Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man is one of the most mixed-bag movies I've seen in quite some time. There are some really entertaining aspects to the film, and moments that I thought were really enjoyable, yet there are also plenty of moments that don't make a whole lot of sense and just aren't that well put together. I really wanted to enjoy this movie. I tried my hardest to. But I just couldn't shake the problems it has. While I was against the idea of a reboot on this series from the beginning, this has nothing to do with my opinion on the film. I'm fine with the idea of comic book movies rebooting themselves in order to keep things fresh. There are plenty of different comic book variations on characters like Spider-Man and Batman, so there's no doubt a chance for there to be many different variations of these characters on the big screen. What I didn't like about the film had nothing to do with its reboot aspect, but the fact that the film isn't well executed on many levels. I didn't like sitting through the origin story again because of the way it was told, and not because it was the origin story a second time.

This is a different, but not completely new, Spider-Man than we were used to with the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire trilogy. Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker/Spider-Man is arrogant, kind of an asshole, and an outsider. When he's Spider-Man, this works really well. Maybe it's my love of characters like Batman and Iron Man, but I like the cocky Spider-Man more than the friendly neighborhood/I'm also the narrator Spider-Man. But, what is really all that fundamentally new about this Spider-Man as opposed to the earlier version, besides the way he shoots webs from his wrist and his personality? If you're going to promise an "untold story" of this character, and say that he's going to be a different take, then that is what you need to deliver, especially when we've already seen this origin story only a decade ago.

There are many sub stories in the movie that are introduced, but then tossed to the side for the sake of big action scenes. Parker's search for Uncle Ben's (Martin Sheen) killer takes up a good ten minutes in the film, then is all of a sudden gone from the story entirely, without a single mention of it for the rest of the film. If it was something that would have been explained as to why it was cast aside, I could have lived with it, but there was no explanation. I also was jarred when Parker all of a sudden creates his suit and is overlooking New York City in no time. He goes from looking for his Uncle's killer in street clothes, then to street clothes with a mask, then to his full Spider-Man costume in what seems like less than five minutes. It's as if the filmmakers realized they spent too much time at this point on Peter Parker and rushed to get the costume on screen. Uncle Ben's death wasn't as much of an emotional gut check as I assumed it would be; in fact, it was almost laughable. There is a much more poignant, and emotional, death, towards the film's conclusion that shouldn't have hit as hard as Uncle Ben's.

I was disappointed that there wasn't more screen time with Aunt May (Sally Field). The character was such a big staple in the Raimi trilogy that I felt her character needed more screen time. She's also cast aside once Peter stops hunting for Uncle Ben's killer, showing up only a few times as if to remind the audience she's around, worrying about Peter. I also really didn't understand the storyline of Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) being a high school student who is also apart of the biggest research department at Oscorp. Maybe that's something that's in the comics (I'm not very familiar with Spider-Man lore), but it didn't make much sense that she has access to those chemicals, and moreover, knows the exact components she needs to make a certain formula later in the film.

Rhys Ifans is an excellent choice to play Dr. Curt Connors, as he just has that scientist/professor look to him, but, it's unclear what exactly his character's motivations are in the movie. He's a brilliant scientist who used to work with Peter's father on genetic mutations; he lost his arm in some sort of accident that is never really explained, or even explored, and, for whatever reason he's determined to change New York City into a crowd of mutated Lizard's because apparently, that's the logical step in evolution to him. Let's get past the fact that this is now the third Spider-Man film that has the mentor/idol to Peter turn into his nemesis. Let's instead think with the idea this is the first time this has happened in a Spider-Man film. It doesn't work because the relationship between Connors and Peter doesn't go as far as it should. The character needed to be more realized in the writing stage. One moment he's a brilliant scientist looking to cure mankind of all disease. In another, he's a sketchy guy with an even sketchier past who has a thing for cold-blooded animals. When he does transform to the Lizard, he's just a hulking monster who wants to kill Peter because he's in the way. It's hard to root for the superhero when you can't figure out the bad guy's motivations, even if they're just anarchy and chaos. If there would have been some sort of outlined back story to him it would have at least given the character some sort of reason to act the way he does, instead of just a means for big fight productions and an ending.

Throughout the marketing for The Amazing Spider-Man we were told this would be the untold story of Peter Parker's transformation to Spider-Man. Like I've already said, there's nothing here that we didn't see in the Raimi trilogy in terms of origin, besides some brief hints at Parker's parents. This was the most frustrating part of the film to me. In the beginning of the film we see that Peter's father Richard (Campbell Scott) was working on the genetic mutation that the film hints at throughout. There's several spider images scattered throughout his office, including a big (almost laughably so) one on his blackboard. Later, Dr. Connors hints that there were experiments done on humans with the genetic mutations, but that none of the subjects survived. It made me believe that the film really wanted to tell us, in a roundabout way, that Peter was one of these experiments, and that the spider bite that he got didn't give him his powers, but instead awakened some sort of genetic mutation that was planted in him by his father. So, in that instance, Peter never became Spider-Man, but was instead always destined to be Spider-Man.

Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, but there are a lot of scenes in the film that seem like they were edited out at the last minute. The trailers had hints at more scenes dealing with the sudden exit of Peter's parents that somehow didn't make their way into the film. Were these scenes so bad that Sony execs forced director Marc Webb to cut them out? I also had a problem with bringing the idea of Peter's parents into the film as a whole. When Peter is trying to learn more about his father's time at Oscorp, there's a brief moment when we see an online article with the headline that his parents died in a plane crash. Later, Peter complains to Uncle Ben that his father had the responsibility to be there for him, and yet he's not here. It's as if everyone thinks Peter's parents are still alive somewhere, yet there's that article saying they aren't, so who knows. I understand that they weren't going to give us all the answers in this film, as it's the first of a planned trilogy, but there needs to be a set idea going forward.

All that being said, there are parts of the movie I really enjoyed. Besides the chemistry between Stone and Garfield, the cinematography by John Schwartzman is really stunning at times, especially the wide shots of the city and the Oscorp tower. James Horner's score works really well in the movie's quieter moments, but is used far too much during the action scenes that it becomes a little annoying. Towards the end of the film, it felt like he was trying to find a main musical theme to the score, but couldn't figure out which one he liked most. The first trailer for the film also featured a long first person sequence of Spider-Man running along New York rooftops. It was something different and I was excited to see exactly how it would be used in the final film. Unfortunately, it's been diminished to nothing more than a gimmick that is inserted at awkward points towards the conclusion.

With the amount of success the film has had at the box office already, it's no surprise Sony has announced this is the first of a planned trilogy. My hope is that Sony takes a little more care with the other two films and not just continually make the same film over again (kind of like the last trilogy). The important thing for them to do is take the elements that worked here, and if they flush out all of the issues it had, and build off the positive elements in smart ways, it can work. I probably won't end up ever liking The Amazing Spider-Man, but I hope I can end up enjoying the series as a whole. If not, there's always the next reboot, right?

C/C-