More "faithful" take on spiderman

Rating: 8/10 (4 July 2012)

I saw the film and really enjoyed it. Maybe it's because this is the first film I saw in theatres where a kid didn't start crying half way through. Although, in all seriousness, it's quite a good movie.
The beginning of the film is mere exposition and reiteration of the spiderman series. It quickly mentions how Peter Parker became Spiderman in a way slightly different (but mostly the same). In classic comic book style, the antagonist is "created" and a classic rivalry is formed. It is a bit slow to get off the ground, because you know what's going to happen for the first 30 minutes... but hey, it's still a fun watch. One thing that is interesting to be noted is that the spiderman powers are actually DIFFERENT. It's actually closer to Stan Lee's original vision of Spiderman. He thought it was a bit silly that a man would be shooting webs, so he recommended that Peter had a machine that does it. His powers are not absolutely ludicrous like some heroes.. He can jump, react super quick, and do things like that, but nothing ridiculous. All in all, I'd say the storyline is fairly ordinary, to be honest. It's nice that they avoided the overly dramatic character development like "with great power comes great responsibility!" or "I never asked for these powers!"... they have some quick mentions to vigilanteism, but done tastefully. Regardless, it does have struggles that the characters face, but their quite a bit more down-to-Earth feeling.
The thing that got me was the whole aesthetic of the movie. Most comic book movies go for the modern "gritty" or "dark" stylings. Batman, Spiderman, Watchmen... you know, that whole super dark thing is popular now. Instead it does a very "classic" feeling. It even permeates throughout the colors, you'll see vibrant contrasting colors clashing like in an old comic book. The green of the villain against the red of Spiderman. It's a lot more "colorful" than other movies of the same genre. That's one of the #1 things I liked about the film, their willingness to be a bit more creative and avoid what's "popular".
Another thing that REALLY hit me was the cinematography. The first person scenes, WOW. And when he is running and jumping across alleys, the camera does a beautiful job of capturing where the energy is. They always had a nice sharp focus on what was important in the scene and made the expression and emotions obvious. Fantastic job!