The Amazing Spider-Man is Basically Batman Begins

Originally Posted July 12th, 2012 at Playeraffinity.com

I can pretty much guarantee that right now, as you're reading this, two people are arguing over who's better: Spider-Man or Batman. Comparisons are a fun outlet for expressing our appreciation for pop culture, but the answer is always personal, not scientific. After all, one character is a Marvel comics property and the other is THE GODDAMN BATMAN.

The movie-based version of "who's the best" is heating up, with Spider-Man getting a new movie last weekend, and Batman wrapping up his trilogy of films in just a few days. While most comic book fans are still holding their breath for the dark knight's swan song, The Amazing Spider-Man is a perfectly fine reboot of the "Spider-Man" fiction, but that's because it's basically the exact same movie as Batman Begins, give or take a hyphen. The number of plot points and means of re-establishing the fiction that Spidey borrows from Batman's reboot is astounding, and if you don't believe me, check just a few of these uncanny instances of overlap between the two franchises.

And yes, here be spoilers.

Pair An Up and Coming Lead From Overseas With a Promising Genre Director 

True, new Spider-Man Andrew Garfield was born in LA, but he grew up in Sussex, England, where he passed his British citizenship exam by appearing in a 2007 episode of Doctor Who, before garnering critical acclaim in The Social Network. Welsh born Christian Bale made a name for himself in indie and cult films like The Machinist and American Psycho, but his only experience in blockbusters before becoming Batman was opposite Matthew McConaughey in Reign of Fire. Point being, planning a new franchise for the long-term means getting a young, baggage-free actor with proven theatrical prowess.

Meanwhile, Marc Webb and Christopher Nolan both made their breakout features outside the realm of blockbusters, before quickly being given the keys to two of the biggest movie properties ever. The debuts for both influenced their respective superhero flicks: (500) Days of Summer's twee cuteness infected Peter and Gwen's relationship in The Amazing Spider-Man, while Batman Begins carried over Memento's thorough plotting and noir elements. You could also point to both filmmakers choosing to rely more on realistic stunts than CGI for directorial similarity, but let's dive right into the story.

Start With The Hero As A Child Experiencing A Character Defining Moment

Swap the openings of "Begins" and "Amazing," and nothing much changes. Both have the young hero playing at home before experiencing a key moment of trauma. In Bruce Wayne's case, he falls down a well and is assaulted by bats. For Peter, the saddest game of hide and seek ever ends with a break-in at the Parker residence. The cause is Richard Parker's research into spiders (you can tell because there's a doodle of a spider on their chalk board, like real scientists make), which forces Ma and Pa to leave Peter with Aunt May and Uncle Ben before going into hiding…or something. It's all pretty vague. Anyway, each incident creates a key trait for the hero: Bruce becomes afraid of bats, while Peter's abandonment makes Richard's arachnid research a lasting link between the wayward father and son.

Make The Iconic Death The Result of the Hero's Flaw

Spider-Man's big motivation has always been the death of Uncle Ben, which he could have stopped in the 2003 movie, but didn't, because he felt like being a dick. The update has Peter's identity crisis, a theme the film beats you over the head with repeatedly, result in Ben's death. Peter spends too much time at the OsCorp research lab learning about his father, gets in a fight with Uncle Ben over his abandonment issues, and storms off into the night, with Ben following. A bottle of chocolate milk and an armed robber later, and we've got one dead uncle and a seriously guilt-ridden Spidey.

Which isn't all that far off from what happens to Thomas and Martha Wayne in Batman Begins. Fear is the theme de jour this time, and while Batman's parents still get gunned down outside a theatre the way they always have, it's Bruce's fear of the Cirque de Soliel guys looking too much like bats that causes the family to leave early, and exit out into the incredibly sketchy alley built into the fancy opera house. If Peter had had a handle on his orphan angst, and if Bruce had just (Bat)manned up, there would be no call to a life of vigilantism.

Develop The Costume Piecemeal

Both Spider-Man and Batman spend their first nights on patrol dressed in duds courtesy the local Salvation Army before really developing their signature looks. Spider-Man uses a heavily modified spandex speed skating suit, while Bruce Wayne assembles his armour from Wayne Tech inventions and items ordered through the company in bulk, so as to avoid suspicion. Apparently the police are less likely to suspect the guy with thousands of bat-shaped masks of being Batman than the guy who has none. Speaking of which…

The Police Hate The Hero

Just to stack the deck against our protagonist before the big bad is revealed, Spider-Man and Batman end up on the wrong side of the law they're trying to enforce. In Batman's case, it's because many of Gotham's finest are in the pocket of organized crime, whereas Spider-Man manages to piss off every cop he encounters by showing how completely inept they are. There's always that one good cop on the force though, but more on him later.

