The Amazing Spider-Man

*minor spoilers!*


I just had no idea how to approach The Amazing Spider-Man. Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire came out in 2002. The absolutely wretched third installment came out just 5 years ago in 2007. Now the franchise has totally been rebooted, despite the fact Spider-Man 3 made a bajillion dollars. Such a short time between reboots seemed kind of odd. But that is the way of the wind in Hollywood today.

Superhero franchises are way too valuable to just sit on. Everyone hated Ang Lee's Hulk in 2003? Just totally re-do it with The Incredible Hulk in 2008. Batman and Robin (1997) totally crapped on everything that was good about Batman? Cast Christian Bale and tell a different story in 2005. What I'm starting to wonder is when will this trend will end? When Batman gets rebooted again (Christopher Nolan has said that The Dark Knight Rises is the final film for his story, and trust me, it will be rebooted) in 2017 or so, are people going to buy into the third different telling of the same franchise? When Mark Ruffalo gets his own Hulk movie, are people going to buy in to a third guy playing the Hulk in less than 15 years? Box office receipts would say yes, but you wonder how long it will take before superhero movies become stale. Movies have only been around roughly a hundred years, I wonder in a hundred more years how many remakes we will have of The Lord of the Rings? How many more soul-crushing Star Wars prequels will George Lucas (or maybe an android with his memories) make? Only time will tell. People like things they have already seen before, so seeing the same franchises re-done and the same stories told over and over wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

Ok, back to Spider-Man. Having heard that it was being directed by Marc Webb, the same guy who did (500) Days of Summer (one of my favorites), I had some hope that it could be good. Casting Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy were also great moves. This installment is certainly much better than the 2000's films, but it takes a major misstep in treading much of the same ground.

The film tells the origin of Spider-Man, slightly modified, once again. Peter Parker is a nerdy teenager trying fit in at school. He is bitten by a genetically enhanced spider that gives him super powers. You know all the rest. The first 45 minutes of the movie are the origin of Spider-Man, and all I found myself doing was trying to find the things it did that were just like the origin of the older films. While I do admit that this version does it better, the older movies are still so fresh in my mind. I can still clearly remember seeing the first movie in theaters with some of my summer baseball teammates.

The villain is certainly better than any in the other installments. The Lizard actually has some motivation and a purpose, and most importantly he doesn't look like a Power Ranger like the Green Goblin did (credit to my cousin for pointing that one out to me). His character design looks pretty cool, and you really feel for Dr. Curt Conners, who is transformed to become him.

The strength of the movie, somewhat unsurprisingly given the director's pedigree, is the romance between Peter and Gwen. Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield have great chemistry together. Emma Stone is just so stinking cute and likeable, it's ridiculous. Her and Garfield have a lot of great scenes together, and you can really get behind them as a couple. Peter reveals who he truly is to her about halfway through the movie, which was a great move on the filmmakers part. It helps strengthen their connection and it was easy to root for them by their attitude of being in things together. Did I say how cute Emma Stone is? Yeah, definitely worth mentioning again. Not just in her appearance, but in everything she does.

In the end The Amazing Spider-Man has two ways of being viewed. If you strictly view it against its predecessors, this iteration exceeds them in every way. Spider-Man 1-3 are awful compared to The Amazing Spider-Man. Then again Spider-Man 1-3 are awful period, but that's beside the point. Now if you view it as strictly stand alone, it's pretty run of the mill. It's good but not great. You'll walk out of the theater saying you liked it, but won't have a huge desire to see it again. I'm glad I saw it in the theater, and you should too, but I'll be ok if I never saw it again.

3/5