Unbelievably awful.

Rating: 1/10 (20 November 2012)

My mom and I both knew going into this movie that it was going to be terrible, but neither of us realized just how terrible it was going to be. Thank god we watched it at home so we could openly criticize and scoff at every stupid aspect of it. Off the top of my head:

Peter. What the hell happened? He is a cocky hipster little jerk who skateboards and reveals himself as Spider-Man at the drop of a hat. I loved Tobey, I rooted for him, I cared for him, I wanted him to succeed. But I just wanted to punch Andrew in his stupid face every time he was on screen. And I actually like Andrew Garfield! But he is NOT Peter Parker. They butchered his character and it is an outright disgrace.

Everything feels completely forced and contrived and like it is trying way too hard to be "young" and "edgy" and "cool." The number of times I rolled my eyes, shook my head in disbelief, or simply uttered sounds of disgust...The whole thing is ridiculous.

It is almost entirely unwatchable. I could re-watch the first two Spider-Mans forever, because they are entertaining, nicely-paced, well-casted, and interesting. But I would never in a million years re-watch this movie ever again. I could hardly sit through it the first time. There is absolutely NO charm, humor, wit, or any warmth whatsoever. I couldn't care less for any of the characters. Not a single one.

In the original, Spider-Man (understandably) becomes famous and a well-known part of New York. You really got a sense that he was part of the community and people knew who he was. I loved all the press about him (plus, J. Jonah Jameson!) and the people interviewed. In this one, it's like no one even knows who he is. The man at the end sees an injured Spider-Man crawling up a building on TV and he's like "Hey, that's the guy who saved my son on the bridge!" Like he's just a completely unknown entity.

The pacing was horrific. It was so boring yet there was way too much going on at the same time. It switched focus and motives and you never really seemed to get any sense of what was going on and why. Who are these characters and why the hell are they doing what they're doing? And why should we possibly care?

Put simply, though the original movies are not perfect, I cannot stress enough how unbelievably superior they are to this atrocity. Every single scene and element of this movie was done so much better in the original: the character of Peter, his aunt and uncle, the love interest, getting bitten, discovering his powers, Ben's death, the villain, the action scenes, side characters, pacing, character development, musical score, etc.

I actually had to watch the original Spider-Man directly afterward as a palate cleanser, or else I would just be angry all night that this was ever even made.