Promises the 'untold story' but gives us largely the same as before; it just ends up being redundant and generic.

Rating: 4/10 (14 February 2018)

'The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)' promises the 'untold story' and yet gives us largely the same origin as before, oddly borrowing some specific elements that surely wouldn't be included if they hadn't been in the '2002' incarnation, while removing most of the connecting tissue between the events and thus severely reducing their impact. Peter Parker - here, a skate-boarding hipster who's idea of awkward is to talk too much but always manage to say the right thing - is bitten by a random spider, that isn't set up as being genetically modified, while visiting a lab. Within a couple of scenes, he is crawling about the walls with ease. It's almost like they couldn't be bothered to retell the origin story and so decided to rush through it, making the entire endeavour rather redundant as it's almost assumed you've seen the prior trilogy anyway. Even when the web-slinging action starts - which is well done for the most part and compounded by some believable visual effects - you just don't care. Plus, it doesn't help that the film is painfully generic, too, both in terms of the story-telling and the directing. At with least Raimi's trilogy, even when it was at it's worst it was still interesting. 4/10