Promote A B-Tier Villain Into A Mentor/Father-Figure Related To The Parents' Death

The problem going into The Amazing Spider-Man was that all the classic villains had been used in the original trilogy; what remained were a bunch of one-note high-school basketball mascots like Rhino and Scorpion, of whom the Jekyll and Hyde-ing Lizard proved to be the least ridiculous. Meanwhile, pre-Batman Begins, pretty much no one would be able to tell you who Ra's al Ghul was, much less pronounce his name. The purpose of choosing newbies as heavies was two-fold: first, it distinguished the new films from the old ones, and second, the leeway allowed by having an unknown villain meant they could become a foe that helps better define the hero.

In each film, the hero is taught under the wing of an older mentor who knows of their tragic past, before said mentor reveals their true intentions. They're also responsible for the death of the hero's parents in some way. Ra's' League of Shadows plummeted Gotham into the recession that got the elder Wayne's killed during a mugging, while Kurt Conners, the Jekyll to Lizard's Hyde, worked with Peter's father before betraying him to the conspiracy that killed them…or something. Seriously, I cannot overstate how ill-formed the parent conspiracy plot is. The ultimate result is that the hero fighting the villain is as much about getting a little parental payback as it is stopping an attack on the city, which in both cases just so happens to involve...

The Villain Attacks the City Using Chemicals

Blowing up a city with bombs? Too cliche. Holding the city ransom with a giant laser? Too tacky. Today's villain is all about dispersing clouds of chemical agents through downtown. And both Lizard and Ra's have enough flair to spice up the attack with some thematic consistency; in the latter's case, the green fog falling on Manhattan turns folks into human-animal hybrids, while misty white fear gas gives Gotham's citizens a deadly case of the heebie-jeebies. Our hero is immune to the stuff but what about his policeman sidekick? Well good thing…

The Love Interest Will Provide An Antidote For The Good Cop

The love interest, in addition to having worked with one of the villains at some point, and learning her super-suitors identity by film's end, will be the only one available to give the good cop the antidote he needs to help the hero save the day. Rachel Dawes inoculates Sgt. Gordon from the fear gas, allowing him to set up Batman's big train derailment. Gwen Stacey, on the other hand, gives her father, Captain Stacey, the counter-agent to Conners' mutagen, which he hands-off to Spider-Man before blowing a few chucks out of The Lizard. It's a dramatic finale, made all the more so because…

The Climax Is Staged At A Place of Familial Importance

Not only does Peter Parker have to defeat his father's old lab partner at the end of The Amazing Spider-Man, he does so on the roof of the OsCorp building, where Richard Parker did the research that got he and his wife killed, and developed the spider that gave Peter his superpowers. Batman meanwhile gets a double dose of daddy-issue resolution, by fighting Ra's not just on the train that Thomas Wayne built, but one that just so happens to be on a collision course with Wayne Tower. Congrats guys, you made your daddies proud by defending their homes away from home, which is all the more impressive because…

The Hero Is Seriously Injured Before The Final Battle

When running up against an 8-foot tall reptile or a martial arts master, chances are that the guy with his name in the title is going to win the final showdown. Since the hero's victory is an inevitability, the only thing to do is make it seem more difficult by forcing him to fight wounded. Batman suffers a nasty gash to the body, courtesy a flaming log, before confronting Ra's, while Spider-Man gets winged in the leg by a crack-shot cop who fires at ol' webhead, despite being given explicit orders not to shoot Spider-Man only two seconds prior. In both cases, the injury doesn't really factor into the final conflict, but it does heighten the stakes during the build-up.

Promise A Bigger Bad Guy Next Time

Having successfully dusted off his wings and reintroduced the caped crusader to the world, while also having turned a no-name villain into a memorable on-screen adversary, Batman Begins ended with a hint that the most legendary villain of the rogues gallery, The Joker, was coming next. It was the perfect note to end the film on, having blown audiences away before teasing that "you ain't seen nothing yet."

And The Amazing Spider-Man tries to do the exact same thing. An after-credits sequence has the newly imprisoned Kurt Conners pleading with a nefarious unseen figure to leave Peter Parker alone, as he appears to be further up the chain in the Parker parent conspiracy. This points strongly to the next villain being…Norman Osborn? Mysterio? Hell it could be J. Jonah Jameson for all we know: most newspaper horoscopes are more accurate and informative than this bit of half-baked sequel-baiting.

It's the last, and certainly most laughable, example of The Amazing Spider-Man trying to pull from Batman Begins' playbook, only to come up with a handful of empty webbing. What Marvel didn't seem to get is that the reason we compare Batman and Spider-Man is because they're distinctly different, and as such, deserve different movies. Imagine a dancing, emo-haired Batman, and tell me I'm wrong once you've stopped vomiting.

