Can he swing from a thread? Take a look overhead
July 20, 2011 6:57 PM Subscribe

The trailer for the upcoming Spider-Man reboot has been released. But does it rip off the 2008 videogame Mirrors Edge?
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn (192 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite

No.
posted by sharkfu at 7:00 PM on July 20, 2011 [3 favorites]

Mirror's Edge invented first-person perspectives? Really?
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:01 PM on July 20, 2011 [7 favorites]

I've just started playing Mirror's Edge, and it did remind me of some of the good Spider-Man games (only with a bit less freedom).
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:02 PM on July 20, 2011

Since Bryan Singer's Superman movie was a reboot, does that make Zach Snyder's movie a threeboot?
posted by Trurl at 7:02 PM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

Every year a different director should take a swing at Spider-Man's origin. It could be the movie version of "Sweet Jane".
posted by Legomancer at 7:04 PM on July 20, 2011 [17 favorites]

You know that thing where you're jumping around and you can occasionally see your own limbs? Because they're in your field of vision? I invented that! I'd be rich except that I have to pay royalties to the woman who invented reflections.
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:04 PM on July 20, 2011 [12 favorites]

Why, I don't think you're even the real mayor!
posted by obiwanwasabi at 7:05 PM on July 20, 2011 [10 favorites]

Every year a different director should take a swing at Spider-Man's origin. It could be the movie version of "Sweet Jane".

I'm so sick of superhero origin stories. Get to the good stuff!

But I like every incarnation of Spider-Man (except for Ben Reily), so I'll like this.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:06 PM on July 20, 2011

OK, somebody name another game, movie, or music video that features first-person parkour.
posted by Nomyte at 7:06 PM on July 20, 2011 [6 favorites]

Well, how different do you expect a first-person running and jumping game to look? Having spent quite a bit of time on the roofs of tall buildings, I can confirm that they all feature open sky, impressive views, pipework and access structures of varying sizes, and stomach-churning downward drops surrounding the perimeter. It is my sincere beleif that these features existed prior to the creation of Mirror's Edge, much as I admire that piece of software.
posted by anigbrowl at 7:07 PM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yeah, what the hell! And video games never, ever take inspiration from movies!
posted by naju at 7:07 PM on July 20, 2011

Why reboot? Just have Spidey fight a new villain. It makes no sense. It's kind of insulting, actually. It makes me not want to see the movie.
posted by vibrotronica at 7:08 PM on July 20, 2011 [17 favorites]

Coming in 2013:
The Incredible Hulk: No, Really, We're Serious This Time
posted by StrikeTheViol at 7:09 PM on July 20, 2011 [40 favorites]

Eh. It was more fun when I got to play.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 7:09 PM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

OK, somebody name another game, movie, or music video that features first-person parkour.

There are plenty of games with lots of first-person jumping puzzles. It was never a good idea. Most people had the sense not to make it the entire game, but that's not a point in favor of Mirror's Edge.

Why reboot? Just have Spidey fight a new villain. It makes no sense. It's kind of insulting, actually. It makes me not want to see the movie.

Did you see the last three? They were terrible. Shedding that baggage is a good thing. It's why Batman Begins wasn't a sequel to Batman And Robin.
posted by kafziel at 7:10 PM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

So the stuff in that trailer of him leaping around where you saw his feet and stuff, that was just like test footage, kinda sketched in so you could see what they were planning to put there? Right? I ask that because it looks like shit.

I usually don't get too worked up about movies that fuck with my childhood icons, I can go read the old comics anytime. But that movie looks like an abomination.
posted by marxchivist at 7:11 PM on July 20, 2011 [6 favorites]

Oh, FFS.

There are only so many ways to depict a person scaling buildings in an urban environment.

Hint: It is a finite number. Something like one. Or two.
posted by joe lisboa at 7:12 PM on July 20, 2011

Wait, reboot? So soon? How is this anything other than a fucking smash-and-cash grab?
posted by joe lisboa at 7:15 PM on July 20, 2011 [7 favorites]

You know, I would have thought there wouldn't be much market for more comic book movies, but I overheard a guy at work complaining that there hadn't made a Hawkeye movie, so I guess not.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:17 PM on July 20, 2011

Why are they making another? Seriously, bad enough Hollywood keeps doing remakes of books and classic movies because they've run out of ideas, now they're using movies that are less than a decade old?

Spiderman looks like a sad emo puppy.
posted by schroedinger at 7:18 PM on July 20, 2011 [4 favorites]

OK, somebody name another game, movie, or music video that features first-person parkour.

FEAR? Brink?

Did you see the last three? They were terrible.

I think you mean the last of the three. The first two were good. In fact, the second one is at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.
posted by Amanojaku at 7:19 PM on July 20, 2011 [6 favorites]

Peter Parkour. In retrospect, this was obvious.
posted by Drastic at 7:19 PM on July 20, 2011 [116 favorites]

> Well, how different do you expect a first-person running and jumping game to look?

> There are only so many ways to depict a person scaling buildings in an urban environment.

Parkour ≠ running and jumping on rooftops. There is a huge acrobatic and artistic element involved. Otherwise, the first level of Duke Nukem 3D would be an example of parkour. That would be a ludicrous thing to claim.

The only thing similar I can think of are the Aliens games (and possibly movies) which have first-person parts with rapid movement and extreme changes in perspective.
posted by Nomyte at 7:22 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Peter Parkour...

Well-played, sir. Well-played.
posted by joe lisboa at 7:22 PM on July 20, 2011

The Incredible Hulk: No, Really, We're Serious This Time

Oddly enough, the climax of the most recent Incredible Hulk had a scene that was a straight rip off/homage to a power in the underrated Hulk: Ultimate Destruction game. The bit where he turns the car into fists was a stock move. Unfortunately, I don't think the bus surfing made it into the film.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:22 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

So, Parkour = running and jumping on rooftops + pretension.
posted by kafziel at 7:23 PM on July 20, 2011 [11 favorites]

I think you mean the last of the three. The first two were good. In fact, the second one is at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The third one was good too. Everyone complains about the dance scene, because neither Sam Raimi or Spider-Man would EVER have goofy humor in them.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:23 PM on July 20, 2011 [6 favorites]

Random Thoughts while watching the trailer:

Oh, my god, I don't care about Spiderman's parents. Who actually cares about Spiderman's parents? Why did they open the trailer with his parents? He's not Batman.

Could this be more emo?

Don't care what's in his father's briefcase. Seriously, his parents again?

Sally Field is Aunt May? I don't really see that.

The first person pov is kinda cool.

Secret this, secret that. So we are still set on emo. Do not want an emo Spiderman.
posted by nooneyouknow at 7:23 PM on July 20, 2011 [9 favorites]

Yeah, somebody's been playing Mirror's Edge. The color scheme (mostly noticeable in the interiors shown in the trailer), Spidey's reflection in the mirrored glass of a building, the parkour. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
posted by killdevil at 7:26 PM on July 20, 2011

Even the trailer's music is reminiscent of the game's soundtrack...
posted by killdevil at 7:27 PM on July 20, 2011

Raimi's Spiderman run was good....real good.

Pretty close to the feel and ideas of the comics, with humor and drama and exceptional casting.

This trailer looks like shit.
posted by gcbv at 7:29 PM on July 20, 2011 [7 favorites]

Interesting that the video doesn't even show up in Safari. Like, at all. I had to book up Chrome to even know there was a video to watch.
posted by hippybear at 7:32 PM on July 20, 2011

Who cares about the movie? Now I want a first-person Spider-Man game using the Mirror's Edge engine.

Or at least Mirror's Edge 2: We Left Out The Guns This Time.
posted by straight at 7:33 PM on July 20, 2011 [6 favorites]

The 'mirror's edge' sequence looked like a video game, too. Looked like xbox-level CG...
posted by Buckt at 7:35 PM on July 20, 2011

If the effects we see in this trailer are what we'll see in the movie then I'm not going to see it, buy it or even rent it.
posted by JakeEXTREME at 7:37 PM on July 20, 2011

Do not want an emo Spiderman.

