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The Amazing Spiderman, 3-D Screens and Accepting my Age

Jul 9

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This week my main lesson learnt about the world of film came in 3- Dimensional form with my experience of The Amazing Spiderman.

I’ve only ever seen one other film at the cinema before The Amazing Spiderman, and that was the re-release of The Lion King last year. Before then, I had only experienced it through those 3-D cinema rides at Disney world and Universal Studios and subsequently saw 3-D film as a novelty that would surely get tedious after half and hour. Although now I think about it, both of the two 3-D films I have seen at the cinema I have been on a related ride for. At some level I think I still relate to them as rides rather than actual films! The Spiderman ride at Islands of Adventure was firmly kept in mind on my way to the cinema and increased my excitement considerably! I loved that ride so much. The 3-D parts were genuinely terrifying and the perceptive tricks pulled on you had me completely forget I was not flying through the skyscrapers ofNew York City but simply strapped into a cart firmly on the ground. Overall, I think my need to see this film was basically grounded in my yearning to be back in the gloriously tropicalFlorida, going to mall where clothes were plentiful and cheap and food was delicious and people had accents like from telly instead of being stuck inNorth Wales’s rainiest summer on record. That, and mummy and daddy offered to pay!

However, even though The Amazing Spiderman may not have quite live up to the standards on The Spiderman ride, I still thoroughly loved the 3-D effects. I’ve always reverted to being a kid when faced with a 3-D screen, jumping and ducking away from whatever was being thrown at me and The Amazing Spiderman was no different. However, it also provides some visually striking and wonderfully composed shots. However. one of my main problems with 3-D in cinema is that it does not allow you to explore the scene yourself. The screen of 3-D film seems to be separated into planes, and if you chose you want to take at look at the background when there is all sorts of 3-D stuff going on in the front plane, your eyes don’t seem to understand what is going on and everything seems unfocused. Or at least it does with me! Basically, what I am trying to say, is with a 2-D screen you can look wherever you want on it, you can see all the little details going on all over the screen. With 3-D, you don’t have a choice but to focus on the enormous reptile coming at you from the middle of the screen. Its hard to appreciate things like narrative and the subtleties of film composition when this is happening. However, I think people need to start to understand that this is not necessarily bad, but only a different type of film, and new medium for film makers to experiment with. Cynics say 3-D is just a gimmick to increase cinema ticket revenue, but me and the child within me can’t help but love 3-D! It obviously shouldn’t just be used willy nilly, but flying swinging through the streets with Spiderman in 3-D? Like you REALLY THERE!! So cool!

The main criticisms I hear from my friends though, is that it is too soon for a reboot of the franchise, since it has only been five years since the last instalment of the previous series. At first I agreed with this, but then started to think , and couldn’t help compare with the Batman franchise. Since 1989 there have been EIGHT Batman films, with four different actors playing the hero. Me, being only 21 now, only really started paying attention to them when Batman Begins came out but somebody ten years older than me must surely be sick of Batman films by now! The X-men franchise similarly did such a seemless reboot of its films from the initial trilogy to its prequels that nobody even noticed, we just seem to accept a constant stream of X-men films! This is why I think me and my friends need a good talking to. We’re are going to have to start seeing films being remade, films of which we might say ‘hey, that was only out a few years ago!’ only to come to the terrifying conclusion that it was in fact 15 years ago, and the kids we are talking to have no idea what we are on about. Spiderman might ‘only’ have been released ten years ago to us, but there is a whole load of 10 year olds who have never even seen it!

Furthermore, looking back on the original Spiderman’s, they seem to be distinctly out of vogue. To me, Chad Kroger’s Hero is one of the best film soundtracks EVER! But are kids still into whiny white guy rock? I still am, but I would probably be laughed out of the room by the girls on my street with their Nicki Minaj and Jessie J remixed by Kanye West featuring Rhianna craziness. And reflects the whole attitude of the original films. They are admittedly quite teenagery, which was good when angst was in. But now its all about darksides and villains with 1950’s madmen styling such as Captain America, Watchmen and of course the darkest of them all The Dark Knight. Aunt May is all but ignored for the latter half of The Amazing Spiderman after Uncle Ben’s death, and Mary Jane’s depressing life struggle against her father to be an actress but can only make it as a waitress is kindly removed. Already we can all predict the battle against the evil with in that (the RIDICULOUSLY CUTE!) Andrew Garfield is going to face in the remainder of the trilogy.

Which leads on to the next requirement of the comic book film these days; the super villain. Since Heath Ledger’s Joker, the villain has never been more important. It has to be iconic, memorable and personal. It can’t just be some big, general manifestation of evil, but has to know how to push our hero’s buttons. This was actually done ok in the first Spider- man, but in The Amazing Spiderman, our villain seems a bit distant. He has his own agenda going on with his arm and his desire to regenerate like his mutated self, a lizard, but this doesn’t seem to connect with Spiderman himself. The two are a bit disjointed. The greatness between Batman and the Joker in The Dark Knight was their relationship with each other, their need for the other to exist contrasting with their innate need to destroy each other. There doesn’t seem to be much shared between Spiderman and this reptile character, which hopefully is something that will be remedied as the series continues.

Other exciting news I have learnt:

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