Superheroes Aren't "Realistic"

This should come as a surprise to nobody who has known me for longer than a year, but I love superheroes. I grew up reading comic books, and I've enjoyed most of the superhero movies that have made it into theaters since they practically became their own genre a decade ago. In fact, my last post on this blog was even a review of The Amazing Spider-man. I'm that geek who gets more excited than anybody really should whenever a new superhero movie comes out, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Despite the fact that we seem to be in a "golden age" of sorts of superhero movies, I can't help but think that there are still some people who just don't get what makes these movies work. I remember when every movie based on a comic book was expected to be a mindless action movie that appealed only to kids and adults who acted like kids. This approach has fallen by the wayside and deemed disrespectful to the source material, but in some respects it seems like people are expecting the complete opposite. Right now, it seems like critics and filmmakers who don't know any better seem to think that the best way to make a superhero movie is to try to make it "gritty" and "realistic." Yes, Christopher Nolan's Batman movies ran with this approach and turned out to be some of the greatest superhero movies of all time, but part of the reason why that approach worked so well is because Batman is (mostly) a gritty and realistic character. It's always been part of his appeal. Batman is a normal guy who just happens to have undergone enough training to hold his own in nightly fights against criminals. Anything he cannot do himself he makes up for with the kind of state-of-the-art crime-fighting equipment that only a billionaire can afford. The idea of Batman has always been that he could exist in the real world, so the Nolan Batman films benefited from a more realistic approach.

The kind of realism of Nolan's Batman trilogy doesn't work so well for other superheroes, however. I was more than a little dismayed when Spider-man was going to get a similar treatment, but I was pleasantly surprised by the results. The Amazing Spider-man was the closest anybody will ever come to a "realistic" take on Spider-man, and it was still about a teenager who gains superpowers from a spider bite and uses them to fight a giant lizard man. It was a smart and believable take on the classic character, but in the end what worked was that the director just ran with the fact that the movie was about a teenager who gains superpowers from a spider bite and fights a giant lizard man. That's not a realistic concept, but it fit the world of the movie.

That's really what makes a superhero movie work: it's set within a world where characters like Spider-man, Batman or Superman can believably exist even if that world isn't our own. Superheroes aren't realistic; they cannot exist in the real world, so they need to be placed in a world where they can exist. I think the most satisfying superhero movies so far have been the movies made by Marvel Studios, and the reason why I believe that is because they exist in their own world with their own rules. Yes, those rules are very close to those of our real world, but they are just different enough to have a billionaire fly around in a robotic suit of armor or a mild-mannered scientist turn into a monster when he gets angry. It's the stuff of pure fantasy, but it fits perfectly in the Marvel Universe. The filmmakers commit to this world and its rules, which is why the colorful heroes that inhabit it never seem silly or out of place like they would in our world. The world is taken seriously, and by the third act of The Avengers (a.k.a. the most satisfying superhero movie ever made) I was able to suspend my disbelief even as the heroes were fighting off an army of aliens led by the Norse god of mischief in New York.

Aside from Nolan's Batman films, superhero movies shouldn't be realistic because superheroes themselves aren't realistic. They cannot and should not exist in the real world, but they can exist in their own world, and it's the commitment to this world that makes superhero movies work. Sadly, with Hollywood being the way it is, I can't help but think we'll bee seeing a lot of really poor attempts at "gritty realism" in movies starring the colorful heroes of my youth.

The Amazing Spider-man: A Review

When I heard that the Spider-man film franchise was being rebooted, I wasn’t happy.  Not only is Sam Raimi’s Spider-man trilogy not even ten years old, but it was actually good.  Sure, Spider-man 3 wasn’t as good as the first two, but I don’t think it was a bad movie.  I certainly didn’t think it was any justification to start over with a reboot so soon.  I could’ve seen a reboot in ten years, but not now.

That’s what I was telling myself when The Amazing Spider-man was first announced.  I had no interest in it, and figured it was just following the current trend of rebooting stalled or failed movie franchises.  After all, the recent reboots for Batman, James Bond and Star Trek all made a ton of money, so why not Spider-man?  Never mind that the last Spider-man movie came out just five years ago.

I started to change my mind about the concept when I saw the trailers though.  Andrew Garfield looked like a great Peter Parker, and while the movie looked darker than the Raimi Films it also looked exciting.  I was intrigued, so I decided to check it out for myself at a midnight showing last night.

