Since Spiderman 3 sucked how do you fix the popular Marvel franchise? Reboot! Wow, the common solution to make everyone forget that the previous movies never existed. All I want to forget is that Spiderman 3 ever happened. The other two movies were actually pretty entertaining. Oh well, it’s time to start over from the beginning with The Amazing Spiderman. After seeing the movie, the only thing that comes to mind is was whether this reboot is really needed?
As with any reboot, you have to start with some sort of origin story. In this movie, the story of Peter Parker becoming the heroic Spiderman takes a long time to develop. Seriously, a long time. Now I took my nephew with me to the movie because he really loves Spiderman. During the movie I can tell he was getting a little antsy wondering where Spiderman was. I was wondering the same thing. I already knew the origins of Spiderman so why do I need to go through the same thing over and over again except slower? Get to the point already! I want some action! Basically the pacing in The Amazing Spiderman crawls at an extremely slow rate. Too slow in my opinion, and that’s not good.
As for the rest of the movie as a whole, I felt like there was something missing. Sam Raimi’s Spiderman movies really had a sense of humor along with a charm making them unique. I couldn’t find that here with this movie. Everything had a very serious tone to it. Spiderman was never really known for that. Most of the antics that took place fell flat with me. In some scenes you almost feel as if a joke was ready to pop out only to get nothing in return. Also for a summer blockbuster, the action that I would expect in this type of movie was lacking. Besides you can only give so much story before the audience gets bored. That’s exactly how the moviegoers in the theater with me were.
The one good thing that The Amazing Spiderman had was the star power, but for some strange reason they lacked the punch that I know they can deliver. Now I’m not looking for Oscar worthy performances, but for a summer movie I expected better. Andrew Garfield was not bad as Peter Parker/Spiderman. His confusing demeanor in the role of civilian/superhero was quite believeable. Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy was not that good. Emma clearly fits in the attractive female role, but she had better performances in some of her other movies. Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Conners/Lizardman kind of had me bored with him until he became the scaly lizard. Denis Leary, Martin Sheen, and Sally Field (is she really that old?) round out the cast that feel like they’re adding one more movie to their long list of credentials.
Sadly, in a summer filled with two other superhero movies (The Avengers & The Dark Knight Rises) The Amazing Spiderman just feels like superhero overload playing third fiddle to the other movies. Overall, The Amazing Spiderman is nothing more than a forgettable movie. That’s saying a lot with The Dark Knight Rises releasing in the next week. The Avengers and The Dark Knight currently sets the bar for superhero movies. The Amazing Spiderman doesn’t even come close, however it is better than the disasterous Spiderman 3.
The World According To Brian 