"...volatile, self-obsessed, and I don't play well with others..."

So, over the last couple of days I've been catching up on the couple of superhero movie films I missed at the cinema... first up I saw the Avengers film, which was mostly really rather good. It was very, very, much a comic on the screen, and captured the flavour of said comic very well indeed. Best thing about it was, by some mile, Robert Downey Jr, who dominated any scene he appeared in. (Which reminds me; must get around to watching Iron Man 2 one of these days...) The whole thing worked really well, both when there were the big action set pieces, and when we had the more character based moments. Also, it had one of the very best Stan Lee cameos... talking of cameos, I loved the Harry Dean Stanton one as well. Overall a big, fun, movie...

And then there was The Amazing Spiderman. I would say it was rather like (warning; lazy comedy slag alert!) The Frustratingly Average Spiderman. Thing is, there were all sorts of elements to it that were great; Andrew Garfield was just perfect. We got Gwen Stacey from the start (one of the most notable annoyances about the Raimi trilogy...), and she was perfect. And Denis Leary was great as her dad, and Rhys Ifans made a wonderful Curt Connors.... but trouble is it all too waaaaaaay too long to get anywhere. For one thing... and thing is the biggest annoyance... we had the blimmin Spidey origin story again. I mean, surely by now every bugger out there knows how he gets his powers by now, and the whole story of how he could have saved his Uncle's life if he'd stopped the robber... yeah, it did things a little differently, but all the main story beats were exactly as normal. Although, was exactly was all that guff with Peter's parents? There was a really good movie trying to get out there, but it was bogged down by loads of guff. The frustrating thing is that it could, and should, have been a truly wonderful film; instead it was somewhat average. 

I have higher hopes for the sequel in that at least now all the origin guff is out of the way (must write a blog post about how superhero films should lay off the origin stories; 9/10 of the time they are not needed), it'll give a bit more space to the baddie of the film. Just one thing, though; if this is to be a trilogy, hold off with the Green Goblin until film #3, and bear in mind Amazing Spiderman #121. (If you don't get what that means, don't look it up; if they use elements of that issue it'll have more impact if you've not read it). 

In anycase, The Dark Knight Rises (one of the few films I did manage to see at a cinema) was better than both of them, despite not even being the best in its trilogy (#2).