THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Review

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Review

By Darin Skaggs

     In the past there has seemed to be a new movie genre, the comic book superhero genre.  There were a few superhero movies in the past like in the late 1970’s with Superman and the late 1980’s with Tim Burton’s Batman films, but the genre never really took off until the past decade.  It all started with the X-Men franchise and the original Spider-Man movie.  Then it took off with other superhero films such as Iron Man, The Dark Knight and The Avengers.  Now, ten years later, we have our second attempt at the Spider-Man franchise with Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man.

     The story of Spider-Man mostly everyone knows.  A boy named Peter Parker, who lives with his Aunt and Uncle, is bitten by a radioactive spider and gains spider like super powers.  Then a villain, who usually starts out sane, becomes evil and endangers the city and it’s up to Parker to become Spider-Man and save the day.  The villain of the piece this time is Dr. Curt Conners, a one armed man who studies lizard DNA so he can find a way to grow missing limps.

     The film is new, but it basically tells the same origin story as the previous Spider-Man film and the villain in this film almost mirrors the original villain of the previous.  However the little changes that it makes in the story benefits it more and enhance the character of Peter Parker, not to mention Andrew Garfield’s acting is really enjoyable. 

     The acting in the film is a big highlight.  Everybody in this film does a great job at establishing their character and making them believable, especially Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy.

     This film is director Marc Webb’s second attempt at a feature length film, his previous attempt being the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, a film I enjoy quite a bit.  This is an odd choice for the studio to give this one time indie romance director a big comic book franchise.  Despite the odd choice in directors, Webb handles the material very well with fun action scenes and still adding a bit of romantic comedy material with Peter and Gwen.

     Even though I liked the film it has a few more problems. The origin story is great on its own and did not bother me that I saw it ten years ago.  The film takes so long on the beginning of Spider-Man and how he becomes familiar with his powers that when it gets to the climax of the story, it’s all over way too fast.  The fight between Spider-Man and Lizard is over way too quickly and the film lessens the character development of Dr. Conners becoming the evil Lizard.

I would say that this one is better then the first Spider-Man film. I think for someone a little younger or some who never saw the original this film would be a good, if not better, starting point for the Spider-Man series.  It’s not amazing as it advertises but I will not deny that it’s fun.