I wanted to like this movie.

Rating: 6/10 (5 July 2012)

This review will definitely contain spoilers. I have been a big Spider- man fan for as long as I can remember. You can only imagine what it was like for me as a 10 year old kid to watch Spider-man on the big screen. To me the movie was perfect, and now as a 20 year old I get to watch a reboot to one of my favorite comic book heroes.
This reboot of the comic book hero is awfully flawed to me. Now maybe it's because I've gotten really picky with the movies that I watch these days, and maybe that "high" from watching the Sam Rami Spider-man has carried over all these years and hasn't allowed me to watch the movie with a truly analytic lens; but I think that the movie has no real characters, only cut out posters for human characters. Firstly, the romance between Peter and Gwen is not well developed, I felt that their romance consisted of mostly sarcastic conversations and of awkward moments. They never had a true human to human moment, like in the Sam Rami, the romance mostly consisted between Spider-man and Mary Jane but Peter was trying to build the relationship with Mary Jane. Peter was funny, but he gave her advice, he comforts her when she feels insecure, and pours his heart out for her. In the reboot, Gwen and Peter meet for what appears to be two days or something, Peter gets bitten and becomes sort of mysterious, then in a Twilight like fashion Gwen falls head over heels for him because he is dark and mysterious and all of a sudden she's at a lost of words when she speaks to him. And then Peter tells this girl, who he's just gotten to know, that he is Spider-man.
The other thing I want to tackle is why he becomes Spider-man. So we all know the origins, that Peter uses his powers irresponsibly which causes his uncle's death, which leads him to wise up about using his powers to stop criminals. This movie has an extra layer which is his parents death/disappearance, which has really weighed on Peter's mind throughout his life. Then his uncle dies, he's angry for a while but discovers he has spider powers and goes to look for the killer (for about 10 minutes of screen time) in a subplot that is never fully resolved. Come on, I would of thought that the death of his uncle would of had a deep psychological impact on him, that he would have nightmares, or he would be angry because he is the direct cause of his uncle's death, some sort of internal conflict, something. But no, the movie forgets that subplot or that Peter is a human being and goes into the main conflict which is the battle with the lizard.
The whole Peter's parents subplot is another thing not fully resolved. The post credit scene felt like a really cheap way of solving the plot by prolonging it, it's as if the director saw a rough cut and said "I forgot about Peter's parents" then at the last second called in Rhys Ifans to do a 2 minute scene to cover his tracks. I've never scene a post credit scene (which has become synonymous with all marvel movies) where they attempt to solve a problem that could of been solved in the movie, they're usually there just to hint at where the sequel will be heading.
Another thing that irritated me was how Peter discovers his powers. It's done in a montage style that feels like it belongs in a music video not in a movie. It's him sort of experimenting with his skateboard in a warehouse or dock. In the Sam Rami version, there was a real revelation to it, a little bit of tension that went with each step he took towards discovering his new found abilities. In this one, they just throw the powers at us, no suspense, nothing, just cool skateboard tricks, him dunking a basketball and comically breaking everything because he's become super strong.
There are a lot of mishaps in logic which I won't get into in this review, it's really small things that sort of forget how the real world works. But these four things were the biggest problems, I could go deeper but I don't want to extend this already long rant. All of that being said, my 10 and 11 year old brothers as well as my 9 and 10 year old cousins really enjoyed the movie. They couldn't stop talking about it, so did the other kids around the theaters. I explained my issues with the movie to them, but they seemed to have no real response to it. My uncle (he's in his late 20s) came along and didn't enjoy the movie and we both concluded that the movie was for kids. So as a kids movie, it succeeds, but as a movie for adults you might be mixed. Again I wanted to like this movie but it failed to deliver.