I haven’t seen The Amazing Spider-Man yet, but last time I posted a trailer, where Spider-Man talks to some thugs like a sarcastic, condescending New Yorker, I noted that Spider-Man (played by Andrew “Scarfield” Garfied)… kind of seems like an A-hole in this one. This latest clip (which shows the “Spider-Man Basketball” scene that’s already been hinted at in publicity stills) seems to drive the point home even more, with Peter Parker mercilessly humiliating the head jock to the point that you expect him to start asking “Why you hitting yourself, huh? Why you hitting yourself?”
Have Hollywood’s screenwriters have finally taken this embittered nerd wish-fulfillment thing too far?
There have been rumors going around that Sony wasn’t too happy with this movie, and I think I’m starting to see why. A few things:
- That score is radically overbearing. It feels like we’re watching a Jim Carrey comedy from the nineties.
- The head jock is named “Flash?” Seriously? Who are his buddies, Ogre and Biff?
- This husky dude in the long-sleeved shirt is a basketball player?
- “Bring it.” Ooh, creative. I wonder if he just saw The Expendables.
All in all, not too promising. But it does have a guy with a shaved head as the bad guy and a skinny guy with a cool jacket and hair that shags in his face just so as the hero, which is a nice new twist on things. All too often, the hero has a crew cut and a letterman jacket.
UPDATE: It’s been brought to my attention that Flash is a character in the comic book and is also in the first movie. Fine, that makes it less bad. Still, Spider-man is 50 years old. Feel free to change stuff like that. If the characters can say stuff like “bring it!”, you can certainly name them something less dumb than “Flash.” High school kids in 2012 aren’t using “Flash” as a nickname for someone super cool.