Captain America: Brave New World

Re-Heated Leftovers

or

The President's a Red Hulking Jerk (So What Else is New?)
 

The new Captain America movie—Captain America: Brave New World—has been the #1 movie of the past three weekends, so it was about time I checked it out. It's the first new "Cap" movie with the retirement of the Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) character in Avengers: Endgame, and after a Disney+ series try-out, Anthony Mackie gets to stop being called The Falcon and being called Captain America in an actual movie from Marvel Studios. 

 

Too bad he feels like a co-star in his own movie, as the character flails around trying to solve a government conspiracy involving the big dump of adamantium that's been sitting in the Indian Ocean since The Eternals (and that was—what?—four years ago?), while at the same time a villain from the past (2008, specifically, but from another Marvel movie series from a previous studio), who has supposedly been rotting in a secure jail-cell somewhere apparently isn't and has his own plans for—muah-ha-ha—revenge. Already the "Brave New World" title of the movie feels like a stretch as it seems to be recycling old dangling plot-threads from the less-than-successful Marvel movies of the past.

And speaking of recycling, Harrison Ford takes over for the late William Hurt (who took over from Sam Elliott) playing General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, who has previously been a thorn in The Avengers' boots and has parlayed that into becoming President of the United States (Ford is President again? Man, we ARE recycling). And as much as Ford tends to dominate the proceedings of the film, he overshadows Mackie's Sam Wilson/Cap and (I think) to the film's detriment.

So, the film begins after the events of "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" (which I never saw, but it apparently doesn't matter much) where Cap and the new Falcon, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) take part in an undercover operation in Mexico to stop a mercenary named Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito), who works for "Serpent" guess they're bad guys—to recover some MacGuffin (which turns out to be refined adamantium that the Japanese government had secured from that Eternals thing which has now been called "Celestial Island"). Don't worry if all of that sounds new, because it is, and no, you haven't missed anything.

Anyway, mission accomplished with the help of Cap's new, improved vibranium-infused wings from Wakanda and a lot of gee-whizardry. Despite doing well in Mexico, Cap insists that Torres train with one of America's super-soldiers, one Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly, always enjoyable), who was introduced in the Disney+ series. Long story short, he was a super-soldier in Korea, but had been imprisoned by the government for the past 30 years...but isn't now. Cool.

After the successful mission, everybody gets invited to the White House to meet the President (both the U.S. and Japanese variety), but while Ross is giving a presentation on how the world should be safe-guarding and sharing adamantium for the world's benefit (unlike those Wakandans!) and doing one of those "it's-for-your-own-good" speeches that American Presidents do, phones start erupting with a song by The Fleetwoods, which turns some in the audience—including Bradley—into "attack" mode (actually, The Fleetwoods aren't that bad!) and they start firing on the President. A big melee happens and Bradley is taken into custody even though he can't remember anything about trying to shoot the President. It's back to prison for Bradley, and Cap is on the "outs" with Ross because Cap's friend tried to shoot him.

Anyway, you get the gist. An international plot (that may involve World War III!) with personal repercussions for our Captain, and it just gets so complicated with mind-controlling cell-phones, nobody trusting anybody, Ross' potential heart-problems, on top of the lamest of character motivations at this late date—how  now-President Ross feels so bad that he's estranged from his daughter Betty (Liv Tyler) because he tried to kill her ex-boyfriend, Bruce Banner, The Hulk (back before he was Mark Ruffalo) making everything a bit of a mish-mash.

That last bit—the daughter thing—undercuts the movie quite a lot, and although Ford plays it gamely, it's a bit of weak tea for motivation, especially given the higher stakes globally, and finally makes President Ross a bit of a lame character, where his ambitions as President pale to his "just wanting to get along" with his own kid. If it was really such a big deal as the movie makes it out to be, it wouldn't be resolved so soporifically as it is in the movie.

