Not Amazing, but still Spider-Man

Rating: 7/10 (5 July 2012)

I'm not going to be the only one admitting this but I went into this movie expecting the worst. I've been a Spider-Man fan as long as I can remember and though Raimi's series certainly had its flaws it was pretty damn solid, though it certainly ended on the weakest note. Each trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man made my expectations sink a little lower, they play it as a conspiracy plot about Oscorp and Peter's parents and in my opinion they made Peter out to be a punk whose wise- cracking was just a little too mean-spirited for my taste.
Fortunately the movie is not simply a trailer but a full length film that fills out far more nicely than the trailer lets on. The conspiracy plot is there of course but it is a layer underneath the whole movie rather than the focus of the film. I was glad they kept his parents and their disappearance somewhat ambiguous only hinting at their possible fates rather than forcing the conspiracy into the forefront of the plot.
Andrew Garfield does a decent job as Parker, though at times you can feel his accent coming through. The biggest improvement over Raimi's series is the romance. Dunst and MacGuire always felt like a stale bland cookie-cutter romance, but here there is an earnestness and many of the sequences where Gwen and Peter flirt feel improvisational and unscripted. Peter stumbles over his words and struggles to form a coherent sentence while Gwen's eyes do all the talking. Emma Stone out acts most of the cast, but maybe I'm biased by being wildly attracted to her.
The origin story aspect of the film does feel a bit rushed and the plot overall tends to be one of convenient coincidences as though set up to save the writers time in telling a more in-depth story. For one Gwen happens to be a high school student interning at Oscorp, where Doctor Connors (The Lizard and film's main villain) is her mentor and also the only link Peter has to his parents. Oscorp just so happens to be the place that has manufactured the spider that will fatefully bite Peter. Despite being in high school Peter is such a genius that with only some cursory internet research and a few books to read he manages to crack the secret to a formula that Doctor Connors has been working on for more than a decade. This leaves us with a rather one-dimensional story rather than the web of conspiracy that seems promised in the trailer.
All in all though the plot is serviceable, not Amazing or Spectacular but good enough, C plus . The earnest moments of Gwen and Peter forming their romantic bond all while Peter learns to control his powers and use them for good instead of revenge works well. I feel like some movie fans will be bored though, like Raimi's films there are a lot of character moments, between Uncle Ben Aunt May and Peter, between Gwen and Peter, etc and the action sequences are few and far between.
There is a real feeling that Peter is growing as a person as well, moving from Geek, to Jerk, to beginning to understand what Uncle Ben meant by responsibility and moral obligation. The character arc is somewhat subtle to be sure but it's definitely there.
Now I have to do the obligatory comments on the new suit and the Lizard design. Quick capsule review: The Lizard looks TERRIBLE, the suit I can live with. Thing about Garfield is he is thin and this gives Spider-Man a very agile appearance and feel which Tobey simply didn't have. Special attention is paid to the webslinging and free-running Spider-Man does, rather then in the comics where his web seems to be disappearing into thin sky there is a more realistic approach dedicated to the idea that Spidey HAS TO be swinging off of something. He can't perform that endless floating rope trick we've seen in cartoons and just swing off of the clouds.
The Lizard, as I said, looks terrible. Oh don't get me wrong the CGI is perfectly fine down the last scale, it's simply such a terrible character design that I was glad they didn't focus on his face too much. It's really the face that does in the Lizard, he has this stupid half- grin plastered across what is a far-too-human face. I know in the original comics, at least at first, he didn't look all that fierce or convincing but this is 2012, surely they knew this looked stupid and if not the guys who chose the design than the animators working on it had to know.
Despite the ugly villain design the film still works overall with enough humor, enough romance and enough action to keep you interested. It's not perfect, FAR FROM IT, and I still feel like Raimi's original 2002 film is still a better Spider-Man movie. I was expecting this to be a train- wreck, but like I said it was decent C+ material, you could do a lot worse. As much as I'd love to see Spidey's rights go to Marvel so he can be added to the Avengers I'm also kinda curious to see if they can improve on this in a sequel and hopefully actually deliver something Amazing, instead of just okay.