The Amazing Spider-Man Reviews

‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ is a pretty good comeback for ‘Spider-Man’ after ‘Spider-Man 3’ was a big box office success but wasn’t very well received! ‘Spider-Man 3’ is something I enjoyed but it was nowhere near as good as the first two ‘Spider-Man’ movies. ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ was a comeback and an improvement on the third movie!

‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ was a different version of ‘Spider-Man’ and personally I thought ‘Spider-Man’ told its tale better! There were many changes here and there were some pretty boring action scenes. The costumes however were perfect as usual and the effects were also very good!

They kept the main plot of ‘Spider-Man’ where Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is bitten by a spider and gets masses of strength and becomes Spider-Man. But it seemed odd that Peter Parker had no friends this time! In the ‘Spider-Man’ movies, his best friend is Harry (James Franco) but here, he gets pushed around all the time (before receiving powers). 

So it’s come to this, ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ is not the same level as ‘Spider-Man’ but worth seeing!

I was looking forward to this film. I honestly was. I love a high-budget superhero flick as much as anyone. Even with the fact that this one is a reboot of a franchise that began only 10 years ago.

Unfortunately, the final product proved a reboot was not only unnecessary, it was a terrible idea. Nearly everything about this film was bad...from the story, to the script, to the casting...as happens so often, the visual effects were the best thing about this film, and they weren't exactly groundbreaking.

From frame one this film just felt off. The opening music didn't seem to fit, and I actually thought I was hearing the wrong audio. The opening scene was just odd...and funnily enough, is never even explained throughout the film. And honestly, that's basically the feel of the entire movie. Just, off.

Casting
Andrew Garfield is a decent enough Peter Parker, but he comes off as more of a hipster instead of the nerd he's supposed to be. (I actually think that's more the fault of the script than the actor's interpretation of the character.) Emma Stone is good enough as Gwen Stacy, I suppose...but, for one thing I personally don't think she's pretty enough...not only to be the hot blonde from the comics, but also to even be a leading lady. And there's just something about her that rubs me the wrong way. But again, that's all personal taste, so I suppose I can't hold it against the movie itself. Of course Denis Leary plays the no nonsense cop just fine. And Martin Sheen and Sally Field always do a fine job, but Field is just not what I picture when I think of Aunt May. Neither came off as very convincing. Rhys Ifans was an odd choice for Dr. Conners, and also was at least a minor disappointment.

All in all, I can see that they were going more for an "unknown" main cast, but I think it left a lot to be desired.

Story
This was just ridiculous. The opening scene of Peter's childhood makes no sense, and as mentioned earlier, is never even explained. The character development is very poorly done, and so often the characters just don't come off right. Flash Thompson starts off bullying Peter (as expected), but after Uncle Ben dies, we get a completely useless scene in which the whole school seems sympathetic to Peter, and Flash seemingly comes up to console him? Not only could the entire scene have been left on the cutting room floor from just an importance-to-the-story standpoint, it should have been left out if for no other reason than it didn't even make sense for the character.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, by the end of the film, he's actually buddying up to Peter? WTF?

Also odd is the way Spider-Man comes off as less of the snarky intelligent hero that tries to do the right thing, and more of just a simple jerk. The best example is in one encounter with a car thief: Spidey webs him to a wall and proceeds to toy with him in a humiliating way, feigning fear and then laughing at how easy it is to defeat him. It's just not Spider-Man.

Spidey also seems way too willing to expose his identity...web-slinging around multiple times without even his costume, let alone his mask...voluntarily taking off his mask multiple times, and even revealing his identity to Gwen, essentially for no reason.

Something else bothersome was the odd display of Peter's abilities. He's so strong he regularly breaks metal objects just through normal use, yet he can't even leap over a normal height chain-link fence, or from one rooftop to another without having to grab the ledge and lift himself up to the second roof. He even runs through the streets instead of jumping to a nearby building and web slinging from there.

Script
This only added to the overall weirdness. So much of the dialog just felt odd and out of place. For example, when Peter comes to see Gwen after being injured, and they begin to kiss, she stops him, saying she can't...and then proceeds to tell him how since she was young her father always put on a badge in the morning and went to work, and she never knew if he would come back alive. Wha?

The inspiration for the Spider-Man suit is never explained. Peter gets the idea for the mask from a lucha libre poster...but for the suit itself, all we see is Peter searching Bing (shameless product placement, of course) for images of Olympic athletes, saying "all spandex". Okaaaay.

It's also a bit lame the way multiple scenes seem to be replayed. Peter gets into a confrontation with Flash several times. He comes home with bruises that Aunt May notices, and which he won't explain to her several times. So much could have been cut out, or at least written in a more fresh way, so that the audience didn't have to basically relive the same sequences over and over again.

