@punyparker said:
@nicksmi56 said:
Garfield's take pissed me off for so many reasons. His character doesn't change at all. By the end of the film, he's the same person except with superpowers and a girlfriend. He didn't learn ANYTHING from Ben's death. Instead it's Captain Stacy that makes him a hero? WHAT??? He's totally arrogant, doesn't give a crap about anyone besides himself, lacks the guilt complex the character is known for, and would rather get sex from Gwen and risk her dying than keep a promise to a man who died for him and ensuring her safety. Oh yeah, and he treats Aunt May like a piece of trash!
This is the purpose of the movie.The promise braking is the ultimate sin.He will be punished for that in the sequel(s)......this came out wrong because it was intended to come out wrong.
The character of Peter Parker is all about screwing up and paying the price......all his life.Think about it.Presumably Gwen dies in ASM2.Peter blames himself because if he had kept the promise this wouldnt have happened,etc.
And he's a kid.An arrogant,tortured kid.Presented that way.He didn't learn about the responsibility lesson in the first flick!!.....he wore the suit to hunt down Ben's killer.And then he felt guilty because he created the Lizard formula.He didn't say "With great power comes great responsibility" and went to fight random crime!!....that's the sequel's job to do.
You have to dig deeper into the script to realise some stuff.
Oh! and everything you say regard the screenwriter......Andrew had nothing to do with it....he played the role. :P
@nicksmi56 said:
It's like the scriptwriter was actively thinking of ways to crap on the character
Isn't that 52 years of Parker history?!.....in-like- everything!?
@ninjablade09 Back me up here,i want support.
I both agree and disagree with you. I disagree with the notion that the character of Peter Parker is all about screwing up and paying the price. Oh he pays the price alright. A heck of a lot of prices too. That I agree with. But we aren't supposed to feel he deserves it all the time. Most of the time, it's just that dang Parker Luck. Jameson beating on him, his not catching a break, him being poor, etc. It's all Parker Luck (something that I didn't really see in the newest film. I think the closest they got was the scene with the flowers get messed up in his bookbag.) If he got everything that came to him because he deserved it, he would be the world's most successful serial killer to heap that much bad karma. Not that he never screws up, but he always learns from it and comes out a better person for it. Plus Peter Parker is a ridiculously nice guy. He's one of the most moral superheroes ever. It's pretty much his defining characteristic. He's the guy that takes a kid swinging around just because they dropped their ice cream. He's the guy who takes time out of his frankly miserable at the time life to visit a cancer patient. He's the guy that goes and saves a guy he hates just because it's the right thing to do. Garfield wasn't that. In truth, I really wanted to punch him in the face for most of the film, especially when it came to Aunt May (ugh, let's not get into how misused she was). I can honestly say I've never disliked a Peter Parker more. He just seemed like a total douche who didn't care about anyone except for when the plot required him to be nice.
As for him learning in the sequel, too late. Honestly. First off, it's not the sequel's job to teach him to be a hero. It's pretty much a fact at this point that after Uncle Ben dies and he catches the killer, Peter takes a hard look at himself and starts trying to help people. Heck, in the Ultimate universe, he went out to fight crime and save people directly after he caught the killer, on the same night in fact! Uncle Ben is the catalyst for him becoming a hero and learning about responsibility. Plain and simple. Also, the sequel doesn't seem to be focusing on that at all. By the time we re-enter Peter's life, he's already a hero, as evidenced by the trailers. Anyway, the one overriding thing that they CAN NOT change that they did is that he learns to be a better person from Uncle Ben. That's the entire point of his death! What's more is it really reinforces the loving relationship they had, and the guilt he feels over how he acted. We didn't get that here. Peter doesn't seem to realize Ben's death was his fault. We never get that crucial moment where he reflects and realizes that if he had just thought of someone other than himself, Ben would be alive. Not that I need him to turn and say it to the camera, but give me something. A flashback or whatever, SOMETHING! Unless you want to make the case that he realizes his uncle died because he was selfish and then.....decides to be selfish again? In that case, he's even worse than I thought.
Someone watching the film with no prior knowledge wouldn't get the reason why he becomes a hero. Heck, I don't even get it.
@ninjablade09 said:
@punyparker: The only thing I can add to your argument is that Captain Stacy didn't inspire him to become a hero. That's a common misconstruction that people have because they don't pay attention to the movie, and the things people say.
See what really happened is Captain Stacy made Peter realize that he isn't being a hero he thinks he is, and he isn't understanding what Uncle Ben said.
He believed that if you could do good things for other people you had a moral obligation to do those things.That's what's at stake here,not choice, responsibility.
Peter took this as it was his responsibility to avenge Uncle Ben, it's his responsibility to make up for what he did. He thought by doing this he was protecting people, and making everything safe. This why he was confused when Stacy said he is assaulting people.
