The Amazing Spider-Man - possible spoilers
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| The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) |
I was looking forward to this. I've been a Spider-Man fan since I was a kid. He's my favorite solo superhero. I liked the Tobey Maguire Spidey films, the first one more than the other two. I really didn't care much for the third one so I was hoping the reboot film would redeem the franchise.
The Amazing Spider-Man is a film adaptation of Spider-Man's origin story. This is 17-year-old Peter Parker in high school, before working for the Daily Bugle, and before Mary Jane Watson. Personally, I liked the Gwen Stacy story line more. And I thought Peter's wrist shooter thingies were pretty cool. I always pictured Peter Parker as this nerdy but adorable guy; Maguire did great on that but Andrew Garfield took it up a notch.
Long story short, it is the first Spider-Man movie only it is set in high school. Sort of like how The CW Network would do a Spider-Man story line. It follows the usual Spider-Man/Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) back story of geeky photography-loving boy likes untouchable girl, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone). Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) still dies and in the end, Peter gets the girl but turns her away. In this, the villain is Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) who becomes The Lizard. Dr. Connors was mentioned in the previous Spidey movies because he was a colleague of Peter's father but he never turned into The Lizard.
Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker is a keeper. He was so adorkable! He had these ear-to-ear smiles and fidgets and it was so cute. It was believable, it never looked like he was playing a character. He embodied Peter as well as Tobey Maguire did. I like Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, his final speech rendered me teary-eyed. They wasted Sally Field on this though. Aunt May never left the Parker apartment. She tried to be inspirational and supportive but she came across a bit forced. Rhys Ifans is always a pleasure to watch.
It wasn't the best but it is definitely in the running for the worst Spider-Man movie. Shame. It has a great cast - Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, and Sally Field But the writing was bad, the editing was awful, disjointed. The graphics were hit and miss. I watched it in 3D,
Let's talk about the writing and story. Gwen's dad had no motivation to come after Spider-Man as strongly as he did. The man in a unitard saved a kid's life after a huge lizard destroyed the bridge but still unitard guy is the bad guy? Also, where did Connors' hatred for Peter come from? The kid gave him the correct equation, allowed him to become what he is, so why did he want to have Peter killed all of a sudden? Sure, all of the answers might be in the movie but they were so thinly executed, I either forgot about it or missed it. The pacing was not good also. That "becoming Spider-Man" montage was a hot mess. I really thought the trailer did a better job.
Overall, it was okay but it was not "amazing". I am a fan of Andrew!Peter and I hope we get to see more of that... but with a better story.