And three words: Peter Parker skateboarding. Seriously?

Bottom line
Overall this film was barely differentiable from the original in terms of visual effects. In terms of everything else, it was a total disappointment, and the original was far superior. In Spider-Man (2002), the characters were more believable, more true to the comic, and better cast. They were more interesting, better developed, and given better things to say. The story made more sense, had better flow, and was better told. That's why over a decade later, it is still the 37th highest grossing film of all time (even without accounting for inflation), and this reboot is barely in the top 50.

This second incarnation just felt like a movie. I was never really pulled into the story...throughout the entire film, I was almost always aware I was watching actors play roles.

I honestly feel like I need to go watch the original series again (or at least the first two) just to get this bad impression out of my mind.

Score
Obviously with a $230 million budget and a top-tier superhero franchise, you're pretty much guaranteed something that is at least visually entertaining...but there were actually several times during this film that I was tempted (and would have been just fine with) turning it off.

At the age of seven years, Peter Parker is in the care of Aunt May and Uncle Ben by parents who never see again. A decade later, is a lonely high school student with a crush on classmate Gwen Stacy, daughter of police captain. The discovery, in the attic, a briefcase containing his father's documents kept secret takes Peter to make the acquaintance of Dr. Curt Connors, old family friend and colleague of her father at Oscorp. It is in his lab, where he studies the possibility of coupling between human and animal cells, that Peter is bitten by a spider and finds himself with a new and extraordinary powers.
In the difficult task of Marc Webb reboot of a film product which we were fully satisfied, thanks to the recent trilogy Raimi: useless get to make an impression, difficult to avoid overlapping, since the common text. What to do? Perhaps the answer lies in the poster of Einstein, who stands at the home of Peter Parker and bears the famous phrase that "imagination is more important than knowledge." It does not matter, Webb seems to say, if history is known, you can still reinvent everything. Towards the end of the film will return to this concept, during a school lesson, when will endeavor to remember that there are those who maintain that the world has only ten stories, but maybe there is even only one, which coincides with the question of identity: who I am. Webb and screenwriters imagine, therefore, a different Peter, no longer an outsider but a rebel, almost a snob in the grass, which is not bitten by accident but goes on its own initiative where the impossible can happen, almost sperandolo, and does not fear its transformation, but it is immediately satisfied and aware. There are nuances because redefine the identity of the protagonist actually redraw the picture completely.
Romance, appearance and playful imagery printed films Raimi (in the sense of the Charter of comics but also the photographic and newspaper) is replaced by a vision actualized, less tormented but more realistic, whose imaginary reference is exclusively film and even retro. Unfortunately, the visual ideas are scarce, except for the passage perhaps intentionally ridiculous by the scales of sea bass skin Lizard, the giant destroyer, or the scene dell'infilata crane, which would make sense to 3D, but put aside any comparison with past or there is no exit from the spiral lines of misleading (and something there, a party responsible, such as "is not a choice, it is a responsibility" in replacement of "great power, great responsibility").
Amazing is a big word that does not fit the film in question, but Spider-Man has had many lives and his tour in the red and blue tights, after all, even if it is deserved Andrew Garfield.

Is this film even necessary? God, no, seeing as how the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy is roughly only a decade old. Is it a lot of fun, adding more heart and depth of character to Peter Parker? You betcha. Still doesn’t make it necessary, but at least it goes about righting some of the wrongs from Raimi’s trilogy.

Another origin story seems a little excessive given that Spider-Man, like Batman or Superman, seems to have an origin that we all already know as a mass group. But this time around, we’re actually told how and why he came to raised by his strict, loving and caring Aunt May (Sally Field, not given much to do besides look concerned and project maternal warmth) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen, finding a perfect balance between authoritarian and trying to be the “cool” surrogate dad).

Peter Parker’s parents are a topic which typical gets ignored by most adaptations of Spider-Man. The 90s animated series barely tapped that storyline for, maybe, two episodes in a sixty-five episode run. While there are still mysteries left unresolved at the end of this film, at least we know that this variation of the franchise will take a more personal, closer look at Parker and his paternal issues (which is pretty fertile ground).

Two of the major problems with the film tie back in to this vague storyline about his parents, which has a deeper connections to everything that’s happened even if we aren’t totally certain how just yet, and several story-lines have plot holes. When Osborn’s sidekick disappears after an encounter with the Lizard on a bridge, he literally just disappears. No explanation is given as to where he went or how he got there, this is clearly an issue of something being edited out of the film. Another is the time when Lizard creates several minors during the prolonged climatic battle at the end. We’re shown a group of cops turning into humanoid lizard creatures, but we never get a payoff of them doing anything. Yet they still show up at the very end having returned to normal. There are other small examples of these issues, but those two most readily stuck out in my mind.

