Leave Garfield alone

Rating: Null/10 (4 September 2015)

A lot of people are hating on this movie, and recently it's been announced that Andrew Garfield is being replaced by another actor. Garfield was never the problem-- I always bought him as a high school/university student (looks young.)
No, the problem was the direction and stories of the movies. Like with the first movie--why would you, for the millionth time, feature Peter Parker's origin story? We all already know he was bitten by a radioactive spider-- we grew up with cartoon after cartoon, comic after comic, and *three* movies directed by Sam Raimi featuring the same back story.
Seeing the origin (yet) again sloooowed the movie to a (spider) crawl. The first film takes *foever* to get going, what with the spider bite, uncle Ben getting murdered for his $30 bucks or whatever, and Aunt May's secret hash addiction-- and the costume in the first movie was just bad.
Not to mention The Lizard had as much appeal/personality/charisma as a plank of wood. The Lizard is meant to hate humanity-- in the comics, he hates humans like how the KKK hates non-whites-- and that's how he should've been played (as an insane, rage-fueled species-ist.) The real Lizard foams at the mouth when he sees us naked apes walking about our cities and shopping malls, paving over his green forests to make our concrete jungles. Seeing but a shred of that energy would've helped the first movie.
The second movie was alright, in my opinion-- Jamie Fox(x?) played a sympathetic villain who wasn't a mad scientist like Doc Ock, Norm Osbourne, or The Lizard-- he was a company worker twisted by social isolation (something that most Internet dwellers can identify with.) Electro was cool, had a cool theme, and I'd love to see Fox (two x's? WTH?) reprise the role if there is a sinister six movie.
Where the second ASM mucks up is the Green Goblin (yawn) and the Emma Stone romance subplot (tripple-whammy-with-cheese yawn.) HOLY LORD the scenes with Emma Stone dragged way, way too long. Yes-- Peter misses her, blah-blah-blah hey can we see some more of Spiderman not being a total pansy please? How about you have him tease JJ Jameson, fight The Shocker, or fight some bullies, 'k?
Don't get me wrong-- romantic trouble has always been part of the Peter Parker/Spiderman formula, but it was unbalanced in this movie. Maybe they were trying to cash in on the fact Emma Stone is a bankable actress right now (hashtags #overrated #loud) but romantic troubles bother Parker at the edge of his mind, while he has to save NY as Spiderman. He was never obsessed with his girlfriends to the point of stalking, like in this second movie.
Then there's the Green Goblin. He looked like an 80's rock star riddled with every STD and STI in the book. They've fouled up his design so many times-- his metal-plastic mask in the first trilogy was one of the weaker aspects. If you want to see what he SHOULD look like, watch the uber creepy animatronic mask on youtube from Studio ADI.
So there you have it-- Garfield was never the problem. A tedious first movie, with an overlong romantic subplot and a half-baked secondary villain were the problems of the ASM movies. Now let Garfield go back to eating his lasagna (I'm so funny.)