Review of Spider-Man (1977) by Logan A — 14 Feb 2016

This isn't a movie that exists to serve you, the audience, but so that Sony can maintain the rights to the Spider-Man license. It's the worst kind of corporate-driven design-by-committee type movie where creativity is not allowed and everything can be used to fuel sequels and franchises. Rinse and repeat. I write this review after the disaster of the sequel, so thankfully we know that Sony's plans failed, but it still makes me sad to look back and see what a godawful mess the first one turned out to be. What makes me sadder is how many people fall over themselves to defend this movie.

Let me start by saying that the two leads, Garfield and Stone, don't act anything like human beings. Garfield's Parker is a cypher for whatever cool thing the filmmakers try to make him be, whether it's a skater, a science nerd (an informed attribute at best), a jerkass one moment, an upstanding dude the next, or just a guy who uses Bing ($$$) to look up stuff about his parents. Oh yeah, Peter's dead parents are supposed to be important or something, but you probably don't care or remember. Stone's Stacy, like MJ Watson of the Sam Raimi trilogy, is the designated love interest, and she doesn't really do much beyond that. Say what you will about Kirsten Dunst's wooden performance as Mary Jane, at least her romance with Peter Parker played an important part of his dual life in the original trilogy.

The side characters aren't much better. Uncle Ben seems to only exist here because he's such an important part of the Spider-Man mythos. That doesn't mean much, because nothing he says or does has any impact whatsoever, not even his death, which should be really fucking important. But it just happens, and nothing ever comes from it. Peter Parker barely even reacts to it, and doesn't really change because of it. Aunt May says some stuff, but she doesn't matter. Denis Leary, who is too good for this movie, might be the one ray of light in this dismal wreck, but his one significant moment is undone at the end, leaving his part a disappointment. Then there's the villain, Dr. Kurt Connors. Seems like a decent guy at first, but when he turns into the lizard, he suddenly becomes evi for some reason, performing the evil plot of turning the rest of the city into lizards. *Yawn*.

Visually, it's also one of the worst looking big budget superhero movies I've seen. The Spider-Man costume is this ugly mix of metallic coloring and mesh texture, complete with these weird glowing sneaker pads on the bottoms of his feet. The Lizard is also awful-looking. Rather than a monstrous man-reptile, we get this ugly big guy who looks like he has an unfortunate skin condition. You'd think that with as much money Sony threw at this crap, they could hire some decent design artists and CG technicians. Or maybe they thought that a scientist who turns into an actual bipedal lizard monster was too preposterous for a Spider-Man movie. Whatever the case, it's an unfortunate missed opportunity.

When I was watching this movie, all I could think about was what it tried to be, only to come up short. It felt like it tried to be the Dark Knight Trilogy, but it doesn't understand how Christopher Nolan weaves themes and ideas into the characters and narratives. It felt like it tried to copy some of the Sam Raimi movies, but it didn't copy what mattered. It felt like it wanted to be like it wanted to be Twilight in order to draw in the profitable tween girl crowd, but no movie should aspire to Twilight. Aside from that last one, it's not wrong to copy other sources. Some do it amazingly well, such as Star Wars. However, it requires a creative team that knows how to copy the best parts and utilize them in such a way to make their own movie stand out. It also helps when the studio relaxes the leash a bit to allow for more liberties. Sadly, the elements in play come together in such a way that allows the filmmakers to only grasp at inspiration, but not take it.

The Amazing Spider-Man is not art. It is pure commercially driven studio bloat without any creative merit, save for a few select moments (the first-person web-slinging and wall-crawling come to mind). I only hope this serves as a lesson to filmmakers and studios in the future. You gotta have a good movie that sells well. Only then can you make a franchise.