The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Release Date: July 3, 2012

With Spider-Man 3 not faring as well as the first two did, Spider-Man 4 falling apart, and Marvel making waves with their own films while taking back the rights to characters like Daredevil, Punisher and Hulk they had previously been licensing out, Sony were left in a tight spot if they wanted to keep the film rights to Spider-Man, one of their key money makers. The solution was to press the big red reboot button and start over with a younger, trendier Spidey.

Peter Parker lives with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, after his parents disappeared while doing mystery stuff that is mysterious relating to Oscorp. Peter is going through a phase of teenage acting out, but his heart is still in the right place, and he wins the affection of his classmate, Gwen Stacey. Peter finds out that his parents were doing mystery Oscorp stuff with Oscorp scientist, Dr Curt Connors, who works as Gwen Stacey’s boss. Peter helps Connors with his experiment to regenerate lost limbs, then sneaks off to a room with genetically modified spiders that give him spider powers after one of them bites him. Peter goes mad with power, and he starts acting out further now that he’s able to enact the revenge of the illogically cool and handsome nerd. Following Peter’s suspension from school after performing the Chaos Dunk (luckily, he doesn’t outlaw basketball or turn Michael Jordan towards the dark side) and leaving Aunt May to walk home alone at night, Uncle Ben calls Peter out on his recent douchiness, causing Peter to storm off in a strop and buy some milk. Bad news, he doesn’t have enough money to buy milk. Good news, the milk is given to Peter by the nicest mugger ever. Very bad news, the nicest mugger ever shoots Uncle Ben outside the shop.

Peter blames himself for Uncle Ben’s murder, and decides to get revenge by tracking down the nicest mugger ever and beating him up. Unfortunately, Peter doesn’t find him because every criminal in New York looks alike, since they’re all members of the Inexplicably Identical Individuals Gang, a clone army created by Oscorp in case HYDRA ever tries to muscle in on their territory. Police officer Captain Stacey, Gwen’s dad, is annoyed at Spider-Man for beating up thugs, and fills the J Jonah Jameson role of saying “Spider-Man’s a menace!” Meanwhile, Dr Connors turns into a lizard man after using lizard DNA in an experiment to regrow his lost arm. He also goes insane and makes a gas that will turn everyone in New York into giant lizards. (Couldn’t he at least wait a few months? They haven’t finished rebuilding New York after the Chitauri yet.) After being caught sneaking into Dr Connors’ office and finding a Lizard-Rat in there, Peter figures out that Dr Connors is the Lizard, and gets Gwen to make an antidote to stop the lizard gas. Spider-Man then weakens the lizard enough to give him the antidote and turn Connors back to normal, but not before the Lizard runs Captain Stacey through. Dammit man, he was only three days away from leaving the force!

After getting medical attention from being tossed around and such, Peter ignores Captain Stacey’s dying wish for him to stop seeing Gwen because neither of them are happy with it. Boy is that a decision he’s going to regret come the sequel… Meanwhile, Dr Connors is sent to prison because, as it turns out, the argument that you turned into a giant lizard doesn’t fly in court when charged with killing a man and attempting a terrorist plot. In his cell, he meets a mystery Oscorp man with a bowler hat.

Seriously? Never thought this guy would be in a Spider-Man movie. Couldn’t they have used Maleficent or Jafar or Captain Hook?

The big thing with this film is that it feels unnecessary. There were only ten years between the original Spider-Man and this reboot, and only five since Spider-Man 3, so the older series was still relatively fresh in the public consciousness, which makes this one seem rather cynical. Even then, Spider-Man has one of the iconic superhero origins, alongside Batman and Superman. Everyone knows Spider-Man’s origin, so did we really need to see it again? The first hour or so of the film is prone to give viewers déjà vu.. The most significant alteration to the origin is the mystery Oscorp stuff with Peter’s parents, which I wasn’t big on, to be honest. The main reason for that is that seemingly everything ties into Oscorp somehow, and it quickly goes into easy-to-mock tinfoil hat conspiracy theory territory. The bit about Oscorp’s clone army of identical criminals earlier on was a joke, but given all the other shady stuff relating to them, it almost seems worryingly plausible.

