A much less clever and engaging take on the spider-man origin story

Rating: 5/10 (7 July 2012)

THIS REVIEW IS AIMED AT READERS WHO HAVE ALREADY SEEN THE MOVIE AND ARE CURIOUS ABOUT OTHERS OPINIONS, NOT PEOPLE TRYING TO SEE WHETHER THE AMAZING SPIDER MAN IS WORTH YOUR TIME AND MONEY. SPOILER: IT'S NOT!!
Despite my unfavorable opinion of this movie, I'm going to start off with what I liked about The Amazing Spider-man. First off, as far as visuals go, this movie was well directed. The first person shots, segments of spidey web slinging around the city, and some cool action parts like where spidey dodges those cops bullets at point blank range, are pretty much the only things I enjoyed about the amazing spider man. I'll say this once, all the crazy good special effects and cool spider- man action in the world can't carry a movie, especially a movie with an extremely inconsistent and tensionless tone and a completely redundant feel like The Amazing Spider-man.
My biggest problem with this movie is that it covered the same plot points as The Original Spider-man, but did it all in a much less clever and memorable way. Did Spider-man really need to be re-booted? Did the new film really do enough to distinguish itself from itself predecessor and add any layers of emotional depth or intelligence to the origin story? My personal opinion is that what it did do to distinguish itself inevitably flawed the movie beyond repair.
Lets start with the tone of the movie. The makers said they wanted to bring more realism and a darker more 'dark knight' like tone to the spider-man reboot. But at the same time they brought in a more comic- book-esque sense of humor to the spider-man character(often times spidey would remind me of the live action teenaged mutant ninja turtles)let's get this straight: Batman is batman and his character is inherently more compatible with a darker tone and the spider-man from the comic books(which is the one the makers were trying to bring to the film) doesn't mesh well at all with this type of tone. This is what kept me from getting emotionally invested at all in the movie and what kept the whole thing from working.
The villain is portrayed by a great actor, but isn't given any well written dialogue or any really interesting form of character development. He wants to turn everyone else in the city into a lizards.....because he wants to strengthen humanity and eradicate all weakness....and all this his motivations are exposed through him talking to a camera...I just never felt the characters plight or his motivation if anything getting even with the corporate A-holes who screwed him would have made better character motivation..... oh, and he talks to himself and hears voices in his head(William Dafoe's green goblin anyone?)And at least the green goblin had an intensity to his character, a certain craziness and determination. You kind of feared what he would do next because he's a crazy technological mastermind.. Doctor Conners turns into a 7 foot lizard and throws stuff around and chases spiderman....LAME. Was the whole 'turn everyone into a lizard with my machine' scheme really best suited for that type of villain?
The original spider man felt...original. In the original, peter was screwed out of thousands of dollars by a greedy wrestling manager and then let the thief get away out of revenge..you could feel the regret and pain in tobey maguires spider man as his uncle ben died before his eyes and called out his name with his dying breathes. In the reboot, peter's moral compass ran eschew over a bottle of chocolate milk -_- and Uncle Ben moronically tried to grab the thiefs dropped gun out of some 'delusion of grandeur'impulse and got shot. The original Uncle Ben was confronted by the thief and was shot when he refused to accomplice him. Which Uncle Ben do you like better? I like Martin Sheen and Sally Field but they were miscasted. And what was up with that voicemail from Uncle Ben at the end? "So come on home Peter, because you're my hero. Let me just talk about things that are only in context at the end of the movie when I'm dead and not at all while I'm actually saying them." LAME. SO LAME. This whole movie felt like a huge waste of time for me and for everyone involved in making it. This is no refreshing or clever new take on the origin story. It's a huge mess that looks good.