The Amazing Spider-Man

Yes, I have been putting this off for a while, partly because I've been busy with work, partly because I've been having a lot of fun with my new Flash blog, but mostly because I tend to get very passionate and specific about my Spider-Man. Although I am happy they're making Spider-Man movies again, I'm not necessarily happy with this reboot. But it is better than Spider-Man 3, so I shouldn't complain so much. The Amazing Spider-Man came out on July 3, 2012, was directed by Marc Webb and stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone and Rhys Ifans.

This movie had to distinguish itself from the Tobey Maguire trilogy, and one of the ways they chose to do this was by going a little into the backstory of Peter Parker's parents. Here's why I don't like this. A major part of Peter Parker's appeal is that he's a normal kid with real-life problems. When you make his parents top secret scientists, he starts to lose that realistic quality that makes him so great. I'm sure there are lots of kids out there who don't know who their parents are, and putting Peter in that group makes him more relatable. But even if he does know who is parents are, why can't they just be normal people?  I've never cared about his parents before, and I certainly never wanted them to be super scientists somehow caught in some dangerous conspiracy that is directly involved in turning Peter into Spider-Man! I have to take a point off for this.

So many movies just don't know what normal high school life is like, and this is definitely one of those movies. Everyone looks and acts too old, especially Gwen, but they also resort to elementary level bullying. My high school experience was nothing like this. Why can't movie makers take a visit to a real high school and see what it's really like? The score is now a 3.

But there are a few things this movie did do better than the first movies, like Uncle Ben. The original Uncle Ben seemed to have one foot in the grave and really didn't do anything interesting until right before he was killed. But this one was much more alive and entertaining. He was also loving and nice, while being stern when he needed to be. I'll add a point for them getting this most important character right.

I'll raise the score back up to an average 5 for the great scene on the subway. It was pretty funny how Peter was continuously apologizing while beating those people up. But more importantly, this was the best demonstration of the spider sense I've ever seen. It's more instinctive than seeing the future or being warned of impending doom, which I think is a lot more realistic and enjoyable.

But now I have to take a point off for an incredibly stupid scene in the high school gym. First of all, I can't figure out what's going on in the gym. There's a whole bunch of kids just hanging around while the basketball team(?) is practicing and some girls are painting posters on the court right next to them. Flash Thompson, the token bully, blocks a kid's shot and the ball knocks over a can of paint, to which the stupid girl cries, "Flash! You did that on purpose!" Look, stupid girl, even if he did do that on purpose, you had no business painting posters on the basketball court! Anyway, Peter decides to use his new spider grip to teach Flash a lesson. He then charges toward the hoop, kinda knocks Flash down, then leaps from the foul line and shatters the backboard with a ferocious dunk. Time out. That was humanly impossible. The best basketball player on the planet, LeBron James, who is 6-8, 270 pounds, could never do that in a million years. At least one person in that crowded gym would be able to realize that skinny little Peter Parker should not be able to do what he just did. There would be an investigation, or at least a big push to put him on the basketball team. But instead, all we got was a visit to the principal's office and a lecture from Uncle Ben about beating up the bully. OK, first of all, Flash wasn't even hurt, like not at all, and secondly, why is everybody brushing off the shattered backboard like it's a perfectly normal thing for a skinny teenager to do? I can suspend my disbelief only so far — especially when basketball is involved.

It was around this point in the movie that I decided I did not like this Peter Parker. The Peter Parker I know and love is the ultimate nerd. Very skinny and wimpy, has few friends, gets the best grades in school, etc., etc. That was what made him so endearing. But the filmmakers here decided to make Peter "cool," which involved giving him a skateboard and kind of turning him into a hipster. Carrying his camera around everywhere was OK, but seriously ... skateboarding? Peter should be too clumsy and busy with school to pick that up. But this Peter doesn't seem to care about school that much. We really only see him sleep or daydream at school, and he had to sneak into Dr. Connors' internship program, when I think he should have been asked to lead it instead of Gwen Stacey. They tried to make him look smart every now and then, but it usually fell flat for me. Like when he showed Dr. Connors the missing formula. Peter didn't come up with it by being smart — he just found it in his dad's briefcase. If this movie couldn't make Peter geekier, it should have at least made him smarter. The score's down to a 3.

