Not As Great As The First Two Films In Raimi's Series, But Still Good Fun

Rating: 7/10 (4 July 2012)

I really want to give this a 6.5, but as we can only do straight numbers, I'll round up. I remember when I first saw Raimi's Spiderman. There were few films like it, a high flying, greatly produced comic book film that, even more than X-Men, created a legitimate tale about a teenager getting superpowers. It was like few films I had seen before and it really got the ball rolling on the superhero genre. Yes, there were films before it that did the superhero thing, but Spiderman was different. It had a certain feeling to it, a certain oomph those other films didn't have.
Sadly, Amazing Spiderman doesn't have that. Now, don't get me wrong, this is a good film. Garfield delivers a great performance, as does the rest of the cast, and there are some nice additions here that even the original three films didn't have. But, that aforementioned oomph isn't there. Now, maybe we've just become so inundated with superhero films, maybe it's the shadowing of Avengers, or maybe it's because this film comes only a few years after the last Spiderman film, but there's something missing here. Where the first two films had a great spectacle and pizazz to them, Amazing Spiderman lacks that. Where there was a somewhat campy, somewhat cliché, somewhat fantasy-like performance to Maguire's performance, and the film overall for that matter, Amazing seems to play it fairly straight. Of course, they need to keep it fresh, so new factors are added, like the thankful choice of replacing Mary Jane with Parker's first real love, Gwen Stacy. There's also, obviously, some humor, because what is Spiderman without the humor. But the overall tone is so serious at times, that it becomes unintentionally funny.
The film is also, I think, unintentionally bland. We don't actually see Spiderman for a good hour into the film, when Peter finally dons the trademark costume. I was continually looking at the time because the beginning just drags and drags, as if we've forgotten already from the first film who Peter Parker is and how he becomes Spiderman. I love Peter Parker's back story and his origin story is one of my favorites of any Marvel hero, but the Peter Parker here is just so normal that it's hard to find it all that interesting. Where Maguire's Parker was the animated, comic book geek, the kind I like to see in Peter Parker, here, he's just a loner who goes through a typical high school outcasts life.
Now, I did give the film a 7, and so there are obviously good things about it. The Peter and Gwen story is good. Garfield and Stone are terrific, especially together, and Stone stands out as the near perfect superhero love interest, as she plays the part to her strengths being funny, sweet, vulnerable, as well as strong willed. In fact, pretty much the entire cast is good, including Rhys Ifans, who plays a similar villain to Doctor Octopus in Spiderman 2. The action scenes are also quite entertaining. While they were good in the original series, the mix of special effects, camera movement, and focus are fantastic here. Though, I would still argue that Spiderman 2 has the best action of the entire series. This film, however, gives hope that the next installments in the series will prove to have even better action.
Though Amazing Spiderman doesn't top the performance of the first two films, it is a lot of fun. It's not without flaws, but solid action and solid acting make it worthwhile.