Every Monday morning, InsidePulse Movies Czar Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings an irreverent and oftentimes hilarious look at pop culture, politics, sports and whatever else comes to mind. And sometimes he writes about movies.
The big story this week was the release of two big things for next summer’s re-launch of Spider-Man entitled The Amazing Spider-Man.
The poster came out as did the trailer, and the leaked version of it as well, and one thing has kept nagging at me ever since all of this. I ignored most of the pre-production and production stuff until now on anything other than a superficial level, like a “oh hey that’s nice” and then moved on, but now it’s out there officially. There’s no stopping the re-launch now, since now its being cut into a movie as opposed to being a film in production.
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Another Spider-Man?You can really ignore a film up until that point but once the trailer comes out it’s out there and you can’t anymore. Trailers in the modern era have gotten to a point where the quality is rather exceptional, even on bad films. Only horrid trailers will really stand out because it’s so much more slick and well-crafted than ever before. A bad trailer, like the one for Into the Wild (which was an insanely brilliant film, btw), is going to stand out more because nearly every trailer made now is so much more brilliant than it was even a decade ago. And watching the one for this newest Spider-Man take left me with a feeling I just can’t shake.
There’s no excitement for this franchise, at least for me, because no matter what they do they’re not really launching the franchise. They’re just remaking the first with a darker theme and new actors, nothing more and nothing less.
Heh heh
I think that’s the thing that’s keeping this film from having any sort of applicable buzz to it. We’ve seen this before; now it’s just Marc Webb trying to take Sam Raimi’s general template for a Spider-Man film and just throw some Christopher Nolan darkness onto it. That’s all. Take away everything and you have a talented director taking a great template and playing with it a bit, like when you open up something in Photoshop and mess with the colors. And there’s a really good reason for it.
We don’t want another examination of Peter Parker’s roots … and we don’t need it either.
The thing that made Batman Begins so refreshing, and why everyone wants to give their franchise that feel, is because it captured the essence of the superhero origin. Spider-Man had its own quirkiness to it in 2001 and it was a really good film at the right time. And the thing it got absolutely right was how it presented Peter Parker’s origins. There’s a twinge of darkness but Spider-Man isn’t about angst; it’s about choice.
The choice of the hero, more specifically.
One of the things about the original Spider-Man trilogy that made its way onto film is that it’s about the choice of the hero to be a hero, and the inherent loneliness therein. That’s what made each film so compelling in its own right; each time it is about a facet of the choice that Parker is making to remain Spider-Man. It’s the one thing that gives him a sort of uniqueness to the superhero landscape of cinema and why all three films still have something to say, story-wise.
Read up on Spider-Man News on the Comics Nexus.
The new Amazing Spider-Man is just revisiting old territory. Nothing is inspirational about it and it’s why my guess is that this film isn’t going to burn up the box office. It’ll be the first film that people really point to as the bust of the comic book film as blockbuster, mark my words, but it’s not because the genre is fading. It’s because the path the story is taking is the easy one when there are so many different ones that could’ve been taken that open up for some more nuanced story-telling the character could use. There are so many paths to take from a story-telling point that going back and re-visiting old & tried material just doesn’t inspire anything but contempt.
Where can you go from Spider-Man 3 to relaunch the franchise? Plenty of places, easy, and I am not exactly the most creative person on the planet. A couple things could’ve been much more interesting to contemplate as a film aficionado. We know how Peter Parker got his powers, and the moment of inspiration (for lack of a better word) that his Uncle’s death gave him, but what hasn’t been explored is what happens next. We’ve seen Peter Parker the kid struggle with his choice, but what about Peter Parker the adult?
There’s nothing like Slutty Spider-Man.
I can imagine if he’s 40, his body scarred and beaten from years of being New York’s hero, has changed his outlook on things and on people. Years of having the major newspaper of your town find ways to make you into Public Enemy #1 has to wear on the psyche. That Spider-Man, and more importantly that Peter Parker, would have something more to say about the superhero experience than the teenaged version could.
One of the things about Daredevil that was never touched on in the film was a scene early on. Daredevil comes in from a night on the prowl, bruised but not broken. As he listen to an answering machine message from a girl dumping in, he sort of limps over to an isolation tank. He pops some painkillers for the beating his body has taken and hops into the chamber, the only place where his advanced hearing is useless. He’s not the badass who stalks the streets; he’s the man in the mirror, for whom the violence has taken a toll on. That film may have had a lot of faults but the one thing it did well, but never fully explored, was the ramifications of that choice.
Mickey Rourke as an aged web-slinger? I’d pay to see that
This leads to another thought about where Spider-Man the film character could’ve gone. What about an aging hero, close to retirement, looking back on his life? One imagines Mickey Rourke as a 50 something hero, his body battered from years of patrols, looking back at the choices that took him there.
Looking back at the young Spider-Man again and again doesn’t inspire much because there’s only so many ways you can tell the same story. It’s an awful lot like a romantic comedy, with boy meets girl, but in this case its boy meets spider. We’ve seen it already and there’s nothing about this path that’s inspiring or engaging.
Random Thoughts of the Week
“This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper.” – T.S Elliot
This week the biggest news story to me wasn’t the Avengers trailer leaking or the fallout from Harry Potter’s finale. It was the announcement that Borders was going to be shuttering its doors forever, liquidating the rest of its assets and closing down the stores that once employed thousands worldwide. Amongst those used to be our very own Mike Noyes, oddly enough, many years ago.
