Today I went and saw The Amazing Spider-Man with Charlotte and a bunch of other people. My expectations were kind of mixed, given that I’d heard good things about it and bad things about it. Some of my favorite reviewers (like Film Critic Hulk) have reviews of it that I haven’t read yet, but the gist I got was “not thrilled”. I had avoided most trailers simply by not watching a lot of TV or other movies, so I was sort of going in blind. I set my expectations at “Better than Spider-Man 3”. In this, I was not disappointed. This, however, is not your Daddy’s Spider-Man…or is it? From this point on, there will probably be some spoilers (Hint: Uncle Ben Dies), so skip to the end for my capsule review.
First off, I rather liked the performance given by Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker. One of the comments I’d heard about this film was that it was a bit less “comic book-y” than the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films, and in some ways I agree with that assessment. This Peter Parker is still nerdy, but he’s a smidge less awkward socially and a lot less weepy. Now, I LOVED Toby Maguire as Peter Parker in the first film, but I also really liked this performance. In this version, they tone down some aspects of Peter (photography, extreme dorkiness) and turned up others (super science, curiousity), but he’s still the lovable dorky everyman…sort of. The parts with his mother and father at the beginning set up WHY he lives with Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and add a bit of mystery to his past…but it doesn’t really go anywhere in this film except as a bit of a MacGuffin and in the setup for the sequel. That is one of the nitpicks I have with this. A LOT of shit is in this to set up the sequels. Occasionally I feel like the writers were saying “Yeah, yeah, you’ve seen this all before. We have to do it because it’s a reboot. You’ll love the sequels!”
So, after that, how were the other performances? Overall, I’d say “Not Bad”. Martin Sheen turns in a good performance as Uncle Ben. I liked that they gave us more time focused on Peter and Ben to see their relationship in action, rather than mostly inferring it as in the previous origin film. The back and forth they have felt more natural to me than the Raimi version, as did some of their arguments. Uncle Ben’s death was handled fairly well, and more realistically than the whole “wrestling thing”, so it wasn’t bad, and of course it needed to happen. The “final voicemail as voiceover flashback” was a nice touch to scoot around the whole “flashback audio” you get so often in these types of films.
Though his part was small, the guy who played Flash Thompson was enjoyable to watch, especially some of the nods to his character in the comics, though a bit inconsistent in portrayal. I think they overdid it a bit in his initial “beat up Parker” scene. Emma Stone turned in a pretty good shot at Gwen Stacy, Peter’s first love, who is finally getting some screen time instead of just “Mary Jane this” and “Mary Jane that”. Sally Field was fine as Aunt May, but Aunt May wasn’t given a whole lot to DO in this story. In the Sam Raimi movie, Aunt May was a core character and a lot of Peter’s grounding influence. Here, she just seems to be…there. “Oh, it’s Spider-Man. Gotta have Uncle Ben and Aunt May somehow.” This is a woman that Peter Parker LITERALLY MADE A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL (Fuck you, One More Day) in the comics to save, and in this film she is just sort of…there.
The Lizard was a good choice for a “first outing” villain. The Lizard in the comics is sort of “Hulk Lite”. Brilliant Scientist turns into Child-like green monster due to an experiment gone awry. It’s a classic sympathetic villain, and the power level is right on par with early Spider-Man. HOWEVER, this is also one of the weaker parts of the film. Kurt Conners (should be CURT, but that’s nitpicking) isn’t as likable as he’s been in other media, or even in the first Spider-Man film. He’s not a BAD guy, but he’s less sympathetic in this portrayal than in others. It doesn’t help that he also gets a case of the “Take Over the World” crazies for what appears to be no reason. I mean, really, if the Lizard part of him is “taking control”, shouldn’t he regress to a more simple viewpoint? This is just setting up the “green serum” as giving you the crazies, so in the next film we have the Green Goblin. Whatever, Chekov’s Mass Aerosol Dispersion System had to come up at some point, right? Overall, I enjoyed the Lizard in this film, but they tried to combine the Lizard and some of William DeFoe’s Green Goblin, and the seams show a bit.
Dennis Leary was a surprise as the initial antagonist for Peter Parker rather than J. Jonah Jameson. Frankly, the Sam Raimi Jameson was damn near perfect and that’s some big shoes to fill…so they didn’t bother trying. The film also emphasizes the “Spider-Man as wanted criminal” aspect more than the first film, and it was a nice twist on it. Leary’s defense of “why Spider-Man is more of a hindrance rather than an aid” speech was a nice jab at the conventional wisdom in comic book movies, and it was appreciated since they were going for a “more realistic” feel.
Let’s talk about that “more realistic” feel the movie tried to accomplish. The CGI Spider-Man in the first film was pretty good, but it suffered from the “too clean” problem. Everything was just a touch too shiny, too perfect. Here, they’ve done a pretty good job of making it look a little more grimy. Spider-Man is not quite as completely bending the laws of physics when he bounds around. He swings around with more weight it seems. There were also some nice practical effects with Peter jumping around that were fun. The Lizard's effects were serviceable, though the CGI tail growing back was pretty lame.
One thing that threw me off a bit was the decision to go with mechanical web shooters rather than organic ones. Yeah, I get it, Peter is smart enough to have built them, but SURELY someone would recognize the product as “OsCorp” stuff? Then it’s simply a matter of looking for someone who buys it regularly who probably shouldn’t…like a HIGH SCHOOLER. Or maybe he stole it from Kurt Conners I don’t know. The change to “DNA weirdness” instead of “Fucking Radioactive Spider” naturally flows to “organic web shooters” and this was just sort of out of place. Hell, it only comes up twice in the film (they don’t work underwater, and the Lizard crushes them at one point), so…why bother? Eh, it’ll probably be made more of in the sequels.
One of the story problems with the film is that it felt disjointed. It seemed to me that it went. “Peter does something. And then Peter does more stuff. And then Peter gets bitten. And then…” Scenes made sense story wise, but the transitions just weren’t. It was a lot of scenes connected by a running story, but not by the film itself (except toward the end, when it all kind of made sense, sort of). It was like "Six Stories in Six One Act Plays, Where All the Stories are Sequels to The Previous Story". This was annoying at times, because a lot of scenes were sort of "half" set up, and then proceed as if they were fully set up. Speaking of gratuitous scenes, the whole “line up the cranes” thing was super, duper cheesy, WAAAAY moreso than the “if you fight one of us you fight all of us” from the first film. It really needed each crane to have an American Flag hanging from it to truly be cheesetacular. The only thing cheesier would have been a scene of Spider-Man swinging into Slow Motion, and shooting a web directly at the audience to justify the 3D effects....OH WAIT, THAT WAS IN THE FILM.
Overall, I’d give the film 2 smiley faces on a scale of 5 frowny faces to 5 smiley faces. It was a pretty good super hero movie that does what it needs to do to set up the “reboot” of the franchise, and it feels very much “by the numbers”. It’s fairly well done, and I liked it. If you’re a comic fan, I recommend checking out a matinee. I still prefer the Sam Raimi Spider-Man over this one, but I can appreciate this reboot as being "not bad". It's not gonna make anyone's top movie list though.
