Way back before you or I were born, Marvel Comics put out a line called the Marvel Treasury Edition. These were larger sized comics that had top-level talent attached while potentially including some reprints along with a unique story. The very last issue, Marvel Treasury Editon #28, was Superman and Spider-Man, though this was not the first time Marvel Comics and their distinguished competition from across the street, DC Comics, had put out a joint venture (the first time was actually 5 years previous with Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man). Occasionally throughout the next two decades, Marvel and DC would co-publish books again with their heroes, one instance being 1995’s Spider-Man and Batman, another being 1999’s Superman/Fantastic Four. Whenever a battle would break out between the heroes (as the law of super-heroics states that there will be), no clear winner would be decided.
So, why did open up this movie review with that useless bit of geek knowledge? Because 17 years later, Spider-Man and Batman have managed to battle each other again.
But this time, there’s a clear winner.
The Amazing Spider-Man. The Dark Knight Rises. In terms of flagship characters, arguably Spider-Man and Batman are the top picks for their companies. I have seen both and yes, I can make the Sophie’s Choice. With some probable spoilers.
The Amazing Spider-Man: After the long and trying period of five years, we have a reboot of the Spider-Man movie series. The characters aren’t actually new: there’s still Peter Parker, Aunt May, Uncle Ben, but we’ve also gotten closer to the canon by throwing Gwen Stacey into the mix.
It works and yet it doesn’t work.
The chemistry between characters, particulary Andrew Garfield’s Peter and Emma Stone’s Gwen, is fantastic. Stone, in particular, is a joy to watch. Unfortunately, these don’t exactly make it rise too much above the infamously bad Spider-Man 3. Amazing‘s Peter is more a hipster Peter, rather than nerd Peter. While the change isn’t necessarily bad, it makes it a little difficult to understand how Peter, who rides around school on a skateboard, can easily understand complex DNA sequencing and build working webshooters, especially considering we don’t exactly see a lot of evidence to support such a character trait.
Another problem, this time with the movie’s villain, the Lizard, is two-fold. The first one, and this is probably more due to me than anything else, is the creature’s design. When transformed into his reptilian self, he’s green, scaly but lacks a snout. Think of him as Cobra Commander in the opening 5 parter for GI Joe’s second season, but with a tail. The other problem? His evil mastermind plot, to turn all of New York into lizard-people is just meh.
I’m not saying that the movie’s an abortion, but in my personal ranking, I put it only slightly higher than Spider-Man 3.
The Dark Knight Rises: Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy is finally coming to an end. Is it good? VERY. Is it better than the previous entry in the series, the masterpiece known as The Dark Knight? No, not quite, but not for lack of trying.
What we have here is a culmination of the planning behind three movies. Batman has been non-existent for the past 8 years and Bruce Wayne has turned into a recluse. Crime is down, but a massive attack will soon be hitting Gotham City. Batman will need to best his greatest challenge to save the city – but he’ll fail. He’ll fail and unless you’ve spoiled yourself already, you can’t predict what will happen.
I’ll go ahead and list the only real problem I have with the movie: Christian Bale’s Batman voice. Truth told, the voice has become more of a begrudging joy to me than an actual issue, as I want it to never improve. Aside from that and some niggling little bits (I won’t talk about them as they’re more super-spoilers than anything else, email me if you want to discuss them), this movie was wonderful. Despite the film being 2 and 3 quarters hours long, the pacing is superb and feels as tight as can be.
Anne Hathaway as Catwoman was a big worry for me, but she’s actually pretty good (sorry Liz). This is probably assisted by her straddling a motorcycle in a leather jumpsuit. Gary Oldman continues his reign as the greatest Commissioner Gordon ever. Tom Hardy as Bane is sensational, though I must really thank Nolan for going back and toning down some of the distortion regarding Bane’s voice in the movie. His physical presence is just so utterly commanding that he really should be viewed in the upper-tier of movie villains.
Go out and watch The Dark Knight Rises now. Stop reading this and go to the theaters. You can wait out for The Amazing Spider-Man, but TDKR needs to be seen ASAP. It’s a sensational film. That’s all there is to it. Believe the hype.