The Amazing Mediocre Reboot

It should have been left untold.

Okay, so I went to see The Amazing Spider-Man. Why, you may ask? Well, being the repeatedly confessed geek that I am, I can hardly let a movie based on a comic book go unseen by my eager eyes. Yeah, I am one of those - I devour these types of films and, considering the streak that Marvel properties brought to the silver screen is currently on, I figured it had to be at least decent, right?

Wrong.

Now we all know that Sony had to make a new film about Spider Man within the next couple of years in order to maintain the rights to the property. Marvel is dying to get their big money makers back in house so that they can include them in the whole Avengers continuity. The same goes for The X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and to a lesser extent, The Punisher.

I guess I can accept that the Raimi/Maguire Spider-Man films are over and done with. In fact, considering what a horrible mess Spider-Man 3 was, I am glad that they all called it quits on that one. Unfortunately, this film is coming out a little too close to the last trilogy which has left a lot of heads scratching as to whether it needed to be made at all (other than for the reasons outlined above). It's damn near impossible for any viewer to look at this film and not compare it to it's recent predecessors. Right there, it's behind the eight ball and we haven't even seen the opening credits yet.

Okay, so I don't need to go scene by scene to make my point here. Let me just (in the immortal words of Inigo Montoya) sum up. The characters were flat. Andrew Garfield looks like Peter Parker, but that's it. He can't seem to commit to any one specific persona for him. He runs the gamut of emotions, motivations, and action and not in that good way. In a way that makes you constantly go "Huh? Why would he do that?" or "Wait, he's really damned stupid for a supposedly smart teenager."

The villain is a scientist whose obsession with his work leads him to self-experimentation causing him to turn into a giant green monster who is unstoppable and tears through metal and stone like tissue paper...wait does this seem familiar to anyone else? Right...LIZARD SMASH!

Anyway, Rhys Ifans is a competent actor given a character so poorly written that I almost feel sorry for him, but for the undoubtedly huge paycheck he got  for this schlock. His motivation for his actions starts with "I have a stump for an arm and that sucks" to "everyone else needs to be a lizard person so I can be king of the lizard people" with no real reason for the shift other than, that's what mad scientists do, they take over the world - or they want to.

Emma  Stone's Gwen Stacy is a real shame because the character and the actress are both fan favorites. She just has nothing to work with here, try though she might. The only bright spot is that she never really takes on the role of "damsel in distress" at all. Granted, the need for a love interest is questionable at best. Romance is optional in these films and, in fact, as The Avengers has proven, completely unnecessary to the degree that you can make a better film if we aren't worried about who the hero has to kiss at the end.

Oh, and on that note, I avoided the Twilight films because I didn't want to watch two hours of teenaged characters staring at one another unable to say what they feel. In my experience, teenagers won't stop telling the world how they feel. Between Facebook, Twitter, and texting they express themselves publicly 24-7. Don't tell me that two kids with emotions can't muster the gumption to share them with one another.

As for the plot overall, we've seen it done before and a lot better. Peter is an outcast who gets himself bitten by a super spider and he becomes a super powered acrobat. His Uncle Ben dies as an indirect result of his actions, sort of, and eventually he realizes that he needs to use his powers to defend the city from the Hulk Lizard.

Then the movie ends.

No, wait, there's something about Peter's parents, mainly his dad, who is a scientist who vanished or died or something...I couldn't tell you because the film abandons that plot (which was a major lynchpin of the trailers) less than halfway through. Presumably they are saving that all for the sequels, God help us.

The bottom line is that this film is pointless in character, plot, and existence. It didn't need to be made for any reason other than to protect Sony's stranglehold on the rights to make films about the web slinger. It's going to make a lot of money because suckers like me will pay to see them every time. I can only hope that I will make a better decision in two years when the sequel rolls into the local megaplex.