I’ve never gotten the insistence on maintaining Peter Parker being in high school, especially since Andrew Garfield (adorable and perfect as Parker/Spider-Man) and Emma Stone (a pistol as Gwen Stacy) look older and possess jobs that are far beyond that of any high school age teenager. They both plays their roles well, but it’s distracting how much older they look than the actual high school age extras. And Stacy’s job as chief intern at Oscorp seems much more like a job that a college-age student would have, bumping up their ages would have fixed this problem in no time.

If it seems I am being nit-picky over nerdy, comic book fanboy things, well, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The Amazing Spider-Man does so many other things right, that when it goes wrong it just left me frustrated. Finally we have a Spider-Man who cracks jokes and is a complete smart-ass, cocky and blabbering constantly during his heroic deeds. And the attention paid to his costume during the last section of the film should be noted. Unlike most superhero films which see the hero get into a big fight, his suit get damaged only for the next scene to feature restored magically to its pristine condition, this film sees Spider-Man’s suit take damage and consistently deteriorate. A giant slash mark across his chest from an earlier battle with the Lizard remains clearly visible throughout the film. I appreciated this attention to continuity, but it made the lapses in the story more prominent. They could pay attention enough to make sure the costume shows a consistent amount of wear and tear, but not enough to explain where one prominent supporting player wanders off to?

Much of what’s right about this film is thanks to the cast. Garfield excels in the role, making for a far better, more realistic and accurate Spider-Man than Tobey Maguire’s whiny, constantly weeping version. He has a certain spunk and impish spark that is most appealing in the role, and he brings a real sense of joy and exuberance to it. Stone is smart, tart and tough as Gwen Stacy. It’s nice to see a comic book movie give a girl something to do besides stand around waiting to be taken hostage by the villain. In fact, there’s a scene late in the film where she hides and out-smarts the Lizard, trying to locate an antidote for his serum that will turn all of Manhattan into his reptilian kingdom. And Rhys Ifans does a great turn as Dr. Curt Connors, a conflicted man whose hubris proves to be his downfall. As he slowly slips away from reality and sanity preferring to be in his Lizard state, we realize that this serum and its side effects are like a highly addictive drug. His sweaty, almost uncomfortably close to detoxing scenes as Connors in-between the mad thrashing and pure rage of the Lizard are humane and ground the character in some semblance of reality. If he never achieves the same level of greatness that Alfred Molina did as Doctor Octopus, well it’s not for a lack of trying.

Mercifully, The Amazing Spider-Man also gives us action scenes of surprising clarity, mostly forgoing the heavily edited ADHD-style so in vogue lately. We can clearly who is where and their relationship to objects around them. Even if the physics require an extended leap as an audience to buy into them, at least we know where the characters are aiming for and what they’re trying to achieve.

The Amazing Spider-Man may not be a great superhero film, but it’s a lot of fun. And it promises to be a quieter, more warm and heartfelt series than the clanging of metal in Iron Man or the only interesting by half Thor. It has many faults and a serious case of déjà vu in some story beats, but at least it’s trying to accurately capture the tone and spirit of not only its hero, but of his corresponding source material.

Peter, having stolen into Gwen’s bedroom, tries to explain to her why he can suddenly cling to the sides of buildings and swing through the air with impossible lightness. 'I’ve been bitten,' he stammers. She leans in close with her husky whisper: 'So have I.' And that sound you hear is the cumulative sigh of a million viewers who suddenly sort of remember, maybe, that there can be something more to movies than elaborate yet repetitive action sequences and strained 3-D effects. You’ve got a girl and a guy in a bedroom, alone. Aren’t you just dying to see what happens in the next panel? haha ;p

This was quite frankly, a terrible movie. It wasn't as bad some of the Marvel movies from last year (Thor leading the way here) but it's terrible nonetheless.

Problem 1: It's constructed like a video game - several action scenes strung together with cut-scenes that move the story along. The cut-scenes have all the emotional shallowness of their video game counterparts.

Problem 2: Every plot development moves along so quickly that nothings sinks in. This is the direct result of problem 1 above. While video games bring a level of immersion just because you're playing the damn thing, getting immersed in a movie requires a different sort of story-telling.

Problem 3: The motivations of the characters often made little sense to me. The cardinal rule of making a good sci-fi movie is the the only things that don't need to make sense are the sci-fi bits. The characters, their emotions, their motivations, their actions MUST make sense like in every other good non sci-fi movie.