Peter Parker, however, should be Emo with a capital E. Unfortunately I doubt this film is going to do any better than Raimi's films at capturing how the mask transforms Parker into Puck.

When, oh when, will we have a movie in which the villain's only reason for trying to kill Spider-Man is that he just won't shut up.
posted by straight at 7:39 PM on July 20, 2011 [5 favorites]

Straight: Thankfully, that's why The Spectacular Spider-Man exists.

Sorry, existed. Dammit, Marvel.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:41 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

So they're remaking eight year old movies now? Soon the cycle will get so short that every year's movies will just be remakes of the previous year's movies.
posted by octothorpe at 7:42 PM on July 20, 2011 [4 favorites]

Peter Parker, however, should be Emo with a capital E. Unfortunately I doubt this film is going to do any better than Raimi's films at capturing how the mask transforms Parker into Puck.

THIS. I love Spider-Man because he was sad and whiny and put-upon, and actually got some power and joy out of life. He was my inspiration as a kid. Spidey SHOULD be mopey.

and Mirrors Edge 2 might happen
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:43 PM on July 20, 2011

MetaFilter: like a sad emo puppy.
posted by loquacious at 7:43 PM on July 20, 2011

So they're remaking eight year old movies now? Soon the cycle will get so short that every year's movies will just be remakes of the previous year's movies.

They've doing that shamelessly for about 90 years. I don't see why anyone is going to catch on any time soon.
posted by loquacious at 7:46 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Man my brain just synthesized the two properties and got an amazing combination of Mirror's Edge and Bionic Commando. The web-shooters remove the issues with combat and guns, since you can disarm enemies from a distance.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:49 PM on July 20, 2011

Why would I want my emo Twlight vampire to dress up like Spiderman? I am so not amused!
posted by Brocktoon at 7:50 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Spider HYPHEN Man
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 7:51 PM on July 20, 2011

> Spider HYPHEN Man

No, it should be Spider*Man. The * is for his anus, where he shoots his webs out of.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 7:52 PM on July 20, 2011 [46 favorites]

vibrotronica: "Why reboot? Just have Spidey fight a new villain. It makes no sense. It's kind of insulting, actually. It makes me not want to see the movie"

Insulting is right. The first one (first two, really) were pitch-perfect, just great superhero movies that have already filtered into wider pop culture ("with great power comes great responsibility," etc.). How does anybody think that needs to be re-done?

nooneyouknow: " Could this be more emo?"

YES
posted by Rhaomi at 7:55 PM on July 20, 2011

Why reboot? Just have Spidey fight a new villain. It makes no sense. It's kind of insulting, actually. It makes me not want to see the movie.

Yeah I find it kind of annoying as well. I feel like I just saw the movie. Why would I want to see the same story told again with slightly different people. It just seems unnatural and strange. With the batman movies, a reboot made sense because the prior films had started to suck. This just seems like a pretty blatant cash grab. And the thing where they made one hulk movie, which sucked, and then immediately rebooted it? This seems only slightly less ridiculous.

That said I didn't really like Spider man 2, and didn't have much interest in seeing spiderman 3, even though it had Venom, apparently.

If they want to make some quick cash off this demo they should make movies out of 80s game. A metroid movie would be pretty cool.
posted by delmoi at 7:59 PM on July 20, 2011 [3 favorites]

If they want to make some quick cash off this demo they should make movies out of 80s game. A metroid movie would be pretty cool.

They've been running live action ads for the recent entries.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:01 PM on July 20, 2011

It looks pretty good. The costume reminds me of the old live-action TV show and I found that look kind of pleasing for some reason.

Sometimes a reboot of a franchise is necessary. The same thing happened with the Batman movies and while I'm sure there's going to be some folks out there who can't wait to tell the internet how much they hated a mostly-loved movie, Batman Begins was a damn sight better than that Clooney shitfest.

Spider-Man 3 sucked. It sucked in a way that thoroughly exhausted any interest I had in exploring the narrative possibilities of that universe. A fresh take would be nice. Seriously - I wouldn't want to watch a sequel, because it would feel kind of inaccurate if the characters didn't spend a long time talking about, "Hey, remember when we were all fucking idiots for a while? And our lives were a convoluted mess and not worth paying any attention to at all? Yeah, that was weird."

Remakes aren't a bad thing. Reboots aren't a bad thing. Shitty remakes and reboots are bad, and most of them are shitty, because most movies are shitty. Maybe this one will be good. If it isn't, it's not like anything has actually been lost.

And honestly, after the development-hell rollercoaster of the late eighties and all of the nineties, I can't help but find it adorable that now people are complaining that there are too many Spider-Man movies.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 8:02 PM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yeah, this doesn't look too much specifically like Mirror's Edge. It's missing the whole red/blue colouring of the game, not to mention the spare aesthetic that highlights the parkour elements while not distracting from the gameplay. For instance: there's no brick texture in Mirror's Edge, and that's for a good reason. Other than the first person perspective with camera motions and a fondness for pipes, I'm not seeing the rip-off.

A bit of irony, Spider-Man 2 for Xbox (not PC) was a landmark open world action game. More fun than Grand Theft Auto, in many ways. The flying mechanic from webslinging was great, and it was one of the first games to present a virtual city (New York) that really felt like the real city.
posted by Nelson at 8:07 PM on July 20, 2011

We keep rebooting these dusty old stories. Maybe it's time for an upgrade?
posted by clvrmnky at 8:07 PM on July 20, 2011

I hope the new one has a scene where the pie is SO GOOD
posted by Greg Nog at 8:08 PM on July 20, 2011 [7 favorites]

If they want to make some quick cash off this demo they should make movies out of 80s game.

Q*Bert!

The * is for his anus, where he shoots his webs out of!
posted by erniepan at 8:10 PM on July 20, 2011 [18 favorites]

Remakes aren't a bad thing. Reboots aren't a bad thing. Shitty remakes and reboots are bad, and most of them are shitty, because most movies are shitty. Maybe this one will be good. If it isn't, it's not like anything has actually been lost.

Yeah, but there was about 8 years between Batman & Robin and Batman Begins, and it was 16 years since the start of the series. Here you have 4 years and just, what, 9 years since the start of the series? You've got to have a little decency
posted by delmoi at 8:11 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

I would totally watch a Hulk reboot starring Drunk Hulk from twitter.
posted by Sailormom at 8:13 PM on July 20, 2011 [4 favorites]

This is all the Spider Man I'll ever need.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:14 PM on July 20, 2011 [6 favorites]

Oh dear. I love Andrew Garfield but this trailer bodes ill. The parents — why the parents?! The incredibly flat & shiny visuals, the fake feeling of the first-person perspective — seriously just strap a camera to David Belle's head and roll with that.

Sony Pictures is making this movie because if a given period of time elapses without them making a Spider-Man film, the rights revert to Marvel.
posted by sixswitch at 8:17 PM on July 20, 2011

Coming in 2013:
The Incredible Hulk: No, Really, We're Serious This Time

And from a better timeline...

Coming in 2013:
Feminist Hulk
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:18 PM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

It won't be the same without the cold, dead eyes of Kirsten Dunst.
posted by brain_drain at 8:20 PM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

FAMOUS MONSTER: " Sometimes a reboot of a franchise is necessary. The same thing happened with the Batman movies and while I'm sure there's going to be some folks out there who can't wait to tell the internet how much they hated a mostly-loved movie, Batman Begins was a damn sight better than that Clooney shitfest."

delmoi: " Yeah, but there was about 8 years between Batman & Robin and Batman Begins, and it was 16 years since the start of the series. Here you have 4 years and just, what, 9 years since the start of the series? You've got to have a little decency"

Plus, the series being rebooted here is damn good. When they remade Eric Bana's Hulk as Edward Norton's Incredible Hulk just a couple years later, it made sense because the original was a confused, lackluster mess. But Spider-man and Spider-man 2 were about the best modern superhero movies there are, aside from Nolan's Batman trilogy. They're fixing what ain't broke.
posted by Rhaomi at 8:20 PM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

Sony Pictures is making this movie because if a given period of time elapses without them making a Spider-Man film, the rights revert to Marvel.