But what am I complaining about, nobody cares much for all that thin "character stuff," as what they really want to see is Ross turn into The Red Hulk because it's promised in the poster and the previews. Given the character's history with the Green Hulk, this is irony with a capital SMASH! and, frankly, has nothing to do with the rest of the movie other than that the same bad guy responsible for all the mind-controlling has been setting up the Third Act Hulkitude as well, just so that...Ross can look bad in front of his daughter, frustrating him into full chili-pepper berserker mode. Oh, and cause all sorts of damage to prominent monuments...and cherry trees.

One senses in that final Cap vs. Red Hulk confrontation that a lot of screenplay back-filling was done in order to bring it about (there are five credited screenwriters), but even given the cheesiness that goes into a lot of the funny-book verisimilitude, the  efforts here strain the goodwill needed in order to accept it. I mean I know it's based on comic books and superheroes, but it takes a Hulk-style leap of faith to accept the ways and means it takes to get there. It takes a lot of the geek-fun out of it to know you're being played. Still, it IS good to see Tim Blake Nelson come back. He's a good actor, a good director, and a heck of a nice guy. He plays evil good, too. But, just as he was ill-served in The Incredible Hulk movie so many years back, he's ill-served by this one, too.

So, it's disappointing, especially because it's Anthony Mackie's first Captain America movie and I've always liked him. And because...legacy. Of all the Marvel properties, the Captain America series was the last of the "majors" to come out before the first "Avengers" movie, and the studio managed to work with its old-fashioned and, frankly, jingoistic tendencies and make it work well. In fact, they did their job so well that the Captain America series was the one trilogy of movies in the Marvel stable that didn't falter in any of its three films. 

 

Now, it has. And that leaves me feeling a bit sad...and disappointed.

Deadpool & Wolverine

Despite Claws and Swords, Not Much of a Point

or

"Get Your Special Sock Out, Nerds — This is Going to Be Good."

It was as inevitable as the title "When Titans Clash" showing up in any Marvel comic. 

 

Around the time that X-men Origins: Wolverine was being conceived, Ryan Reynolds lobbied hard to play the character Deadpool—"The Merc with a Mouth"—a comic super-powered mercenary with regenerative powers and a meta-influenced line of snarky patter that quickly made him a fan favorite from "The House of Ideas." It would have been a nice break-through role for Reynolds (as the man can be funny...and irreverent...as hell), but, for some reason the character was revised for the movie—his mouth was fused together, therefore couldn't speak. 

 

Well, what fun was that? They wouldn't even let him make guttural sounds—which would have been funny if they'd had him trying to say words like he was perpetually eating peanut butter—But, no, "they" wouldn't even allow that. It was Wolverine's movie, Wolverine was—and always was, even in the comics—the breakout character in the "X-men" series, so Deadpool was muted, lest he actually upstage the titular character of the film.*

Ryan Reynolds on "Mute" during X-men Origins: Wolverine.

X-men Origins: Wolverine did okay at the box-office—but not enough to generate any more "X-men Origins" movies. It did generate some animus with Reynolds, who'd been trying to get a "Deadpool" movie into production** and thought X-MO:W killed it and killed it dead. Silly man. Deadpool, after all, has regenerative powers—shoot him and the bullet will work its way out, cut his arm off and it'll grow back—so after having a proposed budget slashed and a rather kicking "sizzle" reel made, the film was made and did blockbuster box-office. It also slightly regenerated the "superhero" genre of films which, at the time, was starting to lose its buy-back value.

Deadpool had no shame in its humor, lampooning superheroes, superhero movies, Marvel, DC, Reynolds, and 20th Century Fox, but seemed to take particular hyena-glee when making fun of Hugh Jackman and X-men Origins: Wolverine, setting my movie-blogger sense tingling about a possible collaboration between the two. It seemed inevitable.

Happily, it's happened in Deadpool & Wolverine, which, after a rather moribund effort with Deadpool 2, has revived the series a few deep-cut notches above its predecessor. The (this time unfunnily not written by Reynolds) synopsis goes like this:

"A listless Wade Wilson toils away in civilian life with his days as the morally flexible mercenary, Deadpool, behind him. But when his home-world faces an existential threat, Wade must reluctantly suit-up again with an even more reluctant Wolverine."

