“Where are you coming from, Spider-Man? Nobody knows who you are!”
So went the lyrics to “Spidey Super Stories” on PBS’ The Electric Company — possibly my earliest introduction to the web slinger, unless it was the 1967 animated series, which I watched in reruns every day. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know who Spider-Man was. Over the years I’ve seen him imagined and reimagined in different ways, and, for the most part, I’ve enjoyed them all, from the classic Marvel Universe comic books to the new Ultimate Marvel series; from the live-action 1970s CBS series starring Nicholas Hammond to the recent Spectacular Spider-Man animated series (one of my favorites).
In principle, I’m happy to see a new movie come along and put a new spin on my favorite superhero. I don’t think it’s “too soon” for a big-screen reboot or even a new origin story. I never thought the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire movies offered a definitive or perfect take on the character anyway. Spider-Man 2 achieved something like comic-book movie perfection, but the series’ interpretation of Peter himself could always have been better: smarter, more reflective, more decisive.
The Amazing Spider-Man has some good ideas in this direction. In some ways, it improves on the previous trilogy. With caveats, I generally like Andrew Garfield’s darker, more ironic take on Peter; it isn’t especially my conception of the character, but it could reasonably be someone’s conception. The awkward flirtation between Peter and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) is more emotionally fraught than the shallow romanticism with MJ in Raimi’s trilogy.
Martin Sheen is terrific as Uncle Ben (I like him at least as much as Cliff Robertson, though partly it’s a matter of writing), and Uncle Ben’s murder is cleverly restaged in a way that emphasizes Peter’s responsibility even more. Director Marc Webb (yes, Webb!) creates a few memorable images, some re-creations of comic-book art, others inspired by the hero’s arachnid iconography.
For all that, the new film bungles who Spider-Man is, where he’s coming from. This isn’t the only problem (there are notable issues around the plot and the interpretation of Spider-Man’s reptilian foe, the Lizard), but, for me, it’s the most intractable, because it undermines the hero’s moral center.
Here is the crux of who Peter Parker has always essentially been, at least in his origins: A brainy high-school outcast unexpectedly bequeathed with extraordinary powers, Peter initially uses those powers for personal gain — until the murder of his Uncle Ben at the hands of a thug Peter could have stopped but didn’t. Blaming himself for his uncle’s death, Peter learns a lesson his uncle tried to teach him: that with great power comes great responsibility. From then on, Peter seeks to use his powers responsibly to protect people generally. With his uncle gone, Peter’s Aunt May becomes an even more crucial figure in his life, and he worries over and cares for her in her widowhood even as he also draws inspiration from her strength of spirit.
The Amazing Spider-Man includes some of these key markers, from Peter’s brains and outcast status to Ben Parker’s murder. Yet Peter’s response to his uncle’s murder — the key turning point in the character’s development — is completely wrong. Instead of blaming himself, or resolving to use his powers to protect others, he directs all his wrath against the murderer, leading to an extended manhunt as Peter tracks down thugs who fit the general description of his uncle’s killer while showing no interest in other criminals.
I’m not against giving Peter a longer learning curve. I get that Peter’s vendetta against his uncle’s killer parallels his earlier retaliation against high-school bully Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka), over which Uncle Ben himself rebuked Peter. The problem is that the movie never gets where it needs to: At no time does the lesson of power and responsibility emerge in connection with Ben’s death.
Instead, Peter’s sense of responsibility emerges in connection with the Lizard — partly because no one else is in the Lizard’s power league and partly because (for reasons I won’t spoil) Peter blames himself for the emergence of the Lizard in the first place.
This is not dramatically equivalent to Peter blaming himself for his uncle’s death, for several reasons. First, the act for which Peter blames himself in connection with the Lizard is not an irresponsible or selfish act. There’s no way he could have foreseen the trouble it would lead to, whereas anyone could foresee that letting a thug escape could lead to further thuggery. Second, it is not a failure to use his powers that Peter blames himself for here. It is crucial to who Spider-Man is that a failure to use his powers leads to consequences that impress on him the importance of using his powers responsibly and selflessly.
