(UPDATED after restoration of Internet service!)Well, on the plus side, now we no longer need to wonder what the aborted early-90s Canon Films version of "Spider-Man"
would've looked like - save that, in the early 90s, this CGI would only look
one or two years out of date...
I'm sure I'll have more to say about this in some other capacity soon enough, but for now let me hit the stuff jumping out at me right off the bat:
#1: I really like that one bit of Spidey fighting the cops - the Raimi movies had a paucity of hand-to-hand group fights since the villains didn't generally have henchmen and it's nice to see it here.
#2: Really kinda hoping SOME of this takes place in daylight. I know this is the darker/edgier/grittier/hardcore Spider-Man; but like I keep saying: NOT EVERY SUPERHERO NEEDS TO BE BATMAN.
#3: Dennis Leary appears well cast. I like the idea of Captain Stacy as a middle-aged working-dad type instead of the wizened elder-statesman from the comics.
#4: Well, there ya go, kids - snarky/jokey Spider-Man leaps into live-action... aaaaand in live-action it comes off as "douchey" instead of charming - like Dane Cook in a Power Rangers outfit.
Who could've possibly predicted that??#5: The dark eyepieces make him look like a villain. Sorry, they do. If I saw this version as a kid, my first assumption would be that this is an "evil" duplicate and that "good" white-eyes Spidey was going to fight him.
#6: The Lizard, as currently glimpsed here, would not pass muster in one of the "Resident Evil" movies - bad CGI rendering of a poorly-designed creature, a real shame.
#7: Well, there we have it: Peter's missing/dead biological father was a super-scientist partner of Curt Conners at (Gasp! No way! NEVER saw it coming!) OsCorp, and they were working on whatever mad-science stuff turns Peter into Spider-Man and Conners into The Lizard. Ah, "Ultimate Marvel" - the gift that keeps on giving... even though you beg it not to.
#8 Y'know what? I'm not done with #7 yet. That's
awful. That's what you'd put into a pitch
making fun of unnecessary, convoluted, bullshit Hollywood revisionism to origin-stories. I've tried my best to find the good in this utterly pointless cash-grab of an endeavor, but then this trailer comes along and tells me with ONE SHOT pretty-much all I need to know. At the 1:53 mark - directly following the asinine "The Untold Story" title-card - we get another black-and-white flashback of Young Peter staring at...
...A spider under glass, also black-and-white and thus implied to be either directly or indirectly part of the same flashback. In other words: It's NOT totally an accident anymore. It's - symbolically, anyway - pre-ordained: The Spider (or, at least, the manner by which it'll give him powers) and at least TWO of his major enemies (one in the film, one obviously being set-up) are all part of a path that's been awaiting him... the
laziest possible screenwriting crutch: DESTINY. Instead of being a story about Great Power being thrust onto someone accidentally, Spider-Man becomes yet another ersatz-Skywalker "Chosen One."
Fuck. That.
See what they did there?