But I'll add back a point for a surprisingly refreshing moment in the film. Uncle Ben was able to have a good conversation with Peter without using the over-repeated phrase, "With great power comes great responsibility." Don't get me wrong, that is a great phrase, but I have gotten tired of seeing and hearing it used over and over and over again in every single Spider-Man story that's ever told. But this movie was able to get the exact same message across in a perfectly natural and effective way. Good for them.

Speaking of Uncle Ben, his death scene earns the movie another point. Instead of having Peter join some strange, underground wrestling tournament, we got a more realistic scene of a pouting teenager moping around the neighborhood and trying to buy some chocolate milk. But more importantly, Uncle Ben's death was was sudden and tragic. They really did a good job of letting us get to know and love Uncle Ben before they killed, so his death carried the appropriate amount of weight to it.

Not only did this movie go out of its way to avoid being like the first movies, but it also sought to return to the original comics in some aspects, like the web cartridges. I loved the first movie's decision to give him naturally-producing webs because I don't see how or why anyone would go to the trouble to create webs in order to swing around the city. But as Stan Lee said, the web cartridges were a great element to Spider-Man because they could provide one more obstacle for him to overcome when they ran out. Unfortunately, in all the Spider-Man stories we've had over the years, it has felt like he runs out of webs way too much. Luckily, this didn't become much of an issue with this movie. But what I didn't like, however, was how he got the webs in the first place, which they never explained. We see a movie explaining that Oscorp developed the webs, then we see a box of them in Peter's room. I don't see why anyone would give him those, and I know he would never be able to afford them ... so ... did he steal them? The score's back down to a 4!

Although I said I didn't like Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker, I really did enjoy him as Spider-Man because there is one element he did better than Tobey Maguire — the wisecracking. Spider-Man is Marvel's legendary wisecracker, always talking and making jokes in every single panel (especially in the old comics), but we didn't get much of that in the movies until now. The best line was, "My one weakness — small knives!" Now that's a Spider-Man I can live with. Plus one point.

Now the main villain of the movie is the Lizard, but we all knew he was just really a monster, while the real villain was the guy behind the scenes causing all the trouble — Norman Osborn. But for some stupid reason, we never ever saw him. Now I think that's making him a bit too mysterious. Instead, all we got was his cliche evil businessman henchman, who seemed to go out of his way to do things the wrong way. When somebody invents a drug that causes a mouse to re-grow a lost limb, you need to spend years of development and testing before you can even think about giving it to a human. That's how it works. But this stupid guy insisted on knowingly giving a dangerous untested drug to people in a hospital. He reminded me a lot of the evil businessman from Avatar, and that's not a good thing. We're back to a 4.

Going back to the Lizard, I have to take a point off for his disappointing design. Yes, his skin was scaly and leathery and he was very big and realistic looking, but we expected that. We live in a day and age where amazing special effects are the norm. But what bugs me is dumb design decisions. If the Lizard has a lizard-like tail, why can't he have a lizard-like snout like he always did in the comics and TV show? This flat face was just strange and lame. Also, why was he naked most of the time? He did have his classic ripped white lab coat on, but it was only for one brief moment. Just a big disappointment. I also didn't like how they made him smart and able to talk and carry out overly-complex plans. But I guess making him a mindless beast would be too much like the Hulk. I don't care, though. Give me the Lizard I grew up with.

The score then falls to a 2 for one of the stupidest ways I've seen for a secret identity to be discovered. The Lizard found Peter's camera, which was carefully labeled, "Property of Peter Parker." Nobody labels their cameras, especially classic fancy ones like that! And besides, why couldn't this intelligent Lizard use his brains to piece together the many clues Peter left floating around. There's his dad's research, his display of amazing agility right in front of Dr. Connors, the vast amount of Oscorp webbing lying around the city, the stories of Peter breaking the backboard from the foul line. Take your pick. Any one of these ways would have been a better way to discover Spider-Man's secret identity. Also, what was with all the lizards being drawn to the Lizard? Are there really that many lizards in New York?

