A nice balance of action and drama

Rating: 8/10 (3 July 2012)

I was initially worried about this movie since so many of the previous reviews suggested it was Twilight-esc. To be fair I've only seen about half of one twilight film (the first one), which was poor in pretty much every way and where it wasn't poor it was clichÃ©... This film however was actually quite good for what it was. I really enjoyed Spider-man and Spider-man 2, but I think the filmmakers really wanted to improve upon some of the weaknesses of the previous series, most of which seemed to have to do with character. All of the characters seem really well developed. Uncle Ben and Aunt May have a really neat dynamic and even almost an unspoken language of their own that makes them feel like they have a long history together. Flash Thompson even has an interesting arc.
Of course Peter's past is the focal point of this story and it's done in a way that builds mystery and impacts the story greatly. It seems his father, Richard, was involved with Dr. Connors on cross-genetic research of some kind. His father was doing research involving spiders, and some of that work was continuing hence the lab where Peter gets bitten, but I'm not really sure how that relates to the reptile work Connors is doing. Maybe I missed it, or perhaps it was unclear.
But this leads of course to Peter getting his powers a good hour or so into the film (though the pace is pretty good up to this point). His realization that he has powers and starting to use them is done fairly well, the only bad thing is that after an hour of building up to this point it seems a bit rushed. I felt the same with Uncle Ben's death.
Another departure from the original series (but more true to the comics) is that he uses web-shooters, which made me nervous... I thought the idea of the webs being organic was brilliant, but they actually made this work really well, and even gave the devices some limitations.
Overall the film seemed to strike a nice balance of action and drama, and felt a lot more grounded in reality than the original series (which sounds odd for a fantasy film). Stan Lee makes his trademark cameo in what is perhaps the best scene of the film! There were only two things I remember that really bugged me. One was in a scene after Lizard attacks the high school a male paramedic is attending to a student (I think it was flash) and he is wearing a really goofy-looking earring that I doubt a real paramedic would be allowed to wear on the job... The other thing was the CGI work in the very last scene. Throughout the whole film the effects were very seamless and never took me out of the movie, but in the last scene Spidey was obviously CGI.
The ending was typical of Spider-man films in that he has to keep away from the girl for her own safety, but in order to be a happier ending he suggests that he intends to break the promise... that's fine, but I just hope that the sequel doesn't spend the whole time being a "will-they-won't-they" film... Spider-man 2 already did that.