Emma Stone will kiss Peter Parker, cast in Marc Webb’s SPIDERMAN reboot
Oct 06
Scratchy-voiced green-eyed cutie (I’m a fan, anyway) Emma Stone has officially signed on to star in Sony’s reboot of the Spiderman franchise, Sony confirmed today.
If you were thinking, like I was, that she’d be a shoe-in for Mary Jane Watson, you’d be wrong. Emma will play Gwen Stacy, a blonde college co-ed who becomes the first love of Peter Parker. Green Goblin killed Gwen in The Amazing Spider-Man #121 comic. I have no shame in admitting I had to wikipedia that fact.
Emma continues to improve on her roles as her profile grows, from Superbad and Zombieland to her first lead role in this year’s Easy A, landing the Spiderman reboot is an impressive notch on her belt.
Earlier this year, Sony announced they will not be making a Spiderman 4, rather, they sacked then-franchise director Sam Raimi and began the task of re-hiring for a complete franchise reboot. Something we’re becoming all too familiar with. Marc Webb (yes, Webb) will direct and Andrew Garfield (yes, Garfield) is starring as Peter Parker.
MEN IN BLACK 3(D) gets a release date
May 10
You’d better get used to 3D blockbusters while you can, because by 2012, you’re going to be drowning in a veritable tidal wave of the buggers. Men In Black 3 (which will be in 3D), has just been slapped with a release date: the 25th of May, 2012. This is slap bang in the middle of Hollywood’s big summer line-up, which is, as usual, headlined by sequels, 3D blockbusters, and the occasional combination of the two.
What else is due in May / June of 2012? Joss Whedon’s Avengers, JJ Abrams’ Star Trek sequel, Peter Berg’s Battleship (yes, that Battleship) adaptation, Christopher Nolan’s third Batfilm, and Marc Webber’s teen Spider-Man reboot, which will all do absolute monster business. Except Battleship, which will hopefully flop like a dead fish.
For the record — I reckon Battleship and Spider-Man will be in 3D, with 50 / 50 odds on Avengers; I trust Abrams and Nolan to resist studio pressure, but there’s still about a 25% chance of their big franchise sequels being shot or processed in 3D. God, can you imagine Star Trek in 3D? The dynamic lights and constant camera motion were dizzying enough in 2D, thanks.
Anyway, why did I bring you here again? Oh yeah, Men In Black 3. 25th of May 2012. Will Smith re-teaming with director Barry Sonnenfeld. Tommy Lee Jones in talks to reprise role. David Koepp going over a script by Etan Coen. Got it. Leave Johnny Knoxville and Lara Flynn Boyle behind this time, okay? Ta.
SPIDER-MAN 4 scrapped in favour of franchise reboot
Jan 12
Hollywood is officially broken. After a recent flurry of casting rumours (Anne Hathaway, John Malkovich as new villains), delays, script problems and fan plot speculation regarding the planned fourth, fifth and sixth Spidey flicks, Sam Raimi has finally had enough of Sony’s shit, and has officially left the building, taking with him Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, the heart and soul of the films, and any sense of dignity the series might once have had. I was doing my daily news rounds, saw a little piece on Malkovich publicly confirming his involvement in Spidey 4, and then BAM — a headline about Spider-Man 4 being unceremoniously let go.
Deadline brings us the bad news.
You’ve got to wonder what Sony was thinking. Until The Dark Knight came out, Spider-Man 3 was the highest-grossing superhero film of all time, despite its mixed reception. If I was Sony, I’d let Raimi loose on the fourth film, maybe with the mandate to pare down the number of villains introduced. I’d try to keep intact and nurture the creative team behind the first three films. I’d plan on turning a dime by putting the same names on the poster as I did the last three times. I wouldn’t reboot the freaking series.
I don’t want a reboot at all. I don’t want to have to go through Peter Parker’s formative high school character-building sequence again just to get to the web-slinging, heart-breaking action. I don’t want to have to put up with someone who isn’t Tobey Maguire filling the shoes, I’d feel guilty and awkward. I’ve grown attached to Maguire as dorky Peter, and anyone else in the role would just feel like a whole different character. And who would they get to direct? Brett Ratner? God save us all.
Anyway this reboot is due in northern hemisphere summer 2012, by which time we’ll have had Iron Man 2, The Avengers, Captain America, Nick Fury, Thor, The Fantastic Four (another, more reasonable reboot), X-Men: First Class, as well as The Green Lantern, Jonah Hex, and god knows how many more Marvel / DC superhero flicks. The world’s gonna burnt be out on over-the-top action and ordinary people fighting extraordinary fights. You’d think around this time we’d be hankering for a revival of the feeling that for many people started the superhero movie craze: the perfect time for a good old-fashioned Spidey sequel.