Review: Batman Begins

Originally Posted July 12th, 2012

What is it about Batman that makes him so popular? He doesn't have all the powers of Superman, he doesn't have any powers at all really, save for superhuman levels of dedication to mastering the twin arts of violence and intimidation. Spider-man is similarly an orphan, but doesn't let that stop him from cracking jokes. Batman thinks a punchline is goons filing up in an orderly fashion to get their noses broken. And while Bruce Wayne masquerades as a boozing Lothario to keep his identity a secret, Tony Stark acts like a billionaire playboy because he's a billionaire playboy. On paper, it seems odd that the runt of the superhero litter is the one everybody seems to care about.

If Superman is our wildest aspirations for what we could be, Batman is as close to a real life Superman as we dare hope could exist. In exploring that truth at the heart of the Batman mythos, Christopher Nolan had to scrape way all the outlandish fringe elements of the comics and previous movies, and returned to audiences the age-old story of a modern man fighting crime, but now honed to a razor's edge. It's led people to criticize Batman Begins, and its equally engrossing follow-up The Dark Knight, for being overly serious. Fine. If a superhero movie being more than frivolous spectacle is somehow a bad thing, I'll still trade all the campy performances and nippled-Batsuits out there for a complex protagonist and a well-developed plot, featuring strong emotional hooks, any day of the week.

Arguing against having a cast filled with incredible actors, who are willing to approach the material earnestly and with conviction, is like complaining that the chef put too much care and effort into cooking your steak. There's the old saying that someone "was a good Batman, but not a good Bruce Wayne," and vice versa, but Christian Bale, as he did in American Psycho, shows that the two identities are not separate, but really inform a single, deeply damaged whole. And it's the first Batman movie to make the guy in the title the actual star; there's none of that billing Jack Nicholson before Michael Keaton crap here, Bale and Batman are the stars.

Using Frank Miller's revolutionary Batman: Year One as a launchpad for the new Batman legend, the death of Bruce Wayne's parents isn't some romantic call-to-arms in a fight against crime, it's the beginning of a lifelong struggle to understand and stop injustice. That drive is given focus under the tutelage of Ducard, an emissary for The League of Shadows, played with a fatherly sternness by Liam Neeson. Both he and Bruce share a secret life, and both wish to end the evils of the world, but their means differ drastically. As Ra's Al Ghul, Ducard would sacrifice the whole of Gotham City to save the world, but as Batman, Wayne devotes himself to saving everyone. A clash of moral relativism and personal ideology makes run-of-the-mill villain plots to get lots of money or blow something up look like the kind of motive only a rich studio with an effects budget would find relatable.

"Training is nothing. Will, is everything, the will to act," Ducard tells Bruce. Other superheroes are made so by accident or birthright, their destiny is spoon-fed to them. Viewers respond to Batman because he creates his powers; his strength, intelligence and skill are all the result of sheer will and determination. Well, it doesn't hurt that he's got the best SkyMall catalogue of gadgets out there, but as with everything else, the toys are routed in spartan efficiency. The old Batmobile would take up half a city block just to park, but the Tumbler will roll over every other vehicle and park wherever it damn well pleases. He's Batman, there's no time to find a meter!

What makes it so easy to talk at length about the conceptual achievements of Begins is that they all spring forth from Nolan's refined understanding of story-telling and his typically craftsmanlike filmmaking. The plot moves effortlessly from setpiece to setpiece, advancing character arcs and motives between all the comic book theatrics. Goyer and Nolan's script is filled with memorable exchanges, even though they can't seem to resist reusing roughly half of the one-liners as ironic zingers later on. Plus, the film looks incredible (and incredibly real) the whole way through; the production team figured out how to shoot a luminous modern city like Gotham with dread, and didn't have to resort to Tim Burton's patented German expressionism-overload.

Really, frustration with Batman Begins has less to do with the film's own seriousness, and more to do with how seriously other people take it. How this is a bad thing is a mystery. Shouldn't we go into every movie hoping that it can incite such dedication? The film generates more rabid conversation than usual because it was designed to; Nolan plays the long game here, seeding ideas of Batman becoming more than just a man, while making a case for the comic book movie as something greater than disposable entertainment by taking the character and franchise to new heights. Yes, Batman Begins is a really, really great film, but for a lot of people, myself included, it's a reminder that pop culture has the ability to make a lasting impression on you, and become unforgettable. Not bad for a comic book movie, huh?

