Enjoyable but extremely redundant.

Rating: 6/10 (8 July 2012)

I have to admit after seeing the trailers and publicity for this movie, I wasn't exactly hyped for it. Although, once the reviews came in I actually thought to myself "Actualy, this could be quite good. Enjoyable anyway." I was half right. It was very enjoyable, but the main problem with this film is, it just feels completely and utterly redundant.
You see, i'm in the minority who actually does rather like the first 3. Well, I say 'first 3'. I thought the third was atrociously bad, but I can watch the first two and still be rather entertained. When it was confirmed that the franchise would be rebooted though, I immediately thought "This is far too early for a reboot, it's too soon, it just feels like they're trying to cash in on the darker rebooted superhero movies." and that's pretty much exactly what they've done. The entire plot just feels like a rehash from 10 years ago, just told differently. If this was the first Spider-Man film in 15 years or something, you know, just enough to time to let the last trilogy settle, then I wouldn't really have a problem with it. But it just feels really unnecessary. Then there's the whole thing about this movie being 'The Untold Story', which after the credits roll, still remains untold. There's virtually nothing learnt about the death of Parkers parents. It's just used as a way to bring Lizard into it.
If they just made this 'Spider-Man 4' and didn't bother with the whole reboot thing, it would've had more time to expand on the death of his parents, and actually bring some form of mystery into it, then it would've probably been a very good film. It's like they tried to do a 'Batman Begins' and lost their nerve 20 minutes in and turned it into another Spiderman film and not something new and interesting.
Oh, and by the way, the 3D is awful. I really wanted a 2D showing but 3D was the only one available. I'm not exaggerating when I say this, but I sat with the glasses off for most of the film and it made no difference. I'm not a fan of 3D anyway, but it does give a sense of... joy when something flies out the screen at you, as bad and pointless as it is. With this it just felt that I was sitting watching a 2D film with glasses on.
The thing is though, I did enjoy it. It was a good waste of a few hours, but there's nothing really original in it. Although the cast was great. I honestly did find Andrew Garfield marvellous. He's definitely so much better in the role than Toby Maguire, and really did bring some sense of danger and menace to it. The thing with Garfied is, is that he has this great screen presence and can carry a movie totally on his own. He's brought so much believability and realism to it, that you can't help but be taken in by his performance. Although, I enjoyed the scenes with Peter more than I did with Spider-Man. Even though I found this movie really redundant, I did feel that Garfield was definitely the strongest aspect of it, and despite my feelings on this movie, part of me really is looking forward to the next one, mainly because of Garfields performance and how uplifting the ending is.
Overall a good waste of a few hours. Very nice performances and a good cast, but at the end of the day, just a pointless rehash.