It's hard to say, really. I was a kid when that one came out, so I don't know how much my fondness for it affects my objective judgement. The acting in this new one is uniformly better, and Gwen Stacy is SO MUCH BETTER than Mary Jane Watson. Also, the movie managed to create a credible large-scale threat that the original Spider-man movies never managed (Dock Ock was scary, for instance, but he never seemed to present a threat to most of New York). On the other hand, I never thought I'd say that a movie is worse off for being like Batman Begins, but this movie cribs so many plot and stylistic cues from that movie, and it's so without shame, that I'm flabbergasted. Not only that, but it's sloppy, in a way that the original trilogy only became in its third installment. I can't really say which one is better, but I do know I prefer the original.

Hmm, I may just wait for it to come out on DVD then.

Regarding The Amazing Spiderman, I actually liked it better than the original movie trilogy. Why? Because Spider-man's character actually adheres to the original comic books- where he is a deadpan snarker anti-hero, who gives out insulting quips when fighting. In the previous movies, Peter is a dorky nice guy, who generally behaves like a sore loser.

Here's the thing -- I would have been fine with Peter as his comic self is portrayed, but the problem is that his quips in this movie were generally neither clever nor funny.

Still better than the boring ol' Peter-Tobey-Maguire-Parker, me thinks. YMMV though.

Well, Peter's snark in the comic aren't that funny or clever either. Or rather, it depends on which comic you're looking at. Bajillions of different writers at the helm and all that jazz. I like the new Spidey's cheerful confidence. In the old trilogy he's just kinda serious-and-silent.

Speaking of which... is it just me or Peter's camera seemed kinda old-fashioned? Maybe I'm just not paying attention, but it looked like one of those old roll-film cameras...

Yeah, he's boring in the old trilogy, and as I said, the acting is much better here all around. But I think the originals were better written and directed.

That camera was super old-fashioned. It used rolls of film. My sister and I were trying to figure out when this was set because of that camera at the very beginning of the movie, and then we decided it was trying to seem classic (including the camera) while being set in modern times, which was not wholly successful.

I suppose in terms of directing, and execution of storyline, the old trilogy is somewhat better, but not by much. The only thing that I like about the earlier trilogy was the smoother pacing, and that's about it. I don't like how the characters were portrayed, and I don't think the storyline was better-written than the new movie.

Re camera: I was wondering about that too. The movie clearly shows that the setting is supposed to be modern (as, without even mentioning the Uber-cool technologies in Dr. Connor's lab, you can see from the very computer Peter is using), so there's no reason why he should be using roll-film cameras. And even more outrageous was the fact that he could somehow transfer the pictures from the film to his computer to set it as his desktop background.


Edited to remove profanity. Even abbreviations aren't allowed. You might want to have a look at the forum rules.
~Mopiece

Yeah, I sorta like the old one better too. For some reason. I dunno about the other stuff, but one of the things that I definitely preferred in the old ones was the romance, at least in the first movie (didn't watch the other two). I thought the romance subplot in this movie was done rather badly, and because this romance thingy has quite a big part in the movie... Drags parts of it down, yo.

Also I really wonder what made them replace Mary-Jane with Gwen Stacy. Again with the bajillions of writers and dozens of alternate universes. Peter's girlfriend/whatever can be either one of them, sure, but Mary-Jane was the girl in Spiderman's original first appearance back in the ye olde days (whenever that was). They chose to take a new approach... why?

So it's NOT just me seeing things with the camera. I know that some people do prefer classic photography with old-school roll films, but still. It's totally impractical. It's definitely modern day, even if you pretend the cool lab is just the sci-fi element all superhero movies has. Peter has a freaking ANDROID phone. That darn thing didn't exist until at least 3-5 years ago.

Maybe the producers/writers wanted to distance this movie from the other ones by replacing Mary-Jane.

Just to be pedantic, Gwen Stacy was actually the Peter Parker love interest even before Mary Jane Watson was introduced to the series. I think this makes sense considering how they were trying to harness the classic feeling of the older comics.