If this is true then that tells you everything you need to know about this particular, ah, project.
posted by joe lisboa at 8:22 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Coming in 2013:
Feminist Hulk

NOT FAIR THAT LADY SHIRTS COST MORE TO CLEAN THAN MAN SHIRTS! HULK SMASH DRY CLEANERS!!
posted by brain_drain at 8:22 PM on July 20, 2011 [6 favorites]

It's the same reason we're getting another Daredevil flick. And just because it's a cash-grab doesn't mean it won't be worth watching. Remember, every studio film exists to make money. Period.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:23 PM on July 20, 2011

All I remember about the game Mirror's Edge is that what I was watching a buddy play it on his PS3 while I ate a bowl of instant brown rice with Nutlex mixed through it and it was reprehensible and now when I think of the game Mirror's Edge I think of the vile stink of that diabolical bowl of brown rice with Nutlex, and the weird gunky film of gross that it slathered all over the inside of my mouth like if a garden slug had crawled all around in there and then exploded and his belly was full of burnt dog hair. Fucking Mirror's Edge, man. Worst game ever made.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:24 PM on July 20, 2011 [3 favorites]

I think I learned all I needed to know on this Spiderman when I saw the EW cover and photo spread of this actor in his very very tight fitting costume, somewhat coyly posed to show off his posterior.

And of course the hair/emo affect is straight out of Twilight in the trailer.

So clearly this version is Spiderman: For the Ladies.
posted by emjaybee at 8:26 PM on July 20, 2011

They're never going to make Kraven's Last Hunt, are they?
posted by Bookhouse at 8:26 PM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

I wish they would make this a musical. I think Spider Man would make a great musical.
posted by inigo2 at 8:26 PM on July 20, 2011 [4 favorites]

Nutlex! A fine name for my first child!
posted by Nomyte at 8:27 PM on July 20, 2011

Hm.

Thinking about this a bit: I actually don't mind that these reboots are a bit "dark" compared to the over-the-top cheesefest of the most recent incarnation of the franchise. It worked for Batman, and it kind of makes a lot of sense for Spiderman. The characters in the last incarnation never actually felt real — I didn't give a shit about Peter or Mary. The plot items were neatly in place to develop the characters, although that development never actually happened.

Andrew Garfield's a great actor, so I think that this can work. The silk coming out of the back of his neck was certainly freaky, and a neat touch. (And, come on. Who wouldn't want to see the Spiderman franchise go all Black Swan?)

On the other hand, I sure hope those CG shots were taken from the video game tie-in. Because that is literally some of the worst graphics and compositing work I've ever seen. I'll forgive that kind of sloppiness on a TV show with a tiny budget (ie. Torchwood). A lot harder to forgive it from a major film studio with a virtually limitless budget.
posted by schmod at 8:27 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

A lot harder to forgive it from a major film studio with a virtually limitless budget.

Yeah, but to be fair, they were just shooting webs out of their collective asses.
posted by joe lisboa at 8:29 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think the next reboot of Spiderman should have Spidey shooting the webs out of his asshole. Real spiders shoot webs out of their assholes, so why should Spiderman be different? It's not like there's anything resembling a gland or orifice on human wrists anyway. What the hell is that? Make him a proper superhero and let him shoot spiderwebs from his asshole.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 7:49 PM on July 20 [3 favorites +] [!]

No need to re-invent human biology. This Spidey is going back to mechanical web-shooters. Problem solved!*

And about a dozen more created, if we can believe the tone of the trailer. I'm with sixswitch and nooneyouknow on this one. Focusing on the parents, especially turning it into a big dramatic, ominous-music-playing-mystery seems like exactly the wrong approach to take.

*I think the odds are pretty good that the web shooters (or the plans for them or the mechanism or the formula for the webbing) will be revealed once the case is opened.
posted by sardonyx at 8:31 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

When they remade Eric Bana's Hulk as Edward Norton's Incredible Hulk just a couple years later, it made sense because the original was a confused, lackluster mess.

Shut up you don't know, Ang Lee's Hulk is easily my favourite comic book movie, and because of that it makes you wrong.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:32 PM on July 20, 2011 [5 favorites]

Also, the reason they are making this is because Tobey Maguire is seventy-six years old.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:33 PM on July 20, 2011

If only this movie featured Turner D. Century as the villain, especially if the rest of the movie was super-duper serious and emo, and especially if the movie ended with a bloodied-but-still-standing Spider-Man turning the camera and exhorting the audience to "rise up against all the Turner D. Centuries of the world, wherever they might be," and then as a result the movie wound up being responsible for a few dozen murders of old people by young people, so then as another result a real-life villainous vigilante would rise up to kill all the young people, thereby becoming Turner D. Century himself, except this time, there's no Spider-Man to save the day, so then Turner D. Century winds up ruling the world for real.

This scenario is the only circumstance under which I'll accept a new Spider-Man movie.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:36 PM on July 20, 2011 [3 favorites]

schmod: "Thinking about this a bit: I actually don't mind that these reboots are a bit "dark" compared to the over-the-top cheesefest of the most recent incarnation of the franchise. It worked for Batman, and it kind of makes a lot of sense for Spiderman. "

Really? I thought that was pretty much the defining characteristic of Peter Parker/Spider-man -- he's just some nerdy kid out there juggling a crappy job with this weighty responsibility, yet still chipper enough to take joy in it and crack self-deprecatingly cornball jokes while chasing the girl and saving the day. It was charming and different.

Turning that narrative into yet another brooding dimly-lit angstfest is like remaking Psychonauts as some kind of grimdark Gears of War shooter.
posted by Rhaomi at 8:40 PM on July 20, 2011 [8 favorites]

Also, the reason they are making this is because Tobey Maguire is seventy-six years old.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:33 PM on July 20 [+] [!]

And Andrew Garfield is 80.

Andrew Garfield
birthdate: August 20, 1983

Tobey Maguire
birthdate: June 27, 1975
(Both sourced from IMDB)

Yes I know. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, just as as reboot makes no sense whatsoever at this point in time.
posted by sardonyx at 8:40 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yes, I know the math doesn't support what I said, but both guys are way too old to be playing high-schoolers.
posted by sardonyx at 8:42 PM on July 20, 2011

Jason Priestley is...CHILD-LAD!
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:43 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Sometimes a reboot of a franchise is necessary.

That is not a use of the word "necessary" that I am familiar with.
posted by mhoye at 8:44 PM on July 20, 2011

tumid dahlia: "Shut up you don't know, Ang Lee's Hulk is easily my favourite comic book movie, and because of that it makes you wrong."

Someone should do a phantom edit of Ang Lee's Hulk and cut that two and half hour mess down to about 1h 50 minutes. There's a decent movie in there somewhere but it's way too overblown and drags on forever.
posted by octothorpe at 8:44 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

You complain now, but just wait until...

...the Star Wars reboot. An edgier, grittier Star Wars. It opens with Luke Skywalker getting in a fistfight in a Tatooine prison, where a very gritty and filthy Ben Kenobi (an ironically cast Harrison Ford) invites him to train to be something greater. Darth Vader is shot in shaky-cam for roughly the first two thirds of the movie; in most scenes, he is emerging from darkness to kill someone in a very gritty way.

...the new Godzilla reboot. This one is ALL shaky-cam and ALL 3D; vomit buckets are mandatory and epileptics have to sign a twelve-page release prior to admission. Also, it takes place on another planet and it's all one big metaphor for nature or something.

...the Wizard of Oz reboot. Can you say gritty? This is actually the origin story of the Wizard, a troubled young man who runs away from an abusive home. Somehow, he finds himself in Oz, a gritty magical land where he must struggle to survive, but his troubles are only starting because it turns out the Government is involved.

...the Jaws reboot. Grittier than a Cape Cod clam chowder. Chief Brody (an ironically cast Harrison Ford) spends the majority of the film fighting special interest tourism groups. At some point, there's a shark (shaky-cam first-person perspective, in 3D of course).
posted by Behemoth at 8:44 PM on July 20, 2011 [36 favorites]

Everyone, including me, is forgetting one crucial factor: This movie will be absolutely, objectively worth seeing if Jonathan Kimble Simmons is in it.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:45 PM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

Meta*Filter: The * is for the... Ah, never mind.
posted by bowmaniac at 8:53 PM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

Legomancer: "Every year a different director should take a swing at Spider-Man's origin. It could be the movie version of "Sweet Jane"."