His uncle’s death has always served as a deeply personal inspiration for Peter’s sense of responsibility and heroic duty. The Lizard thing is much less personal — less connected to who Peter is. Indeed, in this telling, the murder is hardly necessary at all and makes little impact on the rest of the story. (It’s telling that the best scene in connection with the murder takes place the next day at school.) It’s true that Peter first dons the mask to protect himself while seeking to track down his uncle’s killer, but the movie could just as easily have skipped all that and stepped up the Lizard rampage, with practically the same results.
After the murder, poor Aunt May (Sally Field, looking nothing like the iconic character) practically drops out of the movie. Peter has brief, sullen exchanges with her in passing as he comes and goes, and when she expresses concern about his bruises, late hours and general unavailability, he practically snaps at her. Yes: In her hour of grief, Peter disses his widowed aunt for being concerned about him. And he never shows regret for this — never apologizes or manifests real concern or solicitude for the woman who raised him. That’s. Not. Peter. (It was at that moment that my 14-year-old son David turned to me and whispered what I’d been thinking for some time: “He’s kind of a jerk, isn’t he?”)
Yet for some reason at the end of the film is a strange scene in which May solemnly attests to her nephew that he is “a good person.” I’m not saying it isn’t true. Peter has improved by the end and can fairly be called a hero. Yet May hasn’t been privy to his improvement, nor has she been the beneficiary of it in any real way, which is another way of saying he hasn’t improved enough. (There is a peace offering at the end, but it’s not enough. On a side note, money worries don’t fit into this story; apparently, the Parkers are living comfortably in Queens on Ben’s pension or whatever.)
It doesn’t help that the villain’s character and motivations are muddled to incoherent, with less than successful echoes of the Raimi trilogy’s Green Goblin and Dr. Octopus. Nor does it help that the climax feels like a retread of both X-Men and Batman Begins. Some business about his parents’ mysterious disappearance promises a new angle, but, by the end, the promise is mostly invested in a sequel.
None of this makes The Amazing Spider-Man a bad film. It’s watchable, if half-baked, and sometimes enjoyable. A terrific sequence under the Williamsburg Bridge during Spider-Man’s first encounter with the Lizard is a better character moment than anything in Raimi’s series. There are some nifty reptilian touches around the Lizard, though the regeneration bit is overdone, making him practically unkillable.
If it were the first Spider-Man film ever, I suppose I would take what I can get, like I did with the first Raimi/Maguire film a decade ago. But times have changed. We live in a glut of super-hero movies, and a new interpretation needs to justify its existence. Too much of The Amazing Spider-Man plays like what it is: a project of expedience created by Sony to prevent film rights from lapsing to Disney/Marvel. Spider-Man deserves better. And so do I.
Steven D. Greydanus is the Register’s film critic.
Content Advisory: Much intense comic-book violence; a few crude words; some sensuality. Teens and up.
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That’s really disappointing. I was hoping it would be good, but what you say about his reaction to Uncle Ben’s murder makes me think that I’d better wait till this one gets to the dollar theater.
I’ve always thought that, among the Big Three of Superheroes, the ones 99.9% of non-comic books fans have a pretty good knowledge of, Batman and Superman are more interesting and inspiring, but Spider-Man’s origin story is, by far, the best. Superman goes into super-heroics because he is a “good guy” thanks to his adoptive parents : nice, but kinda weak. Batman beats up criminals because of a possibly pathological obsession with stopping all crime because of his survivor’s guilt : interesting, but not very inspiring. But Peter Parker chose to become Spider-Man because the death of his uncle teaches him that with great power there must always come great responsibility : perfect.
Therefore, you cemented my resolve to not go see this movie. A reboot that does not justify its existence and muddles the best super-heroic’s origin story ? I’ll pass.
Aww man ... That stinks that they mishandled Peter’s reaction to Uncle Ben’s death. Well, I already pre-purchased my ticket, and I’m going tomorrow afternoon. Thanks for the review, I’ll lower my expectations accordingly. :P
If it helps, Ben didn’t exactly tell him “with great power comes great responsibility”. He told him something like “if it’s within your power to help people, you have a responsibility, a moral obligation, to do so”. By becoming a vigilante to avenge Ben’s death, Peter must have thought he was being responsible. He only learns later that being an avenger is not enough, he has to use his powers for the sake of good itself. This comes not only from his experience with the Lizard but also through his arguments with Captain Stacy, who says as much that the desire for revenge is shallow compared to the true responsibility of protecting people, much like Ben did earlier. So there’s a learning curve for him learning what exactly Ben meant - basically going from Batman to Superman.
