Well, they've rebooted the Spiderman franchise - I don;t know why, seeing as the original three films were fantastic, but then Hollywood logic is beyond the understanding of us mere mortals. This one stars Andrew Garfield as Spiderman, Jamie Fox as Electro and some emo kid as Harry Osbourne, Norman Osbourne's slightly androgynous daughter. Garfield quite wisely doesn't try to compete with Toby MacGuire's brilliant performance of a vulnerable, awkward Peter Parker, and chooses instead for a cockier, more confident take on the character - basically, a realistic portrayal of a teenager who's just discovered he has super powers. He plays it well, but I can't help but think that his is a rather shallow interpretation, nowhere near as dramatically interesting as McGuire. Aunt May is more interestingly written, and a more ambivalent character, in this film, so it's a shame she's played by an actor with the emotional range of cheese.
I was pretty excited when I heard that Electro would be the villain in this film - in the TVseries (which I loved as a kid) he's interesting as he's pretty much invincible, and the only way Spiderman beats him is by tricking him into beating himself. In the film, though, they've decided to turn him into a stalker who gets his powers when he's bitten by a radioactive electric eel (because fuck it, why not). They also decide to remove the whole near-omnipotent demi god thing, and make him basically another supervillain who uses electricity to blow shit up and lift up cars etc. So we can add electricity to the list of things that the makers of this film don;t understand. Also on that list: cinematography, character, plot, basic physics, and the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sound (there's a scene where a song starts playing on the soundtrack and Spiderman says "oh, I hate this song". Fuck you, whoever wrote that. Fuck you so much.) - in fact, it'd be easier to list the good things about this film than the bad. So - Andrew Garfield's sexy accent, Gwen Stacey's legs, the first fight scene with Electro, and the last twenty minutes. That's the really annoying thing - the film's ending is great. The final fight scene, and everything that comes after it, is excellent, and that somehow makes me hate the film more, because I left the cinema feeling like I enjoyed myself but knowing I didn't. You can't make an hour and a half of mediocre, poorly written shite and then give it an awesome ending to trick people into thinking they liked it.
The plot is this: Harry Osbourne is dying of MacGuffin-itis and needs Spiderman's blood. Spiderman refuses to give it to him because it might kill him, which understandably pisses Harry off. Rather than doing what he looks like he'd do - listen to My Chemical Romance and write something bitchy in his diary - Harry makes a deal with Electro to kill Spiderman, and steal his blood. Oh, that's after the terminally ill kid who looks like he has the muscle mass of custard overpowers two security guards and breaks into a high-security mental asylum staffed by the German/Russian/European-or-something mad scientist Dr Kafka. Read that again. Doctor. Motherfucking. Kafka. That one name sums up just how retarded this film is, or at least it comes close, because nothing could possibly sum up the monumental stupidity of everyone involved in making this ridiculous, badly written, poorly plotted, terribly filmed abortion. And no amount of Andrew Garfiled's sexiness can change that fact.
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