You know, the Cowboy Junkies would do a great version of the Spider-Man origin...
posted by gern at 8:56 PM on July 20, 2011 [3 favorites]

...the Wizard of Oz reboot. Can you say gritty? This is actually the origin story of the Wizard, a troubled young man who runs away from an abusive home. Somehow, he finds himself in Oz, a gritty magical land where he must struggle to survive, but his troubles are only starting because it turns out the Government is involved.

The Witches of Oz. Coming soon.
posted by scalefree at 8:57 PM on July 20, 2011

Sometimes a reboot of a franchise is necessary.

The thing with the Batman reboots is that they were also reinterpretations. Batman is such a wide canvas to work with that it allowed both Nolan, Burton, and other creators to inject their vision into the project. I mean, in the last 20 years Batman has had 3 major cartoon shows, each very different from the other.

With Spider-man, I don't see that with this reboot. And it's not like they didn't have any raw materials.
posted by FJT at 9:10 PM on July 20, 2011

Why does everyone dislike Spider-Man 3?

I wanted to see a Spider-Man movie where Mysterio was Sam Raimi's old practical effects guy. He's fired from Evil Dead 4: Deadites Take Manhattan in favor of some CGI wizard and wants to get revenge.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:12 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

I think the next reboot of Spiderman should have Spidey shooting the webs out of his asshole.

Venture Bros did this. Also he had like twelve eyes.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:13 PM on July 20, 2011

Why does everyone dislike Spider-Man 3?

It was just too much. Big Ideas and Big Themes about the True Nature of Heroism and Sacrifice. Plus emo-spidey was fucking weird. I am not sure how to articulate this properly, but it felt very christian in its narrative to me, in the sense that a christian version of redemption seemed to be the main trope of the enterprise.

The original comics were kind of great in part because Parker was so hapless, and there was no greater good that was going to come along and help him and show him the way. He had to figure it out by himself in a largely amoral setting.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 9:25 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: "Gritty"
posted by Windopaene at 9:26 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Do not want an emo Spiderman.

Peter Parker, however, should be Emo with a capital E. Unfortunately I doubt this film is going to do any better than Raimi's films at capturing how the mask transforms Parker into Puck.

Yes. "Do not want an emo Spiderman." was short hand for two thoughts:

1) Where the hell is Smartass Spiderman? I love that guy and there is no evidence of him in the trailer.

2) I'm defining emo as unjustified angst and whining. Under this definition, Spiderman is not emo because he always has good reason to be angsty - he gets bullied at school, the role he played in his uncle's death, he has no money, the city hates him, he kinda killed his girlfriend, he is really a clone, etc, etc. Also, after the crappy event du jour is wrapped up, Spiderman moves on, to be emo about whatever the next crappy event is e.g. he didn't spend years angsting over Uncle Ben's death or Gwen Stacy's death. And despite all the crappy things in his life, he's not bitter or emotionally repressed/crippled or filled with anger.
posted by nooneyouknow at 9:45 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Why does everyone dislike Spider-Man 3?

Because it was awful.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:47 PM on July 20, 2011

I am underwhelmed by this trailer, especially the last 20 odd seconds of really, really awful CGI.
posted by asnider at 9:54 PM on July 20, 2011

Because it was awful.

The ending was rushed because the studios forced Venom on Raimi, but Sandman was great and the dance sequence was actually funny. And Spider-Man should err more toward emo than, say, Ryan Reynolds.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:58 PM on July 20, 2011

Will we finally find out how Peter Parker becomes Spiderman in this movie?
posted by bstreep at 10:01 PM on July 20, 2011 [7 favorites]

So good.
posted by zephyr_words at 10:07 PM on July 20, 2011

Okay:

A) This movie looks like shit.

B) The parkour sequence at the end was CLEARLY ripped off from Mirrors Edge. It's the same moves, and even the same layout as the first level almost. If you've played the game, it's not even a question.
posted by empath at 10:12 PM on July 20, 2011 [7 favorites]

Spiderman from the Urban Dictionary (NSFW... duh)
posted by Mister Fabulous at 10:19 PM on July 20, 2011

Donald Glover will always be the real Spider-Man in my heart.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:29 PM on July 20, 2011 [12 favorites]

An emo, humorless Spidey?

Shit-tastic!
posted by bardic at 10:32 PM on July 20, 2011

Mirror's Edge was a great, and beautiful, little game.

This movie on the other hands looks like something one torrents a telesync of, 'watches' with one eye up in the corner of the monitor while doing something productive, then deletes out of embarrassment before even hitting a decent ratio.

Which behaviour is probably part of the reason Hollywood churns out these shitty, uncreative, repetitive, high-budget 'low risk' turds with such regularity: they're afraid to take any chances with the big budget toiletbusters.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:33 PM on July 20, 2011

There is pretty obvious influence there. But it's no the kind that's wrong, it's the kind that's art.
posted by SpacemanStix at 10:37 PM on July 20, 2011

Or, that is, the kind that does what art does: it is often influenced by what has come before.
posted by SpacemanStix at 10:38 PM on July 20, 2011

Eh. I'd say it took significant inspiration from Mirror's Edge, but didn't copy it. That's fine with me. Maybe I'd feel more offended if EA had really developed the Mirror's Edge franchise/world/paradigm, but even that's a stretch, because I definitely don't like the idea of the very concept of "first-person parkour" becoming a corporation's exclusive intellectual property.

As it is, though, EA has just left the whole compelling concept/visual style out to dry like forgotten laundry on a clothesline.
posted by treepour at 10:43 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hopefully at this point everyone who has the slightest inclination to will have played Mirror's Edge.

If you haven't, well, it's about £13 on Steam and you can pick up boxed copies for PC and Xbox for about a fiver in the shops (avoid the PS3 version, the frame-rate is awful). Play it on the easiest setting (it doesn't affect the platforming, but it makes the rubbish shooting sections quicker) and then find some way to yell at EA for not letting DICE make a sequel yet.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 11:09 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Are any of the current-gen Spider-Man games worth getting?
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 11:26 PM on July 20, 2011

Did you see the last three? They were terrible.

This. I zoned out half way thru the first one. Practically fell asleep. Who in their right mind would watch the others?

And who was that snaggletoothed scrubber wot played the "love interest"? Crikey, who the hell did she root to get that part?
posted by uncanny hengeman at 11:42 PM on July 20, 2011

A THING HAS HAPPENED SOMEWHERE IN THE WORLD

CAN KOTAKU RELATE IT TO VIDEO GAMES IN A SHITTY ARTICLE?
posted by dudekiller at 11:54 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

In all seriousness, I will only go to see a new Spiderman flick if its directed by Uwe Boll.
posted by bardic at 11:59 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

If you're hankering for a Spider-Mannish game in the current gen, you could do a lot worse than Infamous 2 on the PS3. He doesn't have webs but traversing the city on rooftops is fun and fluid, combat is pretty great, and the story and storytelling are both good enough to keep you going to the end. Should probably wiki the plot of Infamous 1 if you haven't played it first, though.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 12:32 AM on July 21, 2011

When they remade Eric Bana's Hulk as Edward Norton's Incredible Hulk

That wasn't a remake, was it? My recollection was that it picked up where the Ang Lee version ended. Or does having a different style or cast mean it's not really a sequel? (OTOH I would call the last Superman a remake, since its "continuity" with the previous ones seemed mostly annoying wink-and-nudges to the audience.)
posted by bjrubble at 12:43 AM on July 21, 2011

Focusing on the parents, especially turning it into a big dramatic, ominous-music-playing-mystery seems like exactly the wrong approach to take.

Well, Spidey's parents were spies in the comic. They were killed by ... the Red Skull? Something like that. It's not a big (or needed) piece of continuity, but it's not like they're pulling the "parents with a solemn duty that forces them to abandon their son" angle out of a hat.