Examples:
1) Why the fuck was Uncle Ben leaving Peter such a long and clearly well-prepared speech as a voicemail message?
2) How does Gwen, an intern have access to all the high security equipment and data in the lab?
3) Why didn't anyone ask Peter for identification when he was swiping the other intern's badge? And why didn't they ask the other guy for identification before throwing him out?
4) Why do the police officers ignore the massive green lizard that was attacking police officers and causing mayhem (so obviously the bugger threat) and start to pursue Spiderman instead?
5) Why does Captain Stacy completely change his mind about Spiderman after unmasking him as Peter?
6) How did they get all the crane operators in Manhattan to co-ordinate??

So much nonsensical garbage throughout the movie. Anything for a good cut-scene, I suppose. At times I felt like I was watching a movie by Michael Bay.

Problem 4: The story and the characters were too similar to the last Spiderman trilogy, and inferior in almost every way.

Typically, when one walks into a film, they have pre-conceived notions and opinions about it. This was true for me when I walked into The Amazing Spider-Man. I had doubts that this reboot would be as good as the original 2002 film, and I was pretty sure it would just cover the same plot points as the original. This is why I was so surprised at how much I enjoyed myself. It's not the greatest film to grace the silver screen, and it is basically the same film we saw 10 years ago, but it's a lot of fun, and sometimes that's all I need.

Peter Parker (who was separated from his parents at the age of four) is a typical science nerd. That is, until he gets bitten by a genetically enhanced spider, and begins to develop spider-like abilities. Now, he must learn to control his new found power in order to stop a monster called The Lizard.

One thing that surprised me about The Amazing Spider-Man was how different it felt from the original. Yes, it's mostly the same as the 2002 version (but with improved CGI and a new villain), but the feel is so much more different. It's more light and more comedic. Which, based on how you look at it, isn't a bad thing. An overly serious super hero film can quickly become disastrous.

There's significantly more action in The Amazing Spider-Man then there was in the original. And although the action is less inventive, the improved visual effects and the greater intensity overcomes the lack of originality.

Emotionally, The Amazing Spider-Man can't touch the original. The characters are less developed, the plot is less complex, and the romance (though there's less of it) feels forced. The Amazing Spider-Man isn't as touching or intelligent as the original.

But that's okay, that isn't the focus of The Amazing Spider-Man. The Amazing Spider-Man only tries to be fun and exciting entertainment, and it does this splendidly. By eliminating most of the emotional aspects of the original, The Amazing Spider-Man makes more room for comedy. This won't appeal to everyone, but it makes it feel more fun.

J. Jonah Jameson, the publisher of The Daily Bugle was one of the best parts about the original trilogy. Sadly, he has been completely omitted from The Amazing Spider-Man. However, considering this is a reboot, it's unlikely that the same actor would've been hired, and even more unlikely that a new actor would be as memorable.

The Lizard can't touch Doc-Oc or The Green Goblin, as he's very straight forward. Kill Spider-Man. Take over the city. Revenge. Let's face it, the villain's development is rushed in favor of getting more action into the film, but I'm oddly okay with this.

The new league of actors perform well, but because of the straight forward nature of all the characters, the acting feels less impressive by comparison of the original. There are no actors that truly stand out. Andrew Garfield, replacing Tobey Maguire, plays a decent Spider-Man, but he tries too hard to imitate Maguire's performance. The mumbling, the shyness, it feels a bit too forced and not as natural. The acting is by no means bad, it's just not as good as in the original.

The score, composed by James Horner, is hands down better than that of the original. With surprisingly heavy use of the piano, and a minimal of techno effects and heavy percussion, the score improves on the original. There are some problems, though. Maybe I wasn't listening hard enough, but there didn't appear to be a recurring theme in the music, which may come back to bite Horner, considering that this is intended to be a franchise. Also, Horner is infamous for copying his own work in his scores, and while I haven't heard enough of Horner's work to judge, I've heard rumors of his Star Trek score finding it's way into The Amazing Spider-Man.

The Amazing Spider-Man isn't as intelligent, or defined as the original. It lacks the inventiveness and complex plot, as well as the iconic villain(s) that made the original such a hit. But The Amazing Spider-Man becomes a slightly better film by being what matters most in a film: Entertaining. It's light tone makes it much more comedic, and the action is more exciting. The votes will always be split as to which Spider-Man is better, but based on what I've seen so far, The Amazing Spider-Man shows an awful lot of promise.