If in doubt...

Sadly, Uncle Ben’s death doesn’t work as well this time. The death happens immediately after Peter refuses to stop the nicest mugger ever, which was probably done to make him see his mistake sooner, but it backfires, as the scene is moved onto a busy street. It’s harder to blame Peter because there were plenty of other people on the street, and none of them tried to stop the mugger either. In the older films, Peter wasn’t there when the burglar shot Uncle Ben, there wasn’t anyone else around during the shooting, and there was some amount of time before then that Peter alone could have stopped the burglar without anyone else being there, so it falls a little flat in that respect.

For this film, Peter Parker gets a makeover. This time around, he’s significantly more trendy and very handsome. It’s hard to believe that he’s an unpopular nerd at school, since he skateboards in the corridors and everything. Cool kids do that, right? He’s also quite a jerk in this film, which is a surprise after the meek Tobey Maguire, who wasn’t half as much of a jerk, even with a jerkishness-enhancing black suit. Fortunately, the obnoxious behaviour is toned down later, as he grows as a character, but early on, he gives unwelcome reminders of Dante from the Devil May Cry reboot. To be fair though, he is more convincing as a teenager than Tobey Maguire was, which may be why he graduated from high school half way through his first film.

Nothing personnel, kid! #2Edgy4Me

Fortunately, there is something here that is better than in the original films. Specifically, the romance subplot. Peter and Gwen are a cute couple together, and her presence brings out the best in Peter, so he stops being a douche for a bit. It is clear that they both like each other, (then again, that could be because Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are a couple in real life, meaning that they probably weren’t acting in those scenes,) whereas in the earlier films, the love between Peter and Mary Jane sometimes came off as one-sided on Peter’s part, even when they were together. In addition, Gwen isn’t a damsel in distress, unlike Mary Jane who was frequently targeted by the various villains, and she even has a major role in the climax by going into Oscorp to make the antidote to the Lizard Gas, which is a lot more than Mary Jane ever got. Hooray!

Though the tone of the review may come off as overly harsh, The Amazing Spider-Man is an improvement on the disappointing Spider-Man 3, but it pales in comparison to most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Had it been released in the mid 2000s, maybe I wouldn’t be as harsh towards it, but the bar has been raised now. It’s not bad, but after The Avengers, not bad just doesn’t cut it any more.

Stan Lee Spotter: Stan Lee appears as a librarian during Spider-Man and Lizard’s fight at the school. It’s probably for the best that he doesn’t notice the chaos going on behind him.

Next Time: Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe begins.

The Avengers (2012)

The Avengers, or Avengers Assemble, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (2012)

Release Date: May 4, 2012

Here we are. The big one. Marvel’s plan of slowly building up their world and introducing the characters individually has advanced to the point where it’s finally time to bring everyone together for the big finale of Phase 1. As someone who had not seen The Avengers prior to this (An exclusive group consisting of myself and Kevin Robinson from school) I’m quite looking forward.

SHIELD is in possession of the Tesseract, previously seen in Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, and experiments are being run on it by Nick Fury and Dr Erik Selvig. However, Loki arrives, as he has finally found his way back to Earth after falling from the Bifrost Bridge. His adventure took in the Moons of Nibia, the Antares Maelstrom, Perdition's flames, the Phantom Zone, Pink Elephants on Parade and the opening credits of Doctor Who, so he’s had his mind expanded and been driven to madness. More importantly, he also met the Chitauri, an army of aliens who aim to take over Earth, and need the Tesseract to open a portal between Earth and their world. With that in mind, Loki takes the Tesseract, brainwashes Dr Selvig and Hawkeye to join him and destroys the SHIELD base.

