Let's Cut Em Some Slack: Brave and The Amazing Spider-Man

If you are a movie buff, you find yourself living in an often frustrating state of affairs come summer time. Every summer  more and more movies all the movies are remakes, reboots, sequels, prequels, threequels and adaptations of every type of medium imaginable. This has been a problem that people have been quietly talking about for a while but, I feel, that things have finally come to bear this summer. It seems like I can't go more than a couple of weeks without seeing a review for a movie that isn't somehow suffering by comparison to some other legacy that it's supposed to be carrying on or trying to buck. The three that have really taken the brunt of this mess have been Ridley Scott's Prometheus, Disney-Pixar's Brave and, most recently, Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man. I, along with the internet in its entirety, have reviewed Prometheus. I liked it, so what we're going to do here is kind of review and rebut all at the same time for the other two.

Coming off the critical and financial meh-fest that was Cars 2, Pixar really needed a win this summer. Brave needed to be that win, it was the first movie to come out since 2009's Up that didn't have a number in the title. An original story that could have proven that any questions one had about the studio could just be chalked up to sequels inherent lameness. I believe Brave could have been the win Pixar needed had it not been for one tiny detail: the fact that Pixar made the movie. 

People liked Brave, but you'd be pretty hard pressed to find anyone who loved Brave. This, apparently, is unacceptable in the eyes of the internet. Snooty terms like "plays it safe" and "better than the sum of it's parts" went flying thither and yon as Pixar fans' collective sphincters clenched with disappointment that Brave didn't make cherubs sing and change animated film making as we knew it. It was just a good, albeit beautiful, movie that worked in some well established (see: played out) themes. It didn't push the envelope that the studio had already shoved into the ethereal plane years ago. My argument here is, "What's wrong with that?"

Brave is a perfectly pleasant movie-going experience. It's not perfect, sure, but it hardly deserves having articles like this being written about it. In fact, I would argue that in an environment where more and more people base their decision on whether or not to see a movie on online buzz, it's counterproductive to light up a decent movie like that within its first week. But I digress, Brave is exactly what you need out of a family film. It's exciting, the characters are as relatable as any other movie with castles in it, it makes you laugh and it is drop dead gorgeous to look at. The story feels a little disjointed, yes. But is it enough to sink the film? No. You could argue it keeps a good movie from being great, but nothing more than that.


At first, I thought the suffering by comparison problem was an isolated phenomenon. Affecting movies that had a legacy of excellence to live up to, like Brave or Prometheus. I mean, Pixar and Ridley Scott both have a handful of Oscar nominations between them you can almost understand people's disappointment. But then (pardon the cliche) along came a Spider.


I am not Sam Raimi's #1 fan. I enjoyed his first two Spider-Man movies...you know when I was 15. It was a different time for superhero movies. The world was still reeling from how God awful Batman and Robin was, while the X-Men franchise was lighting the world on fire and making the possibilities for superhero films seem endless. Until Hulk...and Daredevil...and Electra...and...well you get the idea. The era preceding the glorious summer that brought us Iron Man and The Dark Knight was a confusing one. But Sam Raimi's Spider-Man and, to a greater extent, Spider-Man 2 were the closest thing we had to a happy medium. Yes, they have more extreme close ups than a bad Wayne's World sketch. Yes, Kirsten Dundst and Toby McGuire captured the pathos of the source material as well as lawn furniture. And yes, Willem Dafoe wore a really really really stupid outfit even by superhero standards. But it was the best we had at the time, and it opened the door for better things. They were the Spider-Man movies we needed, but maybe not the ones we deserved.

And then Spider-Man 3 happened.

