A lot of people complained when Sony announced that they would be rebooting the Spider-Man franchise so close to Sam Raimi's Spidey trilogy, but Spider-man was such a lucrative franchise, with Raimi and Tobey McGuire opting not to do a fourth, Sony needed to reboot. Was a reboot a good thing?, I thought so and I was proved right as The amazing Spider-man went on to make $752,000,000 making it the fourth highest grossing film of the year. Check out my review after the jump....
I remember vividly as a
child that I had a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #1 and what did I do as
a child to that copy? I drew all over it with crayons, yes a comic
book which is now worth £31,000 pounds in mint condition and I
destroyed it, however I do believe that it was a reprint and not an
original which strangely enough is how the film The Amazing
Spider-Man felt. Don't get me wrong The Amazing Spider-Man was a
superb film and I found that I enjoyed it slightly more than Sam
Raimi's 2002 big screen version.
The reason for me
referring to this new Spider-Man as a reprint is mainly due to the
first half of the film which brings us another origin story which
basically retreads the same plot as the first film, with only a few
details changed. Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive spider at
Oscorp and starts to develop spider like powers, he falls out with
his uncle and after uncle Ben's death decides to track down his
killer by donning a costume effectively become your friendly
neighbourhood Spider-man.
The few things that
they changed are quite good and add a bit more to the story. Peter
Parker is less a nerd and more the quiet skater boy outsider, still
picked on by Flash Thompson, Andrew Garfield's Parker is far removed
from the Tobey McGuire Parker of the previous trilogy and brings a
sense of Teen Angst to the role which was unfortunately missing from
Raimi's movies which makes this Parker a far more believable
character in a film filled with completely unbelievable characters.
In this film we're introduced to Gwen Stacy, a replacement for
Mary-Jane Watson. Stacy was Parker's first true love in the comic
books and it was interesting to see how people would react to a
spiderman film that was devoid of miss Watson who viewers had lived
with throughout the previous film and to be honest I always found
Mary-Jane to be a bit of a pain in the arse. Gwen Stacy is not a pain
in the arse and I found, while watching the film, Gwen to be the
better of the two characters. This could very well be down to Emma
Stone who I think is one of the best actresses making films right
now, the brilliant Easy A is proof that this girl has the chops. The
final change that I liked was the use of the webslingers, created by
Parker that uses this very strong webbing devised by Oscorp. This was
better than Parker producing the web as he could run out at anytime.
The things I didn't like were the new suit, it looked too scaly and
the transformation seemed a bit too fast for my liking, something the
Raimi films handled well.
The second part of the
film follows Rhys Ifans' Dr. Curt Conners, the genius scientist
working on the transformation of Lizard healing cells into Cancer
patients and disabled people, tests his formula on himself with the
hope of regenerating his missing arm, this does work but also has
severe side effects as it causes Conners to transform into an 8ft
Lizard bent on destruction and who plans to turn all of New York into
Lizard via a machine placed on top of Oscorp towers. It's upto
Spidey, now considered to be a dangerous vigilante to stop him and
earn the respect of Gwen's cop father and the city.
I like the inclusion of
the Lizard as Conners appeared throughout each of Raimi's movies,
played by Dylan Baker, and even though we knew that Conners was the
Lizard, Raimi never fullfilled the hopes of comic book fans by
including the Lizard character in the film. The rest of the cast are
great, Sally Field plays Aunt May, Field has always been a great
actress and since Eye For An Eye she's not really done much feature
work, appearing mostly in TV shows like Brothers and Sisters and E.R.
But fear not Sally Field fans, not only is she in The Amazing
Spider-man but she also appears in Steven Spielberg's historical
drama Lincoln this year. Dennis Leary is cast as Gwen Stacy's father
and I was fully expecting him to do his Edgar Friendly 'you know what
I want' speech but instead we just these blinding white teeth that
have suddenly appeared in his mouth, but Leary is always a great
watch and Spidey is no exception. Martin Sheen plays uncle Ben and
again, like field Sheen has had a career renaissance since The West
Wing. He was wonderful in The Way which was directed by his son
Emilio Estevez and the wonderfully quirky Seeking A Friend For The
End of The World. I found Sheen's Uncle Ben to be superior to the
late Cliff Robertson's and I think Robertson was a tremendous
underrated actor.
Director Marc Webb
((500) Days Of Summer) could have taken Spider-man in a more darker
direction but ops not to do that but keep the popcorn aesthetics of
The Avengers and the Raimi Spiderman movies which I don't think would
have worked if he'd taken it down the Dark Knight avenue of film
making, Spidey isn't that tortured soul Batman is. One really
fantastic sequence which ends with the reveal of the suit is a first
person perspective of Parker swinging and jumping from building to
building with only his hands visible much like the video game
Mirror's Edge, so instead of being a bland carbon copy of Raimi's
Spider-man, Webb brings a style of his own.
Overall The Amazing
Spider-man brought nothing new to the Spider-man franchise and it
would have been cool to see a 4th Raimi film but Marc Webb
has still made an exceptionally fun comic book movie with a new and
slightly better Peter Parker and a great villain in the character of
The Lizard. At 134 minutes, the time flew by which is always a plus
in my book because you don't want an action film that is over two
hours in length dragging on for what seems like 7 hours (for example
The Avengers, i'm sorry but I didn't really like it). Garfield was
great as Parker and Emma Stone is just a wonderfully beautiful
actress. I'm interested to see where this new franchise goes, who
will be the villain next?...Mysterio, The Shocker, Vulture or maybe
even Kraven The Hunter, who knows but with the wealth of evil dooers
in the Spiderman universe, anything is possible. I really enjoyed The
Amazing Spider-man, more than I thought I would and for that I give
the film 4 stars.
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