Um. Sure. That's sounds..."listless", but serviceable. But, it doesn't really talk about what's happened since the last movie, of which the most important event is that Disney bought 20th Century Fox, home of the X-men franchise, as well as Marvel Studios, which has everybody else, so that The House of Mouse can claim all things Marvel and wait for the money-truck to drive up to the receiving dock. The movie is rife with opportunity to make all sorts of in-jokes on that subject including using the old corporate logo in a Cosmic Garbage Dump called "The Void".

"Welcome to the MCU," Deadpool says at one point. "You're joining at a bit of a low point."

 

(Now, bear in mind this will be confusing) What happens is that Deadpool has been using the time-dimensional device of the Marvel mercenary Cable*** to go back in time and try to fix things to get his girlfriend (Morena Baccarin) back, right? Well, things aren't going too well on that front, so he goes to another Marvel Earth ("The Sacred Timeline" one) to join the Avengers (with just the first of many cameo's), but he's turned down...flat. But, his time-hopping has attracted the attention of the TVA (the Time Variance Authority), and its agent Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), who informs Deadpool that his timeline is starting to unravel owing to the fact that its "anchor being", Wolverine has died (because of Logan). Paradox makes Deadpool the opportunity to be put in "The Sacred Timeline" to spare his life and help with future events.

Wade, wanting to spare his ex and friends from extinction decides he'll do something else (naturally). He transports himself to the spot where the Wolverine died, digs up his grave and finds...a metallic corpse. Not very useful to preserving the timeline, but the parts come in handy in a fight when TVA troops arrive to try and stop him. So, the next step is to find another Wolverine...a "live" one this time...so he goes multiverse-hopping to find a suitable Wolverine—there are some lovely variants, including a comics-accurate version (funny!) and one cameo by a super-hero actor in need a of a job (blink and you'll miss him), until, finally, he finds a "suitable" Wolverine.

Taking him back to the TVA, he discovers that not all adamantium-encrusted Canadian super-heroes are alike, and is told he's brought back "the worst" Wolverine (owing to a failure in his past), Paradox whisks them off to "The Void" (from the Disney series "Loki")—the place at the end of time where discarded super-heroes go to await disposal. Lots of interesting cameo's here (see the picture below for some), but the place is lorded over by Charles Xavier's twin sister Cassandra Nova (played—and quite entertainingly—by Emma Corrin) who has her brother's head-messing-with powers and is (to put it kindly) "resentful."

Just some of the "discarded" heroes in "The Void"

There are so many "in-jokes" and references to past Marvel movies "before they were popular" that some audience-members may get lost in the mix. One merely has to "go with it" as Deadpool's running snarkiness will be providing references and laughs all along the way. Besides, there are so many variants of characters in the Void—there's a "Dogpool" portrayed by Peggy, the recently crowned "Britain's Ugliest Dog"—that details really don't matter, as something funny will be said in the next 30 seconds, anyway.

This, of course, is the film's strength—along with the R-rated "evisceration humor" exhibited in the fights (nobody gets hurt with these regenerative powers, so they're as impactful as injuries in a "Looney Tunes" cartoon)—so much so that the story really doesn't matter. At all. It's all played for laughs, and if the film twists itself in gordian knots trying to generate plot-points, it's going to become a punch-line anyway—maybe because of the lengths the writers have to go through to get there. The Deadpool series has its own wall of incredulity to run interference on "the Plausibles" in the audience trying to see plot-holes in the movie as that's the character of Deadpool himself. He's a one-man "Mystery Science Theater," poking holes (often literally) in everything.

Cassandra Nova's "headquarters" is the corpse of Ant-Man/Giant-Man

Deadpool's comment: "Huh. Paul Rudd finally aged..." 

I guess the poor box-office of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania had ramifications.

But, then, nobody really cared what happened to Hope and Crosby after each "Road" movie, or to the Marx Brothers, or Laurel and Hardy. People just came for the laughs. So let it be with Deadpool. And if things in the movie end merely to the default state at the beginning, at least it insures that another one will come along after awhile, that's okay, too. That's entertainment. Sometimes you have to let go of the continuity consciousness and not expect transformative story-lines and major changes to the characters, as long as they're having a good time and taking us along with them.