Sure I’m taking this a lot more sensitively because I literally just watched all three Raimi-helmed Spider-Man flicks, but I don’t think I’m being too unreasonable here. It’s like Bryan Singer leaving the X-Men movies — oh wait, he did that. Okay, it’s like Peter Jackson not directing The Hobbit — oh wait … It’s like James Cameron not finishing off the Terminator movies — damn it! It’s like Steven Spielberg walking away from Jurassic Park — argh!
Okay, okay, I should have seen this coming. But seriously, sometimes Hollywood is a stupid, stupid place.
The 7 best comic book movies
Jan 11
The Joker turns 70 this year. The clown prince premiered in the northern hemisphere spring of 1940 in Batman’s first standalone series. Batman himself, as well as Superman and some other, lesser-known characters, are a few years older even than Mr J. Back then it was all about domino masks, tights, capes, and good-old-fashioned crime-fighting, with a dash of Freudian introspection on the side. With the exception of Superman, ostensibly the first super-powered comic book hero, straight detective stories were favoured for a good many years till the likes of Marvel popularised super-powers in the fifties and sixties and the genre exploded. Comic books were respectable back then. Hypermasculine men fought each other while hyperfeminine women floated around in the background; morals were unquestioned; the pulpy, predictable serials were tasteful and plain, unadorned with such concerns as sexuality, racism or moral ambiguity. Crime was duly punished, and justice was pursued in a cheap, disposable monthly medium affordable to the average middle-class American kid.
In the 80s comics underwent something of a rennaissance. Batman was rebooted in a grittier, morally challenging storyline, the X-Men got serious with Wolverine’s brutal training in Tokyo finally explored, and out of a hole in the sky fell the Watchmen series, one of very few successful stand-alone comic books. Since that sudden reversal of content comic books have floundered in an endless torrent of glossy, cookie-cutter superhero stories. The art styles have gotten more sleek and gratuitous in their anatomic inaccuracies, but the actual content, as far as this detached, casual observer can tell, hasn’t developed into anything really worth taking notice of.
The 90s saw a brief rush of comic book movies — The Mask, Spawn, Men In Black — that were okay, performing so-so at the box office, but it wasn’t until Bryan Singer’s X-Men that the world finally got a superhero flick that did justice to its (overrated) source material. It was fun, subversive, mature and posed a few interesting sci-fi questions, while telling a remarkably personal tale with emotion and flourish. After the critical and commercial success of this pioneering film the floodgates were opened and in the past decade we’ve seen just about every single major character in the Marvel stable trotted out for a cinematic outing or two, and DC haven’t slacked off in their contribution either. But the vast majority of these films have been mindless dross homogenised by the Hollywood machine — witness The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Elektra, The Spirit, etc., for evidence of this.
There have, however, been many shining lights in the dark. Here are the seven best comic book movies as judged by yours truly.
7 - V For Vendetta (2005)
Socio-political commentary has a propensity to become dangerously dull. How do you make it interesting, you ask? Add masked vigilantism, a fascist regime, some huge explosions, and Tchaikovsky to it. A dark, apparently faithful adaptation of the “graphic novel” (isn’t it cute when they try to sound mature?) of the same name, the V film is dark, violent, and socially relevant. The themes of freedom, justice and masked vigilantism are classic comic book fare, but here it’s all wrapped up in a smart, mature tale that’s pretty fun to watch.
6 – Road To Perdition (2002)
Bet you didn’t know this was originally a comic book. Actually I bet you didn’t even see this movie, hardly anyone did. But it’s got Tom Hanks in it, and a pre-Bond Daniel Craig, not to mention Paul Newman, some delicious cinematography, and some cool shootouts. The story is a tad melodramatic and simplistic, but the scrambled morality of gangster lifestyles is explored in a more compelling manner here than in any Scorcese flick to date. Sam Mendes, of American Beauty, directs.
5 – Iron Man (2008)
Funnyman Jon Favreau miraculously wound up at the helm of this (by ’08) routine superhero origin flick, the first act in an inevitable franchise. Thankfully Favreau kept the film sharp with the casting of Robert Downey, Jr. in the title role as Iron Man / Tony Stark, whose moral compass isn’t as concrete as Spidey’s or the Bat’s, and in the film’s fresh, brisk pace and tone. Anyone who claims not to have had fun watching Iron Man is lying.
