The Amazing Spider-Man

[Darth Revan of the Sith]

[spoiler=Trailer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atCfTRMyjGU[/spoiler]

[spoiler=My Review WARNING SPOILERS!]

4/5 Stars

 

It is a great movie and it has potential.

 

Honestly I thought this was going to be terrible, I really did. Nevertheless, Marc Webb surprised me once again (As that was the same feeling I had about 500 Days of Summer). The action is glorious and the CGI is pristine and breathtaking. The acting is great on all of the cast with Andrew Garfield and Dennis Leary both performing like geniuses in the art.

 

What I especially like about this film is that it doesn't rehash old story lines from the original series. It instead grabs its own brand new villain and gives him a nice enough back story to jump start the plot. I seriously love this villain, he is emotional, he is captivating, and his origins are well made.

 

Among criticism's I must make are at least three. First of all, Uncle Ben's death sequence felt off. It wasn't as emotional or as memorable as the original first movie. Ben felt as if he could give nothing more memorable to his nephew other than the cell phone message, which was good in its own right, however, Parker's reaction to his death was a little odd. It felt as if Garfield was trying to combine the feeling of sadness to his Uncles death, and the feeling of shock towards seeing a dead body. Secondly Sally Fields feels too young for the role of Aunt May honestly. Yes, Sally Fields is quite old but in my view, still not old enough compared to the elegant Rosemary Harris, nevertheless she plays her role well. Thirdly, Emma Stone feels a bit too odd as the smart and sophisticated Gwen Stacy. She attempts to combine the emotions of her love for Parker and her shock at him being Spider-Man at too fast a pace, to where we wonder what the psychological state of her really is.

 

Captain Stacy's death sequence was astounding and much more well performed than Uncle Ben's in my view. Garfield seemed to have amended his mistake in the last death scene and put more emotion into the scene rather than get all technical with it. Dennis Leary let himself go with a bang and I was almost driven to tears.

 

I have been hearing a lot of Spider-Man comic book fans yelling to the skies that THIS version of the movie is far more superior than it's predecessor trilogy. To this I say, utter bullsh*t. It may be a much more faithful version to Spider-Man as a whole, but as a film compared to the original trilogy, it only comes on par with the first one. It is nothing compared to Spider-Man 2 and, although I like Andrew Garfield, Tobey Maguire adds a focus to the original trilogy that Garfield just doesn't possess.

 

All in all I liked this movie. It is a smart adaptation from newcomer Marc Webb (Anybody get the pun yet?). However, it still does not surpass the original trilogy as a film. If this were comics, yes it would, but not as a film. This movie has now kickstarted a brand new series of movies and it has a lot of potential, but Marc is going to have to put all the stops to surpass Sam Raimi, and to this I can only say, good luck.[/spoiler]

[NoshpalStefan]

Loved the movie - and this is coming from a long-term spiderman fan. In all seriousness, I loved the first movie, same for the second, even the third coming from that the movie had a lot of villains and some good situations.

 

Considering that, I went into this movie with a really mixed mindset. On one side, I did expect quite a lot from this movie, as expected after 5 years of waiting for the so-called "Spiderman 4", now known as this movie. On the other side, I knew that even if it was horrible, I would still like it. So, paradoxically, those two did in a way let me look at the movie objectively, and this is the results.

 

The movie was great. True, it doesn't mostly rely on special effects because the first three Spider-man movies kind of took that for themselves. But, this movie took a good approach in building character layers and good acting. Luckily, Andrew Garfield was absolutely the PERFECT actor for this role, in my opinion of course. I virtually wept at the murder of Peter's uncle and how well Garfield played out the emotional response. Exaggerated, perhaps, but very powerful.

 

This might be a quirk with other people, not with me because I am a hopeless romantic, but this movie does slightly steer towards a romance / drama, because I think that the emotion in the movie does overweigh the villain and fights - however, once again, this is not a quirk that I found in myself, but objectively it might be in other people.

 

In any case, I really enjoyed the movie. I did dare to clap in the movie theater when it finished because Marc Webb did, in a really admirable manner, nail this movie in its concept. As a fanboy I would give it not only a 5/5 but rather a 10/5, however if I'm sharing the view as an objective one, as one of an average movie goer, then 4/5 would be most correct.

[tommers2008]

It was all right i suppose it was entertaining and it did have its moments i dont no i just preferred the original ones

[Phantom Roxas]

I love this movie. I'm actually glad that they rebooted it, even if it was for the shallow reasoning of Sony wanting to retain the rights to the character. I'd still would have liked to seen Spider-Man 4, but given how things turned out here, I'm okay with seeing where this reboot goes. I'm also a huge Spider-Man fan, but more for other media, and the Ultimate universe. The mainstream comics right now are just so blegh. Anyway, I loved Andrew Garfield in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and The Social Network, so when I found out that he would be Spider-Man, I was excited. I still prefer Peter with Mary Jane, but I still like Gwen's role in this, and it's much better than the one from Spider-Man 3.

 

If anything, one of the biggest draws to me was making the Lizard the main villain. When I saw Doctor Connors in Spider-Man 2, I was expecting him to become the Lizard at some point, and the fact that they got that out of the way here was a nice way of resolving that little bit from the Raimi trilogy. I'll admit that there were times at the movie where I had to admit that they could be used as criticism for the film, but I will defend the infamous crane scene to the very end. It represented the city coming together to recognize Spider-Man as their hero, and while it does echo the "You mess with one us, you mess with all  of us!" scene from the first Raimi film, this was just executed much better? Is it rather contrived that the guy whose son Peter saved early on just happened to be able to get people to operate all those cranes? Perhaps, but I think thematically it makes sense, with one guy recognizing the good in Spider-Man and helping the city do what they can to support him.

 

I do agree, however, that the relationship between Peter and Gwen is a bit too rushed. There's a moment where she seems perfectly willing to be in a romantic relationship with Peter, even though the last time they talked was when they were at OsCorp. It feels like a scene got cut, or I'm just forgetful.

[Fusion X. Denver]

I liked it a lot. I think my main gripe was the Lizard adopting a more humanoid appearance rather than having a snout, but other than that, it was a solid superhero movie. Emma Stone also makes a good female lead; she's a better character than the original Gwen Stacy was.