already be on my mind's backburner like the first one was. As it happens, though... I'm really fucking upset about Gwen dying?
WEIRD, RIGHT? IDEK. I always figured I'd be impressed if they did it when the whole Stonefield thing seems so bankable, but... fuck, that was terrible. Like, not the scene itself, that in a vacuum was quite well done, my heart was racing even though I knew how it was gonna end, but it was SO FUCKING POINTLESS? I just don't feel like it fit in with the rest of the movie at all? They beat Electro, it was big and climactic and satisfying, and then oooooh yeeeeeeah, Harry's a thing, too, we all forgot him in this jumbled mess of a film. And then this character that they've just spent two hours meticulously establishing as being smart and capable and useful and brave and chock-a-block full of her own agency gets snatched and damseled and killed.... why? The movie started with Peter being all "baaaaaaaw, I can't be with you because you might get hurt like ghost Leary, I must pull away" and then they worked through it and got over it and she proved herself and then.... NOPE, HE WAS ACTUALLY RIGHT ALL ALONG. GOSH, HOW VERY SATISFYING.
I don't thing it's as simple and dumb a matter as 'better fridge the love interest to angst things up'. Gwen dies because she dies in the comics. That's the only reason. This is just one of the random bits of canon they HAVE to be faithful to because The Night Gwen Stacy Died is just SO ICONIC, and how can they pass that up? Having a woman kick ass with science in the big final fight of your Spider-Man movie? That's cool. Having her be a co-lead in the franchise proper? Well, that's just not done. You couldn't possibly have her go to Oxford, have Peter go with her, and have ASM3 take place in England, because that would actually be unexpected and surprising, and if there's anything these movies are dead set against being? It's interesting and innovative (as further evidenced by that one "LOL A MILES MOVIE AS IF NEVER GONNA HAPPEN" interview that was just going around). So Gwen dies. Because she just fucking does, okay, read the damn comics. And ignore how hilariously different everything else is, SHE'S WEARING THE SAME OUTFIT, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?
Other than a big action scene featuring Richard Parker, of course, who WASN'T clamouring for that?
In conclusion: The strange crush that Saving Mr. Banks somehow gave me for B.J. Novak lives on, Gwen is dead, long live Gwen, and Menken is definitely gonna be the Vulture in the next movie, right?
HAVE A POLL! Seriously, you guys? A three-way tie already? Dice roll says we're gonna cast a spell.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4
Which spell will you use against the Master of Wolves?
no subject
or you know if we're playing that game I guess it's 'go back to ASM1, take the parents stuff outta that, add in Harry and MJ, lead onto there' and so there's no point.
But yeah, I got SUPER upset about Gwen dying, and so it was... effective? It was brutal. But then you're right, it's 'Peter was right the whole time' and Iiiii dunno, I just dunno.
movie should have been about the rhino, the best bits were about the rhino
i don't know how to segue into our attempt to befriend the master of wolves
no subject
SERIOUSLY. All the shit with him busting Max out and being abandoned, too, just the right mix of sympathetic and skeezy and then he gets all hardcore and waving guns but he never loses his attitude while he does it, HE WAS SO GOOD.
and then colm shot him up and he caught the lizard's case of looking-really-stupid-itis from the first movie, whups
But yeah, I got SUPER upset about Gwen dying, and so it was... effective? It was brutal.
Effective at PISSING ME OFF, MAYBE. But yeah, seriously, I really like the whole sequence on its own? Brutal and tense and beautifully shot/CGId/whatever, it just... didn't belong in this movie. Narratively, thematically, it didn't follow what we'd just seen at all, they didn't bother to set it up beyond her ridiculously foreshadowy speech right at the beginning. BLEEEEEEEEEH
but seriously, tattooed paul giamatti shooting shit up in a track suit is something that the world should be able to come together and embrace
i bet peter is shit at friendship spells
no subject
but i guess he makes enough charisma rolls for people to ignore the stalking
no subject
in terms of everything else, this sums it up pretty well: "but this strange half-and-half mush of faithfulness and random bullshit is just so odd to me. yeeeah.
no subject
it is possible i am reading too much into it >_> BUT she really was chekhov's refrigerator from the moment she was cast, it would have been so great and novel if they'd gone a different direction, and... nopers
and just
limping snarky war vet songwriting BJ Novak, it just... it did things to me, I can't explain it
no subject
no subject
Hollywood needs to stop fucking hiring Orci and Kurtzman.
They're all spectacle and no substance. The same plot points could ostensibly work if better handled, but this was an extremely poorly written script that functioned solely on the talents of its cast, and even then it faltered a lot. They wanted to play with Peter's guilt and then absolve him of any wrong-doing. They wanted to kill off Gwen because they knew it had to happen, but they refused to commit to it, so that the impact for me comes mostly from being furious at how poorly it was handled. They wanted dramatic themes but they didn't want to build it into the story. They wanted betrayals and parallels, but they didn't want to spend time fucking earning it when they could have a lame shiny fight instead. They don't commit, they don't plan, they don't earn their payoffs, they just shoehorn shit in to try and be dramatic, but the result is it's a lot of sound and fury that winds up not being very memorable. Or it wouldn't be except that I'm so annoyed by the whole fucking thing. And I'd probably be way less annoyed and more inclined to roll my eyes and write it off if I weren't so invested in Gwen.
Looking at the individual plot points on their own, it's not the best, but there were ways to make it work. They just refused to put in the effort, and instead you get a shoddy work full of plotholes and lacking in the emotional resonance it should have had. Also someone fucking explain to me how Felicia, who looks Harry's age, is old enough to be personal assistant to the CEO of a $200 billion corporation.
no subject
YEOP. Pretty much all of the parts of it I liked other than the shiny awesome action scenes were just "Jamie Foxx was great!" "Dane DeHaan was so good!" "COLM FEORE WOO" "Garfield and Stone's chemistry, goddamn!" None of it has anything to do with the film itself? And there's really only so much a talented cast can do when they're working with garbage, so.
I'm probably getting off lucky in that I've never been particularly invested in Spider-Man as a property, but as long as those two keep putting out those shiny glossy apple store action movies dressed up as Star Trek, MAN DO I GET IT.
Then again, I've never been particularly invested in Spider-Man, AND GODDAMN DOES THAT ENDING STILL PISS ME OFF ANYWAY. She was so gooooooood and her death contributed nothiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing because they set it up so crappilyyyyyyyy and these movies could be SO MUCH BETTER AND MORE INTERESTING THAN THEY ARE WHY UGH
but that would require not phoning shit in, so
no subject
I don't know how I got this invested?? I GENUINELY DON'T KNOW HOW IT STARTED. But I feel you, man. I still haven't seen the second Nu-Trek film, but as soon as the first one ended, I couldn't have told you what the plot was. And now Kurtzman's directing the third one and Orci is helming Venom. -_-
I'm reading a Spider-Gwen fic that's a movie-verse AU and I'm torn between excitement and being upset that we didn't get this girl to write the movies instead. Not even Spider-Gwen movies, just she has a better grasp of concept and characterization.
no subject