Films Make A Post: When the kidding stops...the killing starts!

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014): The second and fortunately last of the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man films – again directed by Marc Webb – doubles down on most of the flaws of the first film. So there’s a screenplay made out of many bits and pieces that very often go nowhere and bloat the film to a run-time of nearly two and a half hours for no good reason whatsoever, character motivations that egregiously follow the needs of the script, surprisingly mediocre special effects for a film of this type and budget, so many nagging details that either just don’t work or don’t work in the places where the film puts them, too many villains for the thin script or Webb’s personality-deprived direction to handle, and so on and so forth, until the whole thing turns into a confused slog.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014): Doug Liman’s adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s brilliantly titled “All You Need Is Kill” is good enough to satisfy even the needs of a Tom Cruise hater like me. It does help that the old placenta eater is teamed up with the generally and specifically lovely Emily Blunt, as well as that the film early on uses Cruise’s slimy image for its own needs for a bit. Liman also gets a decent performance out of Cruise, even managing to put a lid on the actor’s often distracting vanity (cinematically useless heroic poses usually being to Cruise what vaseline on the camera lens was to aging Joan Crawford).

The script uses the good old time loop (not invented by Groundhog Day, by the way, as much as I like all parts of that film not Andie McDowell) structure for a fun, fast, in the early proceedings darkly funny military SF adventure of highest entertainment value. The old SF reader in me wants to decry the lack of actual substance, and my politics the film’s inability to even think of any way to solve problems but violence. However, that’s really asking of what at its core is a clever and fun adventure movie with CGI monsters to be something it isn’t trying to do while ignoring it is rather brilliant at what it does do.


Atomica (2017): Dagen Merrill’s – nominally SF – thriller is certainly well meant: it is pleasantly serious in tone, obviously believes in character as the basis for plot and clearly tries very hard. Unfortunately, it’s just not very effective at being a thriller. There are few actual surprises, and while the writing certainly is serious and character-based, it is also just not very interesting and never becomes gripping or exciting in any way, shape, or form. Visually, the film suffers from pretty bland warehouse-style sets, and direction that never chooses anything but the most obvious way to shoot any given scene. It’s certainly not a bad film, but I find it hard to find much more than theoretical praise for it either.

In short: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Fifteen years ago, this would have been quite a good superhero movie. Now, after a glut of films in that particular genre you don’t need to use phrases like “good for a superhero movie” for, it’s a decent one at best, though one that has a fine and fun final phase (take that, Mr Lee) that makes me wish the rest of the film would have been as sure of itself too, because then, I’d actually have seen why we needed a Spider-Man reboot.

As it stands, the film’s beginning two acts are unfocused and seem unsure what kind of hero this version of Spider-Man is supposed to be as well as about how to get the character there. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone (the oldest high school kids alive) do a well enough job with the little the script gives them but still Amazing never really gets to the point where the characters become convincing or loveable. I even think that Stone’s Gwen is the only element here actually handled better than the respective element in the Raimi movies, Mary Jane, with a better integration into the main plot and gutsier acting.

The film also doesn’t manage to set up Curt Connors/the Lizard as the tragic villain he’s supposed to be, the script never quite managing to juggle the origin plot, the pointless stuff about Peter’s parents, and Connors’s experiments in a way that makes Peter and Connors interesting antagonists, or connected by anything more profound than the mere whims of the scripting gods. There’s a lack of thematic coherence here that’s rather frustrating because, if you ask me, characters as iconic as Spider-Man and superheroes as a whole are all about theme: about the way the plots reflect them, and vice versa, about the way the heroes and the villains play off each other. Sure, there’s a bit of the most obvious stuff about responsibility in here, but the film doesn’t seem to have much of a clue about what it wants to actually say about responsibility, either, nor what the Lizard has to do with it. I’m also not quite clear why the CGI Lizard has to look quite as bad as it does, with a boring creature design and little weight to its appearances, but then I wouldn’t put this particular character into Spidey’s origin story at all, so what do I know?

So it’s no surprise the final act is actually the part of the film that’s fun too watch, because here, director Marc Webb can concentrate on the less complicated things, like superhero action and the very particular kind of melodrama the genre thrives on, and going by the entertaining way he handles this part of the film, I suspect he should have been able to manage a worthwhile first hour.

But at least, I want to rewatch Sam Raimi’s first two Spider-Man movies now, so that’s a success, right?

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