So I didn't mind them choosing Gwen to be the girlfriend here instead of Mary Jane. Things needed to be different, and that's fine. It's just that I did not like what they did with her. Not only did she have a hard time deciding how old she was supposed to act, but she had some really cheesy "heroic" moments. I hate it when the girl gets involved in the fights and/or suddenly has all this top secret access and abilities to things. It was just ... dumb. I can't even type it out. I'll just take the score down to a 1. Is it wrong of me to hope her neck gets broken in the next movie like it did in the comics?

Now here we come to the absolute worst part of the whole movie, the part where I had to stop myself from laughing out loud and almost considered leaving the movie right then and there. So the Lizard is involved in his ridiculous plan to turn the entire city into lizard monsters like himself, and an injured Spider-Man needs to get across town to stop him. The vast majority of the city hates and is afraid of Spider-Man, but one man remembers how Spidey saved his son. So even though it's late at night, this one man is able to call in some favors and arrange a bunch of cranes to conveniently move into place over the street Spider-Man needed to go down. They built this scene up so much and milked it for all it was worth, making it cheesier by the second. I know they were trying to re-create those emotional moments from the first two films where the city came together to help our hero, but it just didn't work here. I mean, five minutes ago, everybody hated him. Then all of a sudden, it was, "We need to help Spider-Man!" And all those cranes just happened to be in exactly the right place? Come on! This brings the score down to an absolute zero, which is really sad, when you consider all the things I did like in this movie.

Mercifully, though, I was able to find a couple more things at the end that I did like. The first was the borderline irrational Captain Stacey finally opening his eyes and realizing Spider-Man was a good guy. I really didn't expect that to happen, so I'll add a point for that surprising bit of common sense.

And I'll add one final point for Aunt May. We didn't get to see much of her at the beginning because the movie was so focused on Uncle Ben, but Aunt May was played very well here as well. Her best moment came at the end, where she didn't say anything and just hugged Peter. It was so sweet and simple. It also added fuel to my does-she-know fire. I've long debated whether Aunt May knows Peter is Spider-Man, and after this movie ... I'm kind of thinking she might ... I hope they address that in the next movie. Yes, I am hoping that there's another Spider-Man movie, even though this one sucked and the after-the-credits teaser was overly ambiguous. The world always needs a Spider-Man movie, and this is all we've got for now, so we might as well accept it. But that doesn't mean I necessarily have to enjoy it, though.

Final score: 2

Joker's Wild

Sadly, too many of the Joker episodes in Batman: The Animated Series just turned out very sloppy and lackluster. And one of the worst offenders in this category is "Joker's Wild," the 41st produced episode and 42nd aired on Nov. 19,1992. (I've noticed that the episodes lately have been aired more closely to their production order. Hopefully this trend will continue and the air date order number will match the production number soon.)

The episode gets off to a pretty decent start, with Summer Gleeson covering the opening of a new casino. When it's revealed to have a Joker motif, she can't stop herself from saying, "Disgusting!" She then tries to recover and asks Bruce Wayne his opinion, who can only say, "No comment." Yes, it is disgusting to base a casino on a sociopath, and yes, Bruce would be too upset by this to be able to say anything nice. I'll add a point for that.

Naturally, the Joker was angered and immediately escaped from Arkham Asylum in one of the laziest escapes I've ever seen. All he basically did was pour water on the floor to make some guards slip down. It appears that one of the guards is letting him go on purpose, but the episode never fully explains why. I guess we could assume that he was working for the owner of the casino, Kaiser, who's plan counted on the Joker escaping, but we're never shown or told that explicitly. They should have had the Joker find out they let him escape. He's (normally) too smart a character to not realize that. I'll take off a point for this.

I'll take off another point for a strange, and rather pointless scene where Bruce Wayne plays blackjack with the Joker and cheats to win. Earlier, the Joker was cheating with a bunch of other people, but for some reason he stopped cheating with Bruce. And why would Bruce cheat in the first place? The whole point of that stupid scene was for Bruce to discover that the real Joker was in the casino, but they could have done that in a lot of better ways.