It was a giant slap in the face. It was a slap in the face that cost the film-going pubic 1.5 billion dollars. It was a slap in the face that would continue to sting until Indiana Jones survived a nuclear blast by hiding in a fridge. So when they announced that the knuckle-heads at Sony were going to give Spidey the reboot treatment this summer. I was pretty stoked that we would be seeing a movie about our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man in what could very well be called the Golden Age of Superhero Movies. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had pegged fledgling director Marc Webb of 500 Days of Summer fame to helm the project, and they'd cast that kid who got screwed over on the Facebook dealie to play Spider-Man. All in all I assumed that Sony was interested in doing things right this time

When it came down to it I was right....more or less. The Amazing Spider-Man has an outright stellar cast on just about every front. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are wonderful together and give the movie a lightness that in no way feels forced. Watching them immediately evokes that feeling of first love awkwardness that we all have experienced. Garfield in particular brings a sincerity and a natural feel to Peter Parker that I've never seen outside of a comic book. While Stone pulls off that oh-so-difficult-to-capture-on-film-for-some-reason brainy perfect girlfriend mix with grace and distinction. By the end of the movie she makes you really sad to be a nerd who knows her ultimate fate, because you're already rooting for her. Sally Field brings some much needed fire to May Parker, a character who is pretty commonly portrayed more like a grandmother than a surrogate mom. In fact Sally Field as May Parker goes about exactly how you are picturing it in your head, and that's not a bad thing at all. As Uncle Ben, Martin Sheen reminds us that he's still a pretty solid actor despite how useless his kids are. In fact, he was one of the movies' most pleasant surprises. In an already too large nutshell, the movie is perfectly cast and impressively preformed.

Where the movie kind of falls short is on the directorial side of the camera. Marc Webb is green, and it shows a little in this film. He didn't do a bad job by any means. The scenes move at a pretty solid clip, the action balances pretty well with the drama and the action set pieces were adequate for a movie that was being made before Avengers was in the can. But what I see is a young director who either couldn't quite find his voice or wasn't allowed to, and I'm leaning pretty close to the latter. Because you can see Webb in there, it's just peaking out under all the big studio polish. For a good example of this you need look or, rather, listen no further than the score. 75% of the movie is scored with your standard superhero movie tropes to the point where you start wondering if you've heard it in something else already. But then Peter's learning to be Spider-Man montage happens, and it's done to a Coldplay song. But not just a Coldplay song, oh no sir, but a HIDDEN TRACK from a Coldplay album that came out 7 years ago. I was impressed, also saddened that the whole movie didn't have a fun indie rock soundtrack. How cool would that be? It's not that he really did anything wrong, it's just that it didn't feel like he brought much to the movie. Hell the whole movie I was actually surprised that the guy who spent money to do this in a movie intended for theaters played it so by the book. Though, now with the movie that might as well be called Joss Whedon's The Avengers grossing stupid amounts of money maybe if he's given another shot he won't have to.

Again, Amazing Spider-Man a fun movie. A movie I would recommend you see. A movie I would recommend you see right this very second if you so choose. But like Brave before it, the online media at large seems intent on bringing Raimi's Trilogy up in just about every review I've read since its' release. Debating whether the movie was necessary because Raimi's were so recent. The folks at AV Club went as far as to say that "the film mostly distinguishes itself by not being a Raimi film." I have seen one review that let the movie stand on its' own feet from the good folks at Comics Alliance. That's about it, and that bothers me.

This is where we tie it up. Like I said earlier we are living in a world where more and more people are basing which movies they see on online buzz. At the time of this writing Brave already "under-preformed" at the box office, while the jury is still out on The Amazing Spider-Man. These movies are not perfect, and I am no way saying that bad movies should get a pass just to boost ticket sales, that's evil. But I am saying that we have to accept that we live in a world where there is nothing new under the sun. As these movies continue to happen we have a responsibility to be objective and judge things on their own merits. Because until Hollywood executives realize that original, creator driven hits like Inception or even last weekend's Ted are more than just one off flukes, we're stuck with the big blockbuster adaptations. But just because we're stuck doesn't mean that people aren't working hard on this stuff. For every Michael Bay movie there is one directed by Chris Nolan and if I find out that people are giving The Dark Knight Rises a hard time because it's not exactly like or too exactly like The Dark Knight I'm going to lose it.