Nick Fury brings Iron Man, Captain America and Bruce Banner together to find the Tesseract and get it back. The group, along with Black Widow, go to Stuttgart, having worked out that Loki will be there, and manage to defeat him, but the Tesseract isn’t there. On the way back home, their plane is attacked by Thor, who tries to break Loki out and take him home to Asgard. That doesn’t pan out, and Thor fights Captain America and Iron Man, though he is eventually convinced to let SHIELD take custody of Loki. This works to Loki’s advantage, as he tries to turn the Avengers against one another, which doesn’t prove particularly difficult between Bruce’s anger management issues, Iron Man and Captain America’s clashing personalities and Captain America finding out SHIELD wants the Tesseract so that they can upgrade HYDRA’s laser cannons from World War II. This culminates in an attack on the SHIELD Helicarrier by Loki’s minions that springs him free, (although Black Widow is able to defeat Hawkeye and remove his brainwashing), Bruce turning into Hulk and attacking Black Widow and Thor, Hulk and Thor falling from the Helicarrier, and Loki shanking Agent Coulson.

No sad music this time, because Coulson got better and got his own spin-off. Have happy music instead, since this is the happiest day of Loki’s life.

Dr Selvig builds a machine at the top of Stark Tower and uses the Tesseract to open a portal for the Chitauri to come through and invade. The Avengers, soon rejoined by Thor and Hulk, and with Hawkeye back among their ranks, valiantly hold off the hordes of aliens, but there are too many of them, and they keep on coming out of the goddamn walls. Hulk smashes Loki, and Black Widow breaks Loki’s control over Dr Selvig, who reveals that Loki’s sceptre can close the portal. In a display that gives the Elder Gods a run for their money in terms of mysterious councils who spend a long time doing nothing before pulling a dick move, SHIELD’s board of directors decide that New York is compromised and elect to nuke the site from orbit, despite Nick Fury’s protests. It’s the only way to be sure, after all. Iron Man is able to intercept the nuke and flies through the portal, using the nuke to set the Chitauri mothership up the bomb. Iron Man comes back through the portal just as Black Widow closes it, and the nuke blows up the mothership. Conveniently enough, the aliens all die because they have no chance of survive make your time. Later, the leader of the Chitauri discusses their failure with his boss, Thanos.

 Artist’s impression of my reaction toThanos. Not pictured: Dong Expanded to Feature Length.

We all love a good crossover. There’s just something irresistible about the idea of a group of characters we’ve previously seen separately come together for an adventure, seeing how they would get along with each other and what they would do together. It’s arguably part of why the likes of Super Smash Bros and Kingdom Hearts are so popular. In the end, we’re all just kids bashing our action figures together. While we had seen the occasional crossover in film prior to this such as Freddy vs Jason or Alien vs Predator, The Avengers is definitely the most ambitious in scope. We hadn’t seen anything like this before, and if the number of competing shared universe films going into production is anything to go by, Marvel struck gold. In my opinion, the key to that success was Marvel introducing the characters slowly and individually, letting audiences get to know them and want them to be brought together. After all, why bring everyone together if nobody cares? Also, the characters having already been introduced in their separate films lets it skip straight to the fun crossover interaction stuff. Another smart choice was to include supporting characters such as Dr Selvig and Pepper Potts, as it helps further the idea of all the characters living in the same universe, not just the major players being taken out of context to go on an adventure together.

The action is very fast-paced, which adds to the feeling of fun, as there is never a dull moment. According to the back of the DVD case, the film is 137 minutes, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. Since there’s so much going on, the time simply flies by. In fact, Thor doesn’t appear until 40 minutes in, and Bruce Banner first transforms into Hulk at the 75 minute mark, yet neither of these waits feel significant, instead serving to heighten the excitement when they finally arrive. In the case of Hulk, that’s quite a difference from his first film, where the 45 minute wait for Hulk felt longer, prompting much looking at watches and thinking about pressing fast forward.

