With great power comes great improbability....

[captainsblog]

....but who cares?

Em, Cam and I spent a couple hours of a steamy July afternoon watching Marvel inflicting a few more billions of damage on Manhattan. In the end, it got three spider-shooters up, although I have to admit that my brain was a casualty of the wreckage long before Liz Smith Ard wreaked the usual amount of havoc.



You know you're being asked to leave your cranium in a cubby at the door when you realize, under an hour in, that "high school student becomes superhero after being bitten by a radioactive spider" is only seventh or eighth on your list of disbelief-suspensions. Here was my count as of that point:

(1) Peter JUST HAPPENS to see the Oscorp internship gig announcement, placed by his late dad's partner/nemesis, just moments after the application deadline;

(2) Gwen JUST HAPPENS to be the older student in charge of the internship program, even though she's in a bunch of his classes and would, you think, be the same age (never mind that the couple played college-age people Skeeter Phelan and Eduardo Saverin in their most-famed prior roles);

(3) Gwen's father JUST HAPPENS to be the bleepin' Chief of Police and Spidey's instant nemesis;

(4) Uncle Ben JUST HAPPENS to die on the only vacant city street in Manhattan after being shot by the perp from Jay and Silent Bob's Quick-Stop, and Petey lets out his frustrations about this by screaming out into said street for help rather than using his mobile out of habit as any kid under the age of 25 would;

(5) The only character sympathetic to Spidey's plight JUST HAPPENS to have access to a crane, and a network of other cranes, enabling the final-scene rescue/destruction right after Our Hero's leg JUST HAPPENS to heal itself enough to jump across half, but only half, of a city block;

(6) Michael Bloomberg won't allow a trans-fat molecule or a 16-ounce pop within city limits, and yet he JUST HAPPENS to allow genetic experimentation to occur within a midtown skyscraper; and

(decide if this is outside canon or not)

(7) Peter's aunt JUST HAPPENS to be the fucking Flying Nun, which probably helped in those early unseen flight training sequences.

So, yeah, the bite comes in pretty low on the list, but as with so much of this genre, I didn't care. This rendition was truer and realer to the Stan Lee I remember from the 60s, and the snarky but cheap animation concerning it. Sam Raimi was too focused on the story being "all about a girl," which never rang right with me even when it was Tobey hanging upside-down over Kirsten; the responsibility was always more than the power of the love interest, which tends to happen when your enemies have multiple limbs and exploding charges and things other than Gwen's secret weapon of cramps....

which, btw, worked on her dad about as well as my daughter's work on me, so I related to that.



I like where it went, and where it left the potential to go. It didn't completely excise the story of the previous three- keeping Osborn as a potential threat, and the Bugle as a potential foil, balanced those nicely- but it established both Petey and Spidey as smarter, realer characters for what I expect will be a nice long ride.

As we left the theater, Emily gave it the biggest compliment an artist can: I heard her say to Cameron, Wow, I really want to draw him, now.

That makes your friendly neighborhood Daddyman pretty damn proud:)

Comments

[cinematixyz.livejournal.com]

I just read another review that said the film was doubleplus BOOOOO.

Z