 

Now, that's a real regenerative power.

* Never mind that the scenario might have spawned another movie tent-pole series with Deadpool—a pretty good bet in hindsight because that is exactly what happened, due to Ryan Reynolds' persistence.

 

** Reynolds loved the comic, especially when it described Wade Wilson as looking like "a cross between Ryan Reynolds and a Shar Pei." 

 

*** Cable was in Deadpool 2...you know...played by Josh Brolin (No, not Thanos...the other...*siiigh*...(this is going to take a long time...) Look, just go with it, okay? You probably don't believe in multi-verses anyway! ("Did you know Dr. Dre's "Nothing but a 'G' Thang" has the most verses?") That's NOT what I'm talkin....just keep reading, okay? No more questions.

Superman Returns

While doing work on The B/C-L Index—you are using it, aren't you?—I come across reviews that haven't been thrown on here. This one is an oddity. It's the first movie review I wrote after a long time of just letting movies rattle around in my head. It's rough with way Too Much Information about my personal life for me to be comfortable with it, and too much "What I Had for Dinner"-type information that just seems irrelevant to the subject at hand (that being the movie). Still, it was an interesting read (for me, at least). If I haven't improved since then, I've at least learned to stay more on track...which for a blog about movies is important.

You'll Believe a Man Can Float

Driving home from Superman Returns in 4-story IMAX and 3-freepin'-D on Wednesday night, I was listening to KIRO Newsradio. Thousands were evacuating, fearing the cresting of the Delaware River. Andrea Yates was convicted (again) of killing her kids. A public official was lost in the Olympic Forest.

"Man!" I thought. "We could really use Superman."

I knew I needed him. It had been a rough week of moving furniture and hauling myself from The Island to The Redmond. I was swamped at work and I had to take Tuesday off for the transfer of our big stuff from The Place What We're Selling to the current domicile, so my Wednesday started at 4 am (just in time for the sunrise) to get started early on due assignments. After all this, I was looking forward to seeing friends I hadn't seen...in ages, and seeing the new "Superman movie". I was really looking forward to that. I've been pretty discouraged lately, and a new Superman movie...well, that seemed just the ticket. The previews for it were great.

So, how is it?

Good! Not as good as Superman: The Movie. Better than Superman II (which I've never liked) and it's Shakespeare compared to the moronic Superman III: Wasting Richard Pryor and the incompetent Superman IV: The Quest for Peace ("You'll Believe a Movie Can Stink to Highest Heaven!").

But everyone will be comparing it to the first one. As well they should. Superman Returns should be called "Son of Superman" (*ahem* cough!) as it's so closely tied to the first film. It recycles Marlon Brando as Father Jor-El, and recycles whole sections of the first film's Mario Puzo/Robert Benton/David Newman/Tom Mankiewicz script, including my favorite Lex Luthor line: "My father always told me..." "Get out!"

But, Superman: The Movie was really three films: The deadly earnest Krypton section ("This is no fantasy" intoned Brando at the beginning); the equally serious Smallville/Fortress of Solitude section (with Glenn Ford's last great performance, and a farewell to Ma Kent scene in a seemingly endless epic wheat field); and finally, the Metropolis movie, with its antic screwball comedy pace (brilliantly achieved, by the way), it's cartoonish villains ("Otis-burg? O-TIS-BURG???!!!") with their absurdly successful attempts at stealing nuclear missiles, and at its soul the "Superman Meets Girl" romantic comedy story-line. I've always felt that lurching shift in tone was a bit out of step with the rest of the film (though you could make a case for showing that stalwart Superman is needed in such a crazy, zany world). Now, I'm not so sure. Because Superman Returns keeps the earnest tone of the first couple sections of the original throughout its considerable length. More cohesive it may be, but it's not more entertaining. In fact, it tends to bog down the proceedings, which consists of "regrets and things unsaid" which would have made Richard Donner's His Girl Friday pacing inappropriate. Which only points out how large the gulf is between that first film and this one.