The film is also surprisingly successful in managing to juggle so many major characters. Everyone gets to contribute something and gets a decent amount of screen time. Even Black Widow puts in a good showing, considering how easy it would have been to shaft her given that she has no super powers and didn’t get her own film, instead appearing as a supporting character in Iron Man 2. Admittedly, Hawkeye spends a lot of the film brainwashed as Loki’s minion, but he makes up for it somewhat in the big final battle, and he’s also been promised a bigger role in the sequel, so there’s that.

The star of the show this time is Loki. Tom Hiddleston puts in a great performance which makes Loki seem quite a bit more unhinged than in Thor, due to his intergalactic journey taking him off the deep end. There are times, such as the Mewling Quim scene, in which Loki comes off as genuinely scary, which is quite a surprise for a film like this. The new Loki is threatening enough that getting a group of heroes together, even though Thor defeated him alone before, is plausible. He isn’t even diminished by the end of the film revealing that he was working for someone even bigger and badder.

To summarise, The Avengers is an absolute blast, a big ol’ sugar rush of a film. It’s almost a shame that it has to end. Thank goodness there’s Phase 2 to look forward to. As the only person remaining who has not seen The Avengers, it sucks to be you, Kevin Robinson. Maybe I’ll lend you the DVD if you stop showing everyone my Deviant Art account.

Stan Lee Spotter: Stan Lee appears in the news montage at the end of the film. He’s sceptical of there being superheroes and aliens, or he’s annoyed at the newspeople distracting him from his chess game and is just saying anything to make them go away.

Next Time: Marvel’s most iconic hero swings into action.

…

Wait a minute. I’ve already used that clue. It seems I’ve been doing this long enough to need to recycle clues. Amazing, huh?

Bonus: The title was changed to Avengers Assemble for the UK release, in order to avoid confusion with 60s spy TV show, The Avengers. To be honest, I don't know how much overlap there is between fans of the two.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)

Release Date: February 17, 2012

Ghost Rider is back for another go with Spirit of Vengeance. This film is notable in that it’s a rather awkward not-quite-sequel, not-quite-reboot. Nicolas Cage reprises the role of Johnny Blaze and Ghost Rider, but the film doesn’t really follow up on the previous one, and even contradicts it at times.

A young boy named Danny, and his mother whom I will refer to as Rosemary are running away from Rosemary’s ex-boyfriend Carrigan, who goes beyond the douchebag waster boyfriend stereotype by being a Satanist drug and weapons dealer. As you do. Carrigan leads a group of the Devil’s soldiers on an attack of a castle where Danny and Rosemary are hiding. The two manage to escape, but the monks are killed. The only survivor, the alcoholic Moreau, recruits Ghost Rider to help get the boy to safety with another group of monks. He says if Ghost Rider does this, the monks will turn him back to normal.

Ghost Rider finds Danny and kills Carrigan’s goons, but then gets shot with a rocket launcher at point blank range. Carrigan escapes with Danny, and Rosemary reluctantly lets Ghost Rider and Moreau help her get Danny back. Meanwhile, Carrigan tells his boss Roarke (who is retconned as having turned Johnny Blaze into Ghost Rider, though he is implied to be Mephisto in disguise) that Ghost Rider can sense Danny, so Roarke whispers “Hail HYDRA” in Danny’s ear. This makes Danny undetectable. Unfortunately for Roarke, he should have whispered the stronger incantation “This is my swamp” to block Carrigan too. That oversight lets Ghost Rider save Danny and kill Carrigan. So, that’s that, right?

Not quite, the film’s only halfway through after all. Roarke revives Carrigan as the demon Blackout, who decays everything he touches, except steering wheels. And chairs. And doors. And his clothes. And the ground he stands on. I think I’m overthinking this, so I’ll move on. Ghost Rider gets Danny to Moreau’s other monks, led by Connor MacLeod/Raiden (Delete as appropriate), and turns Ghost Rider back to normal as promised. Unfortunately, as soon as Johnny Blaze returns, Connor/Raiden decides to kill Danny so that the Devil can’t have him. Honestly, Moreau should have seen this coming, as people in robes with writing all over their faces score at least an 8 on the Evil-O-Meter. Blackout arrives, takes Danny back and kills all the monks.

