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| Courtesy of Sony |
The biggest fault with The Amazing Spider-Man (of which there are many) is that it failed to
convince me why we needed to reboot a franchise that is only 10 years old. Oh,
I know there are plenty of business-related reasons – namely, the character
would revert back to Marvel unless Sony quickly made another movie with him
(wouldn’t want the competition making your cash cow a big part of upcoming Avengers sequels) – but none of that justification shows up on the screen.
When original director
Sam Raimi and cast members Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst declined to return
to the franchise, Sony should’ve pulled a James Bond and simply continued the
story with a different creative team. Instead, they went back to square one and
spend an hour of the new flick showing moviegoers how Peter Parker (now played
by Andrew Garfield) becomes Spider-Man…something we already know. Things get
slightly more interesting in the second half, but then the credits are rolling
and it’s time to go.
There are a few
differences this time around, but they’re not exactly upgrades. First, director
Marc Webb appears to be striving for Christopher Nolan-style superhero realism,
which doesn’t work when your protagonist got his powers from a jacked-up
spider. Next, somebody – I’ll blame screenwriters James Vanderbilt, Alvin
Sargent and Steve Kloves – decided that the pre-Spidey Peter shouldn’t be a nerdy
outcast. Now he’s a brooding, Twilight-y loner instead.
They also hint that
Peter’s parents are involved in the conspiracy somehow, but it’s never fully
explained because they’re obviously saving that story for later. Those changes,
combined with a lackluster villain (the Lizard, wasting Rhys Ifans’ talents and
made of some of the worst CGI I’ve ever seen) and disappearing plot points
(characters vanish without a trace, critically important agendas become no big
deal), make The Amazing Spider-Man a disappointing misfire.
What’s sad is that it
didn’t have to be. The casting is actually inspired this time around. Garfield
is a much better fit for Spider-Man once the regurgitated origin story stuff is
out of the way, and Emma Stone is absolutely phenomenal as Gwen Stacy, Peter’s
love interest. She’s gorgeous, she’s funny and her character is every bit
Spidey’s intellectual and adventurous equal. Her chemistry with Garfield is
also off the charts (which might explain why they’re now an item off-screen). Martin
Sheen, as Uncle Ben, and Denis Leary, as Gwen’s police captain father, are also
terrific.
Webb is a solid
director, making effective use of 3D and visualizing Spidey’s web-slinging
exploits in a much more realistic fashion than Raimi did. It’s a shame that so
many bad decisions outweighed the promising aspects Webb and the cast brought
to the film. Now that this unnecessary reboot is out of the way, there’s
nowhere the inevitable sequel can go but up. (At least I hope so.)
The Amazing Spider-Man is rated PG-13
for sequences of action and violence.
Grade: C
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