Donner's Superman was a frothy entertainment, that, in the days of disco, long sideburns, and flaired pants, winked at the concept of heroics. This one is heavier, darker, meaner and less entertaining. There's less joy to it. And it takes its heroes deadly seriously. You think a guy like Spider-man has great power, thus great responsibility? Hell! Try being "Superman!"

Donner's flying scenes in the first (with a lot of credit going to licensed pilot Christopher Reeve) showed the joy of flight--the freedom of it--the grace. Who wouldn't want to fly after "Superman?" "SR's" flights are rarely graceful, and powered by stress. This Superman is always in a hurry. He doesn't stop to smell the up-drafts or do a lazy roll through the clouds. He's making a bee-line from one emergency to another. There's another quality to the SR aerial scenes--isolation. Superman is often seen as a small speck in a big, empty sky with life going on far below him. He's not a part of this Earth, and Singer drives the point home again and again. It's no fun being Superman.

I'll bet audiences have a problem with that: if they were Superman, of course, they'd enjoy it. It brings to mind the Superman scene I'd like to see. Howard Chaykin, of "American Flagg!" comics fame said in an interview how he'd like to start off a Superman comic. Lots of panels of ordinary Metropolitans going about their day only to have them interrupted by a blue-red streak going by their window. BOOM! Another about to sip his coffee. BOOM! A couple more of those until you get to the "splash" page: Superman, over the ocean, wearing a pair of shades, and popping his fingers, listening to "I Believe in You" (from "How to Succeed in Business (Without Really Trying)) on his Walkman. "You have the cool, clear eyes /of a seeker of wisdom and truth."

Yeah. I'd love to see that Superman.

But despite Returns' seriousness, there are joys. Brandon Routh looks and sounds so much like Christopher Reeve that it doesn't take a big leap (or a single bound) to accept him in the role. He exhibits a bit more life as Clark Kent than the more stalwart Superman, breaking into a goofy grin at the slightest provocation, and restraining the klutz routine (he doesn't constantly punch up his glasses the way Reeves' CK did). I also like the fact that his performance doesn't have the same "I'm sharing a joke with the audience" quality that Reeve brought to the role. Kate Bosworth is damned cute as Lois Lane** (as a blonde, she barely registers on the screen, but here, her hair darkened brown, she seems to have a bit more depth) and has little of the Margot Kidder neuroticism and (here's a plus!) I don't remember hearing her scream once. I do miss Kidder's whiskey baritone cracking on "Clark!," however.

There could be a bit more life to Frank Langella's Perry White and Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor. Spacey's Luthor is self-contained malice and only sparks to life during a confrontation scene with Lois. Gene Hackman expertly tred the mine-field of jokes in the first film, but it was tough to buy him as a real threat to anybody but his cronies. Spacey's Luthor is a villain who does bad things...and enjoys doing bad things. Unfortunately, here, you mostly see him prepare to do bad things, and so there's no real pay-off for the character until 2/3 of the way through the film.

There is one cracker-jack sequence involving a doomed airliner that shows that it's pretty darned hard task to stop a plane in free-fall. It's note-perfect, right down to showing the skin of the craft buckling from a lurching halt. The movie has a good bead on the concept of heroism, too. There are a lot of heroics in this film (not just from der Ubermensch) where people who could take the easy way out, go against their better judgement and do What Must Be Done, despite the jeopardy it may put them in. It makes a statement that heroism doesn't come from powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. It comes from the heart, the conscience and the will.

Good movie/bad movie? Thumbs up/Thumbs down? Hard to say at this point. There are some movies that are merely okay while you suffer through them, but are better in memory (Napoleon Dynamite is one of those films: I can laugh at parts of it in retrospect, but I'd have to be kidnapped and a gun placed to my skull to watch it again***). Superman Returns was just the opposite: enjoyable while sitting through it (though I was aware of just how long it was, I didn't quite get to the point of checking the time), but the farther I get from it, I remember what's wrong with it more than what was right. If I had my "druthers," Superman Returns would be lighter than the Batman Begins, the "X-men" films, Spider-man, certainly lighter than Ang Lee's Hulk. At least it wasn't as frivolous as the Fantastic Four. My opinion of it is evolving, and that brings up another issue.

