The Amazing Spider-Man

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.  

It's not fair to compare a film from 2012 to an unrelated set of films that wrapped in 2006.  But that's more or less the way with comic book movies and probably doubly-so in this case, since The Amazing Spider-Man has rebooted the whole Spidey franchise before most of the world had the taste of Spider-Man 3 out of its collective mouth.  And, if anything, ASM can only stand to benefit from the comparison. 

First, a word about the Sam Raimi trilogy: poorly-aged (that's a hyphenated word and I'm counting it as one).  Like most of the world, I really dug the first two films.  On more recent watches, however, the pacing slows, the character motivations seem muddled, and the formerly charming eye-rolling cheesiness is... not so charming.  It doesn't help that we've since had Chris Nolan's Batman series and the Avengers franchise, films that strive not only to be good comic book movies, but good movies period.  And so while Sony's desire to reboot the whole thing is more than a little transparent (see here and here for the mess that is the film rights to Marvel characters), going back to square one was probably for the best. 

Among the more promising aspects of the early ASM trailers was that Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker/Spider-Man seemed actually, well, likable.  That's huge for a character whose biggest selling point has always been relateablity, something Tobey Maguire never quite managed in the role.  And the trailers did not lie.  Garfield almost-perfectly captures Parker's funny and sympathetic qualities, giving us a Spider-Man we want to root for.  That's the advantage of hiring a genuine fan of the character, I suppose.

About as good was Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy.  If comparing Garfield to Maguire was unfair, then comparing one actress to another actress in a different role is certainly unfair.  But screw it.  Stone kicks the hell out of Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane.  It's amazing what you can accomplish with a female lead when she's not selfish, overly-deified, and used for purposes beyond the distressed-damsel.  I don't know if producers plan to "Gwen Stacy" Gwen Stacy, but it would almost be a shame if they did, wasting one of the better love interests a comic book film has ever seen (it's a close competition with Hayley Atwell from Captain America: The First Avenger). 

Likable leads, however, are only half the equation.  It's at this point that the comparison to the previous films both helps and hurts ASM.  Spider-Man's origin story is one of the most iconic among superheroes, so I can understand the desire to rehash it better than I can with most other heroes.  And ASM does it much better than Raimi's Spider-Man did, with or without Macho Man Randy Savage (may he rest in peace), in large part because it doesn't fall victim to the pacing issues of that film: making Peter's trip to the location of the accident about more than getting bitten, getting the bite over with, letting his powers manifest quickly.  But even though it was moving faster, I was always aware that I had seen Peter do all this previously.  This problem continued, up through Uncle Ben's speeches on responsibility and Peter's realizations that being a superhero has its own built-in pitfalls.  Even the Peter's parents angle that was supposed to distinguish ASM was never really exploited (why shoot your load now, when there are sequels that need material?).  It felt too soon to see Spidey's beginning retold again and while that's not entirely the fault of the filmmakers, it does hurt. 

The villain, at least, should've been able to provide a marked contrast, but sadly never quite gets there.  Rhys Ifans' Curt Conners/The Lizard calls back to the motivational issues of Dr. Octopus and Sandman in the previous series.  He starts out typical scientist-doomed-by-his-creation, with a dash of big business forcing things that should never be, and that works for a while.  But the next thing we know Conners is thoroughly crazy (which we know because he's hearing voices, yes, just like Norman Osborne in Rami's first Spider-Man), which is a great excuse for Ifans to put on his evil-guy face; not that Ifans doesn't do that well--he handles the material like a champ--there's just not a lot for him to work with.  It would be one thing for Conners' transformation to make him think differently and understand that there could be something (good and ill) in his work that he had never realized.  I might even accept an evangelist/drug addict kind of angle, where he determines that everyone should experience the same Lizardy high he gets.  But when he's suddenly sympathetic and remorseful again at the end--after he's been cured, conveniently--his whole arc rings hollow. 

Sony is now promising a trilogy (stunning, right?).  The good news is that they have a decent base to build on and there's a lot in Spidey's world left to explore.  The bad news is that they only have the base and there's a lot in Spidey's world left to explore.  And while I think this crew has the skill to go places the last crew never could, they have some problems to sort out as they prepare to compete in an ever-improving field of comic book films. 

Grade: B-