It’s been said that The Amazing Spider-man borrows a lot from Christopher Nolan’s Batman films with its darker tone and attempts to ground the movie in reality.  In fact, it’s been said so often that it’s almost a cliche by now.  A lot of hack critics love to compare new movies to whatever is popular at the time, and I’m sure I could find a review that describes this movie as The Avengers meets The Dark Knight.  As much as I hate to think that I’m stooping to the level of a hack film critic, I have to say that this movie’s comparison to the Nolan Batman films isn’t entirely inappropriate.  It’s darker in that Spider-man starts out as an angry, vengeance-driven vigilante obsessed with finding his uncle’s killer, and it’s more grounded in reality in that the action scenes feel more realistic than those in Raimi’s films.  This sounds pretty horrible for a movie about Spider-man, a character that’s supposed to be fantastic and fun, but it’s better in execution than it is on paper.  Yes, Spider-man starts out wanting to find his uncle’s killer, but he soon learns that he should be using his powers to help people instead of just beating up thugs.  It’s how he learns the lesson of great power and great responsibility here; he has the power to help people, so it’s his responsibility to do just that.  It allows him to grow as a character in a way that wasn’t apparent in the earlier films.  As for the action scenes, they look more realistic this time around.  When we see Spider-man swinging through the city or flipping around during fight scenes, it looks like it’s actually happening.  I’m sure there was no small amount of CGI used, but at least it’s more convincing that a lot of CGI we’ve seen in previous Spider-man movies..  It feels organic.  I believed that what I was seeing was really happening when before I felt like I was watching a cartoon or video game. A visually impressive cartoon or video game, but a cartoon or video game all the same.

The rest of the movie worked just fine for me, although it’s not perfect.  It’s basically a retelling of Spider-man’s origin story.  This time around, Peter Parker is a quirky yet charming loner instead of an awkward nerd.  He’s still bitten by a mutated spider, but this time it happens when he’s snooping around the mysterious laboratory where his deceased father used to work.  His beloved Uncle Ben still gets killed by someone he could’ve stopped.  He still becomes a hero, but it’s a slower progression in which he goes from being a maskless vigilante to a masked vigilante to a full-blown superhero who realizes that he should be helping people in need instead of just beating up criminals.  Like I said before, it gives Peter a logical and smart character arc that is totally believable.

Speaking of Peter Parker, I can’t write a review of this movie without mentioning Andrew Garfield’s excellent portrayal of the character.  He’s odd and quirky, but also very sweet and charming.  He has moments of angst, but he never gets too dark.  He can be very funny, especially when he goes into full Spider-man mode and tosses quips left and right (something that was sorely lacking in Raimi’s films).  He’s incredibly likable, and he carries the movie well.  He also has great chemistry with Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy.  Both Garfield and Stone come off as awkward, smitten teenagers, and they have exactly the kind of relationship a good coming-of-age teenage drama needs.

Unfortunately, this movie isn’t perfect.  First of all, I didn’t feel that Uncle Ben’s death carried as much weight as it should have.  It felt a little like he was killed off just because that’s how the story goes.  Uncle Ben has to die in a Spider-man origin story, just like Krypton has to explode in a Superman origin story, and Bruce Wayne’s parents have to be murdered in a Batman story.  It’s too integral to Spider-man’s origin not to be included.  Ben’s actual death scene is handled well enough, but the rest of the movie treats it almost as an afterthought.  We get a couple of scenes of Peter angsting about it and a revenge subplot that gets dropped as soon as Peter figures out what his true calling is, but that’s about it.  Uncle Ben’s presence should be felt throughout the movie even after he’s killed, yet when it’s finally brought up again towards the end I found myself thinking, “Oh yeah, that’s right, his uncle died,” as if it was a minor footnote in the script.  The loss of a beloved father figure should have a greater impact than that.

Another complaint that I have is that the villain is uninteresting.  Rhys Ifans plays Curt Connors and the Lizard well enough, but I never really bought into the character.  He starts out as a benevolent scientist wanting to do something to help humanity, but after injecting himself with a serum and turning into a giant lizard creature he almost immediately becomes a mad scientist bent on "fixing" the human race with his serum.  He even has a secret lab in the sewers.  I can understand that his transformation affects his mind, but he goes from benevolent scientist to supervillain too quickly and with little motivation.  At least his fight scenes with Spider-man look cool.

There’s also some business of trying to set up a sequel by leaving some plot threads unresolved.  There are hints of an evil corporate overlord/criminal mastermind pulling everyone’s strings, and the mystery of why Peter’s parents disappeared is never resolved.  It’s fairly transparent sequel baiting that’s common in movies these days.  It’s frustrating to see in most movies, but what we’re given is intriguing enough to pique my curiosity, so I'm more willing to give it a pass this time.

Overall, I have to say that The Amazing Spider-man is a smarter and more satisfying reboot than I expected it to be.  It has its flaws, but the good outweighs the bad.  I’m not sure I like it as much as Spider-man or Spider-man 2, but it’s definitely better than Spider-man 3.  For what it’s worth, I hope it does well enough to warrant a couple of sequels.  I’d love to see where this story is headed.