4 – X-Men 2 (2003)
Captain Jean-Luc Picard scoots around in a mind-controlled wheelchair, staring people down and unleashing his merry band of mutants on the world, trying to make it a better place, while Gandalf the Grey floats around in a metal bucket for a helmet trying to stop Picard for no other reason than “the Nazis killed my parents, therefore everyone deserves to die.” Okay, okay, there’s more to this sequel to the film that started the heroic avalanche in 2000 — some breathtaking action set-pieces, some palpable drama between the main characters, a very cool sci-fi aesthetic, and the kind of professional filmmaking usually reserved for “serious” movies. X2 perfectly rides the line between mindless entertainment and intellectual stimulation, with great performances all round. Shame about X-Men 3 and X-men: Origins: Wolverine: The Prequel: The Beginning.
3 – The Dark Knight (2008)
Oh Christopher Nolan, you simultaneously delight and disappoint me. The Dark Knight is a big, loud, dark, complex film on every level. Christian Bale’s Batman, introduced in the middling Batman Begins, faces his first true test as a superhero in the form of Heath Ledger’s ultra-villain the Joker. The Joker’s wicked anarchic sense of humour is simultaneously amusing and terrifying, and Ledger’s performance of the character is the stuff of cinema legend. He inhabits the role, a role invested with such realism and integrity as to be utterly repulsive but ultimately fascinating and compelling at the same time. Bats is forced to question his own morality and identity in the face of the Joker’s cruel and unusual pranks and set-ups, meanwhile contending with a psychotically deranged Harvey Dent / Two-Face incited to violence by the Clown Prince himself. Batman’s dark, ugly world is a thematically beautiful and intellectually interesting place: every villain in Gotham City has a fascinating aspect to their psyche, and Batman invariably winds up being the most boring character in anything he’s in. The reason I don’t love Nolan’s second bat-flick is because it’s so cool, so loud, so flashy, so dark and awesome and gritty that there’s very little actual character to latch onto when all is said and done. The emotion is there, it’s just buried miles deep beneath layers and layers of crowd-pleasing aesthetic stylings.
2 – Watchmen (2009)
Having just criticised The Dark Knight for being shallow, I feel a pang of guilt including Watchmen in a higher position on this list. It is literally a shot-for-shot, visual-effects-driven recreation of the original comic book, but beneath the arguably flimsy veneer is the single most coherent, challenging and daring narratives in the history of comics. Some masked vigilante kills some other masked guy, and there’s a scientist who was de-atomised and is now a blue god, and there’s some Rorschach-wearing clown going around being unpredictably awesome for some reason — the plot merely serves as a prism through which comic books can be deconstructed and scrutinised and then spat back out as a damning observation of the world circa 1985, and as such, it is amazingly fun to watch. I identified most with John Osterman (Billy Crudup) as he undertook the journey to coming to terms with his superpowers: Dr Manhattan, as he is known, is an immediately more realistic depiction of a superhero than was ever depicted before Watchmen hit the shelves — he’s over the whole infinite power thing, he’s over seeing through time, and he’s bored of life as we know it. I guess that’s the kind of thing ultimate power brings you — boredom. So why do we all spend our lives scurrying to secure a slice of the power pie? Imagine thoughts like this, suggested constantly and in every scene of this visually entertaining flick, and you have some sense of the extent to which I was engaged and challenged.
1 – Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Ah, the amazing Spider-Man. The original Spidey flick was one of the earlier superhero flicks, and one of the better ones. Director Sam Raimi infused the story with enough classic character archetypes, modern references, universal coherence and pure, undiluted emotion for the film to be a promising start to the franchise. But it was nothing compared to the first and as yet only good sequel, in which the characters set up in the first film are dutifully knocked down in one of the most brutal, uncompromising but ultimately optimistic middle acts in the history of cinema. I enjoy every single scene of this movie, and it’s one of those few movies I could watch a dozen times and not become utterly sick of.
So there you have it, Froley’s favourite 7 comic book movies!
Honourable mention should go to 1978′s Superman for setting the bar for superhero dramas in their current form; Zack Snyder’s 300 proved that sometimes even slavish adaptation of the oft-maligned source material can prove to be entertaining; and David Cronenberg’s A History Of Violence barely even resembles a comic book movie at all, what with the lack of capes and superpowers and whatnot, and is all the better for the absence of such silly things.
