The Amazing Spider-Man.

In terms of context well...funny story, for me at least - a friend of mine suggested I go see 'Seeking A Friend For The End of The World' and the critics I follow hated Amazing but the thing was, generally on average 10% more critics gave a positive review to Amazing than they did Seeking A Friend and I know apples and oranges or whatever but if Amazing really is 'the worst superhero movie since Green Lantern' then how bad must Seeking A Friend to be to be getting an even more mixed reaction? Enjoy!

The Amazing Spider-Man exists for the sake of Sony's bottom line, if Sony had waited around much longer, they'd have lost the rights to Spider-Man and the cheapest and quickest way to hold onto the license is a reboot with a smaller cast and crew (in terms of costs) and throw it together as fast as possible. I mean this film came out insanely fast, Spider-Man 4 was only just cancelled in 2010 and we're only just half way through 2012 and here it is, apparently this film would have been out even sooner possibly as soon as last year, but they did a lot of reshoots.

The film has been praised for its cast, its director who gave it a stronger romance thread. People also liked the darker take on Spider-Man who apparently just makes more sense this time around and that it is just in general a fun little movie. But it has been criticised for retreading a lot of the story from the original Spider-Man creating a story that feels old, dull and uninspired, the general consensus from the critical reaction felt the Lizard was a weak villain and many felt that the reboot was simply pointless from a thematic point of view.


And what did I think? Well let's dig into 'The Amazing Spider-Man'.

Amazing has a brand new, much wider plot. Oscorp are still the mad scientists at the centre of everything but now Peter Parker's parents are integral to it all as well. It would appear Peter's parents were some sort of scientists come pseudo secret agents. They are eventually mysteriously offed it would seem to imply, which is why Peter is now living with his Aunt and Uncle and this creates the first driving force for the narrative.

This leads into the second driving force of the narrative, this time Peter's powers are directly linked to Oscorp. Peter sneaks off to find anything he can on his mysterious parents after finding a file hidden by his father that connects him to Curt Connors and Oscorp. Eventually Peter gets bitten by a super spider while he sneaks around. I have to say, the development of his powers are much more natural and much more amusing in this film than in the Raimi ones. Natural progression is something that Webb does brilliantly across the board, the natural progression of Peter's powers and his transformation into Spider-Man is all brilliantly handled.

This then leads into the third part of the narrative, Uncle Ben's death. It is much better handled in this movie than in the Raimi ones, providing a much clearer driving force for Peter's transformation into Spider-Man. He becomes Spider-Man out of vengeance just like in the original films but here Peter's hunt for Uncle Ben's killer takes up a good chunk of the movie without conclusion leaving it open to carry on through the films, rather than being awkwardly brought up again like they did with Spider-Man 3. The problem here, is that this is an odd scene that is directly lifted from the first Raimi movie then redressed. A guy won't sell Peter milk because he is two cents short, so when the shop gets robbed he just lets it slide and then as the robber gets away because of Peter, he ends up shooting Uncle Ben killing him without even saying the line! He even gets inspired by wrestling to create his costume again. But as said, overall the aftermath is much better handled in this film and has a greater importance to the general narrative.

The next chunk of the story is dedicated to our new villain Curt Connors as played Rhys Ifans. I'm sorry but he is a very weak character and a crap villain, easily the weakest part of the movie - thankfully he doesn't really become all that important until act three. He is basically Norman Osborn all over again, right down to the talking to himself scene. Connors is working on 'cross specieces genetics', our mad science in this movie. He is attempting to save Norman Osborn from some unnamed illness but outside pressure causes Connors to test it on himself even though it isn't ready which turns him into a super powered madman exactly like what happened with Norman Osborn's transformation into the Green Goblin. There is basically no real explanation as to why The Lizard is evil other than the assumption you make that the Cross Species thing ends up driving him nuts but basically all of Connors motivations tie back to 'I just wan't my arm back' and since they've tried to make the plot so much more deep and complex, such a simplistic villain just feels out of place.

The end of the movie is really anti-climactic, we get great action scenes throughout but then when it comes to the big final battle between The Lizard and Spider-Man with the entire city in the balance... it just sorts of ends.


Amazing Peter Parker is so different to comics Peter Parker they are really only the same character by name but the thing is, I liked the new Peter Parker, the handsome and charming misfit genius and although Peter Parker has been completely rewritten - this is a much truer characterisation of Spider-Man, the quips are back, the web shooters are back. Even the way he moves is much truer to comic Spider-Man. His costume is a little strange looking and I must admit at times the true, jokey Spidey worked, but at others I just wanted him to shut the fuck up. Although why does Spider-Man keep taking his mask off in every scene? A central part to Spider-Man is his fear of people finding out his identity, but he just doesn't seem to care - every central character in this movie knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man by the end of the movie, it's just ridiculous.

MJ has now been replaced as the love interest by Gwen Stacy that makes sense with the high school setting. Stone does a much better job than Dunst did as the love interest and the chemistry between Garfield and Stone is much stronger than it ever was with Maguire and Dunst. The romance scenes in this film had me grinning from ear to ear but of course, it is directed by Marc Webb.

Not only is the chemistry between the two leads improved, but so has the dialogue, although there were moments of exposition dumping but since this film added this whole new element with Peter's parents there was more plot to show and less plot to say, which leads to much more natural dialogue.

Overall the film is easily the best paced Spider-Man movie out of the four, each scene naturally leads into the next just like with Raimi's direction but there is a much realer resonance to each scene and much realer emotions for the characters which mean it all fits together much better.

I really digged the CGI in this movie, The Lizard looked really, really good and the animation for Spidey's agility didn't reduce the film to a cartoon, it's a great looking movie. Not only does it look great, but the action is just excellent, the choreography is brilliant - it truly captures the way Spidey moves and fights and it creates a really fun movie. The camera really helps with this too, I loved the way the camera caught the web-swinging  - especially the first person moments, they were just awesome.

So do I recommend it? In many senses it feels like the whole Spider-Man part of the production was an after thought, Marc Webb, famous for (500) Days of Summer, directs the high school romance parts as masterfully as you'd imagine and that is a central part to Spider-Man but it isn't all there is...but so much of the Spider-Man portion feels tacked on, the Spider-Man stuff is great, well directed and much truer to the comics but the two halves of the film never seem to properly come together..Amazing is still overall a fun movie, but it holds itself back from being a truly great one. For every moment it's a much better Spider-Man adaptation it does something that makes it a worse one. There are some changes that actually end up working and some direct adaptations that make it pretty obvious why Raimi didn't include them but overall, it's a great fun and worth checking out.

Think About It!

-Locke