It's also kind of an interesting wrinkle in the "with great power comes great responsibility" mantra -- you can be incredibly responsible, but to who? Your government or the boy who needs you? And later, will that same boy be responsible to the people of New York who need protection ... or Gwen Stacy? Could be an interesting angle, if they pursue it.

If you're hankering for a Spider-Mannish game in the current gen, you could do a lot worse than Infamous 2 on the PS3.

I also suggest Just Cause 2. Yes, it has guns, but using the grappling hook and parachute to go base jumping, latch on to helicopters, and swing around a city has a major Spider-Man vibe to it.
posted by Amanojaku at 12:44 AM on July 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

I've never seen the arms while running thing done elsewhere, but obviously that should become standard.

Mirror's Edge still has a better theme song, although nowhere near as good as Portal's song.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:52 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's not just the perspective, the rooftop looks uncannily like a Mirror's edge level.
posted by Veritron at 12:58 AM on July 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

The slide move kinda seals it for me.
posted by lumensimus at 1:00 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

The contempt expressed here for Raimi's attempt at a Spider-Man franchise has restored my faith in humanity. My god those movies were awful. Awful, awful, awful.
posted by ShutterBun at 1:08 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Ahh, Mirror's Edge. Never has a game been in more need of an actual writer. That game had brilliant design, excellent level design, wonderful sound effects and music, and the most retarded story this side of Birdemic.

The justification of free-running around a futuristic city is that the government is evil (never shown, taken on faith) so a band of people exist who run packages of unspecified contents between unknown clients for unsaid reasons. The story in the game is that your character's sister is kidnapped for an unsaid reason and you have to get her back. In the process you find out that the evil government's plan for getting rid of the runners is to train runners of their own -- never mind that throughout the game it's routinely shown that a helicopter is your worst enemy, not someone else who can run up buildings too.

I reckon that the way to turn the sequel up to 11 would be to do two things: hire an actual writer, and realize that the core gameplayof first person free running is actually really great. I think they did recognize the latter since all the post story stuff to do in the game revolves around running races and has absolutely no bad guys in.

If they got rid of the guys trying to kill you in the story missions, or at least got rid of the crappy shooting parts I think they'd be onto a winner.

Oh wait, the post's about Spiderman! Well, they've certainly made a movie, haven't they! I look forward to learning about how power and responsibility have some sort of connection and how using your newfound superpowers to make money is wrong. THAT's new.
posted by Silentgoldfish at 1:30 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I also suggest Just Cause 2.

Yes, yes, yes. The grappling hook + parachute mechanic is just so fucking fun.
posted by kmz at 1:47 AM on July 21, 2011

Lovecraft in Brooklyn and I are occupying the same headspace again. Mysterio would make the AWESOMEST villian for a Spidey movie. Hell, don't even bother retelling the origin; just pick up mid franchise, don't even bother explaining why the actors and the costume is different. I would be perfectly content to watch Spidey do awesome stuff and bust Mysterio's balls for two hours.
posted by KingEdRa at 2:05 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I dunno, if the new Spider Man is half as awesome as Mirror's Edge I will be super stoked.

I also realize that not everyone has the same love for Mirror's Edge that I do.
posted by timelord at 2:14 AM on July 21, 2011

I don't have good luck with Spider-Man movies. I saw the first one while experiencing my first-ever gout attack while unemployed with no health insurance. I don't remember what happened with the second, but I saw the third on a flight from Denver to Toronto and came down with a case of food poisoning right about the time of the Sandman origin scene.

At this rate, I fully expect the entire theater to spontaneously combust if I go to see this reboot.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:51 AM on July 21, 2011

Silentgoldfish: "I reckon that the way to turn the sequel up to 11 would be to do two things: hire an actual writer, and realize that the core gameplayof first person free running is actually really great. I think they did recognize the latter since all the post story stuff to do in the game revolves around running races and has absolutely no bad guys in."

My imaginary Mirror's Edge sequel:

The basic setup of the first game is actually pretty good, but it needs fleshing out. It's obvious that the government has 100% effective eavesdropping technology for the internet and that the presence of encryption is usually taken as evidence enough to investigate someone (and by investigate I mean kick in their door and cart them off). Ground and air vehicles that don't have the mandatory chips that allow the police to take control of them when they need/want to are stopped, boarded, and sometimes even fired upon. This makes travelling on foot the only safe way to deliver information you don't want the government to know about.

You start as a drug runner, ferrying little electronic currency chips and small packets of drugs (both medicinal and recreational; this setting has hugely inflated costs for live-saving medicine and a backstory about a terrible disease that's spreading among the poor and has yet to be cured). It plays a bit like Elite or Privateer: you trade, you run across the city, you trade again. As you make money you can buy black-market goods to make your life easier, allow you to climb higher, and enable you to penetrate the more dangerous parts of the city: gang territory, government sector, and so on. You can buy rechargeable gloves and shoes that allow you to climb walls like Spider-Man for a limited time, short- and long-range stun guns that don't impede your running but allow you to put down police officers without having to melee them, and so on. The story is slowly built from missions you can take alongside your trading.

One day your contact arranges a special delivery mission for you. You pick up a heavier pack than usual and as a result you are less agile and have to stick to lower buildings and the streets. For some reason the cops are really really on this one: they storm the lab where you pick it up as you're leaving, and you have to escape through gas grenades and storms of bullets (fortunately, by this point in the game you'll have picked up a lightweight gas mask and a little personal shield that's charged by your running and can take a few bullets for you). Once out on the street you evade the police long enough to deliver your package, but before you reach your destination your sister, working for a faction you've distrusted for years, calls you up and tells you to look at the package. You can ignore her and continue on or you can find a quiet side-street and take a look at the rack of frozen human fetuses you're carrying around.

Turns out the lab you just left was working on curing the disease that's cutting into the poor population and threatening to break out of the slums, and their incredibly brutal efforts appear to have born fruit. From this point on three factions emerge: the government, the owners of the lab who plan to sell the cure for a profit, and your sister's grass-roots group who want to distribute it for free to the poor and at just-above-cost to those who can afford it. Your initial allegiance is decided by the group you decide to deliver the fetuses to, but you can switch with enough work. Each faction provides you with a different story, or at least a different spin on the main story, and different assistive technology to help you get around the city faster and dodge goons with more ease.

Yeah, it's kind of a generic story, but it only took me five minutes and it's only a justification for the Elite crossed with Mirror's Edge with a bit of Stalker in that I suddenly really, really want to play.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 3:14 AM on July 21, 2011 [17 favorites]

It's not like there's anything resembling a gland or orifice on human wrists anyway. What the hell is that? ... posted by Horselover Phattie at 7:49 PM on July 20

It always made perfect sense to me that a moody teenage boy with the hots for the Prom Queen would find a sense of empowerment by shooting sticky white goo off his wrists. With a mask on.
posted by chavenet at 3:34 AM on July 21, 2011

fuck parkour *stays inside and eats a maple bar*
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 4:05 AM on July 21, 2011

It looks a lot like the mirror's edge trailers i saw back in the day (never played it), but it also reminded me a lot of the superman map in urban terror, so i don't think the mirror's edge guys have exclusive rights to the first person urban jumping style thing, like others have said here.
posted by palbo at 4:48 AM on July 21, 2011

So every ten years they are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make the same movies over again? That's a thing now?
posted by I Foody at 5:16 AM on July 21, 2011

Two things I will not back down from:

1. We need more reboots, but less origin stories.
2. The latest Hulk was a SEQUEL, not a reboot. It continues the same story.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:25 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

So they're remaking eight year old movies now? Soon the cycle will get so short that every year's movies will just be remakes of the previous year's movies.

They've doing that shamelessly for about 90 years. I don't see why anyone is going to catch on any time soon.

So every ten years they are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make the same movies over again? That's a thing now?

