Review: The (Less Than) Amazing Spider-Man

I have no idea whether I’ll enjoy the film or not (I’m a bit indifferent about seeing it to be honest) but I just wanted to say I love this review just for the Clue reference! <3 

I think your review was actually too kind.  I agree that all the acting was good.  I want to see all these actors in more films.   Garfield’s acting actually made Peter sympathetic again after three scenes of him being really creepy/stalkery concerning Gwen, something that would give Edward Cullen’s behavior a run for the money.   I mean between the secret, practically upskirting shot of Gwen Stacy without her knowledge while she sat on the picnic table, the sneaking up to her bedroom and spying on her before they even had established any familiarity,  or more than the beginnings of chemistry,  and then during another awkward and not lusty or romantic exchange him smacking her in the ass with his webbing and yanking her into his arms while planting a kiss, mixed with poor music choices and a weird tension in the scene made the entire romance begin horrrrrribly. 

The jokes were cheap ones, that wouldn’t have been thrilling even 15 years ago.   This could have come out the same year as the first Tobey Maguire version.  

I went in with low expectations and it couldn’t even meet them.    The Avengers and The Dark Knight trilogy as well as the progression of the last ten years have set the bar a little higher.

I’ll agree that there were a ton of “why don’t they just …” moments. But that’s about all I can agree with on this review. As a huge fan of the wall-crawler, I came out of the theater with a huge smile on my face and not the slightest bit of buyer’s remorse. I got chills during the crane sequence, regardless of how cheesy it was. The Amazing Spider-Man truly was a great Spider-Man film, in my eyes.

Gwen was actually a science student of Miles Warren in the comics. I think even an intern, she was around him enough for him to develop an obsession with her that turned him into the Jackal after her death. It’s not too far from the comic to say she was interning at OsCorp.

I enjoyed the movie more than the first series. I thought it portrayed Peter as a hero before he got the powers. The moment where he turned from vigilante to superhero was something I don’t ever recall the comic doing. Honestly, it’s something I’ve never seen from any superhero movie produced. The catalyst has always been Uncle Ben’s death. Sure, that was what got him into the costume but the other incident took him from ‘hunting a killer’ to ‘saving the innocent’ and that was the film’s best moment.

SPOILERS!

I agree with your review. I saw it today and overall I prefer Sam Raimi’s version.
They did a few things better or the way I look at it, things that should have been included in Raimi’s version, but overall Raimi got it right and Webb didn’t.

What I liked:
Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy. (Although I think they should have cast her as Mary Jane Watson)

Garfield as Spider-Man/Parker

Smart ass Spider-man

Science geek Parker and the Web Shooters. Part of what makes Peter Parker who he is, is that he is an amateur inventor and a genius in his own right.

What I didn’t like:
Why must Spider-man (and every hero who wears a mask in the Marvel movie Universe for that matter) always take their mask off every ten seconds? Why wear one in the first place?

Aunt May and Uncle Ben, sorry but Martin Sheen and Sally Field just didn’t do it for me.

The Lizard, just didn’t look right and I really didn’t like Rhys Ifans.

No Daily Bugle or J. Jonah Jameson, this was a travesty. My guess is they couldn’t find someone who could pull it off as well as JK Simmons.

The whole sub plot with PP parents. Totally unnecessary.

The fact that Oscorp plays a role in the creation of Spider-man, you know, the same way Victor Von Doom had a hand in the formation of Fantastic Four in the Fox movie. Plus his web material comes from Oscorp. In the mail no less!

I hated the way they handled Uncle Ben’s death. In Raimi’s movie I cried my eyes out. In this one it just didn’t have the same emotional impact.

There’s more but you get my drift.

Could not agree more with your review. I liked the film but it really held itself back. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone were fantastic but overall the film just did not really stand out and be amazing. I kept getting distracted by simple illogical stuff and the music was just bad. I mean a superhero film has to have a great score and this one just didn’t.

Also the gymnasium scene annoyed me. I mean come on, I get why it was there but it could have been done so much better, without the cheesy air bud music.

My review of “The Amazing Spider-Man”

It wasn’t one of Raimi’s crappity crap crapfests.

The End.

Okay, yes. The story was kind of all over the place and there were definitely things that didn’t need to be there (the crane scene). Gwen finding out about Peter so early bugged me. We finally get use out of Gwen Stacy on film and they completely throw away the whole “She hates Spider-Man, but she loves Peter” aspect of her story.But at the end of the day, it’s still 100 times better than the turds Raimi inflicted on the franchise over his three movies and that’s good enough for me.

Wait, what? I LOVED it! Saw it last week, and, although I am a huge fan of the other Spiderman movies, this was my favorite Spidey yet! :)

I BAWLED during the crane scene. Just that shot of Spider-Man limping across rooftops looking so defeated because he can’t save the day, and then everything just lines up perfectly…I’m tearing up now.

I had super-low expectations going into this and was utterly blown away.

Garfield was pitch perfect as Peter Parker, same with Emma Stone as Gwen. And I was glad that they didn’t even try and make her damsel-in-distress. 

The only thing I didn’t like was Rhys Ifans as The Lizard. Not only did the character seem totally out of place and inconsistent in the movie, his motivations never make sense.

In addition to what you said, I wish they hadn’t retold the origin story at all. Is there anyone on EARTH that doesn’t know that Peter Parker became Spider-Man after getting bitten by a radioactive spider? No.  But I really did enjoy the film too. 

