True men don't hyphenate

Rating: Null/10 (30 August 2012)

Fearing the loss of very specific property rights, Sony Pictures rushed out "The Amazing Spiderman", a retelling of the origins of a Marvel superhero by the same name. Those familiar with Sam Raimi's recent Spiderman trilogy (or Marvel's Spiderman lore) will find little new here, but the film, directed by Mark Weber, nevertheless moves well. Knowing that its audience has very strong negative preconceptions ("A Spidey reboot, so soon!?") it rushes through familiar plot-beats and tries to veer in original directions when possible.
Still, Weber's film is different only in areas which don't matter: the backgrounds of Spiderman's parents are altered, our hero's love interest is changed and Weber tries to shake things up by having our hero reveal his identity early to both his bosomy girlfriend and her father, a police officer whose last act death swiftly makes his entire character absolutely pointless. The film's less personal than Raimi's, more anonymously directed, its action sequences aren't as classily framed, is less bloated, and expectantly degenerates into big budget CGI fisticuffs, this time with our hero trading blows with a computer generated man-crocodile. The film has one good scene in which Spidey constructs an underground spiderweb to "detect" subtle micro-movements.
This incarnation of Spiderman is played by Andrew Garfield. Like Tobey Maguire, Sony's previous Spiderman, Garfiend possesses a mix of geekiness and athletic sexiness. As today's interactivity-indoctrinated net-wired audiences are tired of CGI, and spectacle itself is largely dead, it's the film's soap opera moments which work best. But why invest in Spidey-soap when there's a two-to-three year gap between each blockbuster? And why invest when every Marvel franchise, both on-screen and in print, has scuttled continuity and ultimately betrayed its audience? Nobody cares about Raimi's Spiderman 1 and 2 because 3 was god-awful. Meanwhile the X-men franchise was contaminated the moment ultra-hack Brett Ratner was given the reigns. All these spandex franchises are treated as being disposable.
Incidentally, Spiderman is spelt and trademarked as "Spider-man", unlike Batman, Superman and Iron Man, all of whom lack a hyphen. This supposedly was done to distinguish Spider-man from Superman. Superman, meanwhile, originally had few super powers, but writers began pulling random powers out of his ass in the 1950s to differentiate him from other super heroes. So to distinguish himself Supes gets laser vision, super-speed, super hearing etc, whilst Spidey gets a meagre hyphen. Marvel's so cheap.
7.5/10 - Worth one viewing.