I've noticed an interesting trend in on-line reviews over the weekend. Initially, they're scathing, criticizing every aspect of the film..and harshly, to a ridiculous , often hysterical level. Second viewings produce a more favorable response, even admiration. I suspect that folks go, expecting to see the first film or worse yet, their idealized memory of the first...or second film. In that regards, this one will fail, but it can't help but fail. You can't fight a cherished favorite, or the memory of a cherished favorite. My advice: Go, expecting Superman IV. I know I'm going to see it again. Through the double exposure of the 3-D glasses, I couldn't tell whether the cribbed...sorry, the "homage"...final shot of Superman flying up, up and away past the audience had its Superman smile benignly at the audience. Like the George Reeves wink at the end of some of the TV shows, and Christopher Reeve's shared smile, it would have been nice to see it in this one. The fact that I didn't disappoints me, and makes me wonder why a decision not to include it, was made. Don't we want Superman on our side? I'll have to see it again. *

My favorite sum-up is by The Stranger's Andrew Wright who grumped: "For a movie featuring a hero who can conceivably give God a wedgie, there's precious little zowie to be found." "Zowie!" as in Adam West clobbering Ceasar Romero "Zowie?"

 

* And, sad to say, there is no smile on the final fly-by of 2006 Superman. He merely scans the audience with his eyes on the way past, ever vigilant. He probably isn't smiling because of the relatively few bodies he sees in the seats. And the ones that were there are already heading for the Exits. Not exactly what a super-hero expects when he sets out to "watch your back." 

 

** Hey, c'mon, younger me: Lois Lane shouldn't be "cute".  Lois Lane would curl her lip if you called her that.

 

*** Yeah, I don't know what my problem was here. I watched it a few years later and fell in love with it and regard it fondly.

A bit of hind-sight from here in 2024: James Gunn is making a new Superman movie with a new "from-scratch" cast and I just read the Internet News says that the "CW" is making a Superman series with Brandon Routh playing the role again—although as it's from the Internet, I'll believe it when I see it on my TV screen. I like Routh. He's gotten looser and more charismatic with age and I bet he could do a fine performance as "Supes" these days (as he did on those recent CW shows).

But, my long-distance memory of Superman Returns tilts it to a "bit of a drag" movie. There WAS no "ZOWIE!" to it. It was dark, dispiriting, mean and vengeful. It lingered on the negative and dismissed the positive. It should be bright, three-colored and direct. It should take pride in the right and look down on the wrong, not dwell on it. Bad guys shouldn't be taken so seriously; they should be ridiculed...but not by Superman. That would be mean. But, they should be dispatched so that life can go on positively.

And no brooding. Zack Snyder spent so much time having Henry Cavill doubting himself and "his way" that he never got around to showing a good portrait of Superman. And I, for one, am glad he got stopped before he could carry out his "Superman-as-villain" scenario for his planned Justice League series. That would have been just a dreary exercise. As dreary as making Superman a "fair-weather father" as he is in Superman Returns. Not to mention a serial-peeper. The crux of Superman is he's a good guy. Just because he CAN do something, doesn't mean he does. There's a thinking, moral filter there...that the recent incarnations have forgotten about.

Maybe it's because all I see these days (because they're the loudest) are politicians as "anti"-Supermen who don't believe in "Truth" (that's for damn sure!), "Justice" ("Delay, Delay, Delay") and I don't know what the Hell their idea of "The American Way" is (but it probably involves a lead pipe). It would be nice to have that...as an alternative for what America supposedly stands for now.

The Amazing Spider-Man

Written at the time of the film's release.

Don't worry. New stuff tomorrow....