What are some of your favourite comic book movies of all time? Do you think Hollywood has gone a little costume-crazy since X-Men was released, ten years ago? Do you think the style of storytelling and characterisation inherent in comic books is leaking into non-comic book movies? I want to know what you think, dammit!
SPIDER-MAN 3 review: oh how the mighty have fallen
Jan 11
I was actually looking forward to finishing off the Spidey trilogy, especially coming off the back of the first sequel. I had fond memories of this third instalment, but watching the film again, I have no idea why. Maybe it stands on its own quite well — that is, if you don’t watch it within 48 hours of the other two — but after the awesome Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3 feels detached, unfamiliar, and wrong on several levels.
So after enduring difficult trials in the middle Spidey flick, Peter Parker now leads something of a charmed life. He’s got the girl, the city loves him, he’s getting steady work and good grades. But from the very beginning Spider-Man 3 feels completely different from the first two movies. The tone and pace have changed, as well as the narrative focus. There is way too much going on in this movie for it all to hit the right mark. But where exactly did Sam Raimi and the screenwriters go wrong?
Well, for a start, they make Peter Parker annoying. He’s always put his foot in the majority of social situations, but here he acts aggressively and pig-headedly, not like the level-headed, polite character of the original film, and manages to screw things up for himself with girlfriend MJ. For her part, Mary-Jane also becomes annoying, in a jealous-of-my-boyfriend’s-superpowers kind of way. This seems especially weird after the cathartic conclusion of Spidey 2, in which MJ proclaims her love for Peter in a powerful, honest way. Funny how people backflip whenever dramatic tension requires them to do so, huh? And then there’s Harry, who at the end of the last film had discovered Spider-Man’s true identity, and looked set to follow through on his promise to kill the Spider, even it meant killing his best friend as well. This awesome potential for drama is unceremoniously swept under the rug in an oddly unoriginal fight scene early in Spider-Man 3 — Harry attacks Peter and winds up getting beaten, and wakes up in hospital with convenient short-term memory loss. This is a pretty criminal use of plot device, especially at this point in the overall three-film narrative. At about this point, with all three major leads disappointing in a serious way, I began to greatly anticipate the introduction of a good villain to shake up Peter’s world.
So after briefly setting up Harry as supervillain New Goblin and then trashing his memory in some horribly amateur plot device, we get another supervillain in the form of Flint Marko’s Sandman (played by Thomas Haden Church). The Sandman is actually a rather pathetic character, and while Raimi aims to make him sympathetic like he did with the villains of the first two films, here he fails because Marko is actually a base criminal. Sure, he’s stealing money to help his sick daughter recover — but he’s still stealing money (of course if America had a health care system that wasn’t borderline criminal, none of this would be a problem). So anyway Marko is transformed into the Sandman, and this time around, with suspension of disbelief already straining, the superpower comes off as contrived and silly. So he’s made of sand? How does he colour the sand so he can walk around looking like a normal human? How do you kill someone who can rebuild himself out of extremely common materials? And how the hell does he maintain consciousness even as the inanimate grains of sand composing his body dissipate and waft through the breeze?
While Marko’s busy whining about not being a “bad guy,” meanwhile beating the crap out of anyone who tries to stop him incessantly stealing things, we get another pseudo-villain in the form of some weird sticky black gunk from outer space. Yes, that’s right, the outer space, the one that has never bothered anyone up until this point. Anyway this black goo latches onto Peter and amplifies his aggression, turning him into even more of a douche than he already was. There was potential in this idea. Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus only did the evil things they did because an exterior influence penetrated their psyche and warped their good intentions into evil deeds — the potential is here for the same thing to happen to Peter as Spidey, perhaps turning him into a true menace to New York, who can only be stopped by, oh, I don’t know, the New Goblin. That way Harry can actually be a good guy for once instead of being relentlessly cruel and cold, and Spidey can get a taste of his own medicine. I-rony!
But then Peter manages to rip the black stuff off his body and throw it onto some guy called Eddie Brock, played with amazing incompetence by Topher Grace. Brock serves as a parallel to Peter Parker — he’s also a budding photographer trying to impress his dream girl. But Brock crosses some lines the morally-strict Peter wouldn’t dare to, and then when he becomes infected with the alien venom, he gives himself over totally to evil, so I guess that means it’s okay to beat the stuffing out of the poor guy. So how does this black stuff work? Where does it come from? On its home planet it must have some corporeal co-inhabitants it can be symbiote buddies with, right? How does it have a mind of its own when it doesn’t appear to have a brain? How did it survive the journey here? How does it chemically amplify an emotion? How did a simple lab test with a microscope confirm any of this? A brief overview of some of these rules would be nice. Instead the black goo just becomes distracting and annoying. If an audience doesn’t understand something, it will groan every time it appears in a scene. Why are you breaking all these rules, Sam Raimi?
