Amazing Again

Popped out to see The Amazing Spider-Man 2 yesterday, and it occurs to me I've been rather lax in my movie reviews lately. To be honest, I haven't seen that many so far this year. Before Captain America 2, I think the last movie I saw was Frozen, at Christmas. Let's see what I can do to redress this balance.

On the subject of Disney's latest re-telling of an old folk tale, all I'll say is that I really enjoyed it, it's very well done, beautifully designed, and goes rather against the grain when it comes to Disney's tales involving love stories. On the subject of the controversy surrounding that song, all I'll say is that it is most upsetting when religious groups obsess and fixate on the 'evils' they infer from the lyrics, when the song is purely and simply about self-acceptance. This wouldn't be the first time that I've felt that some religious institutions (or the poisonous vocal minorities therein) would prefer their members to despise themselves, deriving their only comfort in life from the idea that God loves them, even though no-one else can. Faith can accomplish much, certainly, but religion these days tends to be a system of repression second only to the so-called democratic goverments we in the 'free world' hold so dear and yet, through apathy and media-fuelled fear, allow to erode our freedoms in the name of 'security'.

Wow. That rant went a bit further than intended.

Interesting, then, that it leads in perfectly to Captain America 2, in which the patriotic hero is faced with the idea that his own employers and his own government might be his greatest enemy. Of course, it turns out that Hydra is back (or rather, it's never been away, just quietly infiltrating the seats of power)... but it's so cleverly done - not just for a Marvel movie, it's a surprisingly intelligent spy thriller even without the licensed characters - and makes for a truly riveting movie. The action is brilliant throughout and, while fast-paced, it never becomes impossible to follow. The introduction of the Winter Soldier was well-done (speaking as someone who never read the comics) and I'm very keen to see where the story continues from here, given the state of SHIELD by the end of the movie. Possibly my favourite sequence involved Jenny Agutter beating the living shit out of a couple of enemy agents, before revealing she was actually Black Widow (Scarlet Johanssen, playing it rather different to her previous outings in Iron Man 2 and Avengers) in some kind of holographic disguise. Nevertheless, it was awesome to see Agutter taking on that kind of role... she's come a long way since The Railway Children. I think my only complaint about the movie is that some of the product placement is incredibly blatant. There's a bit in and Apple store where the camera very deliberately re-frames itself - while you watch - to ensure it includes the name of the product the protagonists are using to dig through a secret file.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2, meanwhile, breaks the mold in a very different way. I quite liked Sam Raimi's trilogy (well, the first two, anyway) and found Tobey Maguire mostly likeable in his take on Peter Parker and Spider-Man... But Andy Garfield is a better build for Spider-Man - he's tall and lean, while Maguire is shorter and stockier - and this version of the character is substantially less whiney. When Amazing 2 was first announced, I was rather worried that the glut of villains - Electro (Jamie Foxx doing an excellent job as the meek, geeky electrical engineer and the menacing master of electricity, even though his origin story is deeply implausible (hey, it's a comic book movie... they're allowed!) and some of the Electro effects seemed to be a direct rip-off of Doc Manhatten from Watchmen), Green Goblin (a mixture of the rather different idea used in Raimi's first Spidey flick and basically skipping straight to the Harry Osborne version of the Green Goblin, neatly re-using the electronic pumpkin bombs from Raimi's version) and the Rhino (Paul Giamatti... cast very much against type and clearly revelling in the fun!) - but their introductions were dealt with surprisingly well compared to the travesty that was Spider-Man 3. Also surprising considering the two highest-billed screenwriters were the same pair of idiots that turned wrote a movie about an irritating teenager buying his first car and then slapped some shape-shifting alien robots onto it. I find it bizarre that Kurtzman and Orci are capable of writing (or re-writing) very good screenplays, yet their work on the TransFormers franchise was execrable. A similar dichotomy presents itself in Akiva Goldsman, who wrote the screenplays for A Beautiful Mind and Batman & Robin.

But I digress. Spider-Man, more than most of the other characters in the Marvel pantheon, is about the impact super powers have on a boy's attempts to live a normal life while also living up to the ideals of his father-figure (the famous line being "with great power comes great responsibility"). Being Spider-Man allows Peter Parker to be the greatest version of himself (also the most obnoxiously motor-mouthed, but that's just a side effect of the anonymity granted by the mask, I guess), but it also means those around him are constantly in danger. Interestingly, this movie goes to great lengths to tell Peter that he's ultimately not responsible for other people's choices and actions (a similar theme presents itself in the series of books I was reading earlier in the year). I'm not entirely sure about it's take on the perils of hero-worship, not least because one character goes from loving Spider-Man to wanting to kill him rather too quickly. Despite packing a hell of a lot of story into just under two and a half hours, it remains coherent throughout and doesn't squander the characters. Marvel do seem to have been bitten by the Joss Whedon bug where, just when you think certain characters are going to have a happy - though not ideal - ending, one of them gets horrifically killed but, again, Amazing 2 doesn't squander the moment. It makes for a very tense sequence (it's rare that I'm literally on the edge of my seat, but I did find afterward that I'd been leaning forward during that bit) that gives you just enough hope for a positive outcome that the actual death is shocking. It is said that Sony are setting us up for the Sinister Six... and, in the wake of Amazing 2, that's a far more exciting proposition than I'd expected.

On the way home, I passed a guy hobbling along the platform toward the train on a crutch and then, while walking down the inside of the train, I heard a loud thump behind me. Turning round, all I saw was a couple of women glancing behind them then quickly turning back round. It didn't take long for me to figure out that the guy with the crutch might have fallen over, so I dashed back - I was at least halfway down the carriage at this point - to help him up. As it turns out, the driver had decided to close the door just as he was boarding, knocking him off-balance. He was already well on his way to finding his feet by the time I got to him, but he thanked me for the help nonetheless. He'd dropped a laptop he was carrying (he muttered something about either selling it or giving it to his mother) which had popped open, dislodging its hard disk in the process. It seemed to pop back together easily enough once I'd got the disk back in place, but he was concerned it would be ruined. I was more concerned that no-one closer to the accident had seen fit to help the guy... I mean, seriously, you don't have to be a super hero to help another human being, do you?