I love movies. More importantly, I love seeing movies before almost everyone else. Certain movies will get me to the theater at midnight, so I figured I’d see them first and write a review the next day so you can get a real review from someone that isn’t a Hollywood hack.
In this installment… The Amazing Spider-Man
In 2002, Sony subsidiary Columbia Pictures released the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man, starring Tobey McGuire as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson. The film went on to be a tremendous financial and critical success, spawning two sequels and, arguably, the subsequent wave of superhero movies we’ve seen since. Without Spider-Man and it’s predecessor, X-Men, proving to be a tremendous successes, we never would have gotten the Unified Marvel Film Universe and ultimately The Avengers.
The reason that the Mark Webb-directed The Amazing Spider-Man exists is due to a clause in the contract between Marvel and Columbia which states that Columbia had to continue making Spider-Man movies or the license would return to Marvel. This is, by the way, why five years after Spider-Man 3 we have a series reboot.
With all this being said, The Amazing Spider-Man is not a quickly hashed together remake of Spider-Man. It is a much different film; there is less of Raimi’s trademark “camp” and both the story and acting are truer to the comic book character, including Spider-Man’s infamous body count.
Spider-Man’s origin story is no secret: teenage nerd and loner Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive/mutant spider and gains super strength, super agility, the ability to stick to most surfaces, and a sixth “spider” sense that warns him when danger is approaching. In the Raimi films, Peter developed organic webshooters as part of his mutation; in the Webb film, Peter builds them himself.
In The Amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker is angry. He doesn’t have Tobey McGuire’s happy-go-lucky charm. He’s a damaged person, having lost his mother and father, and eventually his uncle, Ben Parker, who provides him with the impetus to become Spider-Man with his quote “With great power, comes great responsibility.”. Although Martin Sheen, who plays Uncle Ben in The Amazing Spider-Man, doesn’t utter those famous words, he does paraphrase them. Garfield’s Spider-Man is lean and lithe, and frankly a bit of a jackass, which is what Spider-Man should be.
The story follows Parker’s discovery of his powers, his debut as Spider-Man, and eventually his showdown with The Lizard, played as both human Curt Connors and a CGI beast by Rhys Ifans.
So, how does this film stack up, both in comparison to it’s predecessor as well as on it’s own? I enjoyed it a great deal. Andrew Garfield is a sarcastic and vulnerable Peter Parker, who comes home every night with bruises and cuts and still goes out the next night. Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy is a tragic figure, assuming you know her ultimate fate in the comics, but delivers an immensely entertaining experience here. While Tobey McGuire and Kirsten Dunst were meant to be high school students, you never quite believed it. With Garfield and Stone, they capture the awkwardness of being 18 while embracing the sense of invulnerability that comes with being young.
All in all, I’d highly recommend giving The Amazing Spider-Man a view.
