Likes and Dislikes about 'The Amazing Spider-Man' movie

Likes

- Gwen being intelligent

- Gwen not being a damsel in distress

- Gwen and the ‘flamethrower’!

- Spidey’s combat acrobatics – especially in the school

- Flash’s growth

- Flaming car (a little like the cable car scene but with a very simple choice – and important here as it served to show Peter that there is more he can do with the abilities he now has)

- Vigilante Peter

- SWAT team taking Peter down

- The interactions between Gwen and Peter

- The girl who has a bit of a thing for Peter (silent crush)

- Peter standing up to Flash (prior to The Bite) was good to see

Dislikes

- Scenes from the trailers and teasers being cut from the movie (although the ‘doorman scene’ was too much like the Raimi stuff so that being cut is fine)

- The fight on the train was a tad messy (granted, it’s instinct kicking in, but the frame cuts, etc, were too jerky and some of the moves just didn’t ‘fit’)

- What happened to the ‘secret of his parents’ stuff?

- Vigilante Peter (yes, it falls in both categories)

- Captain Stacy dying

- Lizard’s uber-enhanced regeneration abilities – seemed better than Wolverine’s!

- Some of the ‘first person’ view CGI effects were…poor.

- No JJJ

Asides:

- There’s, potentially, a lizard-rat roaming around out there…

- I doubt the ‘guy in the shadows’ is Norman (it’s could be Professor Miles Warren)

- Peter (in the movie) designed the web shooters, not the actual webbing (with the amount of webbing out there, it would have been pretty straight forward for the police to trace it back to him)

- Although I don’t think it was their intent, Peter being unable to help Ben (for fear of compounding things and killing him) can be construed (yes, yes, he was dying/dead from the gunshot wound, but Peter tore a tap off without trying, administering some form of CPR on his uncle would have been wrong on his part)

- Why was Peter not as pro-active about his education and science future as Gwen?

Movie Talk (July 4 2012)

Finally got around to seeing Men in Black 3 on Saturday (and bought my advance ticket for Tuesday’s ‘late’ showing of The Amazing Spider-Man).

MiB3 was quite enjoyable, had a touch of Back to the Future in there and a nice way of by-passing the paradox.  I felt it was better than the second one, and provided an aspect of closure and understanding to the relationship between J and K.

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World was enjoyable, too (saw it on Monday).  Generally ignoring the impact on the rest of the world and focussing on Dodge and Penny, it was well done.  The brief highlights on how different people were reacting to/dealing with/accepting ‘the end of the world’ was interesting – ranging from ‘keeping things normal’ through to riots and ‘who cares, let’s just sleep with someone’, whilst keeping far away from any religious aspects.  To a certain degree, those things are 'standard', but it was nice seeing them, anyway.

And now, The Amazing Spider-Man...

Although a ‘retread’ of the one from a decade ago, I felt this one worked out a lot better – it still had the ‘bad guy talking to himself’ scene, but it was a lot briefer than the first time around.

Some of the action sequences came off a little awkward, but Flash (Eugene) had a lot of growth in the short time he was in the movie.   

Other thoughts:

- Gwen often looked a lot older than her 17 years;

- the killer of Uncle Ben currently has a ‘Joe Chill’ aspect going for him;

- I’m not sure why Oscorp would sell the bio-cable to someone like Peter;

- I know there’s a lot of construction work going on in Manhattan, but is there really that much along that stretch of the city?

- The discovery of the powers was reasonably well done (especially in the bathroom) – alas, the Dick Grayson handstand-to-dive has now probably been denied us forever :( 

- The banter between Gwen and Peter worked really well and it was good to see that he got her attention before getting the powers;

- Peter was still a stalking photographer, though (first time round it was MJ, now it’s Gwen);

- The Lizard was variable; and

- I prefer Captain Stacy approving of Spider-Man, and of Gwen's relationship with Peter, and I think he should have lived through this movie (and the sequel, and died in the third).

I guess that's enough for now ;)