The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

It takes some guts to completely reboot the Spider-Man franchise just five years after the third and final film in Sam Raimi’s trilogy. It takes serious guts to turn said reboot into an origin story that is eerily similar to Raimi’s first film in too many ways to ignore. It hits all the same beats, but it’s apparently a whole new experience just because they went through the trouble of changing a few nouns. Thus we have The Amazing Spider-Man, a slick, anonymous mess that has no personality except for the brief moments of humor and fun that are usually provided by the actors. This film would be far less egregious if it just told a new Spider-Man story instead of taking us through interminable sequences of exposition that we’ve already seen played out. It’s unmistakably a product of the Marvel film factory, but never has their formula backfired so severely.

After building up an impressive resume that includes Never Let Me Go and The Social Network, Andrew Garfield steps into the role of Peter Parker; a nerdy high school student who is bitten by a radioactive spider and develops, well, you know the rest. After his parents die, he lives with his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field) while trying to piece together his parents’ story. Meanwhile, he attempts to woo the brainy, popular Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) and uses to new-found powers to start a one-man assault on various New York City criminals. Spider-Man becomes an infamous figure in the city, and the police captain most obsessed with capturing him (Denis Leary) also happens to be Gwen’s father. Oh, and Peter’s father’s good friend Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) becomes The Lizard and starts wreaking havoc all over town.

Almost nothing in The Amazing Spider-Man is done in an interesting or unique way. Much of the film’s first half—too much, in fact—is devoted to Peter’s life in high school and his slow transformation into everyone’s favorite superhero. This is the part of the story that everyone knows, yet this film decides to focus so squarely on it that the film’s few original elements are unwisely put on the backburner. As such, the film never gets the opportunity to develop the other characters or the New York City universe. Nothing of import happens for so much of the film that when the actual Spidey vs. Lizard stuff kicks into gear it has to fly by at lightning speed. Connors’ transformation into The Lizard means nothing because we don’t know anything about him, which is a stark contrast to the villains in Raimi’s first two films. Often, The Amazing Spider-Man has no interest in being anything more than a clinical trip down a checklist of required plot points. You could probably make an entertaining movie out of this if you choose to linger on the interesting plot points rather than the boring ones; that's just not what happens here.

The film doesn’t fare much better from the visual standpoint. Let’s face it: there’s no longer any real thrill to watching Spidey swing through New York’s skyline. We’ve seen it a billion times, and any attempts by The Amazing Spider-Man to spice it up mostly fall flat. The situation could have been salvaged by The Lizard, so long as he looked fierce and original. Well, that’s not the case. More often than not he looks like a cartoon character, and the CGI never seems as convincing as it needs to be. He looks less like a Jurassic Park creature and more like a bigger, greener version of the Woola from John Carter. I’ve said it before, but CGI works best when it’s the frosting on the cake rather than the cake itself. In The Amazing Spider-Man it’s used so much that it no longer feels like we’re watching these events play out in the real world. Or at least a real world.

I don’t think there’s a person associated with The Amazing Spider-Man that I don’t respect and/or enjoy. It was directed by Marc Webb, who made the terrific (500) Days of Summer back in 2009. One of the writers was James Vanderbilt, who wrote one of my favorite films of last decade in Zodiac. (Though that is probably “A David Fincher film” first and foremost.) As far as the cast is concerned, I thought Andrew Garfield’s performance in The Social Network was worthy of awards recognition, I believe Emma Stone is terrific, and if you don’t like Martin Sheen or Sally Field you’re lying to yourself. Yet all of this talent is wasted on material that isn’t worthy of existing, and no one involved is able to elevate it.

Perhaps my opinion would be different if Raimi’s Spider-Man films didn’t exist, but the fact is they do and all three of them—yes, Spider-Man 3 included—are way more unique and entertaining than The Amazing Spider-Man. I don’t think it’s wrong to compare this film to Raimi’s trilogy, because when you take a franchise that had personality and turn it into a shiny, generic and boring product like this you are just asking for the criticism. Raimi’s original Spider-Man was—along with X-Men—the film that kicked off a decade of success for Marvel. Since then, they’ve become more of a machine than a film studio, and now they’ve repaid Raimi's efforts by brushing his work aside and creating a film that attempts to tell the same story but pales in comparison every step of the way. There’s nothing inherently wrong with making a new Spider-Man film with this same cast and crew. It’s much more disheartening that this is the film they chose to make.

Grade: D+

P.S. - I didn't address it above, but James Horner's musical score drove me nuts as well. If you like being told what to feel every second, then you'll probably love it.