4. Rhys Ifans as the Lizard in “The Amazing Spider-Man” (2012)
So perhaps the Raimi Spidey series needed a reboot, but did it really deserve this one? This writer came only recently to the Marc Webb’s megahit, and left reeling at the film’s largely positive reviews and $750m worldwide take. Is everybody high? What, aside from Garfield and Stone’s endearing chemistry, does this film have to recommend it? And in the middle of the stew of bad, sits a turgid, badly written and poorly CG’d villain in Rhys Ifans‘ Lizard. One of the marks of a great villain is nuance, and nuanced he ain’t, in fact he appears to be playing three entirely separate characters who don’t even seem like they share a nodding acquaintance, let alone a consciousness. First, he’s the slightly untrustworthy scientific genius for whom Stacy improbably interns at the shady corporation that houses the spider that bites the boy… and so on. Second, he’s a crusading but tortured idealist, haunted by his missing arm, who out of protective instinct won’t rush to test his serum on humans despite pressure from his bosses. And third he’s a huge rampaging Lizard monster thingie that kills without compunction. If you compare the fluency and coherence of, say Doc Ock’s characterization in “Spider-Man 2,” you realize just how much Kurt Connors/The Lizard here doesn’t so much have an arc as do a bunch of stuff and then stop. And then you think of the box office take and despair.
3. Topher Grace as Venom in “Spider-Man 3” (2007)
Again a character spawned of the quote-unquote dark, cool era of 1990s comics, Venom — a dark mirror of Spider-Man, created when the alien symbiote that Peter wore as a new costume bonded with his rival Eddie Brock — was an instant hit with fans, instantly becoming one of the characters’ most popular villains, and even being mooted for his own movie, in development from writer David Goyer at New Line in the early 00s. In fact, he was so popular, that apparently, he was forced on director Sam Raimi by Sony against the director’s wishes for his final installment in the franchise, “Spider-Man 3.” And boy, does it show. The bloated third movie was already top-heavy with villains, but the inclusion of Venom couldn’t feel like more of an afterthought: the symbiote only bonds with Brock at the end of the second act, and the character gets so little screen time than he never becomes much of a threat, or much of anything, really, with Raimi’s heart still evidently with Sandman, who’s reduced to a second fiddle. As for the casting, “That ’70s Show” star Topher Grace landed the part of Brock, and it’s easy to see what they were going for: Grace is someone who could have played Parker at one point, and the idea of him being a sort of evil doppelganger makes sense. But Grace simply isn’t menacing in the role, and you’re never particularly scared of him. That Spidey takes him down by literally banging two metal bars together seems to speak to the contempt that Raimi had for the character, and his reluctance to include him.
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