I guess so…Lee did mention in an interview that he saved a little girl in one scene. But there was a scene featuring him that was cut out-where he meets Spider-Man face-to-face.
I saw it in a packed theater full of college kids. The audience was great–there was applause at multiple points during the film. It was a fun flick, I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.
I believe Stan Lee was part of the crowd during the balcony attack. There was a quick shot of him ducking in front of an explosion.
I almost didn’t realize that Brucy baby was doing the wrestling announcing.
Good movie, too. There was some cheezy dialogue, but I think that goes with the genre.
I loved it…and yes, Stan Lee was seen ushering a little girl out of the way. I caught him! Also, Bruce Campbell as the announver was great. Apparantly, (according to the credits) Lucy Lawless had a cameo! She was “Punk-Rocker Girl.” I didn’t see her, or maybe it’s just an extra with the name Lucy Lawless. I also caught Ted Raimi (though it was obvious, since he was in every scene with Joanha.)
All in all, great flick! But wait…that Quest accident person was Tony Stark? Awesome…Iron Man movie could kick ass…now, my friends tell me that the Goblin’s son (forgot his name, sorry) becomes the Hobgoblin…is this true? I also hear that Doc Oc will be in the next movie, and personally I want to see Venom at some point (the mentioned Eddie Brock in the movie, but I didn’t think they showed him at all.)
Well, I’d warn for spoliers, but no-one else did, so why bother?
I spotted Stan Lee easily enough in the crowd scene, as well as Ted Raimi, the director’s brother. Anyone else catch the “teeming millions” line? Hey, we’re famous!
Plus the scene where Peter tries swinging across a street for the first time. He slams face-first into a Chevrolet billboard and slides down. Get it? Off the windshield!
X-Men was a better movie (how could it not be, with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan?), but Spider-Man was truer to its comic roots and I look forward to sequels. If they apply the same sort of lightning-fast metal tentacle effects we saw on the hunter/seekers in The Matrix to a future Dr. Octopus, watch out!
I just hope they drop that dorky voice-over in future movies. And how could this be New York City with only one cynical character; J. Jonah? Fugghedaboudit!
And I understand Spidey and GG are strong, but that’s a 20-ton cable car they’re tossing around. How does GG keep his balance while he’s holding the cable in one hand and MJ in the other? She must be heavier than she looks!
And another thing, with Spidey in the skin-tight suit and Green Goblin in the dorky fixed-expression mask, did anyone else think their fights were a little Power Ranger-ish?
Fair warning in case you haven’t seen the movie yet, minor spoilers ahead, but this film is rather predictable so I wouldn’t be too worried about spoiling anything. If you’d like to skip the review and head straight to the bottom line: It’s worth eight bucks and two hours of your time, but just barely.
The effects were just passable, in general they worked, but at times they were really stretching the concept of suspended disbelief. For example the scene where Spidey is first learning his wall crawling ability, they use a 3D rendered Tobey Maguire, and it looked absurd, like they cut a scene from Toy Story into a live action film and tried to pass it off as the real thing. The effects in Battlestar Galactica were more consistent. It might not bother you as much as it did me, but my feeling is if you can’t make it look real on a computer, then don’t do it on a computer. Also, I wasn’t happy with the Green Goblin costume, it looked good from a distance but up close it looked cheap and poorly made, the ribbed, iridescent green material on the arms and legs looked like something they picked up at Home Depot. Spidey’s costume however looked great; it was faithful to the books and still looked sleek and modern.
As for the story, it wasn’t bad per se, just incredibly predictable, virtually nothing happens that myself and most of the audience didn’t expect far in advance. Nothing that made the theater gasp out loud or burst out laughing. Chuckles and a few faint oohs were about it, and Spider-Man was lucky to get that. To tell the truth, I was amazed to find that the most redeeming aspect of this movie was the Maryjane/ Peter Parker romance. From what I’ve heard from others Kirstin Dunst and Tobey Maguire are an acquired taste, but neither of them did anything to make me cringe – although Maguire should work on his crying skills. I thought they were both well cast and performed ably; I really felt the connection between those two. And in case your wondering I am among those who still find Kirstin adorable despite the odd shaped head and bad teeth, she has such a sweet personality. J. Jonah Jameson was also very well done. He was a page right out of the comics, perpetually irritated and self obsessed, you could almost say that his 10 minutes of screen time stole the show. Willam Defoe did well with the part of the Goblin, his character was a typical homicidal, schizophrenic, multiple personality lunatic (if such a thing can be typical). He took a bad drug, it made him hear voices that tell him to kill people that get in his way, so he kills people that get in his way. It seemed somewhat stale and basic. Not at all like Nicholson’s hilarious and richly psychotic Joker, or Hackman’s devious and egomaniacal Lex Luthor, or even Ian Holms driven and principle bound Magneto. I don’t think the Green Goblin will be going down as one of the great super hero villains on the silver screen. Maybe they’ll do a better job with Doc Octopus or Venom.
All in all it was a decent movie, just not the captivating, edge of my seat, thriller I was expecting. It was a let down, but I’ll probably go see the sequel anyway.
Ian McKellin is Magneto, not Holm. The wizard, not the hobbit.
(Spidey-geek reporting in)
Just got back from the movie. I really loved watching it. The performances were strong. The FX did look obviously CGI half the time, but were engaging nonetheless. It’s well worth the ticket price and is required viewing for Spidey-fans (duh).
My main area of disappointment was Koepps’ sorry excuse for a screenplay. You know that guy whose claim to fame is ‘adapting’ Crichton’s “Jurassic Park” book into a special effects movie that didn’t have a story. Yeah, that one.
Given that the major parts of this movie were written already (origin of Spidey and his showdown with the Green Goblin), Koepp’s main job was to reinterpret the stories from the 60’s and 70’s for modern sensibilities. That puts his work in direct comparison to the work that was recently done in the Ultimate Spider-Man series. (for non-comic book types out there, this is a recent comic series that did a REAL good job at updating the Spidey-story called “Ultimate Spider-Man.” If you’re new to Spidey, look for the paperbacks that collect the first few stories from the series.They are a great place to start.)
Anyway, this screenplay did little to illustrate how important Peter’s surrogate parents meant to him, so when Ben get’s killed, it doesn’t affect us the way it could. It also was very inconsistent in it’s characterization of Norman Osborn. Whether or not his brain got fucked up from his experiment, his personality was nothing more than a grab-bag of “things a ‘bad’ person does.” The means by which he discovers Peter’s secret was weak, and Peter’s refusal of love at the end of the movie made little sense.
So that’s my $.02. But I want to reiterate that I was thoroughly entertained throughout the movie and hope everybody likes it in general, it’s just that it’s not without it’s flaws.
woah, huge mistake. im a :wally
The drudge report links to this site which says:
I hope it’s good. I love that Marvel comics are finally getting some high quality movies made.
Wow, those are some serious numbers. I’d heard that they are already working on the sequel. I hope they limit it to one villian, though, and don’t pull a Batman, though. There was a throwaway line about spiders changing their color that made me hope for Venom as the next baddy.
Willam Dafoe does a good bad guy, and he pulled off Norman Osborne going loony pretty well, but as someone said, he was somewhat one-dimensional and we didn’t really care about him before or after he changed. The Goblin outfit looked kinda stupid too.
In essence, I’d have to agree with others on here. Was it a film for the ages? No. Was it very entertaining and worth seeing? Certinally. It was a Spider-man made for everyone, fans and newcomers alike.
SPOILER
OK, it was a decent movie, but I have to comment on the scene on the bridge, where Spidey is saved by a crowd of angered New Yorkers. Yikes! That was painfully cheesy. I’d really like to know if that was done before or after Sep. 11.
I was kinda wondering that myself…but I seriously doubt they made that entire bridge scene after Sep. 11, I suppose they only had to add that one part, but then how did Spidey manage to get out of it in the original? I can’t wait for the DVD to see the original ending. (Which I still firmly believe should have been kept, I wouldn’t have considered it bad taste.)
Well, we saw it today, and my son loved it (he’s 11). I thought the FX were a little cheesy in some parts, and I didn’t like the “wrist web” adaption, so overall I’d give it a 6.5 out of 10.