The Amazing Spider-Man is one confused mixed bag of a superhero movie. The first ten minutes say a lot about the dramatic tone that director Marc Webb was most concerned with establishing, although much of that particular air of self-seriousness just kind of lays limp, waiting for the next intermittent scene of humor to relieve the audience's yearning to just have a good time. It's true that the film only seems to pop when it lets loose the shackles of this oh-so-personal Peter Parker origin story. Indeed, the film covers much of the same ground that Raimi's first film did... too bad it seems laborious here -- that is, until the talking CG lizard turd shows up to declass the proceedings. Yet through it all, there are plenty of moments in the film that work: actors who brighten up a scene, genuinely funny audience-friendly bits, and Spidey images that are just neat to see. It's just too bad that one can’t sift the good stuff through a strainer and leave out the celluloid fat.

The script's pork lies mostly in this backstory that reinvents Peter (Andrew Garfield) as a loner orphan who conveniently finds a nondescript parcel belonging to his long-lost father, whose tale once paralleled a comic story that cast him as an American spy (itself an orphaned subplot cut out for the theatrical release), which leads Peter to conveniently jump to the conclusion that he should investigate and get this plot a-rolling. Lucky for him, the popular gal he's got his eye on, Gwen Stacy (charmingly played by Emma Stone), is a lab intern forCurt Connors (Rhys Ifans), the very man Peter is seeking out because he worked with his father. Though the i's are never dotted for Peter -- or the audience -- in this particular deadbeat dad/coworker relationship seemingly so key to the story, a common intellectual ground is found between the two while the inquisitive teenager is visiting the company that the one-armed scientist works for, Oscorp (cue sequel clues here). Soon, Peter is bitten by a radioactive spider at the lab and we're off to the races, crossing off iconic character moments like a checklist (Uncle Ben dies, Peter seeks revenge and discovers powers while trying out his new alter ego) that eventually lead to the showdown between the now-vigilante Spider-Man and the Lizard, a mutated Dr. Connors who seeks the new evolution of mankind through cross-species DNA mumbo jumbo.

Clocking in at the theaters at fifteen minutes beyond two hours, the picture shifts from serious land to B-movie mayhem at around the halfway point and really doesn’t stop smelling funky from there on in. The lizard is a mess -- looks-wise, as well as in his poorly laid out intentions. The computer-generated villain mugs for the camera aplenty, with Ifans' voice absurdly spouting out dialogue that only underlines how dopey the end result is in comparison to the brooding drama that makes up much of the rest of the picture. Spider-Man himself barely grows out of his young cocky mode before becoming a non-expressive digital stuntman in much of the film's finale. It's too bad, because Garfield has it in him to be a good Peter, albeit a different one than we've seen before. Stone, along with Denis Leary as her father, provide the most well-acted scenes with Garfield that honestly work and provide the best backbone the flick possesses. Unfortunately, the cast's keen chemistry ends with Aunt May and Uncle Ben, both played by terrific actors (Sally Field and Martin Sheen, respectively) who are never given the right chance to connect with the warmth and emotionality of their characters.

As in most cases with Marvel movies not made in-house during this time, there's just something off with this Spidey outing that hurts it in the long run. Many will say it's missing the fun that Raimi effortlessly brought to the character -- a shared ingredient that made The Avengers such a crowd-pleaser. Comparisons aside, The Amazing Spider-Man just seems like too much of a compromised product. Its former indie director wanted it to be one thing, yet by definition of a modern superhero film, was forced to include expensive action regalia that he wasn't cut out to handle. Perhaps the film will end up being a necessary studio sacrifice just to continue on with the character in future outings. In that case, it'll be interesting to see what they learn from this semi-honorable, but ultimately shabby effort.

Wednesday, July 18th

I saw this in theaters (not 3D) and LOVED it. There was action, humor, romance...really everything that it needed to be a big hit.
Of course, we have all seen every special effect trick in the book, so it's not like they went above and beyond when it came to that, but it was well done.

As for the story, I felt that Marvel did an excellent job at connecting you to the characters, especially Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone was to die for). I know that I can't compare her to Kirsten Dunst in the original Spiderman trilogy because she didn't play Gwen, but rather Mary Jane. (which confused me, by the way. Which love intrest is more accurate to the comic?)

I thought that the characters also felt more realistic than in the original franchise. Peter Parker definitely acts like a teenager would act when something terrible happens. Also, I enjoyed the comedic perspective that this film took. When he first realizes he has powers he is obviously FREAKED OUT and CONFUSED, and it takes him a while to get used to it. I thought that part really was a home run.

Anyways, overall, if you are skeptical about this movie, suck it up and watch it. It was amazing.