Martin:
It doesn’t help.
The phrase “With great power comes great responsibility” was never actually put on Uncle Ben’s lips in the early comics, but that phrase is how Peter expressed his uncle’s moral lesson the moment he realized that his uncle’s killer was the man he had let go.
In the film, Peter understands the cause and effect from the get-go — but he never puts the moral pieces together, never has a moment of clarity where it hits him: “It’s because I failed to act when I had the power to do so that Uncle Ben is dead…therefore I must never again fail to use my power to protect others.”
It’s like Uncle Ben died (more precisely, like Peter caused Uncle Ben’s death) for nothing.
“By becoming a vigilante to avenge Ben’s death, Peter must have thought he was being responsible.”—- by this I mean taking the responsibility of the police, or the law, into his own hands. Also he starts taking the law into his own hands when he sees a man roughing up a woman, so there’s also a general opposition to injustice in play, other than revenge. It was foreshadowed by him standing up for students the school bully was bullying (when not being bullied himself). I also thought it was clear, though unspoken, that Peter blamed himself for Ben’s death - he was sitting in despair in a corner. Later after he saves people from the Lizard he’s sitting in his room contemplating, probably about responsibility.
If the film undermines the hero’s motivations and moral center with an insufficient character change, would it be fair to say that The Amazing Spiderman is this year’s version of Thor?
Martin: You’re projecting onto scenes that could just as easily be read in terms of mere grief. It’s up to the filmmakers to make it clear that Peter feels more than grief, that he feels a weight of responsibility in connection with his uncle’s death.
In Raimi’s film, following the original comic-book story, that responsibility is brought him in the moment of revelation when Spider-Man sees the face of his uncle’s killer and realizes that it’s the same man he allowed to escape. Since there’s no comparable revelation in this film (Peter knows all along who killed his uncle), they needed to do something else. They didn’t.
Evan: Clearly there’s at least a rough analogy between Thor and Amazing Spider-Man (I gave them identical ratings), although Thor had too little story and Amazing Spider-Man if anything too much. Also, Spider-Man has a better love interest.
Another thing - in this one he doesn’t use his powers to earn money and then let a thief get away since he wasn’t paid the right amount. He instead lets a thief get away because a clerk the thief robbed was rude to him. There’s a disconnect between misusing his powers and Ben’s death, as opposed to failing to use his powers. He doesn’t learn he should use his power only to protect others until later.
Steven, I am interested in hearing more of your take on the Ultimate Spider-Man comics. I’m in my 20’s and those were the first Spidey comics I ever read. Since then I’ve read a lot of the originals and I’m specifically interested in what you think of the darker tone of Ultimate? I enjoyed them for the most part but Peter’s psychological trauma was so bad at times I was surprised (along with Nick Fury) that Peter didn’t go rogue.
It’s Marc Webb (with a “c”). Stephen, you are such a hack! How can you misspell the directors’ name and expect to have anything intelligent to say about a movie!?!?! Where did you learn to right, comic books?
No thank you for ruining my excitement about the first real Gwen Stacy movie. Except maybe I will thank you if I agree. Already have tickets.
Maybe the “with great power comes great responsibility” will come through in the sequels? I mean, maybe Webb is moving more slowly with Peter’s character development so that it grows in gravity, and the intensity of the Aunt May reckoning will come later?
but isnt it all about the 3D?
John M: Thanks for the correction. “I make many mistakes” (Norris, The Big Sleep) and I always appreciate reader corrections.
Joe: The 3D is nothing special. Both David and I noted that for long stretches there is essentially no 3D; you can take off your glasses and it doesn’t even look blurry. There is more 3D in the action sequences but it’s still nothing special.
John M:
Where did you get the write to chide others’ righting? Comic books?
And here’s the John M critical method when they reboot GONE WITH THE WIND: “they’re just saving Rhett for the sequel.”
One other thing, Jon ...I never attack commenters’ for disagreeing with Mr. Graydanos.
Victor Morton, when I noticed the typo, I couldn’t resist a little “troll-impersonation” humor. I happened to like Mr. Webb’s first movie (500 Days of Summer) and hope I still like TAS tonight despite its revisionism.
