Andrew Garfield plays Spider-man in the first of what may be a new trilogy of remakes

Rating: 8/10 (12 April 2013)

It seems odd to remake a trilogy that only ended in 2007, but I suppose people just got bored without 'your friendly neighbourhood Spider-man' around and wanted more. But rather than add to the existing plot line, the producers opted to remake the originals, re-creating Peter Parker's character and some of the events that happen to him whilst also sharing some parallels with the originals. For example, we have to go through the Uncle Ben death all over again, but the reasons for his death change - Peter's entry into a wrestling tournament from the original is replaced by Peter visiting an off-licence to purchase a carton of milk, before being denied the purchase because he is 2 cents short. Although I think this change was unnecessary and made things worse, most of the changes made to the plot were for the better. Andrew Garfield makes a modest and likable Peter Parker, and the growth of his wit and confidence as the film progresses is credit to Garfield's ability to develop a character. There were several things that bothered me, though. Firstly that, because the spider that bit Peter was one of dozens of spiders with the same characteristics, surely anyone who had access to a key card to open the door could stumble in there and be given the same powers Peter has by another one of the spiders, right? And if that was the case, why didn't Dr. Connors just make more spiders to bite people with, the spiders that had been around since Peter's father left, rather than waste loads of time tying to generate a formula for cross- species genetics if all he wanted to do was make people stronger? Sticking with Dr. Connors for a moment, there were two things that didn't work for me about him. One, I'm sick of British bad guys, they just don't have the effect that they used to. Two, his idea was actually pretty awesome (who wouldn't rather be a giant invincible lizard than a human?) so I found myself wanting him to succeed at the end despite Spider-man being my favourite superhero. And then there's the constant issue of 'why are there so many conveniently-placed cranes in the Spider-man movies?', but that's unimportant, really. So, for some good action, acting and story line changes, I think this was a very worthy remake of the originals, so it gets 8/10 from me.