Spider-man v. 2.0
or
"With Great Power Comes Sequels, Re-Boots, Etc....(A Spider-man's Work is Never Done)"

It may be a web-strand too soon to be doing a re-boot of the "Spider-man" franchise, but The Amazing Spider-man does do one thing that justifies its existence—it's better than the Tobey McGuire/Sam Raimi first film in the original trilogy, and right off the ledge manages to have the fun, energy, pop-soapishness, and inventiveness of the second film in that series, the one with Dr. Octopus. We have to go through the origin story again (but that's okay, we seem to have to with every "Superman" film, and evidently will with the next one).

The story is basically the same—Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a smart high school geek with a photog' hobby, and his first encounter with an industrial science lab manages to put the bite on him, arachnidally-speaking, then strange things start happening as he does whatever a spider can, conflicts, conflicts, conflicts (of the physical and angst variety), "with great power comes great responsibility," yadda yadda yadda. But there's a lot of "Spidey"-history to draw on, and the writers (James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent—who added a lot to Spiderman 2—and Steve Kloves—who mentored Harry Potter) have tinkered and brought a lot of missing pieces to the table. 

This time the love interest is Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone, who appears to be the oldest person in school, but that may be part of the appeal of the character, certainly to Parker), daughter of an NYPD captain (Denis Leary, who plays it straight, tough, and with impeccable comic timing), and bowing to the fan-boyish, his web-powers are not so organic—he's got the little web-shooters now, although interestingly, he doesn't develop the web-goo. Oscorp is still around, although we never see its CEO (or do we?), so's the Daily Bugle—but Parker doesn't have a job there yet, so there's no J. Jonah Jameson (how could replace or improve on J.K. Simmons' interpretation?). The villain is another industrial bio-scientist, Curt Connors (played as if was Peter O'Toole by Rhys Ifans and he's terrific), who—not giving anything away here—eventually turns into the Lizard.

What's different is motivation and sub-text. Echoing the Potter series, attention and emphasis is paid to what happened to Peter's parents (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz) that put him in the care of Uncle Ben and Aunt May (Martin Sheen and Sally Field, both extraordinarily good) and indications are that is the story which will run throughout this movie-arc (as well, I suspect, as the consequences of keeping secrets (as I said, there's a lot of history to drawn on). 

What's also different and good is how everybody's perfected the formula, including director Marc Webb (who made the, to me, extraordinarily fine (500) Days of Summer): Garfield's Parker is more in line with the comic character, mood-swinging as well as web-slinging, and his Parker is awkward, stammering, frequently inarticulate and perceived outwardly as something of a jerk, a simp, or worthless* (hey, wow, they got the character of a misunderstood teenager down), and the fights, which in the past have been rushed and often unfollowable, now flow and, frequently—thanks to CGI—in one continuous shot that swoops, loops and parallels Spider-man's flight patterns.

The pace is still there, but thanks to stunt arranger and second-unit director Vic Armstrong (a few of the Bonds and Indiana Jones), it's not all a blur. Also, under Raimi, some of these fights were brutal and sadistic, and, don't get me wrong, these are no less savage, and take more of a toll on the participants.** But the desperation is there, and the "wrong-ness" of the abuse of power, which kept my moral compass (or is it "Spidey"-sense?) from peaking out in the red zone.  

So, yes, it's the same story, but more sure-footed (by having its hero less so), and also intriguing for what it might hold in the future. The first trilogy seemed to be a little wobbly as it went along, searching for story. This one already feels like it knows where its going, and will find the best and most opportune path to get there.***

* And—a nice touch—he's thin and ungainly, not buffed-out, like the typical "strong-man" super-hero, which is the way he was when Steve Ditko first drew him.  Nice.

** This does bring up something that will be difficult to sustain: Parker is frequently shown battered, bruised, and slashed from these fights, which makes his encounters post-fight with Aunt May a little illogical.  And at some point, when will she clamp down on him, or child-protective services step in? 

*** A couple more things: there's no interpretation of the "Spider-man" theme from the 60's cartoon ("Hey there, there goes the Spider-man!") but James Horner's score is his most inventive in a long time—if a little needlessly bombastic in rare instances; there is a "coda" of sorts, but early in the credits (so you won't be missing anything if you don't stay for the full credit roll); and the Stan Lee cameo actually made me smile and feel affectionate towards the man.  Now, that's amazing.