Indeed. This trailer leaves me feeling indifferent at best, but people really have to get past the idea that (a) remakes and reboots are inherently new and (b) remakes and reboots are automatically lesser works than their predecessors. Audiences only ever saw Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade because Warner Bros. remade The Maltese Falcon from ten years earlier (after having done a loose remake called Satan Met A Lady in between). The TV series of Buffy The Vampire Slayer shares nothing with the movie of the same name except the name of the protagonist. And although I am a fan of Manhunter, five years later The Silence of the Lambs was quite right to recast the roles in common and essentially ignore the previous movie. Brian Cox gave a fine performance as Lecktor; Anthony Hopkins gave an iconic one as Lecter.

And it goes far back past Hollywood: almost all of Shakespeare's output was recycled material, often of stories in the public eye only a decade or so earlier, but who now stages Thomas Kyd's Hamlet or the 1590s King Leir or Fiorentino's Il Pecorone instead of its loose adaptation, The Merchant of Venice?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:32 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

The eyes on the suit are too small.
posted by neuromodulator at 6:32 AM on July 21, 2011

The movie looks pretty bad. "Cheap" is a word that came to mind while watching the trailer.

Has the villain been revealed yet?
posted by codacorolla at 6:38 AM on July 21, 2011

Jeez, another Spiderman game?

I gather that nobody has been listening to my demands for a multiplayer-heavy sequel to Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.
posted by box at 6:46 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

I can't wait for the Thor reboot. I feel it's about time.
posted by Vindaloo at 7:09 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: Like if a garden slug had crawled all around in your mouth and then exploded and his belly was full of burnt dog hair.
posted by Billiken at 7:17 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Why does everyone dislike Spider-Man 3?

Because arguably the coolest story in all of comics history-- the alien symbiote that slowly, over the course of like a year, turned Spider-Man pretty damn evil and then was eventually defeated only to go on to create the scariest-as-shit villain in the Spider-Man comics, took up like twelve minutes of screen time, was played for laughs, and when we finally met Venom, he was played by the geek from That 70s Show and spoke in a high-pitched girlish voice through his three-inch fangs and was in exactly one scene.
posted by shakespeherian at 7:18 AM on July 21, 2011 [11 favorites]

The only way it rips off of Mirror's Edge is that the scene looks like someone playing a video game on an Xbox, not like a movie that people actually spent time and energy crafting.

Really, CGI totally has its place and I love it, but when I'm watching a scene and I can see that it's CGI? That's pretty unforgiveable, especially when these days more often then not if I walk by the widescreen TV in the coworking hall and see a soccer match on, it takes me a second to realize that it's actually a video game.

So, basically, that CGI was pretty astoundingly bad, and they shouldn't have wasted so much trailer time on it because it was really bad. The rest of the trailer convinced me that I would hate the protagonist, the dialogue, and the plot. That last part convinced me that the special effects wouldn't save it either.
posted by Deathalicious at 7:31 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

> It always made perfect sense to me that a moody teenage boy with the hots for the Prom Queen would find a sense of empowerment by shooting sticky white goo off his wrists.

Ah, ok. So Spider*Man is really just the origin/backstory for Miggs from "The Silence of the Lambs", then?

I have not seen Venture Bros but it seems that I need to subscribe to their newsletter.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 7:50 AM on July 21, 2011

I've always liked Spider-man, but he's undoubtedly got the dumbest origin story in the history of comics. The Hulk got blowed up by nukes and so now he's a big, green, angry guy. Superman's from another planet. Captain America was created by military scientists. If you lean to your left and squint, all of that is almost plausible. Spider-man got bitten by a nuclear spider, and so he got "the proportional strength of a spider." Okay, I'll buy that. But he also got, what, little bristles on the ends of his fingers and toes? That work even when covered in spandex? That's bugged the hell out of me for almost fifty years now, and is most likely to blame for my failure to become a senator or a physicist or something. Curse you, Stan Lee!

And why doesn't he shoot webs out of his ass?
posted by steambadger at 8:03 AM on July 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Also: I sincerely hope that for whatever else this movie does, they have a scene where Spiderman is sitting at a desk with a picture of himself on the wall behind him (sort-of explanation).
posted by codacorolla at 8:11 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

steambadger: "And why doesn't he shoot webs out of his ass?"

This guy does.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 8:13 AM on July 21, 2011

Meh.. rather than another Incredible Hulk movie, I'd prefer to see it rebooted as The Credible Hulk.

A trustworthy and reliable Hulk that makes sure he has enough insurance coverage for any damage he may cause in his adventures. Someone you'd have good reason to believe in. All the green mutant you want - just without the hype.
posted by TofuGolem at 8:20 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

If they are going to keep making Spider-Man movies, I'd actually like to see them go the route of Mission Impossible, where each movie gets a different director and is somewhat isolated from the events of the previous films.

We know the characters, we know the universe, so spare us the Nth retelling of the origin story and make something cool in the world we know and love, even if you are using totally different actors; Batman, the Hulk, and the Bond series has demonstrated that people are willing to suspend their disbelief in this area, so it'll work fine.
posted by quin at 8:22 AM on July 21, 2011

In the interest of variety of ass-webbing discussions:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=49
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:23 AM on July 21, 2011

> A trustworthy and reliable Hulk that makes sure he has enough insurance coverage for any damage he may cause in his adventures.

He does seem very pragmatic, and is eager to direct.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 8:24 AM on July 21, 2011

Why would I want to see the same story told again with slightly different people. It just seems unnatural and strange.

Well, plays for example, are done this way. You can see, say, Hamlet, or any other play, repeatedly, done by different people. A script is a play as well in my mind, though it is presented as a film rather than on stage so I have no issue with films that cover the same subject and don't feel them to be at all unnatural or strange. Some people present a story spectacularly, some people do not.

As for being a "rip off" I find this to be another example of this bizarre idea that everything can't bare any similarity to anything else to be any good or "original". Very few things live in a vacuum, and some of the best creative work ever has been based on the creative work of others.

I once had a Mormon girlfriend. She insisted I got to a dance once with "just a little sermon" before the dance (I am not religious in that sense so it was a source of tension). The priest (or whatever they are called for this particular religion) point blank said that Jesus was in South America because they had aqueducts there, and the only reason this was possible was because Jesus saw them in the Mediterranean and brought the technology to South America. I thought to myself, fuck no, it's engineering. It's the way water flows. Gravity, etc.

I presume this film is 3D, hence the FPP. How else are they supposed to do it? Why is this a rip off?
posted by juiceCake at 8:24 AM on July 21, 2011

2. The latest Hulk was a SEQUEL, not a reboot. It continues the same story.
posted by blue_beetle at 14:25 on July 21

Wikipedia says:
It is not a sequel to the 2003 film Hulk, but rather a reboot that establishes a new back-story where Banner became the Hulk as an unwitting pawn in a military scheme to reinvigorate the supersoldier program through gamma radiation.

Take from that what you will, but it basically refutes both your points. :-)
posted by palbo at 8:31 AM on July 21, 2011

Hulk 2 wasn't a full reboot, but there was some serious retconning going on. I liked Ang Lee's version and everyone who didn't is wrong.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 8:37 AM on July 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

It's not just the perspective, the rooftop looks uncannily like a Mirror's edge level.

That's partly unavoidable. If you set the scene on Manhattan rooftops you're going to get rows of big bulky air conditioners & pipes because that's what's up there on most rooftops. The same goes for mirrored building sides & pipes running up brick wall faces. It's a distinctive look but Mirror's Edge didn't create it, they borrowed it from real life. You get a lot of the same look playing Crackdown or Prototype (albeit with less first person POV). That said, I'd be very surprised if the Spidey team didn't have some idea of creating an homage to ME in that scene.
posted by scalefree at 8:45 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

American movies are calcifying, like theater did. So much restaging. Makes me sad for both American movies and theater. I'm not opposed to remakes and sequels, it's just sad that this is where the money goes nowadays.

OTOH, the beloved 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz came only six years off the heels of an earlier sorta-version of the same title.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:06 AM on July 21, 2011

OTOH, the beloved 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz came only six years off the heels of an earlier sorta-version of the same title.

1939 was "only six years" after 1925? I get your point but I am not sure I agree with your math.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:23 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Why does everyone dislike Spider-Man 3?