5 out of 5

Directed by Christopher Nolan

2005, USA

Review: The Dark Knight Rises

Well Bat-boys and Bat-girls, it's finally here. After years of internet speculation, months of binging on promotional material, and more than a few movie tickets bought as a shameless excuse to watch the new trailers, The Dark Knight Rises is here. Christopher Nolan's genre redefining take on the Batman mythos glides into theatres aloft on the praise of audiences and critics alike, but faces the infamous foe that is the finale. So, have Nolan and company stuck the landing, or is the burden of expectation too great to bear? Is The Dark Knight Rises the "Return of the King" or a super disaster of Spider-Man 3 proportions?

The answer is… it's "Jedi". "Rises"is to The Dark Knight saga what Return of the Jedi was to "Star Wars." Wait, wait! Douse the torches and sheath your pitchforks; there are no fuzzy teddy bears or toy tie-ins to be found here, the comparison is meant as a compliment. As many of us had hoped, Bruce Wayne's journey as the caped crusader Batman comes to a definitive, satisfying end, synthesizing the character study that was Batman Begins with the greater thematic aspirations of The Dark Knight into a package that feels whole and complete. Some will find a few niggling questions remain unanswered and criticize the door being left ever so slightly ajar for someone else to pick up the franchise mantle, but it's clear that Nolan but it's clear that Nolan has stretched this comic book adaptation/myth making exercise to its absolute limit.

But just like "Jedi" however,the payments made to satisfying the grander narrative are at the expense of the final instalment itself. The huge shift in scope and ambition between parts I and II created a gulf for the trilogy as a whole that "Rises" spends most of its first act filling in. There's a lot of catch up to play when returning to Gotham eight years after Batman shouldered the blame for Harvey Dent's crimes at the end of The Dark Knight, and everyone's out of their element. As Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) struggles to maintain a lie that cleaned up Gotham's streets, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) retreats further into solitude in his rebuilt Xanadu of Wayne Manor, having retired from nights of jumping off of rooftops to nurse a broken heart and a lack of purpose.

With great speed, a bevy of new players enter to shake up the peace. There's Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillar), an alluring CEO looking to save the world by getting into bed with Wayne industries, John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a rookie cop who understands Bruce better than anyone, and Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a jewel thief looking for a fresh start with a new identity. But the real catalyst for Batman's return is a new threat, the hulking beast Bane (Tom Hardy), who rasps and wheezes like Vader through an analgesic mask, and has designs for Gotham nothing short of total annihilation.

An exhilarating and beautiful opening plane hijacking (as in, one plane lassoing another midair) launches things spectacularly, but early signs of turbulence come about from the half a dozen plot lines frantically racing towards their required destinations. The instances of contrivance and convenience that detracted from The Dark Knight pale in comparison to the happenstance on display here, and numerous scenes feel like nothing more than setup without the memorable quips and sardonic humour the first two scripts had at beck and call.

With "Rises," Nolan has completed the transition from superhero movie to all out epic, one describing a modern day apocalypse of dizzying magnitude. People talking about the film's awards potential could point to its "and the kitchen sink" approach to weaving in every contemporary boogeyman Oscar voters like to reward, from domestic terrorism and Wall st., to civil uprising and weapon proliferation. It doesn't meditate on these ideas too throughly, but keeps their presence a constant as the heroes and villains scramble toward a powerful finale, amping up the sense of dread and despair as Bruce Wayne faces his most agonizing trials yet.

But that's where the film finds its most focussed and satisfying through line, in closing out Bruce Wayne's story by exploring his dependence on his secret identity. It's fitting that the film comes out the same week as the remake of Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, because that's how Bruce functions without the cape and cowl, as a warrior looking for a good death in a world that doesn't want him. With doting butler Alfred (Michael Caine) begging him to hang up the costume for good, Bruce's choice to fight evil physically instead of economically and socially comes into question. Through the endless plot turns, character moments and set pieces, one question comes to centre the film and the franchise as a whole: can Bruce Wayne overcome his inner demons and return to a world he gave up on, or is he destined to go down fighting as the Batman?

And it's a Christopher Nolan movie, which means thrilling action sequences (save for a criminally stupid continuity error during a motorcycle chase), gorgeous cinematography from Wally Pfister, and one haymaker of a late game twist that makes up for Bane's intimidating but not always engaging presence. And just as Nolan was the first to really understand Batman, Anne Hathaway's spot-on Catwoman is the sultry, badass addition such a solemn affair desperately needed. Having cleared the bar for our expectations so soundly in its first two instalments, it's no surprise that by the final chapter, The Dark Knight Rises ends Nolan's legend feeling all gassed out. But taken as a part of the greater narrative, its a rousing finish, an operatic swan song that's been earned. To hopefully use this tired old phrase one last time, The Dark Knight Rises may not quite be the finale the Dark Knight Saga deserved, but it's certainly the one it needed.

4 out of 5

The Dark Knight Rises

Directed by Christopher Nolan

2012, USA