Good movie, same general story but with a different execution.

Rating: Null/10 (2 December 2012)

I like the Spider-Man movies and own DVDs of the series with Toby Mcguire. After I watched this new one, I popped in the 2002 movie to compare them back-to-back.
While the overall story of a high school boy, interested in photography, and being raised by his aunt and uncle, becoming Spider Man after being bitten by an engineered spider during a class field trip is the same in both movies, most everything else is different.
I found myself trying to guess who Mary Jane Watson was going to be, but this one has no Mary Jane Watson. Instead it has Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, whose dad is a policeman. I like Stone, and she did fine here, but I found myself wondering why she was not MJ.
Andrew Garfield is the newest Spider-Man, also known as Peter Parker. He of course plays it a bit differently and I enjoyed his performance.
The core of this story involves a scientist who had known and worked with Peter's dad, Rhys Ifans (the absurd 'Spike' in 'Notting Hill') as Dr. Curt Connors. Somewhere along the line he has lost his right arm below the elbow, and his research seeks to use lizard DNA engineered to regenerate limbs in humans. Not everything goes as he would like and when he injects himself the arm grows, but he also turns into a giant and very vicious lizard with human speech and intelligence. He becomes the villain that Spider-Man must defeat. Their fights destroy lots of stuff!
Overall a fine movie, I enjoyed it.