It seemed like they wrote three different screenplays and then filmed random scenes from each of them.
posted by octothorpe at 9:28 AM on July 21, 2011

1939 was "only six years" after 1925? I get your point but I am not sure I agree with your math.

Ha. Whoops. That's 14 years. For some reason I was subtracting 1929 from 1935.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:01 AM on July 21, 2011

Really? I thought that was pretty much the defining characteristic of Peter Parker/Spider-man -- he's just some nerdy kid out there juggling a crappy job with this weighty responsibility, yet still chipper enough to take joy in it and crack self-deprecatingly cornball jokes while chasing the girl and saving the day. It was charming and different.

I get that, and think that Andrew Garfield might be able to play that part a bit better than Toby MaGuire did.

I don't think that anybody ever argued for an Emo-spidey that's always dark and brooding. However, I don't think that the movies ever developed the characters enough for me to care about them one way or the other. The dichotomy between Peter's chipper attitude while also having the weight of the world on his shoulders was never really addressed or explained in the films.
posted by schmod at 10:07 AM on July 21, 2011

I'll probably watch the new Spider-Man at some point but probably won't pay a theater for the priveledge. I mostly enjoyed Spider-Man 3, but I did feel it was the weakest of the 3 films.

But I'm mainly posting so I can suggest a ReBoot reboot.
posted by Green With You at 10:15 AM on July 21, 2011

I think the next reboot of Spiderman should have Spidey shooting the webs out of his asshole. Real spiders shoot webs out of their assholes, so why should Spiderman be different?

They do? I thought it was out of their spinnerets on their abdomen.
posted by juiceCake at 10:20 AM on July 21, 2011

That said, I'd be very surprised if the Spidey team didn't have some idea of creating an homage to ME in that scene.

Sorry if this has already been posted (not seeing it in a quick browse, but there's a lot of comments here) but here's the trailer and clips from the game side-by-side. They are pretty damn similar...
posted by inigo2 at 10:22 AM on July 21, 2011 [3 favorites]

And why doesn't he shoot webs out of his ass?

All the more reason to love The Venture Bros. (yes, that's a parody of spiderman shooting webbing out of his coccyx).
posted by the other side at 10:38 AM on July 21, 2011

I thought it was out of their spinnerets on their abdomen.

You are technically correct, though from an observer's perspective it's close enough.
posted by brain_drain at 10:43 AM on July 21, 2011

And the new Spider*Man theme song will be called "Warm Spinnerette" sung to a remake of the classic The Normal song.
posted by Horselover Phattie at 10:51 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

The only way it rips off of Mirror's Edge is that the scene looks like someone playing a video game on an Xbox, not like a movie that people actually spent time and energy crafting.

How do you think video games get made?
posted by empath at 10:59 AM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

How do you think video games get made?

A wizard did it!
posted by blue_beetle at 11:03 AM on July 21, 2011

Behold! The brown recluse spider-man, coming to theaters in 20XX!
posted by Nomyte at 11:50 AM on July 21, 2011

For the record, I think this is the greatest parkour scene of all time.
posted by brundlefly at 11:55 AM on July 21, 2011

empath: "How do you think video games get made?"

Yeah. Every time a movie is compared to a video game in a negative way, I feel really sorry for the people who make video games. "It's like a video game" has become a lazy shorthand for lowest common denominator spectacle, and it doesn't seem fair to the medium.
posted by brundlefly at 12:04 PM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

The only way it rips off of Mirror's Edge is that the scene looks like someone playing a video game on an Xbox, not like a movie that people actually spent time and energy crafting.

Duh. Video games don't require any time and energy. You just sit there on the couch and play them.

Yeah. Every time a movie is compared to a video game in a negative way, I feel really sorry for the people who make video games.

It's the same fetish/snobbery that thinks a dude playing a guitar is "real" music, but the production guy who makes a mediocre singer's song catchy enough to stay in your head all summer and distinctive enough that you can identify it from a 0.5 second snippet isn't doing anything artistic or creative.
posted by straight at 12:31 PM on July 21, 2011

I think what 'it looks like a video game' really means is that it looks like plotless action. It's an anachronistic complaint, since a lot of videogames have better, more complicated stories than a lot of movies do.

No, I think some people just think practical effects and stuntmen are always more engaging to watch than CGI. I think it's just a preference like people who like acoustic music and hate synthesizers.
posted by straight at 12:34 PM on July 21, 2011

Okay, so video games require a lot of time and energy to create.

But bits of that trailer really did look more like something that was being generated in real-time with consumer-grade hardware and less like something that people had painstakingly animated, lit, and rendered.

I agree. It almost makes me think that this is deliberately shitty and low-rent, and it fulfill the sudio's one Spidey movie per X years requirements and also give them publicity when Toby MacGuire Spiderman make a triumphant return in a year or so.
posted by codacorolla at 1:15 PM on July 21, 2011

fulfill the sudio's one Spidey movie per X years requirements

According to insider sources, one of the scenes is titled "You Say France And I Whistle"
posted by Greg Nog at 1:26 PM on July 21, 2011

Twilight Spider can bite my sack.
posted by lumpenprole at 1:59 PM on July 21, 2011

...and I spun silk! In! My! Pants!
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:47 PM on July 21, 2011

Are any of the current-gen Spider-Man games worth getting?

Nobody else seemed to like it, but I had oodles of fun with [Prototype], which isn't what you asked.
posted by tumid dahlia at 3:30 PM on July 21, 2011

Also I hope they do another Punisher with Ray Stevenson, that was a great film. But it needs to cross over with the other Marvel universe films. So, basically, I'm saying we need a movie where Ray Stevenson slaps Andrew Garfield from one end of New York to the other, and then Ben Affleck backflips into the frame and gets rocket-launchered. And then Punisher fills Iron Man's suit with fire ants, and Downey gets in and he's all "Aiiieeee!" And then whoever is playing Hulk this week turns up but, ruh roh, we see in flashback that Stevenson has actually murdered all the X-Men and he uses their powers to teleport Wolverine's claws into Hulk's brain, who dies messily. Captain America is next in line, but he is such a punk-ass whiner, possibly the stupidest superhero still alive, that Punisher just holds up his index finger and gives a serious look and Captain America runs away. I dunno what Thor's doing during all this, and in this iteration of the Marvel universe the Fantastic Four didn't get fantastic, they just died hideously in their spaceship explosion. Dolph Lundgren makes a cameo as Rocket Red, a DC character, and it's really weird.
posted by tumid dahlia at 3:41 PM on July 21, 2011 [4 favorites]

My ideal Mirrors Edge 2 plot:

you are at point A. The end of the game is at point B. RUN
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 4:06 PM on July 21, 2011

I would watch the hell out of a Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe movie.
posted by ooga_booga at 4:25 PM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Dolph Lundgren makes a cameo as Rocket Red, a DC character, and it's really weird.

and that's the line that made me favorite the comment. God bless you, tumid dahlia. MOAR ROCKET RED!
posted by KingEdRa at 6:17 PM on July 21, 2011

I don't understand how people can deny the obvious similarity to Mirror's Edge. I don't even have the game — I played the demo once, at least a year or two ago, and it was the first thing I thought of when I saw this trailer.

Anyway. From what I remember reading, this film's being made on the cheap, or at least Hollywood's approximation of 'cheap' — $80m — because Spiderman films have an inbuilt audience in the same way new James Bond/Terminator/Star Wars franchise movie, and a lot of that potential was being swallowed by the ballooning budgets of each successive sequel. I thought the first Spiderman movie was mildly entertaining, but the second was atrocious and what little I saw of the third was so horrible I've held a grudge against Tobey Maguire ever since, but the budget for the most recent film was $258 MILLION. I would've thought that throwing that kind of money at radioactive spider research would stand a good chance of producing results similar to the film's plot, and at least be a more productive allocation of capital.