Our heroes follow the bad guys to Roarke’s evil lair, where he is in the middle of a ritual to take Danny, who is the Antichrist, as his new body and cause Hell on Earth. Kinda like what Blackheart Wiseau did, but with more being inside a 10 year old boy’s body. Johnny realises that this means Danny has all the powers of his dad, and tells Danny to turn him back into Ghost Rider. Danny finds memories of Johnny’s past life as Big Daddy, a vigilante who fought crime alongside his daughter before being burned alive by the Mob. These memories bring back Ghost Rider with more powerful blue fire, and he kills all the bad guys, except for Roarke and Blackout, who run away with Danny in tow. Ghost Rider follows, and Blackout gets run over by a truck. “Roadkill” Ghost Rider quips.

Ghost Rider makes Roarke’s car crash, then chain-suplexes him through the center of the earth back to Hell, which is pretty damn cool. Not quite as cool as squashing someone under a finger the size of a planet, but it’s certainly up there. Ghost Rider screams his song of triumph, but then finds out Danny died when Roarke’s car crashed. Whoops. Just as Rosemary gets ready to shout at Ghost Rider, he uses his blue fire to revive Danny. Ghost Rider then realises that, having turned back into Ghost Rider about 15 minutes after returning to normal, he wasted his wish, and he kicks himself since the monks are all dead, so he can’t ask them for a nacho hat instead.

Of all the films that have come up thus far, this one is probably the oddest, and since we’re nearing the end now, I don’t see much left to dethrone it. On one hand, Spirit of Vengeance is more gruesome and serious than the previous film, but on the other hand, it’s much sillier. There’s a tonal war between the two extremes. It’s mentioned that Ghost Rider is increasingly struggling to control his powers and eating souls for petty reasons, but it’s hard to take that seriously when it’s shown as Nicolas Cage alternating between screaming his lines and singing them. On the same note, Ghost Rider twitching about is less scary and more silly, like he’s humming his favourite song in his head. Ghost Rider’s new design leans towards the serious side, as this time his clothes and skull look tattered and burnt, which is an improvement on the glossy plastic look from last time.

The plot is rather similar to Elektra, and by rather similar, I mean almost identical to the point of plagiarism. I’m not going to hold it against the film, because it avoids Elektra’s biggest pitfall, taking itself too seriously. While the tonal clash remains, there is enough silliness to indicate that at least some of it was intentional in the sense of aiming for so bad it’s good, like the hell crane of doom, Ghost Rider spinning round in the air (right round like a record, baby) or Ghost Rider peeing fire, which is still more sensible than when Nightmare on Elm Street did it.

The villain is better this time as well. Even before becoming a demon with the power of decay, Carrigan is able to put up quite a fight against Ghost Rider as a mere mortal. He is also sufficiently douchey for us to believe that he actually poses a threat, which is more than could be said for Blackheart. He came off as a moody teenager throwing a temper tantrum and choosing to cause hell on earth instead of locking himself in his room writing depressing poetry on Deviant Art while listening to Evanescence.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is guilty of trying to have its cake and eat it too. One does not simply try to be so bad it’s good and taken seriously at the same time, and the film would have been better off choosing one approach and sticking with it. Having said that, there is something to be admired for swinging for the fences and going balls-out crazy over playing it safe like the bland original.

Next Time: It all comes together.

Bonus: The film rights to Ghost Rider reverted to Marvel in May 2013, but there are no plans to bring him into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the near future, since they’re booked solid through to the end of the decade. Ghost Rider for Marvel Phase 4 in 2022, anyone?

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Release date: July 22, 2011

Thor was a more risky proposition for Marvel than Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were, but the gamble paid off. Captain America presents a risk of a different sort. Would a film starring a patriotic all-American hero work, given that America isn’t exactly popular with other countries?