I agree that the romance itself was not handled very well (it was just kind of a series of events that happened, and Peter was such a creeper with his surreptitious pictures of Gwen), but I prefer Gwen to Mary Jane in every way. She's a more interesting character with more personality than just love interest, she's apparently a match for Peter when it comes to intellect, she is instrumental in defeating the bad guy at the end, and, unlike Mary Jane, never succumbs to damsel-in-distress syndrome (almost, but not quite). As a character she's miles ahead. The romance just wasn't handled all that well.

Wellp, if they REALLY wanted to do old school, why enter Harry Osborn because supposedly Peter met Harry and Gwen around the same time? And wasn't Peter's first love/girlfriends supposed to be Betty Brant, not Gwen? And why not enter Jameson and Peter's Daily Bugle kerfuffle?

Comic books are confusing.

Anyways. Going by the comic books I've read (not many, I'd admit), I say Gwen and Mary Jane have the same amount of damsel-in-distress moments as well as them holding up on their own in different circumstances. It's just the creators of the first Spiderman movies decided to amp up MJ's damsel-in-distress level to the max. I personally liked MJ better than Gwen so I wasn't impressed with that aspect of the movie, but hey...

@d_a: When I say that Gwen isn't a damsel in distress, I mean in the movie. I know very little about her character in the comics (aside from the fact that she died horribly). Meh. I like Emma Stone, so maybe I'm biased.

Yeah, I totally forgot to mention in my previous post that I'm biased AGAINST Gwen, which was the entire reason why I was raving. I happen to like MJ Watson, and I disapproved of the way they made her a damsel in distress in the old version. Since you were lording the fact that Gwen wasn't quite such a d-i-d unlike MJ...

Don't get me wrong, I like MJ. I just like Gwen/Emma Stone better.

I didn't get you wrong. I don't like Gwen, and you were saying that Gwen is better than MJ because she isn't quite so D-I-D in the movies, so I'm all defensive. New-Gwen really makes me want to smack her in the face very hard for some reason. Worse than old-Gwen. Maybe because I see too little of old-Gwen to care (I only saw the trailers for Spiderman 2 and 3 and not the actual movie).

Is anyone going to see The Dark Knight Rises this weekend? It's currently got a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (granted, only eleven reviews), which surprises me, because it seems like it's just setting itself up to be disappointing. But I'm really excited (although I won't be seeing it until approximately the 28th because I'm going to be seeing it with my sister and she's out of town). I guess I'll have to avoid the entire internet for a week in order to avoid spoilers...

Made plans with friends to go watch this coming Saturday. Looks nice, and I can't complain much because I don't know much of the comic lore. Only the bare basics (Bruce Wayne, orphan, batcave, police, batgirl, technology) and whatever the previous movies gave me. Bane acting as his own villain threw me off because I still have memories of the old Batman and Robin movie where Bane is Poison Ivy's assistant-of-sorts, but whatever. Movie looks cool.

Alright, I just watched The Dark Knight Rises this evening. Overall a good movie, as expected from Christopher Nolan, though I still prefer his Inception to this (most of the main cast from Inception actually appeared in this movie, with the exception of Watanabe and DiCaprio, though I didn't recognize Tom Hardy in his Bane-mask until the credits).

Anyway, if you don't mind the mild spoilers, I'm somewhat disappointed that despite this being a Batman movie, Cat-woman appears to have the most action scene; while Batman himself spends a lot of his time emo-ing over the trouble he caused in the previous movie.

And the fact that his fight with Bane appears more like a street brawl than the epic Hero-Big Bad showdown you'd expect doesn't help the matters.

@D_A: Eh? Bane was Poison-Ivy's underling? Really? I don't remember Poison-Ivy having an underling- wasn't she Mr. Freeze's underling herself in the movie?

Speaking of Robin, he did make appearance in Dark Knight Rises, though he hasn't become Robin... No spoiler tags because it was kinda obvious when you watch the movie.

In the old movie Bane was Ivy's underling/right-hand man. Ivy herself was sort of partnering and quasi-in-love with Freeze.