Miscellaneous Thoughts of a Spiderman Nature

Sometimes you just have nothing to say. And when that’s the case, your mind can go amazing places.  Those places could be fantastically wonderful, with dragons smote by knights in shining armor. They could be horribly dark, exploring parts of your psyche you’d rather remained buried, never to see the light of day. For me, my mind just tosses random things together and says, "Entertain yourself."

So I do.

Which leads to this. This being a long series of thoughts strung together in bite-size chunks easy enough for the average diet. Piecemealed over the course of a day, it's part of your daily nutritional content. Bet you think I made that up. Prove that I did, and you'll get today’s reward—a hearty pat on the back. The ten million dollar giveaway was yesterday.

See, this is what I mean. Random thoughts thrown together for my own amusement.  Please see the name of this blog. Now, I’m sure that I’ll write more than just random musings strung together—any sane author will—but I'm also sure that this won't be the only time I do this.  Sometimes what you want to say can only be expressed in little pieces.   But I'll try to restrain myself and not make it a common occurrence.

And now, on with the show.

             My wife, K, and I just finished watching The Amazing Spiderman. As a comic book guy, I’m more than a little chagrined that it took me nearly two years to watch it. In fact, if it wasn't for K's insistence on seeing the sequel with friends, I probably wouldn't have even now. I like the character (though I'm a DC man myself), but those Toby Maguire films left such a bad taste in my mouth that I couldn’t find the interest. But now I've seen it and I’m actually finding myself looking forward to the sequel. More on that later.

            Of all the tragic turning points for heroes in comics—they all have them—I have to admit that (spoiler alert) Uncle Ben's death is the worst for me. Sure, Batman lost his parents as a kid, Tony Stark got stuck in a cave for quite a while, and Bruce Banner ate up some bad mojo on an epic scale. But no other superhero seems to go through that same heartbreak.

Let's use my second worse turning point as an example: Batman. Wayne lost both his parents as a kid, while Parker lost Uncle Ben when he was much older and still had Aunt May in his life. But the big difference is this: Bruce Wayne was a kid when his parents died. He was still a child. What could he do? The question still haunts and motivates him.  Parker was acting like a child. He knew better and knew what he could have done to prevent Ben’s death.  That physical difference is huge in metaphorical standards. And it makes that tragedy much harder on me.

It's not unusual for me to slip during that part or ask for company. I’ll admit it—I just don’t want to experience it alone.

            Speaking of Spiderman, this is what worries me about The Amazing Spiderman 2: three villain disease. Name a good movie that has three villains. It's impossible. And I'm not talking about three bad guys working for the same organization, à la Raiders of the Lost Ark. That I can handle.  Besides, they should only be counted as one villain—the Nazis. No, what I'm referring to is what happened in Spiderman 3, Batman and Robin, X-Men 3, et cetera. Introduce three separate villains with their own motivations and interests, and it clogs up the plot and creates some real stinkers at the box office. So what do they do with this Spiderman sequel?  Three villains. ’Cause obviously more is better.

             That makes me think of Batman and Robin. That film was horrible.

            I do have to wonder about Hollywood, though. Do producers think "Oh, the hero survived X, so we must add Y and Z to make it feel more challenging" and then increase by one for every sequel until the script collapses under its own weight?  By the way, I imagined all that with a deep, fake voice and an abnormally puffed up chest. Please recreate for optimal effect.

But think about it. That seems to be the case. And it drives me nuts. But then you have Nolan's The Dark Knight. Batman faces essentially one villain in the sequel.  And it’s fantastic.

            The Dark Knight is the only reason I won’t judge Ben Affleck as Batman until I actually see the movie. My reasoning is this. I saw Heath Ledger in A Knight's Tale and other films before he starred in The Dark Knight. Much like everyone else, I thought he'd be horrible in the role of Joker. And he knocks it out of the park. While Jack Nicholson portrayed an accurate Joker from the comics (and did a very good job), Ledger caused a revamping of the character in its source medium. That isn't easy. Using that reasoning, it makes sense not to judge Affleck too harshly yet. He could still be very good in the role. Only time will tell. 

But if he sucks, I'll be right there criticizing Warner Brothers.

Author’s Note:  By the time you read this, I’ll have already seen The Amazing Spiderman 2.  Actually, I went to see it yesterday.  It had its ups and downs, but it was, overall, an enjoyable movie.  And it didn’t suffer from three villain disease at all.

Mainly because there were just two.