One of his former colleagues has written a book on it, so check this out. In some time it’ll be more nostalgia then current events, I guess.
One thing has been stuck in my craw ever since Borders announced its demise. It started with the denouement of Blockbuster as a video store franchise a while back but didn’t really sink in until Borders announced it was going away. And Barnes & Noble will probably be next, too, but they’ve been smart enough to run a successful business so far. But it’s only a matter of time before they go away, too, or become much more of a book store than a full media store. And it comes down to one thing.
In less than 10 years, the way people will discover movies is going to be radically different than the way many of us grew up doing.
In fact it’s probably going to resemble the way the music industry has changed after Napster accelerated the downfall of the record store, another relic of another time. It may seem a bit dated to remember the days of places like Tower Records but there was seemingly always a Tower Records near a Blockbuster (or any other sort of chain video store franchise). They came hand in hand, it seems, and they were always near a mall or in a strip mall of their own. It was a slice of Americana that’s disappearing.
John Cougar Mellancamp sang about small towns, et al, and there’s something about that song that still resonates with a lot of people who didn’t grow up in massive cities. For me that song always reminds me of the local video store, which was a Blockbuster growing up, and the joy of aisle-surfing.
Behold the power of the film aisle
Aisle-surfing is the time honored tradition of wandering up and down the aisles, looking for something that stands out that you’ve never heard of before. Usually it’s because you’re with someone else and they’re looking at crappy films you don’t like, like an ex of mine did constantly, or you’re looking for that one to get the special deal. The special deal is why you come there, usually. What’s the special deal?
Any reasonably video store has like a “rent three, get one free” or some sort of discount deal to get you to rent more than normal. Kind of like how Blockbuster used to do the five DVDs for 20 dollars deal, so you’d find four you liked and threw something in there so you weren’t paying full price. It’s how my friend Nick the Stand Up found something called Mexican Werewolf in Texas, which I thought was a joke until I went online. It’s an actual film with a trailer and everything.
So yeah … the small video store that used to be on my college campus had like five VHS tapes for 10 bucks back in the day. That was a great special deal and we used to aisle surf to find that one remaining film to throw in the four we wanted to see. I’d rather rent something bad and pay 10 bucks instead of renting four and paying full price.
Every cinephile will admit to doing this when finding movies. If you didn’t you don’t love film … or you’re going to be in the next generation that discovers films via NetFlix, Hulu, and online exclusively. You really don’t do that it in a Best Buy, which doesn’t have massive stocks of films from all over. It’s a big box store and occasionally you find something off the beaten path but let’s face it; finding something that’s a cult or foreign film is much tougher than a Saw sequel. Same with Target, et al, so it’s not like I’m singling out the Best Buy franchise here. It’s rare to aisle-surf there because you know what’s going to be there day after day; 99% is studio stuff with recognizable stars, the other 1% is a combination of fitness, UFC and WWE related DVD titles.
That’s the thing that intrigues me and I think will be one of the next big generation gaps. How we discover film is going to be so much more different than we used to. And I think being a film fan is going to change too, at least in how we discover film. I think we lose something this way, by not being able to physically handle a film before we opt to watch it. There’s something to be said about seeing box cover art in person, as opposed to looking at whatever online service or website is showing.
There’s something to surfing that aisle, to see if they have something you’ve never heard of or isn’t in print for sale anymore, that can’t be duplicated I think.
A Movie A Week – The Challenge
This Week’s DVD – 12 Rounds
How far can you get to ripping off a film without officially being a remake? That’s what 12 Rounds wants to do with Die Hard with a Vengeance and, to a lesser extent, Speed.
Danny Fisher (John Cena) is a New Orleans cop who lucks into bringing down an international arms dealer (Aidan Gillen) almost by accident. Also an accident is the man’s girlfriend being run over by a truck, which he blames on Danny. A year later he escapes from prison and carries out an extraordinarily complicated plan to torture Danny by kidnapping his girlfriend (Ashley Scott) and making him do tasks or else she dies.
It’s pretty much Die Hard with a Vengeance but with a pro wrestler instead of John McClane and a lot crappier storyline. You’d think Renny Harlin, who directed Die Hard 2, would’ve picked a better Die Hard sequel to rip off than the one that had Jeremy Irons in it. I mean he directed the second best one in the series AND The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, for the love of pete.
It is fairly perfunctory and not a bad waste of a couple hours. There are better wastes, but you can still look yourself fin the eye afterward.
Slight recommendation.
What Looks Good This Weekend, and I Don’t Mean the $2 Pints of Bass Ale and community college co-eds with low standards at the Alumni Club
Cowboys & Aliens – Aliens invade the Old West. Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig fight back.
See It – The man who would be the American James Bond and … well … the current James Bond fight aliens? Count me in.
The Smurfs – A big screen, live action adaptation of the Communist cartoon of the 1980s
Skip It – Instead of seeing this film, go get yourself a Smurf, load it up with some Smurfs, and then pull the trigger so you can Smurf your brains all over a bathroom stall. That’d be more productive than watching this film.
Crazy, Stupid, Love – Ryan Gosling goes from womanizer to man in love. Steve Carell is doing the opposite.
See It – Carell is always good for a quirky comedy every other year or so and this has just the right cast to be amusing on some level.
Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings his trademarked irreverence and offensive hilarity to Twitter in 140 characters or less. Follow him @MMCritic_Kubryk.
