This is the first paragraph of Anthony Lane’s review in this week’s New Yorker:
When someone reboots a film franchise, as the makers of “The Amazing Spider-Man” have done, what are we meant to think of the original boot? The first “Spider-Man” came out in 2002, followed by its obligatory sequels in 2004 and 2007. If you are a twenty-year-old male of unvarnished social aptitude, those movies will seem like much-loved classics that have eaten up half your lifetime. They beg to be interpreted anew, just as Shakespeare’s history plays should be freshly staged by every generation. For those of us who are lavishly cobwebbed with time, however, the notion of yet another Spider-Man saga, this soon, does seem hasty, and I wish that the good people—or, at any rate, the patent lawyers—at Marvel Comics could at least have taken the opportunity to elide the intensely annoying hyphen in the title. Or does merely suggesting such a change make me a total ass-hole?
One of the worst things about my kids being grown is that I don’t have to see this movie, and so of course won’t, but I remember fondly my son’s obsession with Spidey, and how with him I enjoyed Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in the “original” ten years ago.
Even though I’m more a Batman guy, myself.
For those of us who were/are comics fans, the “reboot” isn’t always that much of a shock to the system. The comics world constantly reboots its heroes. Take, for instance, the current reboot of Green Lantern as gay. Often it gets explained away as taking place in an alternate universe, which is plausible enough if you’ve followed current trends in theoretical physics.
Good point! Yeah, the source IS a comics series, and they do have it all ways.
I still think that comics are an untapped source of literature – maybe adding an operatic dimention. Seems to me there hasn’t been anything going on since R. Crumb in the 60s.
Not an Alan Moore fan, Dr. Wylie?
I don’t know about the movie but Anthony Lane’s take on it was just a GREAT piece of writing. Any line is quotable, but I loved the part about how “If Webb had had the guts to pursue the truly inventive, and the biologically accurate, Peter would not have surprised Gwen at her bedroom window or shared a dreamy kiss. He would have crawled out of her drain and been beaten to death with a mop.” Hilarious.
That one cracked me up, too, Paulette! So much in the piece did, like the one about Peter’s . . . well, it’s too vulgar, really, out of context, as in. Movies like that, their only function is as fodder for Prince Anthony.
Thanks for posting this. I knew I wasn’t the only one who had a problem with reboots of franchises less than 10 years old! But I guess we wouldn’t have them if they didn’t bring in the big bucks for Hollywood studios.