I'll drop the score to a 3 for the terrible animation and lack of basic English skills. The animators just could not figure out what the Joker was supposed to look like, and a couple of times, they got confused with the black rings around his eyes and drew them as massive eyebrows instead. They also put up a couple of nonsensical signs, one reading "End Stop" and the worst: "Wan the ciringnal Jokernocile." This was supposed to say "Win the original Jokermobile," but apparently nobody at this animation company, Akom, knew any English. Apparently, Bruce Timm was so upset with this episode, he stopped working with Akom completely. So maybe in a way, this episode was good, in that it let the animation finally hit rock bottom, causing the producers to make a concerted effort to improve the animation quality. We'll just have to see how much things really do improve after this.

Now Cameron Kaiser really had a dumb idea. He went bankrupt creating a casino, so he hastily changed it to make it a target for the Joker to destroy, allowing him to recoup his losses on the insurance. First of all, the hasty remodeling had to cost a fortune; and secondly, any competent insurance man would instantly see through the fraud of this. Anyway, once the Joker is discovered in the casino, Kaiser starts frantically stuffing cash in a briefcase. Why? And wasn't he bankrupt? Batman finds Kaiser and opens that case, which suddenly only has files in it. Curse you, Akom! For all this nonsense, I'm going to have to drop the score to a 2.

But like in many Joker episodes, the one redeeming quality was Mark Hamill's performance. Here are his best lines: "I hate it when you make sense!" "Why can't he ever stay dead!" "That's it — chew him up and spit him out!" I'll add a point for this, but I just wish that more Joker episodes would rise to the great voice work and not rely on it to carry everything.

Final score: 3

If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?

I'm surprised it took this long, but we finally got to the first appearance of the Riddler. Better late than never, I guess. "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?" was the 40th episode produced and 41st aired on Nov. 18, 1992.

This episode did a really good job of showing Robin act like a teenager. I love the fact that he would use the massive Batcomputer to play video games. Which teenager in the world wouldn't do that? I also liked the little detail of having him slouch in his seat in the Batmobile and prop his feet up on the dashboard. I love it when the animators take just a little extra time to draw something like that, which says so much about the character. I'll add a point for that.

But now that I've just praised the animators, I'm going to have to take a point off for their overall general sloppiness throughout the episode as a whole. One part that really bugged me was when the Riddler's ring puzzle somehow became handcuffs off screen. How was that even possible? The colorists also kept forgetting that the Riddler's mask and gloves were supposed to be purple, not gray.

But speaking of the Riddler, I am going to add a point for his design. As a man who uses his intellect to commit crimes, it makes much more sense for him to wear a simple suit and hat instead of dressing in bright green tights covered in question marks. Whenever I think of the Riddler, I think of this version. And it's not just his looks — his voice and his calm, collected manner also perfectly match his skills and abilities.

I'll bring the score up to a 7 for the riddles and maze in the episode. I thought they were all pretty interesting and solved in a logical manner. It was also great to see that Batman couldn't solve all them himself, but needed Robin's help. I almost think this could have been a good two-parter, but maybe the riddles and maze would have become redundant after a while.

However, I wasn't too happy with the ending. Batman did cheat to get to the center of the maze, which seemed too quick and convenient. And instead of having a nice fight with the Minotaur, Batman gave Riddler his own riddle: "How do you take out a minotaur with a single blow?" He then did just that with the giant Hand of Fate he took over. Not only did Batman prevent what could have been a cool fight, but he delivered a really stupid line that in no way could be considered a real riddle. What a pathetic climax. The score's now a 6.

But I was happy with the fact that the Riddler did escape long before Batman had a chance to look for him, and that we saw what happened to Mockridge afterward. Yes, Mockridge was a rather cliche corrupt businessman, but through his story, we finally got to see a little into the effects of being kidnapped by a super villain. I mean, if the Riddler or the Joker or one of those guys kidnapped you and almost killed you, you'd be pretty messed up for a while, I'd imagine. So for that redeeming ending, I'll add back one point.