There’s a few romantic subplots involving Peter’s pseudo-infidelity with cutie Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard), Harry’s advances on a confused and strangely vindictive MJ, and MJ’s forced betrayal of Peter’s love, devised with malicious glee (which comes off as completely unconvincing) by Harry once he gets his memory back. None of these distractions ring true, and what’s worse, Peter doesn’t even take his chance to hook up with Elizabeth Banks’ Betty Brant. Shame on you. These dalliances divert attention from the real point of the movie, which is … er …
So here’s what the movie should have been about. The only villain should have been the New Goblin, forget the Sandman and that Venom nonsense — those characters are not in the least compelling, nor even that visually exciting, and they contribute nothing to the story. Explore the lengths to which Harry will go to avenge his father’s death — will he go for Aunt May first, and then MJ, to try and get to Peter, just like his dear old pa? How much of himself or the city of New York will Harry sacrifice in his misguided quest for revenge? Then flip the coin and ask, once again, and with bigger stakes, how much Peter is willing to sacrifice in order to stop crime dead in its tracks — will he kill his best friend for the sake of justice and peace? Do that same MJ-or-the-little-children dilemma scene from the first one, but this time put MJ on the other side of the island, forcing Peter to choose one. Or unmask Peter once and for all, reveal him to the city and the world at large. Do something to challenge Peter Parker at the most fundamental level. Then, Peter can rise to the challenge, and when he doubts himself, Aunt May and MJ will be there for him, and he will tragically go out and kick the Goblin’s ass.
Or, if you’re really dead-set keen on introducing Venom, only put it on Peter. Like I suggested above, turn him into the villain of the picture, alienating his friends and family, and then have New Goblin ironically come to save the day when Black Spidey goes around trashing the city. Harry is the new hero, and Spidey is the new villain, completely lost and disconnected from his roots. Then they can both realise what they’ve done and work together to undo the damage Spidey’s been doing this whole time. Harry can forgive Peter for failing to jump in front of the runaway hoverboard that killed his father, and Peter can forgive himself for doing all these stupid things to everyone in the first place. This way only one of the characters is radically changed, instead of every single one of them. Plus you get a focused, driven conflict between the three best friends. It’s personal, it’s different, and it’s emotionally engaging. Introducing so many new characters after already radically altering your existing protagonist(s) is a bad move, especially if the new characters are going to be as dull and pointless as the Sandman, Venom, and Gwen Stacy.
There is still a good movie buried in here somewhere. The montage of Peter exploring his new black-suit hyper-sexuality is extremely amusing, if a little long. JK Simmons again nails his hilarious role, and is given a little more to do this time, as is Elizabeth Banks as secretary Betty. The finale has a few dollops of vague emotion, a mere echo of the sheer catharsis of the first two films, but still more powerful than what you’d find in most movies. The Goblin-forced break-up scene is also pretty devastating thanks to the performances and timing, and it feels like the Peter Parker of the first two films makes an appearance for this brief but welcome scene. Plus the overall product is so polished it’s hard to hate it.
But the failures threaten to overwhelm the feature. Too many villains, none with enough motivation or sympathy; too many entirely unnecessary subplots and minor characters; too much of a departure from the first films; the running time is too long; the visual effects are way overused this time (black characters flying against black backgrounds? At night?! Arghh, my eyes!); the action scenes seem like unnecessary retreads of the first two films’; but most of all the film lacks the emotional narrative core of the first two. The hero isn’t supposed to completely change after the second act, he’s supposed to find himself, that’s the point of all those brutal challenges. He’s supposed to come to terms with himself, and then go out and fight the real problem, which in this case should have been the actions he took in the first act — killing Norm Osborn and setting his best friend against himself.
While the third Spidey feature doesn’t measure up favourably against the first two, it’s not actively bad as popcorn entertainment. It’s light, fresh, okay to look at, and moves fast enough not to be dull or sleep-inducing. So I can’t give it anything but a thoroughly average score.
That wraps up my Spider-Man weekend. I was both pleasantly surprised and dismally disappointed at the experience, but it was totally worth it. Here’s hoping Raimi and co. can pull out all the stops for Spider-Man 4 (due 2011), and return to more of a Spider-Man 2 vibe.
Spider-Man 3 score
51/100
OPINIONS COUNT