SPIDER-BLOG

NOTE: I wrote this about 3 weeks ago, when I saw the movie around my birthday. Why the wait? Pictures. I'm not a picture man. Basically this is my initial reaction to the movie, which can probably be summed up by: OMG Emma Stone makes a gorgeous blonde!! OK, there might be more to it than that. Maybe.

So, I gone done gone went and saw The Amazing Spider-Man finally. I know, I know. I’m behind the times. What can I say, that’s how I roll. Twenty years behind. In another twenty years I might find out what’s up with this Justin Bieber character I keep hearing about.

Anyway, I pretty much loved this movie. I really should preface this with the fact that I am pretty much an avid Spider-Man fan in general. This is after all parkerisspiderman.blogspot.com. There’s a reason for that. I’m not joking I literally have a Spider-Man pillow and blanket. Let me show you.

See. I’m slightly Spider obsessed. Just a little bit. Obviously. (Picture from my mission apartment in Sultan, WA. I'm pretty sure anyway)

My Spider-Man obsession goes back a few years, starting when I was a kid in the 90s. I watched the cartoon series of the time, and liked it, due in part to the awesome Joe Parry theme song. Later, I started picking up Spider-Man toys for the sole purpose of getting the free classic Spidey comics they came with. This led to my subscription to the then new Ultimate Spider-Man series, which led to my following Brian Michael Bendis, which is a different story altogether—ultimately due to Payson City post office issues I ended my subscription. I also discovered graphic novels about this time, and got a couple of those, more to fill the gaps in the story due to missing issues than anything. As a note, I really feel graphic novels are the way to go reading comics. No ads, and you get a full story arc, as opposed to just a single issue of the arc—and yes, most comic authors these days do write in arcs these days if you didn’t know. It gives them opportunity to explore the characters more and gives a chance for more depth, at least in theory.

Then it kinda ended for me for a while, except for occasionally browsing comics at libraries and bookstores , which is when I originally caught The Other sequence by J. Michael Straczynski (which I still can’t spell). Then, when I finally started using the Logan Library about a year ago, I caught the bug again, and started reading both the Ultimate, and Amazing storylines.

Which brings me to the current movie. I’ve gotta say, I wasn’t sold on Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Of course, I’d never heard of him before, but I think that Spider-Man, and particularly Peter Parker, is a very difficult character to portray. If you think about it, he’s a nerd/geek that becomes a cool, athletic dude after he’s bit by a spider. That’s the Peter Parker I see anyway. In the previous movies, which I fairly liked, Peter is played by Tobey Maguire, who in my not-at-all-humble opinion did a terrible job. Is that Peter Parker either geeky or cool? No. He’s really dopey and dweeby. Andrew Garfield in contrast, I think doesn’t do a good job portraying the intelligence a geek/nerd would have, but portrays the social awkwardness inherent in that well. He also does a good job playing the cool part. In other words, this Peter Parker is a huge step up over the last. The problem I have is the voice. I’ve watched too many Spider-Man cartoons over this summer to not have specific expectations of the voice of Peter Parker/Spider-Man. And Andrew Garfield didn’t do it for me.

I think cartoon adaptations do a better job with superhero stories because the mediums are ultimately more similar. Meaning I find cartoons and comics to be closely related. Plus, the artists can design the characters to look how they should, so then you just have to find someone who sounds right for the part. Which for Spider-Man, I love Rino Romano, Neil Patrick Harris, and Christopher Daniel Barnes, who voiced for Spider-Man Unlimited, Spider-Man: the New Animated Series, and Spider-Man: The Animated Series respectively. I’ll get to those in a moment, since I don’t know that I’ve been over them before—and I should have. I hope I have, and if I have, well, this won’t be the first time I’ve repeated myself.

Other notes on Amazing: To me, the Lizard isn’t the Lizard without his snout. See here?

It’s not a huge difference, but it makes him look like The Lizard.

Final note on the movie before going into the cartoons. Emma Stone. Wow. Who knew that she was a natural blonde? I sure didn’t. But she is, and she looks great blonde—Emma Stone maybe just plain looks great. I also think she was just plain a great casting decisions. She was definitely brainy in the film, though I’m not sure if she was in the original series or not. She definitely wasn’t in the Ultimate version. The irony is that in Spider-Man 3 they had a blonde as Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) and a redhead as Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard). I think they pulled it off better than say, Angelina Jolie in Salt.

Yeah, we’ll pretend like that hair color is real on you. Of course, I’m just a Salt hater. I preferred The Tourist—perhaps Johnny Depp makes everything better.

And, on second thought, I might just save my thoughts on the cartoons for later, or just hope I already said them previously.