Amazing Spider-Man 2: Yes, You Can Reasonably Make an Electric Boogaloo Joke

1. Some quick reflections on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 following...
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

But TL;DR? ASM2 wasn't very good. Looked pretty, though.

And that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are so good on screen together? They should hook up in real life, or something. And that's all the good, right there.

2. There's a vague 'hope' theme in Amazing Spider-Man 2, which could've been subtitled ASM2: Unrelentingly Hopeless.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

Seriously, this is an unerringly dank and depressingly film. And in the moments where it's not? It's just wrong. Having Peter bound up to the stage, with all this attitude and swagger, and then kiss Gwen in front of everyone? You can call that guy Peter Parker, but that's not Peter Parker.

3. I say "vague theme" of hope because it's hilariously forced. Gwen uses it in speech, Peter muses about it, Harry uses it mockingly.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

I mean, it's also about responsibility and doing the right thing because you're screwed either way. Or, at least, that's what it's about when Peter Parker is recognizably Peter Parker. Which he wasn't. So it really wasn't about those things. It was about "hope". Except, like I said in that tweet, it wasn't really about that, either. Even though it claimed to be.

4. But Harry's right. There's nothing hopeful about this movie. It opens with a death & there are two deaths in the climax. Sooo much dying.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

Arrgh. Sooooo miserable. Who did they make this for? People who thought that The Dark Knight was too much fun? Who wished that Spider-Man's battles should probably be as needlessly destructive as Superman's in Man of Steel?

5. And where's the redemption angle? Spider-man baddies are tragic, bad guys by circumstance who can be redeemed. No hope for that, here.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

6. Electro's heel-turn happens instantly & without a clear reason. Harry's is rushed & has no impact, since we met him just 20 minutes ago
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

Electro is up there with Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face for Absolute Worst Super-Villain in a Film. Remember this?:

Electro is a clownish, unbelievable character (is he some kind of thinly veiled shot at Spider-man fanboys? could it actually be any more mean-spirited?) with an equally unlikely transformation into Spider-man's biggest enemy.

And Harry? The less said, the better. There's just nothing there. He gets an intro, a meeting, a conversation with Peter, a conversation with Spider-man, and then he turns evil. And that sounds like a lot, but it's pretty much 5 minutes in total. And do we even have the chance to care? No, no we don't. Because the Peter and Harry relationship is built on their memories of stuff that we never saw and comes as a complete surprise. But we're still supposed to feel something when Peter refuses to help him and Harry gets really, really, unreasonably angry?

7. On the bright side, Aunt May and Gwen supply great characters & performances. Strong (Gwen leaving), subtle (May knows!) & sympathetic.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

Who's the real star of this franchise? Sally Field. I mean, Garfield and Stone are good when they're given very little to work with - the story is awful, and Peter is just awful, so it works best when they aren't trying to advance the story - but Sally Field is great and Aunt May is great.

8. Naturally, then - spoilers! - one of them has to die. Because the male hero needs motivation & they exist for him. Sigh.
— Neil Shyminsky (@neilshyminsky) May 6, 2014

Sigh.

Andrew Garfield on Spider-man, me on Garfield's portrayal of Spider-man

This is what Andrew Garfield recently said about Spider-man and how he needs to be updated in order to remain relevant. Good points, all of them:

"...what I believe about Spider-Man is that he does stand for everybody: black, white, Chinese, Malaysian, gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender. He will put himself in harm’s way for anyone. He is colorblind. He’s blind to sexual orientation, and that is what he has always represented to me. He represents the everyman, but he represents the underdog and those marginalized who come up against great prejudice which I, as a middle-class straight, white man, don’t really understand so much. And when Stan Lee first wrote and created this character, the outcast was the computer nerd, was the science nerd, was the guy that couldn’t get the girl. Those guys now run the world. So how much of an outcast is that version of Peter Parker anymore? That’s my question."

 
If you've read my blog at any length, you'll know that I'm in complete agreement with a lot of this. The superhero-as-outsider metaphor has always been a bit of a stretch, given that most of the heroes are themselves white men, and that the outsider who identifies with Spider-man or the X-Men is often still white, male, middle-class. But it's become additionally problematic recently, what with the mainstreaming of super-hero culture and the generally increasing economic and political clout of geeks.

In short, Spider-man's ability to represent the underdog or the marginalized, while always a bit suspect, has become pretty much an impossibility.

The irony in these comments, of course, is that Garfield's Spider-man is probably cooler and less marginalized than any other version we've seen in the comics or movies. This is a Spider-man who skateboards, who is snarky rather than awkward, and who just oozes hipster cool. If he's an outsider, it seems like he's an outsider by choice. So even if Garfield's words ring true, his performance seems to be moving in the total opposite direction.