A would be hero...

Rating: 1/10 (22 July 2012)

'The Amazing Spider-Man' is a mess of a movie. The classic hero formula gets old really fast. 'The Amazing Spider-Man' doesn't give a damn about any of it's characters or what motivates them. It wants money and that's all there is to it. Sony thinks America's movie going public is composed of a bunch of ignoramuses who will buy anything they shove Spider-Man's name onto. Sam Raimi made a trilogy of goofy films but at their best moments they defined Spider- Man and what he wanted to be. 'The Amazing Spider-Man' is too dark and self important to work. Sony failed to understand the character and what drove him. I can imagine the writing of this script tried very hard to mimic 'The Dark Knight'. Spider-Man isn't meant to be this dark though. Here Spider-Man is more like Norman Bates than he is a superhero. 'The Amazing Spider- Man' has no idea what it is to be an adolescent trying to find their place in the world which I imagine was their intent in the rebooting of the franchise. What we get is a very flat hero who thinks he is well developed.
"With great power comes great responsibility"
Cheesy? Sure but it has a nice ring to it. Stan Lee in his own nerdy form of eloquence defined what drives every super hero. If you have the power to do good than you should. I am not a fan of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films but at least they had a character with a motivation. It's a simple and cliché motivation but with proper weight put on it, it is brilliant. Spider-Man has gone into darker themes as a comic but never has he become a self-important cry baby as he is here. There is no origin or making of a hero here. The entire film is built around Peter's parents and some terrible secret they took with them to the graves. Fine but at least take us along on a journey with Peter. The film is forced to remind us about this with star Andrew Garfield going into little angsty crybaby fits. Uncle Ben which has served as the primary motivation for Spider- Man in the past is reduced to next to nothing here. Martin Sheen is good here but Garfield and this script give nothing back to the character. His death becomes mere exposition because we are meant to think something deeper and more sinister lies beneath. I sincerely doubt Sony has taken any sort of comic book into mind in the plotting of this would be franchise. I predict that sequels will drag along without the secret being answered and they will just having Peter be depressed about it. I doubt Sony even knows what the secret is.
And so how does this effect the film? We have a miserable selfish hero that only cares about himself. This is the furthest opposite of all that Spider-Man was built upon. If Spider-Man ever got depressed it was because he was limited in the amount of people he could save. Spider- Man has great power here but it is self serving power. If I were Stan Lee I'd be ashamed that they did this to my character.
There isn't really anything positive to say about any other area of the film. It's foundations are faulty and so nothing can really be built upon them. I imagine Denis Leary, Emma Stone, and Rhys Ifans could all be cast in the same roles in an excellent Spider-Man film.Rhys Ifans is actually kind of good as Curt Conners but the Lizard CGI is about as fake as anything you would see in a 'Transformers' film and so his performance is wasted.The problem is because the origin and mythology is so distorted and unlikeable that I don't care about anyone else. It's just an ordinary summer film really which needs a good story to become extraordinary. We see the same old action we always see. Raimi was better at web swinging action sequences because he embraced the cartoonish nature of them while keeping the integrity of the character.
See Spider-Man 2. It's not a great film and it has it's share of goof ball moments but it has a defined hero.