Well, I was really excited for this one, as Peter Parker's High school time has never been thoroughly covered on the big screen. Of course, my comic book nerd-dom left me completely unimpressed, as Marc Webb decided that his "original" take on Spider-Man's origin is better than the canonical story that Steve Ditko and Stan Lee created decades ago. I understand the desire to update certain franchises in order to make it more accessible to a younger generation, but without a groundbreaking or wholly original plot (like X-Men: First Class for example), the entire thing really just falls short. What resulted in this case were two-dimensional characters that I found myself not really caring for. Sure, the "coincidences" that were thrown in to fix the huge plot gaps made enough sense, but it felt like a forced rewiring of a perfect system, instead of an organic evolution of one of my favorite characters of all time; Peter Parker. Whoa... I feel myself getting long winded on this one; I just shed a tear. Anyway! In the movie, Peter Parker gets picked on. Great. He has a thing for Gwen Stacy. Great. He gets bitten by a spider, except it really ties into his parents' secret line of work with radioactive spiders? Okay... I can buy it. The problems though, are that Peter is way to confident here. Way too dreamy, and is bound to be a fucking supervillain because: wait for it... He never fucking learns that with great power comes great responsibility! Throughout the movie, Spider-Man goes around hunting his uncle's killer. He never finds him, and instead beats up the Lizard, who is trying to destroy the city. There's a HUGE problem with that plot alone. His anger towards his uncle's killer is never resolved, he never learns any life lessons, and effectively fails to come of age in this story. The entire point of the original Peter Parker story is that he comes of age. It's the classic coming of age story. There's tragedy and heroic moments and tons and tons of failures and in the end, he finally becomes a man and starts dealing with life and his superpowers in a very responsible and caring way. In this movie, there is no conflict. No teenager torn, no love story haunted by demons, just a sappy teen-romance that is coated with Spider-Powers and a supervillain. The CGI was pretty cool though, and the fight scenes were fast-paced and sharp. I liked Captain Stacy, as his characterization was the only one that matched the original depiction. If you've never heard the story of Peter Parker, then I suppose this movie will seem like a triumph to you. It has a concise layout, and there is the illusion of character growth throughout. But if you know Peter Parker, then you're in for two weird hours with strangers. Spider-Man's "untold story" would be better off staying that way. The plot left me unimpressed but for looking cool, I'll give it 2 stars.
Ryan's Retort:
The main problem that I had with "The Amazing Spider-Man" is that it just wasn't different enough from the original "Spider-Man" to even warrant it being made in the first place. There was just so much time wasted on unnecessary back story; it takes literally an hour before we even see Peter Parker become a full-fledged Spider-Man. Like we all already know how he becomes Spider-Man, there isn't a single person on the planet who doesn't know that. I mean, the other movie just came out like ten years ago. They could have summed up all of that origin story in a quick animation during the opening credits and then jumped right into Peter Parker already being Spider-Man! Ugh! Anyway. Since Jelani already went over why "The Amazing Spider-Man" was not as amazing as it should have been, I'll highlight some of the better aspects of the film. First of all, I think Andrew Garfield made for a pretty good Spider-Man. He's more quippy than Tobey Maguire and he uses his webs a hell of a lot more. In fact, that was one of the main things that they did right. Peter Parker making and designing his own web shooters with his own genius brain trumps Peter Parker miraculously developing his own webbing inside of his body somehow any day of the week. The Lizard was also pretty terrific, even though I would have liked it more if he wasn't able to speak. Also, it wouldn't hurt to have him actually wearing the labcoat for more than a few seconds. But that's just the huge nerd inside me talking. Overall, I felt that "The Amazing Spider-Man" was very underwhelming. Often times I found myself feeling bored, which is not something that I should ever feel during a FUCKING SPIDER-MAN MOVIE. FUCK. However, the action sequences were pretty cool to look at and the acting was pretty decent. If I were to watch this movie again, I'd most likely just fast-forward through all of the kissing and touching faces. Hopefully, the next two movies dwell less on the teenage romance and more on the supervillain fights.
Overview
Rating: 3 out of 5 unnecessary reboots
Did Jelani Fall Asleep: Surprisingly no, Brian did
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