He's hunting down a bunch of criminals that all look the same, like he's got some sort of personal vendetta. But he's not protecting innocent people, Mr. Parker.
This is my favorite line in the movie because its what makes him realize that he is think of it all wrong. That's why he goes to the bridge, to prove he is a hero that is protecting people. Now my favorite scene follows when he reunites the little boy with his father. This is the moment when he becomes Spider-Man, he now understands that he has to protect people. The father and son are a symbol to Peter because he has been able to help continue a father son relationship, that he not only lost with his own father, but Uncle Ben as well.
You and I see that scene WAAAYYY differently. Peter isn't trying to be a hero when he goes to catch the killer. He just wants to catch the killer. Though that was kind of obvious, especially since he doesn't even bother to bring a number of the people he catches to the police but rather just leaves them at large. You can pick them out if you rewatch the scenes. So no, it's not out of some misguided sense of heroism. It's petty revenge. The dude killed his uncle and he wants to make him pay. That's it. As for the Stacy scene, he's making excuses. It's like when your parents catch you doing something wrong and you go "But...." and make up some excuse. That's exactly what's happening here. He's not confused that Stacy thinks he's assaulting people. He KNOWS he's assaulting people, but he doesn't want to admit he's wrong. That's why he's so adamant about being right. Like your pal PunyParker said, he's a kid. Stacy chews him out and he starts thinking about how he should stop thinking about only himself and start thinking of others. Then he chooses to save the kid over stopping Lizard in the bridge scene, one of the few scenes I like wholeheartedly. But the fact that Stacy's speech is the one that makes him choose to save people while Ben's death just made him go on a rampage means that it is in fact Stacy that convinces him to be a hero. And that's all wrong.
Back to @punyparker:
Like I said, I don't get why Peter becomes a hero. Why does he give a crap what Stacy says in the first place? He certainly didn't give a crap when Gwen begged him not to get her in trouble in OsCorp. He just went off and snuck around anyway with no thought of how she might lose her job. Same with Aunt May when he was supposed to pick her up. He just ignored Ben's call cause he couldn't be bothered to put off the experiment for a day so he could pick up his elderly aunt instead of making her walk like 20 blocks in the middle of the night on her own. And that's just two instances of him not caring about other people. So we have a character that couldn't care less about the people that like him, but gives so much importance to someone that hates him, when a family member just died and he's even MORE likely to brush people off? What? It just rings false.
On to the whole Gwen dying thing somehow justifying the first film, no. First off, Gwen's death in the comics was a tragic affair because Peter was NOT the cause of it. To him, the Goblin was out of his life and didn't remember his identity. So he was in the clear. Plus he knew Gwen for quite a while and he had fallen in love with her. Why not be together? Here, this is a girl he doesn't know and certainly doesn't love. They're physically attracted to each other but that's it. They never actually TALK to each other besides awkward mumbling when they're not together and when they do get together, all they talk about is Spider-Man. They don't know what the other person likes, dislikes, their dreams and ambitions, what the other's favorite activity is, nothing. All because the film would rather have them make doe eyes at each other than actually talk and build a relationship like real people. Admittedly, this is a problem for most film romances, but it still counts here. By the end of the film, all Peter knows about Gwen is her dad is dead, she works at OsCorp, she's smart and she's hot. All Gwen knows is Peter has an uncle who's dead, he's smart, he's Spider-Man, and he looks like Andrew Garfield. Sorry, but if you don't know the other person, that's not love. That's lust. You may make the argument that he thinks he's in love, which is fine. After all, he's a teenager.....except for the fact that a TEENAGE Peter Parker made this exact choice in the comics (Betty Brant) and made the EXACT OPPOSITE choice than Garfield. Because that choice is hideously out of character for Peter Parker, plain and simple.
So is the death still tragic? Not for me, because it's Peter's fault. Seriously, they had Captain Stacy literally TELL HIM TO HIS FACE that she would die if he didn't give her up ("People you love are going to get hurt. Leave Gwen out of it."), but apparently sex > everything in Peter's eyes. Even if he was really in love with her (which he's not), you'd think someone as supposedly smart as him would say "Hmmm the first time I was selfish, someone I cared about died. Then someone else I cared about died because of another time I was selfish. Maybe I shouldn't be selfish this time so Gwen can live." Why does Peter need THREE people to DIE before he learns to not be selfish? Ugh.
Even thematically, the choice is just wrong. We have the entire film be about him learning that he is not the only one that matters and that he should do the right thing and when the moment finally comes to prove to the audience that he has learned he......turns around and starts doing the exact same crap he would've done if none of this had happened? UGH.
I can go on but I think I made my point. The sequel looks better and much more in character (save the fact that he's still with Gwen and apparently not feeling any guilt about it), but this film really made me wary of the franchise as a whole. Definitely waiting for reviews before I even think of spending money on it. But even if it's the best Spidey film ever (which I desperately hope it will be), it can't save this turd.
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