Final score: 7

Green Lantern

When I heard they were making a Green Lantern movie, I had a lot of reservations. He is such a complicated, other-worldly character, that I doubted his ability to transition to a major motion picture. Turned out my doubts were right. Despite DC's best marketing efforts, including a heavy run in the comics and a new cartoon show, this movie was an epic failure. This is probably because it committed the great sin of alienating both the mainstream audience (by being too weird) and angering the loyal comic book geeks (by changing too many things in an attempt to relate to the main audience). Green Lantern came out in 2011, was directed by Martin Campbell and stars Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively and Peter Sarsgaard.

Right up front, I'm going to take a point off for their choice of villain. Parallax is far too abstract a villain to be fighting an already abstract hero. The average fan might know who Sinestro is, but very rarely will you find someone who knows about Parallax. And if you do find that rare soul, they would tell you all the reasons why this movie's Parallax is completely different and worse than the one in the comics. I understand the necessity to make changes for movies, but these changes need to improve the characters and make them easier to understand. That did not happen here. The more you try to understand Parallax, the more confused you get. OK, so he's the embodiment of fear, and he usually acts like a mindless monster, but sometimes he talks and acts like he's got a big, master plan. He sucks the fear out of people, which also sucks out their skeletons and kills them? And his body is a giant head made out of clouds with a lot of tentacles? Completely bizarre. How can an audience enjoy a villain when they can't wrap their minds around it?

I'm going to take another point off for the old Hollywood cliche of making the beautiful girlfriend perfect at everything. In the comics, Carol Ferris is in charge of a multi-billion dollar company, which is more than enough for anybody to handle. But here, they also made her the second-best pilot in the world. Let me guess, she's also a world champion kick boxer? Come on! She doesn't need to also be flying the jets! Running the company that makes them should be good enough.

Luckily, a surprisingly intense scene brings the score back up to a 4. It was actually pretty dramatic and emotional when Hal was crashing his plane and remembering his dad blowing up in his plane. In such a poorly-made movie, scenes like this are a rarity and keep you invested just enough to make it through the end of the movie.

Another thing I wasn't expecting was the appearance of Amanda Waller. Yes, she was too skinny and nowhere near the powerful, intimidating figure we saw in the Justice League cartoons, but I was still happy to see her, and for that, I will add a point.

The score will jump to an above-average 6 for the first time Hal Jordan recites the Green Lantern oath. The oath itself (and even the idea of it) is incredibly cheesy and lame. But they somehow found a way to make it actually sound kind of cool. Having his eyes slowly turn green while he spoke was also a nice touch.

This next point I'm going to take off is something I rarely focus on: the director. For some reason, Martin Campbell loves using closeups. That in itself, isn't a bad thing, but he didn't seem to understand the purpose of closeups. Too often, the camera would zoom in and linger on a random character, implying some sort of significance. I'd start racking my brain, trying to figure out who this person was in the comic book world, only to realize that character was a complete nobody. Campbell's other mistake with closeups was overdoing it on the obvious must-have closeups. Like when Hal was sent to Oa and started to become the Green Lantern. The camera got uncomfortably close to him and gave the audience a great shot up Ryan Reynolds' nose. We didn't need to see that!

We always knew the special effects were going to be incredibly important in this movie, and unfortunately, this movie let itself get too caught up in the special effects to give enough time and attention to the script, actors, etc. Interestingly, they got the big stuff right. Oa and all the aliens were amazing and interesting. I actually wish we would have spent more time there. On the other hand, the filmmakers got caught up in the little details, especially Green Lantern's suit. Honestly, I don't think a single person would have cared if they just gave him a normal suit. Instead, they outsmarted themselves by making his suit out of pure energy. The end result was a needless amount of CGI that ended up looking like crap. Half the time, it looked like Ryan Reynolds' head was floating above this odd, throbbing mass of green energy that was kinda shaped like a skinnier version of his own body. And what was with his stupid mask? It was somehow both too big and too small at the same time. I say, either completely cover the nose or not at all. Anyway, I'll take a point away for the stupid suit, but add a point for Oa and the aliens, so we're still at a 5.

The only non-human Green Lantern I know is Kilowog, who was done very well here. He was big enough, he was tough enough, he had a great look and a good voice, to boot. Although his screen time was far too brief, he was a rare enjoyable moment for me in this movie, so I'll add a point for him.