I loved the way that Spectacular Spiderman (the cartoon) handled the Uncle Ben storyline, as a better way of working around the fact that “great power/great responsibility” is now so familiar. In that version, it’s both an immediate realization and something that takes longer to learn.
I guess it’s the George Lucas school of writing origin stories—don’t use anything of real emotional consequence in the first movie. That worked out well for the Star Wars prequels…
Well, I saw the movie. I enjoyed it overall, in spite of the flaws mentioned by SDG (or perhaps because I was prepared for them). I thought the climax was especially good, perhaps the best finale in the Spider-films.
I did not care for Sally Field as Aunt May. I’ll take Rosemary Harris’ portrayal of the character over Field’s any day of the week.
I disagree that the film compromises Peter’s moral center, I think the film instead uses Richard Parker’s personal philosophy of a moral responsibility to do good as well as his parting words to Peter (“Be good.”) as the moral core of Spider-Man. Uncle Ben’s death is just part of that playing out. I examine this argument more in my review.
http://cinemasights.com/?p=11177
However, I agree the film does become dramatically lacking by displacing the feeling of moral responsibility onto Peter’s creation of The Lizard.
Hi Steven,
I have to disagree with you on this one, because I think the movie captures a shift of responsibility… from seeking revenge to realizing there’s a responsibility. He goes after the Lizard when he realizes who it is and he’s partially to blame for his creation.
The movie is supposed to display a Peter Parker’s thrust into a world that barely is able to defend. He isn’t able to save Captain Stacy and he just barely is able to save the day in the end. Spider-Man if done right shows a maturation slowly but surely.
So I think they were able to show the beginnings of a hero that is just beginning to realize what he can do and what he can do for others.
How many more of these re-hashes must we endure?
Is there no original story that remains? It seems like a kind of purgatory for fiction. I enjoy the escapist aspects; but I don’t dwell on it. Even factual things get terribly twisted.
Jeff:
But Peter isn’t “partly to blame” for creating the Lizard, as I already pointed out. He didn’t do anything clearly wrong or irresponsible, as in the original origin story.
Also as I already pointed out, Peter’s act in connection with the Lizard doesn’t involve a failure to use his powers when he should have, so it isn’t as powerful a motivation to use those powers responsibly in the future.
It just isn’t a dramatically equivalent solution.
James Blake Ewing:
If you agree that displacing the feeling of moral responsibility onto Peter’s creation of The Lizard is a dramatic mistake, then I think you have to acknowledge that the character’s moral center (that is, what motivates him) has been compromised, for the reasons I cited in my response to Jeff. Peter’s sense of responsibility is no longer connected to having done anything wrong, nor is it connected to a failure to use his powers when he should have. That’s the ballgame. That’s why Spider-Man is who he is.
Note: High spoiler quotient below.
I don’t think the lack of money problems should be considered a side note. It’s the fundamental difference between this story and Raini’s more classic take. In Webb’s movie, Peter’s sin is not avarice but pride—he doesn’t set up Uncle Ben for murder because he’s mad about losing money, he sets him up by (a) walking out on him (b) feeling insulted by a clerk who refuses to grant him 2 cents.
I think the film portrays the challenge both of being and of having a teenager who is very talented but also socially estranged and a potential danger to himself. This is true of Garfield’s Peter Parker even before he gets superpowers, and they only enhance the situation. In this context, I think Aunt May’s affirmation of Peter’s underlying goodness—the goodness we see in the beginning when he stands up to Flash—makes perfect sense to me. There’s a danger that someone like Peter will turn against himself, go into a dark place, if he loses his self-acceptance. After all, his pride is fueled by his sense of abandonment by his father. Yet it’s in an awkward tension with his need to take responsibility.
The peace offering at the end is the apology. I’m sure you would expect a more explicit apology from your children, but Garfield plays the role of a teenager who is painfully inarticulate at key emotional moments, which is funny when it happens in romance but also occurs elsewhere without an intenion of humor. And Aunt May, having raised him, would understand.
I don’t agree that the Aunt May-Uncle Ben “subplot” becomes inessential to the movie. From an emotional perspective, I felt the gravity of Ben’s death hangs on everything that follows, hangs on the word “responsibility” when Peter speaks it. I just don’t agree that “Peter’s sense of responsibility is no longer connected to having done anything wrong, nor is it connected to a failure to use his powers when he should have.” His intense desire for vengeance at Ben’s killer has to be underlied by a sense of guilt. The movie ends, not with him congratulating himself on his heroism, but with him repeating yet again Uncle Ben’s message.
