A Massive Improvement

Rating: 8/10 (8 July 2012)

'The Amazing Spiderman' is a film that has been greatly anticipated but has also made a lot of people worry. The re-boot of the franchise so quickly after Sam Raimi's attempt seems ridiculous as there is not really a new generation of children yet to be introduced to Spiderman since 'Spiderman 3' was just released in 2007. I think director Marc Webb has taken this opportunity to fix what was wrong with the previous trilogy.
The script is great, the film promised more information relating to Peter Parker's back-story i.e. what happened to his parents but you do not get a great deal of NEW information. Compared to Raimi's trilogy there are only a few extra bits in the beginning. Aside from that, the story is different because it sees Spiderman deal with a new villain, the Lizard. The whole story was well-written and the Lizard had a lot to do with Parker's identity.
The acting was good, Andrew Garfield is already far better than Tobey Maguire. I think this may be because the film focuses on Parker's life in high school rather than in adult life so you see him in some scenes behaving like a real teenager which is great. Rhys Ifans was good but not great, he did portray both sides of his character well but I think there was a lot of room for improvement there. Emma Stone was really good; she played the love interest of Spiderman very well if you compare it to Kirsten Dunst's performance in the previous trilogy where she had no on-screen presence whatsoever.
One thing that was really impressive was the special effects, they tried to use as little CGI as possible when it came to stunts but for scenes where Spiderman is swinging through the air it did look a lot more realistic, unlike Raimi's trilogy where scenes like this would look too weightless, thankfully in this film they have managed to sort this out so it really does look like it is a real person swinging through the air. The effects used to create the Lizard were very well done too, the whole design of the villain was great, particularly the face which looked very creepy, especially when he spoke.
Overall, I would recommend this film as it is a massive improvement on the previous trilogy. If you've not seen a Spiderman film before this is a great place to start. Andrew Garfield is a great superhero and I can't wait to see what they do next.