But I digress. If I remember correctly, part of this whole 'low-budget' schtick is that Andrew Garfield is only getting paid $500k (again, this is all relative) for his role in the film. A low budget could account for the lousy CGI at the end, but equally, it's not out until July next year, so there's plenty of time to fix them in post production. Besides, the whole flying over buildings schtick is usually used when Peter first discovers his powers 'OMG I CAN FALL WITH STYLE' and usually only after that when he needs to get somewhere in a hurry. Most of the action takes place inside buildings or on street level, and if there ever was a temptation to do big set pieces between buildings, I think the Transformers movies have pretty much gone through every possible permutation.
posted by jaffacakerhubarb at 6:26 PM on July 21, 2011

Hey, the end bit of the trailer does kinda look like Mirror's Edge...

but uh, hey Kotaku, I'm not sure that simple point is quite clear enough; would you kindly spell it out for me over and over again for the next three minutes, and could you pop in every now and again to remind me how deft you are for both noticing and illustrating this point?

Thanks a mil Kotaku, this video was totally informative and also not shit. Cheers!
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 6:27 PM on July 21, 2011

Besides, the whole flying over buildings schtick is usually used when Peter first discovers his powers 'OMG I CAN FALL WITH STYLE' and usually only after that when he needs to get somewhere in a hurry.

Bleh. In the comics he sometimes swings for the pure joy of swinging around the city (which is also how I play a few of the games).

Spider-Man was 'It gets better' for geeks.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:44 PM on July 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

Hell with it, I'm posting my idea of how to fix Mirror's Edge.

So Mirror’s Edge, if ‘twere really one of those rare games that joined its mechanism and its meaning in ludo-narrative harmony, would be ‘about’ ceaseless movement through a space. Sadly, in the Mirror’s Edge we ended up with you kept being stopped, not only by the mechanism (inclusion of combat) but also by the story.

Those incredibly dinky flash cutscenes conveyed basically no information of value (or at least nothing that’s stuck in my head), and took you out of the experiential space of running, jumping, climbing trees. While I have nothing against downtime - you need some dynamics over time - there’s no reason that couldn’t have happened within the game environment. And there’s a good reason it should have been in the game environment.

In my magical alternative version of ME, the near-future surveillance-culture bad dudes would have built the mechanisms of their surveillance into the very built fabric. Hand in hand with keeping tabs on everyone is being able to advertise to everyone (cue apoplectic fits about google). Together, this means the bad dudes know where you are, and can talk directly to you - every surface you’re running/jumping/climbing trees over is a screen.

So as you’re running, the voice and image of authority is following you. In fact, it’s staying ahead of you, flickering from screen to screen so it’s always in your field of vision. And it is telling you that you cannot win, that they have you surrounded, that the system is complete. Basically one big continuous narrowcast of Robot Unicorn Attack’s “You will fail…”

But the Runners have a network too, and they can get into the surveillance/advertising system. From them you’ll get encouragement, advice of where to go, warnings of incoming trouble. Both would add their stark colour to the white and red landscape.

Downtime wouldn’t be safe zones filled with screens of your team - this is still the bad dudes’ system. It would be little spaces, maybe a stretch of pre-bad dude takeover corridor, or blind spots between cameras, when everybody shuts up and Faith has a chance to talk to herself.

The challenge is not combat based, but is in maintaining your momentum in the face of all the blather, and finding the routes that give you a little peace and quiet.

---

And I want a Marvel Adventures movie. Hulk chase pig!
posted by roobot at 7:31 PM on July 21, 2011 [6 favorites]

Man, that reboot looks seriously bad.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:38 PM on July 21, 2011

...because Spiderman films have an inbuilt audience in the same way new James Bond/Terminator/Star Wars franchise movie...
posted by jaffacakerhubarb at 6:26 PM on July 21

It's precisely that reason why we don't need reboot.

As you said, there is a built-in audience. Given that, the origin story doesn't need to be told again. People already know it, so move on with the narrative. Bring in Kraven. Introduce the Black Cat. Let Peter age and start going to grad school where he has to mix being a TA with finishing a thesis and still finding time to catch some bad guys, not to mention freelancing for the Bugle. Let Aunt May start dating the Vulture. Pick any one of the thousands of stories from the comics, or create an entirely new one.

There just seems to be this compulsion that everything has to have a very linear narrative, and that narrative always has to start with an origin story. Why not try something different?

Start in the middle and flashback if needed. I mean Casablanca didn't start with Rick and Isla meeting in Paris and then splitting up and then finding themselves in a strange café. They covered the characters' history in flashbacks and backstory. Why not try the same in Spider-man? Just tell a story with an established character, and if the narrative dictates that we re-visit how he got his powers, stick it in a flashback or have him tell his story to a different character. If we need to know he was tormented in high school, show it in a montage that takes a couple of minutes. Don't spend 90 minutes telling the same story over and over again.

Part of me wants to like this movie. It seems from the bits I've been reading online that they're putting a lot of effort into physical special effects (there were shots of Spider-man climbing/swinging off of transport trucks, etc.), but I don't think it will be enough. I can't see yet another origin story, in particular an angsty, emo one, offering any kind of enticement to me. But then again, maybe I'm not the target audience. Maybe this is going to be the Spider-man for Twilight teenagers.

Given the far-off release date, I'm not holding the bad CGI against the movie. At least not yet.
posted by sardonyx at 7:39 PM on July 21, 2011 [2 favorites]

roobot: "Those incredibly dinky flash cutscenes conveyed basically no information of value (or at least nothing that’s stuck in my head), and took you out of the experiential space of running, jumping, climbing trees."

I loved the OLED-looking news screens in lifts for that. Those were perfect moments: you might have been running for your life just before, but now you're in the quiet of the elevator with story scrolling past you. You can read, or you can just catch your breath. Perhaps they were just disguised loading screens, but I'm not sure I've played any game that made them feel so natural.

Lovecraft In Brooklyn: "you are at point A. The end of the game is at point B. RUN"

Did you play the DLC? It was fucking great for that.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 11:11 PM on July 21, 2011 [1 favorite]

Side by side comparison
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:34 PM on July 22, 2011

I saw that trailer in the theater last night before Captain America and I could hear people around me saying "huh, how can they remake that already?"
posted by octothorpe at 3:14 PM on July 24, 2011

You know, I would have thought there wouldn't be much market for more comic book movies, but I overheard a guy at work complaining that there hadn't made a Hawkeye movie, so I guess not.

Hawkeye will be played by Jeremy Renner in next year's Avengers movie. If you want to let your friend know. :)

Personally? I'm not overly upset that they're rebooting the franchise. I loves me some Spidey, and even liked the last Spider-Man film ok, but I dunno, I'm must kinda sick of Tobey-as-Parker. Though, I suppose they could have just recast him too - and also, while I *loved* Kirsten Dunst in the first Spider-Man movie, like "got chills when she called him Tiger" loved, I totally cannot stand her as MJ anymore, which I can't explain. I guess the nice thing about a reboot is that, as long as you can keep the cast constant for the next few films, and the chemistry works, you have a nice build up of chemistry between Peter and MJ. I will seriously mourn the loss of J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson though.

As far as ripping off Mirror's Edge? Really, this is Spider-Man. He runs and jumps from rooftop to rooftop, climbs up walls and swings from buildings via spiderwebs that he shoots from his wrist. Has been doing so for about 50 years. Deciding to show this behaviour from a first person point of view isn't really some kind of CRAZY out there idea that nobody would ever think of if it weren't for a video game that decided to show that perspective too.
posted by antifuse at 6:30 AM on July 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

got chills when she called him Tiger

good lord i thought i was the only one
posted by neuromodulator at 2:23 PM on July 25, 2011

I don't care about doing a reboot with a new cast and director, but why redo the origin story. There's 50 years of Spiderman comics to take from, why do they keep redoing the same issue over and over again?
posted by empath at 3:01 PM on July 25, 2011 [2 favorites]

Yeah, that's my beef, too. I don't care about the cast, and I think Raimi needed to be pulled (inserting his own kids into the climax of the movie was kind of a dick move, IMO). But holy crap why do we have to watch the origin story again? It's not like every Spider-Man fan on the earth a) isn't already familiar with it and b) hasn't seen the Maguire films.
posted by neuromodulator at 3:22 PM on July 25, 2011 [1 favorite]

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