He recognizes in recounting the scene on the bridge to Gwen that, if he had not been there, people would have died. The connection to “doing good because one has the power to do so” is relatively clear. I agree with James Blake Ewing’s observation that he accepts his identity as “Spider-man”, a hero, not because he created the Lizard, but because he reunited a boy and his father (this is made quite explicit). And how he did so, calming the boy by saying, “Hey, I’m just a regular guy,” is the antithesis of the pride he displays at other times.
So why muddle this theme with the explicit connection to “creating” the Lizard? Well, for one, I’m not sure he did nothing wrong. I think he had a sense of foreboding that giving the formula to Dr. Connors was a bad idea—why else did he lie about where he got it? That is, he recognized that his father kept it a secret, and kept it from Dr. Connors for some reason, but he broke his father’s secret and had some inkling that he shouldn’t. And I think he did it to impress Dr. Connors, to get closer to a father figure. And with all of the “father figure” themes going around, perhaps Webb wants to intimate that Peter is in some way the “father” of the Lizard? But that’s definitely stretching it.
Ultimately, I think it’s true that, even after Uncle Ben’s death and the later death that Peter Parker could simply say, “I’m Spider-man, and I will continue putting myself out there because great power comes great responsibility.” Nor has he made things up adequately to Aunt May. And it may take another (canonical) death for him to get there. But I do think Uncle Ben’s death (and its contrast with saving the boy on the bridge) is his moral center, again, by virtue of the movie ending with Uncle Ben. “Creating the Lizard” was a contingent situation that did spur him on, but it was also a convenient way for him to explain his motives rather than bare a part of his soul that he has not fully dealt with himself to his new girlfriend . So I stand by my pre-viewing expectation that the sequel(s) will explore this territory more deeply, and Peter will learn to understand and articulate Who Spider-Man Is at the end of that journey, not sooner.
I’m okay with that, but I’m not as well-versed in/attached to the more traditional telling. I know I’m not convincing you, SDG, but I appreciate that you show the interest you do in your readers’ opinions of variable quality.
John M:
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
I don’t think Peter’s sin in the original telling was avarice either. He had a legitimate need for the money and felt he had been unfairly cheated. It was revenge, rooted in wrath, more than avarice, I think.
What I expect from my kids is one thing; what I expect from a character I know as well as any in fiction, and whom I expect, I think reasonably, to be portrayed with at least some minimum of continuity, is something else.
On your other points, while I find some more persuasive than others, I won’t go through your comments with a fine-tooth comb. I’ve said essentially what I have to say, and everyone can judge for himself. Cheers.
I laughed out loud when I read what your son said about Peter being a jerk. I told my best fried after we saw it that Peter Parker is not supposed to be a jerk!—at least not all the time. My best friend noted (I think appropriately) that this Peter has many tics and came across as kind of shifty. I agree with the review almost entirely: No moral center, selfish revenge muddles any true inspiration, poor villian motive, and no sense of taking responsibility for his actions or powers. I got the feeling that he was always using the powers for his own ends. He even says that fighting the lizard was his responisiblity—what if he was not responsible? I don’t think this spidey would have bothered!
Having seen the movie now, I’m not so sure I agree about Peter being “kind of a jerk”. In fact, reading this for the second time with the movie in mind, Peter seems more like ME than I care to admit, which makes me wonder if instead of this being “Spider-Man the jerk”, maybe it’s “Spider-Man with Asperger’s Syndrome”. I honestly didn’t notice your beefs with the character that prompted that response from your son. Maybe that’s because I have to actually think to do things like that sometimes, it doesn’t always occur to me naturally. I’m not trying to defend myself when I fail to take people’s feelings into consideration, or Peter (who is a character who was written, not a real individual), just to say that I sometimes identify with people, real or fictional, to the point where I get hurt when someone else calls that person a “jerk” or says something similar (not that I’m blaming your son, or yourself, for being mean-spirited either). Just thought I’d get that out there.
For what it’s worth, I thought Peter was “kind of a jerk” in the original comic book, when he said (paraphrasing) that he was going to take care of Ben and May but that “the rest of the world can go hang for all I care!” How exactly did this guy become a hero?
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