Review of The Amazing
Spider-Man
I’m going to start this review like I do all my reviews—I’m
going to start with the preproduction and move into generalities of the film,
commenting on things that will not ruin any of the major plot points of the
film if you have not yet seen it. Then I’ll follow that up with an in-depth
analysis of everything which will include spoilers and can be read after you
see the movie.
Acting: 7/10
Story: 7/10
Effects: 8.5/10
Overall: 7.75/10
When I first heard that Sony had dropped negotiations with Sam Raimi to direct a fourth Spider-Man movie I was a bit skeptical. I mean, Spider-Man 3 was not nearly as good as Spider-Man 2, but I didn’t hate it. I kind of enjoyed parts of it—even though it suffered from Joel Schumacher syndrome in that it had two too many villains. But the studio’s decision to go with someone else wasn’t a shocker after the critical failure of the last one (and let’s be honest, lots of people jumped on the hate bandwagon because the popular opinion was negative; why else would it have made the money it did if it was so bad?). Then Sony announced that not only would they be switching directors, but that they would be rebooting the entire franchise from the ground up, essentially erasing all of the mythology created over the last ten years. New actors, new mythology, new suit, new everything. So, yeah, I was a bit grumpy after all I had invested in my fandom. But I kept an open mind because, after all, it was the only way I was going to get to see Spider-Man on the big screen again.
When they revealed Andrew Garfield had been cast as Peter
Parker I was. . . indecisive. Another citizen of the United
Kingdom had been given the part of one of America Garfield
And speaking of being “suited.” A few weeks after filming
began, the first official photo of Andrew in the new Spidey suit hit the net.
It was a morose picture of a battered and dirty, maskless Peter Parker, his
suit with huge claw marks on it. At this point is where the second major rift
happened in the fandom world. Much like the outright hatred of the new U.S.S. Enterprise from J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, people started swearing not
to see the movie based on a single still image. I was . . . again, indecisive.
Yes, the suit looked like it was made of pieces of basketballs sewn together
and painted red and blue. It didn’t have that silky sheen of spandex—nor did it
look like Peter had crafted this outfit on his own (a major flaw that the first
series suffered from). But that wasn’t the huge news. The major reveal was the
mechanical web-shooters. Raimi worked hard to force the idea of the organic
ones on us, and it started to take hold, so much so that even the comics
adapted them for a time. But, again, this news put a huge frowny face on fans
who simply refused to see someone else’s vision of the character. Then a few
more photos turned up of the full suit revealing the gold-colored eyepieces and
I was still not thrilled, but willing to wait until some kind of teaser trailer
popped up to see the suit in action. After all, I wasn’t big on the raised
webbing on the earlier costumes until I actually saw how it functioned on film.
I was impressed with the teaser released last year. More
than that, I was intrigued. There seemed to be a nice mix of character and
action as well as a bit more of a nod to the origins of the character. So I
waited patiently.
If you’ve made it this far, good for you because now I get
to talk about the movie.
The film opens on a little-explored chapter in young Peter’s
life: his childhood. We are treated to a mystery right away in the ransacking
of Mr. Parker’s home office that Peter discovers during a game of
hide-and-seek. Right away the story takes off as the child is whisked away to
his aunt and uncle’s house (played by Sally Field and Martin Sheen,
respectively). Mr. Parker is vague about details and his final words to his son
are “Be good.” Instantly it is present day and Peter is at high school. From
here the story drags a bit as we see Peter being bullied by Flash Thompson, as
well as allusion to Peter’s fondness for photography.
Also in this first segment are all of the necessary
character informational scenes that are needed during an “origin” story of this
sort. Peter being a science nerd (something that was kind of left out of the
Raimi trilogy); Peter being uncomfortable around girls; Peter being a victim.
But there is also a pivotal scene in which a pre-powers Peter shows us his
tendency to stand up for the little guy. These scenes are well-acted and do a pretty
good job of portraying life in high school—though they all seem to go to
Midtown Science High School, so I’m not sure if that is an advanced school or
something, but Flash isn’t really the science type, so I’m not sure how that
fit in.
That’s when everything changes for Peter and everyone around
him. He discovers his father’s old briefcase, one that was entrusted to Ben and
May by Peter’s father with a promise to keep it (and Peter) safe. I won’t spoil
what’s in the briefcase here, but suffice it to say, its contents lead Peter to
seek out Dr. Curt Connors at Oscorp by sneaking into their intern program. There
he bumps into Gwen Stacy, who works as an intern to the aforementioned doctor.
After more than a little flirting, Peter wanders off and finds himself in a
room full of spiders who are spinning on some kind of device to harvest their
webbing (under a blacklight for some reason). No need to go into great detail
about what happens here—it’s pretty self-explanatory. Boom. Spider powers.
The next chunk of the story is dedicated to Peter exploring
his new powers, starting with a somewhat humorous and expertly choreographed
scene on a subway train. Here we see Peter starting to come out of his shell
and he explores all these cool new things he can do. He is both awed as a
teenager and intrigued as a scientist. Also prevalent is the fact that director
Marc Webb made it very clear that he was going to do a lot of practical stunts
as opposed to relying on the rubbery and cartoonish style of CG. And it works very
well here. Watching an animated humanoid bounce around in all of its digital
glory is well and good, but it lacks that verisimilitude at someone like
Richard Donner put into Superman with
the use of cranes and wires to pull Christopher Reeve off the ground.
From here on out the story gets complicated and to discuss
it too much would end up with spoilers all over the place, so I’ll hold back on
that until a little later. But here’s what I can say: The Amazing Spider-Man is probably the second best portrayal of the
webbed wonder since 2004’s Spider-Man 2.
The acting, for the majority, was excellent and could have
been excellent even without the Spidey element. This was just an all-around
well-acted film. Garfield did a great job as the spastic teen Peter who bridges
the gap into over-confidence after he gets his powers. Martin Sheen pulls of a fabulous
Uncle Ben that puts that not-acting touch that Cliff Robertson missed. Sally
Field as Aunt May was overshadowed by her reduced role (in this film), but her
scenes were strong and she brought Aunt May back into the realm of
believability—most of the incarnations (on-screen and in the comics have her as
just plain old). Rhys Ifans was great as Dr. Connors, but his Lizard was shaky
and over-acted. Emma Stone, while fun to look at and dream about, might not
have been the right choice to play Gwen. Her strength as a woman (as an actress
and a character) really made it hard for me to believe that she needed saving;
more that she only needed help cleaning up the mess after she kicked ass—and yet
a pivotal scene has her hiding in a closest.
The effects were top-notch! Many a mile has been crossed in
the advance of technology in the decade since the first film, and the blending
of CG and live-action stunts was relatively smooth in most cases. Unfortunately,
everything that was great about the effects was severely crushed by the
awkwardness of the CG Lizard. Though he was 8-feet tall, green, and has a tail,
his face was far too human. I think the design would have been right up the
alley for, say, Killer Croc in a Batman movie. But Lizard only looked partly
transformed most of the time. I was hoping for a nice mix between something
like a Jurassic Park raptor and Dolph
Lundgren.
Well, that does it for Part 1. Part 2 should be along
sometime soon. Maybe after I see The Dark
Knight Rises.
