I Can't Bring Myself to Rate This Movie

Rating: Null/10 (3 July 2012)

The Amazing Spider-Man dresses up a story that everyone in the country already knows, and most have already seen. It achieves a better, less happenstance vision of the origin of the Spider-Man character than the 2002 Spider-Man, which launched Marvel's entire strategy toward brining their catalogue of characters to the screen.
Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is in high school when he's bitten by a radioactive spider, which gives him superpowers so he can fight crime. He lives with Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen), but only for so long. This time his love interest is the less iconic but more comic-oriented Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone).
Director Marc Webb—what a name—makes every effort to make this the series fans want. Spider-Man is the comic book's smart alec. The visual effects are Oscar worthy, featuring fluid combat and artistic attributes that would make the comic book colorists proud. Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker isn't the all out dweeb played up by Tobey Macguire. Still, I have to take some issue with how this film's villain, a lizard mutant played by Rhys Ifans, hears voices in his head. I also can't get past how Spider-Man is skillful enough a tailor to stitch his amazing garb unassisted; maybe instead of scenes showing his skateboarding prowess we could have gotten him knitting.
The Amazing Spider-Man is presented in 3D, and I did see it as thus. In the more static scenes of dialog I lifted the plastic frames to see if anything was 3D at all, and the screen was almost entirely clear to the naked eyes. Even during the more intense moments the 3D didn't push to the extremes, where I find double vision occurs. For the most part there were maybe three moments where 3D filmmaking was really an objective and two of these bookend the movie.
The Amazing Spider-Man is considerably better than Spider-Man (2002) and the latest Marvel flick The Avengers. The people tasked with making it deserve praise, but the process for which it came to be is entirely unscrupulous. Marvel and Sony purposely crafted an awful Spider-Man 3 to build support for a reboot effort. This movie is the child of a bean counter's inartistic, unapologetic effort to make a sure buck. I'm sick of what the industry has become. Shamed to have bought into the notions, I now see that a movie which gives a too familiar origin tale can not be truly recommended. N/A
See my video review of The Amazing Spider-Man at my site VaughnOnMovies.com.