I love Spider-Man. It's that's simple. When the first Spider-Man came out back in 2002 (12 years ago?!) I knew the entire movie line for line, but I'm not here to talk about Raimi's Trilogy. The franchise was rebooted so Sony could keep the rights instead of them reverting back to Marvel (MCU heavy sigh).
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| The Amazing Spider-Man Poster. |
The reboot was a pleasant experience of a well-known origin. This time Spidey is played by Andrew Garfield. Garfield is too attractive to be convincing that people would actually pick-on and ignore him in school but he plays a very nicely comedic Spider-Man. Much closer to the comic book. Garfield is a big fan of the character and has been since he was little. It makes his performance a little bit more endearing for me.
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| Spidey's back. Get it? Back? Okay. |
The difference with this reboot is that it's much closer to the feel of the comic books. The humor and sarcasm of Spider-Man is something that makes him an iconic superhero and they really brought that out better in this movie. The story, of course, is how Peter Parker turns into Spider-Man. As a young boy his parents mysteriously died and he was left to be raised by his Aunt and Uncle. Once in high school, he visits a science lab (this time at OSCORP) and is bitten by a spider while trying to snoop for information on his father.
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| The cast of The Amazing Spider-Man |
The Spider bite gives him radioactive powers! He also has an adorable relationship with science student and independent woman, Gwen Stacy. As Peter begins to learn about all of his new abilities he chooses not to help when a drug store is robbed. The thief gets away and ends up shooting Peter's Uncle. Wap. Wap. Now he's angsty for life. The villain in the movie is Dr Curt Connors, someone who is connected to Peter's father through their research together. Peter gives Connors a formula he found in his father's hidden research and it seems to be valid. Connors uses it on himself, eager for his arm to grow back. He should know those types of things come with a consequence. He paid it big time. He turned into a giant lizard!
Long story short, there's lots of fight scenes. Connors wants the entire city of New York to be lizards too so he releases an air toxin to hit them all. Of course, all's well in the end. Spidey stops it but not without a casualty or two. He thinks that he is protecting Gwen by staying away from her (of course he should've- if you've read the comics you know what tragedy happens to her) but in the very end of the film decides he doesn't care and is with her anyway. Hm... sound familiar Spider-Man 2 plot point?
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| Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man. Mask-less and angsty |
Emma Stone plays Gwen Stacy and she does a great job. I like her a lot as an actress. She's someone who can put up with Peter's nonsense and still hold her own ground. She challenges him in many ways. Her character is strong and keeps up with Peter Parker, she's independent and smart, I love that she is a positive role model in this film. You go Gwen Stacy!
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| Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy |
The problem with this film, of course, is that it's all too familiar. We all know that Uncle Ben's going to die. We know why Peter Parker turns into Spider-Man. It makes for a less interesting story because it's too recently remade. This is starting to actually become a trend and a problem for studios to remake a film instead of producing new content. It's a travesty. There's great scripts out there but they get overshadowed and passed over by someone thinking that it'll make more money and makes more business sense to do something again that's already made money.
I like this reboot I just wish it had come with a little bit more time between films, I think people would be more excited about seeing the sequel to THIS reboot if that were the case. It's an epic story and deserves to be told in the right way. The Amazing Spider-Man is at 73% on Rotten Tomatoes.
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| Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy |
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