This time, we’re going back to World War II, and weedy little Steve Rogers is desperate to join the army and fight in the war, due to his strong sense of justice and dislike of bullies. He is scouted by Dr Erskine, a scientist who defected from Nazi Germany, and is chosen as the test subject for Erskine’s Super Soldier Serum. The serum amplifies a person’s nature as well as their capabilities, which explains why Bruce Banner turned into a big green rage monster, and why Emil Blonsky turned into Marvel’s version of Killer Croc. Cast in the name of God, Steve’s not guilty, and his kind heart results in him being chosen. The experiment is a complete success and Steve becomes buff, but a German spy kills Dr Erskine and destroys the remaining serum. Steve is able to capture the spy, who is revealed to be working for HYDRA, a rogue division of the Nazis led by Johan Schmidt, the Red Skull, which has acquired the Tesseract, a magical artefact native to Asgard (you may remember from the post-credits scene in Thor). The spy kills himself with a cyanide tablet before he can be interrogated. Meanwhile, the Red Skull has used the Tesseract to make disintegrator rays for HYDRA, and turns on the Nazis so that HYDRA can, you guessed it, take over the world.

Because Steve’s pursuit of the spy was seen by the public, he becomes Captain America, a propaganda character created to sell war bonds and raise morale. Cap eventually learns that the 107^th division has been captured by HYDRA, and because his friend Bucky was assigned to the 107^th, he decides to sneak off to rescue them. He succeeds, and in the process learns that HYDRA have several weapon factories. Several successful operations are launched to destroy them. Cap then leads an operation to capture HYDRA’s head scientist, Arnim Zola, while he’s on a train. The operation succeeds, but Bucky is knocked out of the train and seemingly falls to his death.

Zola’s interrogation reveals the location of Red Skull’s evil mountain lair, and Cap leads an operation to eliminate HYDRA once and for all. Red Skull escapes on his plane, loaded with bombs to destroy the world’s cities, but Cap is able to get on the plane before it leaves. During the ensuing battle, Red Skull holds the Tesseract and is consequently magicked away, but the plane is still on course to complete its bombing run. Cap sacrifices himself to fly the plane into the sea, and is frozen for 70 years, until SHIELD finds the plane in the present day and thaws Cap out.

Fortunately, he looks better than this when he's defrosted.

While Captain America could be described as a superhero film, a more accurate description would be a war film with a superhero in it. Like Thor, this different approach sets the film apart from previous entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and again demonstrates the franchise’s greatest strength: it can give each film a different tone in order to set each individual hero apart and prevent monotony from setting in. The period setting helps with this, as not being set in the present day like the other entries helps the film distance itself further and stand up in its own right.

Above, I alluded to a potentially hostile reception to Captain America as a character outside the US due to the patriotic concept of the character being potentially off-putting to those who are antagonistic towards America. Fortunately, this turns out not to be a problem. The creation of the Captain America character for the purposes of US propaganda during World War II is the ideal way of justifying the patriotism, as well as being a neat reference to the character’s real-life beginnings.

Decking Hitler in the schnozz, like a boss!

The setting provides a tonal shift to something like the film serials of the 1940s, or Indiana Jones for a more modern example, in which the difference between good and evil is clear: good is pure and incorruptible, while evil has no redeeming qualities. Red Skull is an entertaining pantomime villain, even if his shallow, one-dimensional villainy prevents him from being as captivating as Loki. Captain America is likewise portrayed as an absolute force of good that can do no wrong. This likeability makes him very easy to root for, as well as providing a nice contrast to Iron Man, Hulk and Thor, who are shown as being more flawed, though still good. This portrayal is faithful to the spirit of the Captain America character, and that is beneficial to the film.

Captain America may not threaten to be one of the best entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, feeling like it’s on a smaller scale, but it still provides a good time for those fancying a good old-fashioned Good vs Evil story. Besides, all the pieces are now in place for the Avengers.

Stan Lee Spotter: Stan Lee appears as a military officer at an awards ceremony Captain America doesn’t attend. Stan thought he’d be taller.

Next Time: