Re: Spider-Man: The Reboot!
The first one isn't spot on to the comics. Especially considering the way the Goblin comes about, but its closer than A LOT of other film representations, costume as well (for Spidey). Then again Raimi undid some of his masterpiece in the third...
Here is the thing about the first two films, it spawned three kinds of fans: Genre Fans, Bandwagon fans and Spidey Fans. The first came out when honestly what else was out there in 2002? X-Men was out two years before but changed everything about the X-Men from roster, to Wolverine to costume to origins of the team and while people were loving it, it still was a change. Blade was a memory from 1998 which still was stinging from the Batman and Robin fiasco the year before.
It was groundbreaking, the costumes we saw from the books translated, the feel, the look was perfect....for the time. People went fanatic. The first film holds up pretty well still compared to the films of today. Then there was the second, besting X-2 which was applauded better than Spidey and people went nuts again, but that film doesn't hold up. Despite the performance by Molina, the film is littered with problems, mainly from combining three different storylines into one without the pay-off of any of them. It was a bad film but people were caught up in it, myself included but going back and looking at it deserves to be dismantled. Spider-Man 3 is a wreck so no use in wasting breath there.
Raimi almost as a ____ you destroyed what he made in SM and SM2, one wonders if purposefully...so that tie is gone. Harry dead? Gwen and MJ up in the air? It'd be a whole fourth film of tying up the loose ends.
What changed it honestly was Batman Begins and to a more extent The Dark Knight. It was a serious superhero film, ones done as if the Superhero aspect was a subplot instead of the actual main story. TDK holds up as a crime drama almost as much as films like Heat if you remove the Bat aspects. SM3 is goofy by comparison to the first two but even more so against BB/TDK.
Bandwagon fans have moved on, I fully expect a ton of them to hit onto the Green Lantern, then off to Cap, then off to Thor, etc. Genre fans are demanding more than Raimi has given, not how much he could have given because he was definitely at the mercy of Avi Arad but more than we've seen, especially considering the directors now handling films like Thor and The Wolverine.
Spidey fans are the ones who still hold the films so high, all three because they love the character and so its their character come to life. I'll be the first to admit that IM2 wasn't a good film and very disjointed but I love the character and still love watching it.
I get the love for Raimi's films because while I don't care much for Favreau I love what he put out there for my favorite character but they aren't perfect. Just like Donner's Superman or Burton's Batman or in all honestly Nolan's TDK aren't perfect. When the fandom fades you'll see people dissecting TDK for it's flaws in the genre and Nolan's mishandling of the character in general (it's there whether you admit it or not) but it'll stay in people's minds as a fond memory no matter what Garfield and Webb put out.
True, I forget how much people hated S-M 3. I agree about the way characters were handled in that. Gwen being in the movie was a waste, Sandman was good up until he started crying and turned into dust in the wind, and Venom...well...
