Thursday, July 21, 2011

Spider-Man: Turn Off The Film



With Captain America just a few days away, it is the perfect time for the other comic books to knock the wind out of the patriot's sails. There's the new Batman trailer, where nothing happened. There's the new Walking Dead trailer, where nothing happened. And there's the trailer after Captain America, which actually has some excitement. I won't spoil it for you, but if you want to know simply tune in to any other website on the internet. Now we have the first full trailer for the Spider-Man reboot, which has just slightly more than nothing happening.

Now the other Spider-Man films - all three of them - are great movies. I understand there were some problems with director Sam Raimi and the studio, and that Tobey Maguire and Kristen Dunst aged about 30 years between films (and still couldn't find any chemistry), but it seems like those are easy things to fix without remaking the entire franchise. Replacing an actor mid-series isn't the end of the world (it's actually pretty common in super-hero movies) and as long as they are good, nobody except idiots would complain. Then they can still work with the established franchise.

I just hate the idea of reboots, so maybe that alone killed this trailer for me. But the trailer being god-awful sure doesn't help. Watch it if you dare.    


Spider-Man is without a doubt one of the most fun and light-hearted comics out there. This is the exact opposite. Strike one: Why does this look serious? I hate throwing the term "emo" around (maybe because I love Rites of Spring and so many other old DC bands, but they all got mixed in with all the crappy MTV-emo bands in the mid 2000s, but that's a story for another day) but this looks insanely emo. The bad kind. One of the biggest complaints of Spider-Man 3 was how it was super emo (less so than the other two, but that's another story for another 'nother day), so what better way to start off a fresh start reboot than by going back to the old films.

Strike two, why are his parents there? Amazing Spider-Man is on issue magic number 666. In all those years, his parents appeared about four times, usually as a robotic decoy. While I don't care how they stick to the comics, Peter Parker having no parents plays a much larger role. It is a common writing strategy to not give the hero any parents (see Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Frodo, Dorothy, and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) to make him more disconnected from his or her surroundings and more relatable to the viewers. It also gives the hero a reason to leave home and begin the adventure. However, everything about this trailer says his parents leaving play a large part of the story. It is just going to bog the film down.

Strike three, what is with that action scene? I guess we should be grateful there actually was an action scene, but that was ripped directly out of Mirror's Edge. Except with worse CGI (must have been the Wii version). Are all the Spider-Man scenes going to be in first person? Or was that just a quick teaser they whipped together? While it sure didn't make me want to see, it got me in the mood to play Mirror's Edge again. This may even be a good enough excuse for EA to finally make a sequel.

For now, I'm not going to look past the trailer (I have too many bad things to say about the film's exclusion of J. Jonah Jameson), but something tells me we may be seeing a second reboot in the near future. We still got a year till its release, so maybe they can fix it still. Until then, the only thing we can take solace in is there is no way this turns out worse than the Spider-Man Musical.



Right?

11 comments:

  1. There's no J. Jonah Jameson!?!?!?! Blasphemy.
    I agree with your sentiments. The trailer looks awful. The effects on the one action scene were so cartoonishly bad it's like something from a SyFy channel movie, like Sharktopus. Looks like they "Green Lanterned" Spidey (bad costume, bad effects, ho-hum story) but without even a giggle. And they're going heavy on the origin, as though we don't all know it? If the director/writer says something about "the hero's journey" or "New York is a really a character" then we know the movie is in serious trouble.

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  2. I thought they were just replacing Spidey, didn't know they were doing a reboot already. Not looking forward to this at all.

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  3. I never let a trailer ruin a movie for me, I always try to avoid seeing those little spoilers.

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  4. well, lets see what the movie will be ;)

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  5. I immediately thought "emo" as well. I think that scene of him in class, dressed in a black hoodie and leaning protectively over his work is what really did it.

    Even though I haven't played a lot of Mirror's Edge that trailer made me think of the game right away. It really does look a trailer for a similar game instead of an integrated part of the movie.

    As a girl though at least I can say "Well, at least this Spidey is cuter."

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  6. I actually think this looks better than the Sam Raimi ones.

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  7. I just don't understand how anyone in hollywood can justify rebooting this franchise. It literally just came out. The movies are not even cold. Crazy.

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  8. no dont like it:P hahaha!
    thanks for the comment again love

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    www.mirfashion.blogspot.com

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  10. Get out the sticky tape and the glitter glue and make it work Hollywood.

    ...as if.

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