But I'll take off another point for the speed of Hal's decision to quit being a Lantern. He trains with Tomar-Re and Kilowog for about two minutes, then he fights Sinestro for less than one minute. After being beaten by a man who's been a Green Lantern for years, Hal Jordan decides he doesn't have what it takes and decides to quit after being a Lantern for about ten minutes. Seriously? How the heck did he make it through pilot school if he quit after the first teeny bit of adversity?

I'll drop the score to a 4 for the biggest plot hole in the whole movie. The Guardians of Oa tell Sinestro that one of their own, an immortal, all-knowing Guardian, once tried to control the power of fear, but it overtook him and turned him into the embodiment of fear, Parallax. Immediately, Sinestro suggests that they use the power of fear to create yellow rings to fight Parallax. Wait, didn't you just hear about how fear corrupted even of the best and wisest creatures in the galaxy? Why do you think you'll be able to do it better? And the worst part about the whole thing is that the Guardians agree with Sinestro! You know, for being the supreme protectors of the universe, you guys sure are dumb.

I'm going to take off another point for the way in which Green Lantern revealed himself to the world. He's at a party and he sees a helicopter about to crash. Now, there are at least 7,000 different ways to solve this crisis, but it seems like here, Hal asked himself, "What's the stupidest way to stop a crashing helicopter?" And he probably did come up with the stupidest way: a giant Hot Wheels car to catch the helicopter and zoom it around on a track complete with an unnecessary jump. To make matters even worse, I saw a commercial for toys to recreate this exact scenario. It's almost like the toy company came to the filmmakers first and said, "We need you to work this into the movie somehow." And like obedient sheep, that's exactly what they did. Seriously, though — Green Lantern can create anything and the first major thing you have him make is a giant Hot Wheels car? Talk about selling out in the lamest possible way.

But the funniest moment of the movie does deserve a point. That's when Carol easily and quickly recognizes Hal through his retarded mask. She makes a great point: "Just because your cheekbones are covered, doesn't mean I won't recognize you." Of course, this is a strange way for the movie to admit that they made a stupid mask. It would have been better for them to make a better mask (or be really bold and not have one at all), but it still was neat to poke fun at a universally-overlooked flaw in all superheroes.

I'll now bring the score down to a 3 for Green Lantern's unexplained appearance that stopped Hector Hammond from killing Amanda Waller. Seeing Hammond go nuts on them was rather interesting, but suddenly, out of nowhere, G.L. shows up. We didn't see anybody call him; we didn't see his ring tell him to go there. Nothing. There's a fight going on and here's our hero to save the day. (Of course, he failed to save Hammond's dad, the senator.) I wonder if there's a deleted scene here, or if this was just the result of lazy writing. Either way, it sucked.

I'm going to take off another point for the strange relationship between Hammond and Parallax. So a small bit of Parallax was left in Abin Sur from their fight in the beginning, which then went into Hammond during the autopsy. This piece of Parallax then gave Hammond psychic powers? Why? And then the two were connected and Parallax decided to use Hammond to get revenge on Hal because, you know, he has Abin Sur's old ring, and it's a lot more important to kill him before destroying Oa, the center of the universe.

The score then falls to a 1 when Green Lantern goes before the council of Guardians to deliver an extremely cheesy speech, in which he ... asks for permission to fight Parallax alone before he destroys Earth? Why would he have to ask and why would the Guardians say no? All I know is Hal said a lot of stupid stuff about courage and heart and it was supposed to be inspiring but was just really stupid instead.

We then hit a rock bottom zero when Hal decides to give Hammond the ring for some reason. Hammond then uses the ring to blow up a few things, before Hal explains that the ring has to choose you and he summons it off Hammond's finger and back to his hand. Wait ... so, the ring has to choose the person and it only works for that person ... so why was Hammond able to use it to blow all that stuff up? And what was the whole point of this, anyway?

Mercifully, I will add one last point for the second time Hal recites the oath. I just got chills listening to it. Yes, the music helped, but it mostly goes to Ryan Reynolds' delivery. I wouldn't think they'd be able to recite the oath in a non-lame way in the movie, but they pulled it off — twice! (It was just everything else they did in a really lame way.)

Final score: 1