(Note: Spoilers do not begin until the SPOILERS line in this article below the photograph.)
We’ll have an official Big Shiny Robot review of The Amazing Spiderman for you July 2nd, but in the meantime we wanted to bring you some comments trickling in from Japan about the film. Kotaku East reporter Richard Eisenbeis was on hand for the Japanese premier, and has provided some valuable context in his article about why Spiderman does so incredibly well in Japan:
“Japan loves Spider-Man. I mean they LOVE him. It’s not the same with other American superheroes—Batman, Superman, and most of the recent Marvel movies tend to do poorly in at the Japanese box office…Perhaps it’s due to his similarity to Japan’s own masked superhero—heck, he even had a live-action, power ranger style show in the late 70s. Because Spider-Man is a sure hit in Japan, his movies often get released in Japan before the rest of the world.”
He goes on to review the film, saying fairly good things about the handling of the origin story, the strength of the supporting cast, the fantastic performance that Martin Sheen has given as Uncle Ben, and some thoughts regarding directorial choices in relation to the film’s use of 3D. Though his review seems to be a bit on the first-watch-is-super-awesome side, I’d say that his review is balanced enough to suggest that the film is pretty good. To me, this is great news, because I’ve honestly been a bit nervous about this project from the start. I really did like Sam Raimi’s first two Spiderman films in the early 2000’s and was cautiously optimistic that this movie would still rock even though it hasn’t been that long since we saw Spidey swing onto the big screen.
WARNING: SPOILERS START HERE!
What’s the not-so-good from this review? Eisenbeis mentions his mixed feelings about how much disbelief we are expected to suspend given Peter’s secret identity and currently available technology (and there are choices made in the film that imply “that both the company and the police are incompetent—not the way you want your potential antagonists to be portrayed.”). He also expresses serious frustration with the fact that Spidey has his mask removed more than once, and subsequently reveals his identity to more than five people throughout the movie. On the surface, that does sound like a rather poor creative choice to me, but I’ll be watching to see how it’s handled (along with Eisenbeis’ other points) when I get to see the movie for myself next week.
What do you think? Will you be seeing The Amazing Spiderman when it hits theaters? Check out Eisenbeis’ review (WARNING = FULL OF SPOILERS) and then sound off in our comments section!