This Sunday I am going to spend a ridiculous amount of money to see The Amazing Spiderman 2. My local theater is offering the event in D-Box, a motion-driven 4D experience guaranteed to allow my kids to hoot and holler and enjoy it in that special way that only seems possible for kids under the age of 10. D-Box adds to the already horrific cost of movies these days, but it may be what saves the experience entirely. See, I’m afraid Spiderman 2 is going to suck.
The first story of any televised comic book series is the origin story. We get to learn where a character came from and understand his (or extremely rarely her–and yes I know Wonder Woman may show up in the next Superman flick and yes, yes, yes I am stoked–especially if she is played by Gemma Arterton) roots. Once you know the character it the next logical question is: where do we go from here? The answer is difficult. Most writers and directors get it wrong. Some try to replicate the first episode. Some try to go big. The rare few walk into the situation with an idea of what the sequence (trilogy mostly) looks like. With May 4th looming it is only fair to note that Star Wars got it right with The Empire Strikes Back though Attack of the Clones was an unmitigated disaster of everything but CGI. We saw them get it right with the Dark Knight movies. We did not see that with the Iron Man movies.We definitely did not see that with the original Spiderman trilogy, which leaves me little hope of seeing it now. Instead, I’m bombarded with advertisements showing multiple villains in the mold of the Sinister Six, which leads me to believe that Amazing Spiderman 2 is going big. In this image you see the rigs for Vulture and Doc Octopus, who are not otherwise shown in the previews. What the previews do detail is images of Electro, Rhino, and even the Green Goblin/Hobgoblin/whatever-goblin. You can’t go big and tell the intricate character story. There just isn’t enough screen time to do both. So what happens is the directors build a plot around the origin stories of the added villians, somehow indicating that their fall to evil ways is instigated or dependent on the hero who is forced to defeat them in order to end the movie. It winds up looking stupid and contrived with big effects to hold little ones in their seats, but leave thinking ones feeling dirty.
At least i’ll have rockin seats.