This past week, the remake/reboot of the Spiderman franchise was released to minimal excitement from prospective audiences. I had about an ounce of excitement in me that stayed the same throughout the whole movie and maybe only slightly elevated at the end. To me “Amazing Spiderman” was mostly unnecessary and isn’t crucial to even watch if you want to keep up with the series.
Most of us have already seen the original 2002 “Spiderman” starring Tobey Maguire. Well, the stories are basically the same: Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is a geeky and picked-on high school student who gets bitten by a genetically wacky spider and begins to develop spider-like reflexes and abilities. The love interest is intelligent preppyclassmate Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) whose father is the chief-of-police that thinks of Spiderman as a criminal. The villain is Dr Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a one-armed scientist who tries to splice reptiles’ self-regeneration DNA with humans to create “a world without weakness” and accidentally becomes the aggressive Lizard.
Andrew Garfield (“The Social Network”) brought a new kind of tone to Peter Parker. He was less helpless-looking than his predecessor, Tobey Maguire, and had much more sarcastic humor. This Peter is always protective of others even before his powers kick in and it doesnt take his uncles Ben dying to motivate him into becoming a masked vigilante; he’s a born hero. It’s no secret that no one ever plays their age in movies and that high school students are very often portrayed by actors in their thirties. Garfield, 28, may be one of the few that looks and acts like someone our age, which I really liked.
Emma Stone (“Easy A”, “The Help”) is cutesy and smart and tones down her usual snark. Playing Gwen Stacy, Spiderman/Peter Parker’s first girlfriend, seemed like a good fit for her. Personally, I always liked her more than Mary Jane Watson because she was less vulnerable and was easily the smartest person in the room. The one thing that kind of bothered me was that the haircut and knee socks made her look like an over-sized toddler. She and Garfield had good chemistry, sharing in deliberately awkward moments that make you want to hide your face because you’re actually embarrassed for them.
Rhys Ifans (“Anonymous”) was more or less channeling Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin from the original “Spiderman.” His origin story is pretty much the same, too: a determined scientist who resorts to conducting human science experiments on himself and is malfunctions into a bad guy. He’s not wildly different from the Green Goblin, but the Goblin is more vengeful while the Lizard is a mad perfectionist.
Compared to the original 2002 “Spiderman”, this wasn’t better or worse, just slightly altered. The origin story is more or less the same: a spider bite gives Peter the powers and Uncle Ben’s death gives him the heroic drive. Other than a different villain and another girl, the stories are pretty much the same. Probably the biggest difference is Peter’s attitude towards the life changes around him, he’s more angsty and humorous. There’s also much more mystery surrounding his parents, to be addressed in the sequels. It seems to me that the only reason that the reboot is so alike to the original is because they want to get all the pesky character development out of the way and continue the Spiderman story in a completely different direction.
The fight scenes were meh and here were too many moments where Spiderman is saved by everyday civilians, especially in the final battle. There were maybe two or three good action scenes (one of which is graced by Stan Lee’s presence), but they weren’t all great. The only thing that was above average was probably the romance between Peter and Gwen and her father’s interference.
This whole movie, though well made, well casted and acted, and well enough executed, just didn’t have that one spark-like thing that makes a movie good. It didn’t invoke any kind of emotion or feeling for me, and I know I don’t really need it to understand the Spiderman series. You can pretty much get away with not watching this and relying on the original movie to understand the sequels. And be assured, there will be sequels, this time hopefully featuring the Green Goblin.
Note: There’s an additional scene a little after the credits, so if you decide to see this and you’re interested in a bit of a sneak peek for the sequel, stick around for a minute or two.
Amazing Spiderman is rated PG-13 and runs for 136 minutes.
