The untold story? Yeah, right

Rating: 4/10 (10 July 2017)

So after the mixed reviews of Spider-Man 3 and the aborted plans for Spider-Man 4, Sony decided to reboot the franchise with a new cast, new director and a 'new' story thread.
Peter Parker is now played by Andrew Garfield, who is a decent actor but his portrayal as Spider-Man is kinda questionable. Once again, he is too old to pull off the illusion that he's still in high school. Also, the classic archetype of Peter Parker pre-spider bite is that he's a reclusive nerdy brainbox. This iteration of Parker takes a different turn, as Garfield plays the part as a hipster wannabe who is already handsome and charismatic.
His love interest is Gwen Stacy, played by Emma Stone. Their chemistry is perfect together but Gwen's input to the plot is fairly minimal, other than her father being the Chief of Police, played by Denis Leary. Gwen finds out that Parker is Spider-Man and tries to keep the fact hidden from her father, who is out to foil him for vigilantism.
So the promotional marketing tried to pass off this movie as the 'untold story' of Spider-Man, which turns out to be a complete lie as the origin story of Spider-Man is rehashed with the only different being a loose thread as to how Parker's parents passed away.
Uncle Ben is now played by Martin Sheen who *spoiler alert* dies. Big shock. Parker tries to track down and confront his uncle's killer. Or at least 10-20 minutes of the film focus on his efforts to find the killer, but then that subplot is completely aborted and never referenced again. Instead, we get thrown into a hastily thrown together villain story about Curt Connors/The Lizard, a work partner of Parker's dad, played by Rhys Ifans.
The motivation of the Lizard is an unfocused mess. An Oscorp professor with only one arm, specializing in cross species genetics, he gets his hands on an incomplete algorithm from Parker, based off his father's research, in which he tries to use lizard DNA to regenerate his lost limb. Things go horribly wrong when he mutates into the Lizard and then all of a sudden, he goes on a mad rampage attempting to infect the city of New York with the airborne lizard gas and turn everyone into lizard creatures.
I gave this film a pass when I first saw it, thinking nothing of it, but in retrospect, it's kind of a mess. Parker's rarely likable, we've seen the 'story' before and there's hardly anything memorable. The only thing I bought into was the chemistry between Garfield and Stone. Other than that, this film is a solid 'meh' for the entirety.