I was disappointed by the movie. Competent, yes, but nothing more. It played like a two-hour pilot for a tv show, introducing the characters but not bothering to give them any more personality than you found out in their first ten seconds of screen time. The script is mostly the blame. It had a few flashes of wit and spark, but far too few.
I’m generally not a fan of the origin story in a movie. Do what Batman did and dive right into the character, filling in background through a few well-placed flashbacks.
Both Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst was good in their roles, with Maguire better, more Peter Parkerish.
Normally, a movie this average wouldn’t draw me back for a sequel, but in this case I feel that’s where the real movie will start. Maybe then they can get it right.
Question (posting this before my minor spoiler below):
In one of the many behind the scenes things on TV, Stan Lee comments that there are appearances by two Spidey villains (other than Norman Osborne’s GG) in the movie. As noted below, Venom might have been one of them. Was the other Harry Osborne? Or was it something more subtle than that?
<minor spoiler>
You’ll also notice that in the first or second sequence with JJJ, he commented on (Eddie) Brock’s inability to get a shot of Spidey. Brock was supposedly also in the credits on IMDB, but I’m guessing his scene got cut, 'cause I didn’t notice anybody who was supposed to be (or even looked like) him.
Yuppers. I can’t remember where I read it but Sam Raimi did indeed add the bit with the angry resilient New Yorkers after 9/11. He didn’t need to add or significantly change the bridge scene on the whole by the way. The shots involving the New Yorkers were, what, only thirty seconds or so? I liked it, but then again I can be a bit sentimental at times so I guess I’m not the best judge of whether or not it was cheesy. He also added the bit at the very end where Spider-Man is perched on a flagpole with the US flag waving above him after 9/11.
Screw that. Go here. Marvel allows people to view some of their more popular comic books online for free. They keep the entire run online except for the most recent issues. They’re working on the Crack Cocaine Principle: Even though you can wait until the next issue is available online for free they’re betting you’ll go hunt it down and pay for it instead. Just click on Ultimate Spider-Man. When the next page loads there is a bar near the center of the screen that has the issues listed: scroll down to issue one and click again. When you see the cover load on the left of the screen pick hi or low bandwidth. It takes a few moments to download but it is well worth the wait.
Thought it was a great, fun movie. It did exactly what it had to do. His first costume was hysterical. Everything about the plot worked for me. I like the wrist webs, thought the effects were good, and I thought the Goblin suit was good. Cartoonish… but that’s the point.
My only minor beef was with Kirsten Dunst - there must be 5,000 actresses around who could have done ten times the job she did.
I had one major beef, though. THE SCORE WAS TERRIBLE. Lemme ask you, everyone who saw Spider-Man:
- Hum the Superman them.
- Now hum the Batman theme.
- Now, hum the Indiana Jones theme.
- Now hum the Spider-Man theme. Can’t do it, can you?
It was a terrible score, sounded like a random mishmash of Danny Elfman tricks. He mailed it in, big time.
I rather liked the music.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie. And the ending did make a lot of sense with his turn down of Mary Jane, that’s a common thing in most super hero story lines. When you’re a super human with big foes, it puts your loved ones at risk, and the best way to prevent that is to push people away. I thought that was really cool, helped keep it from being the traditional hollywood flick.
And I liked the fact that, even though they relied a lot on CGI to make Spidey all flailing and swingy, they still went and used real people for the fight scenes (unlike Blade, who decided to spend thousands of dollars on a crappy CGI characature of Wesly Snipes everytime he got hit hard as opposed to the ten bucks it costs to throw a stunt double fifty feet).
I also liked the little bits of Sam Raimi in the movie (I’m a big fan of his). Apart from Bruce and Ted, did anyone else notice the “Classic”? I was suprised about one thing though: No grituitous zooms. Eh.
The one problem I had was the way that they killed Ben’s murderer. That’s supposed to be the thing that makes him realize “No, murder’s wrong.” Spidey’s supposed to WANT to kill him, and have the chance, but NOT take it, thus separating himself from whatever it is that makes people “bad.” Killing having the guy die and Peter not saving him from something he obviously could have (how many falling people does he save in this movie?) really kinda irked me. But I soon got over it.
Again, I really enjoyed it, and will probably go see it again when my other friends get the urge.