Well, after 10 years and a ton of movies, the penultimate movie has supposedly come out. I should warn, there will be SPOILERS ahead. We were told the stakes would be high, but are they? I finally watched Doctor Strange over the weekend and you know, he has the time stone, a magical element that he can use to manipulate time, undo whatever has happened in the past. Imagine how helpful that would be if something awful happened, to say, all, or half, of our favorite characters. The movie starts of where Thor Ragnorok ended, and we are aboard the ship of what is left of Asgard. Loki is on his knees, pleading with Thanos about not killing Thor, not wanting to give up the Tesseract (another infinity stone) – if you missed it, there are 6 magical stones, the big bad, Thanos, has one, as far as we know, but gets the second from Loki, who stole it before Asgard fell. The ship they’re on gets destroyed and that’s how Thor ends up with the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Hemdall, Idras Elba, gets Hulk off of the ship, back to NYC and he lands in Doctor Strange’s sanctum. And this is the first time Banner is back, and he isn’t the Hulk and we don’t see the Hulk throughout the movie. I don’t want to skip over anything, but the story with Vision I found very annoying. And his love story with the Scarlett Witch bored me. I know that sounds bad, especially because he has the infinity stone in his head, and it’ll likely cost him his life. But I’m going to change gears.
For several movies we’ve heard nothing but fear and anxiety about Thanos. This movie finally gives us a glimpse into some of his origins. It doesn’t delve deeply enough, into what makes him think that he’s right, but we see a flashback of him taking Gamorra from her home world and adopting her, sort of. There is a moment, towards the end of the movie, that Thanos is explaining to Iron Man/Tony Stark, what happened to his home planet, Titan. This, to me, was the most important scene. Thanos says he noticed how wonderful Titan was, how prosperous it was, how overcrowded it was. He said he made a suggestion, or something, to decrease the number of people, to kill off a large group, but not based on wealth or status, just random. That encapsulates the ending. As you expect, Thanos gets all of the stones, has the completed gauntlet and does exactly what he says he’s going to do. And poof, like that, half the heroes are gone. But not any of the original Avengers, not they’re all fine. And that’s what makes this so empty. The can kill of Black Panther or Spidey, but we know they have more movies coming out, so we know they’re going to be fine. So what have we been waiting for, really? I’m not sure.
I think it would be pointless to rehash the Spiderman story, it isn’t new, thanks to Toby Maguire and company. It’s hard to also get that bad taste out of your mouth after watching the third entry of the series, but I went ahead and said, for $6, I think I can commit. Was I disappointed? Of course, I’m a comic book geek (there, I’ve admitted it). Was I surprised at being disappointed? Not in the least. Spiderman is one of the few comics that truly belongs in animated form or in a comic, the on-screen version never turns out like the comic, never, and not based on special effects.In the newest entry of Spiderman, arguably the original was the one that started the great comic book craze, the cast is totally redone and the story is recreated. There is no tie to the original save for the stayed and true appearance of Stan Lee. As a comic fan, I have to stop and comment on the lack of Steve Ditko, who is the co-creator of the series. He and Lee had a falling out years ago and while I’ve no doubt he makes money off the series, is never given the credit he deserves. Anyway, in place of the occasionally talented Toby Maguire enters Andrew Garfield, to me, little known British actor who apparently has a feud with Robert Pattinson, can’t imagine why. Opposite Garfield is the adorable Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, previously played for three seconds by Bryce Dallas Howard in the 3rd Spiderman movie. His aunt and uncle were played by Sally Field and Charlie Sheen, both fantastic as Aunt Mae and Uncle Ben. Casting aside, nothing new is seen in this version of Spiderman. Peter loses his parents at an early age, grows up with his aunt and uncle, gets bullied in school and gets bitten by a spider that magically transforms him into a superhero. He watches his uncle die and then decides to be a crime fighter. Where Garfield excels is where Maguire failed, the comedic timing of Spiderman. Peter Parker always made jokes, Toby Maguire isn’t funny and wouldn’t know funny if his life depended on it. Garfield had a way of delivering lines that made them as entertaining as Parker makes them in the comic. But that is the last advancement to Spiderman that fans can expect from Garfield. He has the same lost look and sad eyes that Maguire mastered long before and delivers his action in the same metered way Maguire did. It all seemed very orchestrated, and I know it is, but I shouldn’t be able to notice that.The rest of the story revolved around the story of Dr. Curt Connors, the man who turns himself into the Lizard. He reveals nothing to Peter of the truth of his relationship with Peter’s father, but finds the variables to growing his arm back, and in so doing, transforms himself into a crazed half-man, half-lizard, bent on turning NYC into ground zero for lizards. Of course, Spiderman stops him, but at the cost of Gwen Stacy’s father, Captain Stacy of the NYPD played by Denis Leary.The movie was about what I expected. Garfield was passable as Spiderman/Peter Parker, the rest of the cast fell into place in their supporting roles. Truth be told, the ‘adults’ of the cast were great, the kids, Garfield and Stone were somewhat mediocre in comparison. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Emma Stone in Easy A, but her version of Gwen Stacy wasn’t great, but just good. There were quite a few scenes where Gwen should be anything but funny, but Stone is just too funny for her own good and didn’t seem to get serious much, if at all. I thought she could have, but pulled away from it.As I said before, for $6, this is worth seeing, but otherwise it isn’t a ‘stop what you’re doing to see’ movie. I had hoped it would be better, bring a fresh take to this overdone series, but it didn’t. If anything, it makes me miss the Ultimate Spiderman reboot done about ten years ago by revered comic scribe Brian Michael Bendis, if you don’t know him, shame on you.
