A reboot that's "webbed together" pretty well

Rating: 8/10 (6 July 2012)

"The Amazing Spider-Man" exceeded my expectations. I am somewhat of a fan of the Raimi films and I was just as doubtful as anybody else when I heard that Andrew Garfield was gonna be the new Spider-Man. I saw him in "The Social Network", he's a good actor; but I didn't expect him to be a better Spider-Man than Tobey Maguire. Having seen this film, Garfield is not only a better Peter Parker, his character is a lot more interesting. The problem I had with Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker was that he was just a good-hearted geek, sort of the generic hero. With Garfield's portrayal, Peter Parker is not just the shy and nerdy outcast, he's pretty street-smart and courageous; the kind of outcast people generally look up to. He has a pretty good sense of humor which is well reflected in the more decently written dialogue than the Raimi films. Not to mention, he's much more of a genius than Maguire's Spider-Man for solving an algorithm (a reference to Eduardo from "The Social Network" who was also portrayed by Garfield?) that ultimately creates the Lizard and builds his own web. The fight scenes are pretty good, he constantly gets bruised and his superpowers are well portrayed compared to the Raimi films. As one can already assume from the title, the film is certainly more faithful to the comic books but also pays some homage to the Raimi films as well. The supporting characters were well portrayed and were definitely more interesting than ones from the Raimi films. Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy was smart and had some pretty good chemistry with Garfield's Spider-Man. The only flaw in the film was the Lizard. He's the typical mad-scientist with the Jekyll and Hyde-ish approach that's a little reminiscent of the Doc Ock character from "Spider-Man 2". The filmmakers definitely could have put more emphasis on Dr. Connors and Peter's father's relationship as well more dialogue between Spider-Man and The Lizard in the end. The only thing that saved the Lizard from being the worst villain is that he's put in jail and will very likely appear in the sequel; which would indicate that there will be some more character development for Dr. Connors. With more realistic characters and dialogue, this film is definitely a good addition to the string of awesome Marvel superhero films that began with "Iron Man".