Haven't we seen this before?

Rating: 6/10 (25 March 2017)

The Amazing Spider-Man is one of those films which your nostalgia prevents you from liking. There are a few positives to this film, such as the chemistry between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, some of the fight scenes and Garfield's Spidey was a fresh take on the character, although somewhat lacking.
What bogs this film down for me is the fact that this is just the first Spider-Man again. There are scenes which are practically copied from the first, such as Peter taking pictures of Gwen. He then gets bitten by the spider and finds out he has his powers by easily beating someone up. The villain of this film is, again, a scientist Peter admires but then has his funding pulled, so performs his experiment on himself and kills those who took away his funding. Oh, the villain is also green.
Uncle Ben is shot again because of Peter's incompetence and this leads to one of my biggest gripes with the film: Peter Parker doesn't fight crime because of the responsibility he feels over his Uncle's murder, he fights crime to seek revenge for Ben which completely undermines the character. This is why it annoys me when people call him the 'Definitive Spider-Man' when all he does is spout lame jokes at the wrong times. His revenge plot is also forgotten about halfway into the movie and never picked up again, it takes the video game for the sequel to resolve that thread.
In terms of the film's score, there is not much to rave about, it does what it needs to do and nothing more. It's disappointing considering we had Danny Elfman's score for the previous films which managed to be fun while also emotional when it needed to be. It also had memorable motifs which I just can't pinpoint in The Amazing Spider-Man Overall, this film is a competent reboot and does what it needs to keep the franchise afloat (until The Amazing Spider-Man 2 at least, which forced them to give creative control back to Marvel).