A Very Enjoyable Superhero Film, But Several Major Things Handled Terribly Detract From It

Rating: 5/10 (5 July 2012)

"The Amazing Spider-Man" had many people skeptical from day one. A reboot of a franchise that'd only been absent five years, redoing the origin story, and just a way for Sony to keep the rights to the character from reverting back to Marvel. But as more and more news came in about the project, I became more and more hopeful. I was hoping that with the excellence of recent superhero films like "Iron Man", that "The Amazing Spider-Man" would join the list of critically-acclaimed and commercially phenomenal adaptations that fans and mainstream audiences would love. Sadly, we got our hopes too high.
"The Amazing Spider-Man" is a retelling of the origin story. Peter Parker's parents mysteriously vanished when he was just a boy. Now, Peter is a teenager and while looking into his parents past is bitten by an experimental spider, giving him newfound abilities. Peter also meets Dr. Curt Connors, an ex-partner of Peter's father who is trying to regrow his arm by splicing the DNA of lizards into other animals. When Connors loses his patience, he injects himself with an untested serum and becomes the the Lizard. Now, Peter must stop what he is partially responsible for and become the hero he is destined to be. If I went into every little detail about just the first hour of story in this movie, the whole review could be taken up by just the synopsis. When you're watching the movie though, they go through all of this really fast and it doesn't feel rushed, it's just expertly written.
One of the reasons I did not enjoy certain aspects of this movie is first of all, the two main plot lines the marketing for this film pushed to be the molding of Peter Parker into a hero are dropped. After about 45 minutes, Peter stops looking for clues into his parents past. And about 20 minutes after Peter becomes Spider-Man, he stops looking for Uncle Ben's killer. Both of these plot lines have potential for strong emotion and character development, but they're forgotten and hardly mentioned ever again. Just like in "Spider-Man 3", it feels like there were several sub-plots thought of for this movie, and instead of picking just one, the writers threw them all in. That's not to say that like "Spider-Man 3", it feels like there's too much going on in this movie. It never feels like there is too much, but just the right amount of other things going on besides just Spider-Man vs. the Lizard. What I mean is that all the sub-plots were used fine, but two of them were just dropped suddenly. And that really bothered me.
Now the acting in this film was great. Looking back, I now see how poor a casting choice Toby Maguire was in the Sam Raimi trilogy. I grew up watching the Raimi trilogy, and as a kid I never questioned it. But now looking at Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man in comparison to Toby Maguire's Spider-Man is pointless. They're just completely different. And not just with Spider-Man, but with Peter Parker too. Toby Maguire's Peter Parker was very cliché in that he's ridiculously smart, he's awkward, and he wears nice shirts and glasses. Whereas Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker was very modern. He rides a skateboard, he dresses like a hipster, he wears contacts, but he's deceivingly brilliant. He's just like that quiet smart kid that hardly talks and sits in the back of your class. He's extremely likable and funny and you relate to the guy so much. Everything his character does is what a normal teenager would do if given the powers that Peter has. I could never relate to Maguire's Peter Parker, but now we have Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker, and he is awesome.
Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy was nothing more than Emma Stone's usual amazing performance. She's very natural, very funny, but can also carry herself emotionally. You can't help but love her character and you care for her. When I love an actress that much, that means that she never lets me down when she portrays a character and I always love that character. Emma Stone does that. That's something that no matter how hard they tried, I couldn't do with Mary Jane in the Raimi films. Whenever she was captured, I just always thought "well here goes Spidey to save cliché superhero girlfriend #25". Thankfully, someone else thought that too.
Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors was so cliché in my opinion, it was ridiculous. I never felt sorry for his character and I never cared whether he lived or died. He is such a stereotype scientist it drives me insane. The Lizard talks, which I didn't expect. And you could've blamed all his actions up to this point on the Lizard like a Jekyll/Hyde scenario, but once he talks, you realize that Connors is actually in control and has just turned evil for no reason. Towards the end of the movie, his evil plot is to morph the entire city of New York into Lizard people. And you're really wondering how a guy with an insane IQ like Connors thinks that turning everyone into monstrous killing machines will fix humanity. It doesn't make sense to me at all, especially since Connors is in control as the Lizard and he can still utilize his intelligence.
You probably think I hate this movie. I didn't at all, actually it was really enjoyable. But I can't help nitpick this movie because I was really excited to see it. Whether or not I'm to blame for setting my expectations too high, or the writers are for not paying attention to certain aspects, I would still buy "The Amazing Spider-Man" on Blu-Ray for $15 maximum. It's a good movie, and I'm sure on repeated viewings I'd enjoy it a lot more, but as it stands right now, it didn't satisfy what I was looking for.