 You know what annoyed me about the gym scene? The fact that accidentally shattering a backboard is apparently a bigger disciplinary deal than Flash beating the shit out of Peter earlier. I know Hollywood-schools have consequence-free fights all the time, but at least be consistent.

I actually didn’t mind Uncle Ben’s closer at all. It’s possible that that’s just because I’ve heard of people who deliberately don’t erase voicemails from loved ones because they want to be able to hear their voices any time if something happens to them, and it acquired more emotional resonance for me, but I thought it was a nice way of tying things together. I love Cliff Robertson’s performance, but this was a hell of a lot more subtle than a dream-ghost who puts every realization Peter needs to have into words.

Oh, and (I’m not spoiler-labeling this because come on, it’s the origin story) was anybody else bothered that Uncle Ben’s killer was packing even though he didn’t even use the gun while committing the prior robbery?

The origin story movie of ANY superhero film franchise is supposed to be the best, right? I mean, that’s usually the most compelling story, the easiest to get previously uninterested people emotionally invested in. And in The Amazing Spider-Man it was just… meh. Like you say, EVERYONE knows the story, so if you’re going to retell it (which you kind of have to—is there any franchise reboot that hasn’t started with the origin story?), at least do something different with it!

Agree about the crane scene—but I’m biased, maybe, b/c I just hate sap in movies. It was like… c’mon, really? REALLY?!

My knowledge of comic Gwen Stacy is nil, but I think that would’ve been such a neat element to add to the character! As-is she was pretty generic. They really SHOULD have done something interesting with the character, considering most people (well, me, and I would assume other people too) imagine that she’ll eventually be replaced as the movies go on by Mary Jane. If Gwen’s gonna die, make her INTERESTING first, Jesus.

Plus, how things ended with her and Peter was ridiculous. They set up this conflict for Peter as to whether he’s going to avoid Gwen and/or tell her about his promise to her dad… and then they completely cop out on it in the last few scenes. You can do a takeback on that conflict, movie, but you’ll have to give back the character development, too, m’kay?

Agreed. He broke a piece of (glass!) sports equipment… shouldn’t they be recruiting him for the basketball team, not giving him community service?

Agree re: the parents. Teasing all that parental intrigue was unnecessary and, in my mind, a bit dickish. Don’t spend that much time in movie #1 on stuff you’ve no intention to explore until movie #2. If movie #1′s not good, I’m not going to see the sequel. I’ll cope with not knowing about Peter’s parents.

I agree re: liking how this movie showed the “growing pains” of Spider-Man from getting his powers to figuring out how to use them to become a proper hero. It fit well with the whole younger-Peter-Parker-teenager thing.

I don’t remember thinking Raimi’s films were that bad, actually… aside from Spider-Man 3. Compared to that, The Amazing Spider-Men is Citizen Kane.

I thought using the voicemail was a neat choice, but it was just so SCRIPTED. I get Uncle Ben is the wise guru Yoda in Peter’s life, but who ever leaves a voicemail like that? Just another oh-that’s-convenient-for-the-writers! moment. It broke suspension of disbelief for me. (For about the dozenth time.)

That didn’t bug me—I can see how he wouldn’t use the gun if he didn’t have to, and he pulled the robbery off pretty smoothly sans weapons.

What I don’t get is how Peter kept tracking down all these lookalike criminals. If he heard a brunette being chased on the police scanner, did he just ignore it? Would officers usually say something like “suspect has between chin-and-shoulder-length blonde hair” when placing a call? I’m confused.

The world always needs more Clue references!

Aww, I like Ifans as the Lizard. Though I agree his motivations weren’t clear. The serum, in addition to turning him into a super-strong lizard monster, made him insane, right? I got the sense that it was more a dual personality thing, that as a human he wanted to advance science to help people, and the alter ego took that and added homicidal mania. There were a few moments where it seemed the human Connors seemed horrified at what the lizard Connors had done.

Did I read that correctly?

 I thought leaving him at large was kind of a mistake too; the character isn’t supposed to be Moby Dick, he’s the banality of evil personified. The pettiest possible crook, would’ve taken about ten seconds to stop, but you didn’t, and now your surrogate father’s dead.

 ”Why must Spider-man (and every hero who wears a mask in the Marvel movie
Universe for that matter) always take their mask off every ten seconds?”
I suspect it’s because, like a lot of movies, they’re counting on their lead to sell the movie to some extent, so they show their face as much as they can for branding purposes. (This doesn’t make much sense for this particular movie, since I can’t imagine too many people are referring to this as “that new Andrew Garfield movie”, but if I understood how a producer’s mind worked, I would either be very rich or a serial killer.)

**SPOILERY**

Something I’m wondering about, and bear with me, because I’m not a comic reader:

So in comic cannon, Gwen Stacy hates Spider-Man but loves Peter, because she blames Spider-Man for her father’s death.  But as we know, that’s not how it pans out in the new film.  And if I recall, the same basic conflict happened in Raimi’s movies, but it was Peter’s best friend Harry Osborn who hated Spider-Man but loved Peter.  So is that comic cannon as well, or did the writers/producers/director just BS all that?  I’m just wondering about the cannon conflicts between the characters.

I was actually excited to see this…until the trailers started coming out that made it clear this was yet another “young man comes of age and struggles with his father issues” story. So…dollar rental for me.

 Just rewatched the first episode of the 1994 Spider-man cartoon. Definitely like a snout on The Lizard. Hated the design in the movie.

Love Rhys Ifans, though.

 Peter and Harry’s arc was more or less the same, only Harry actually witnessed his father’s death in the comics (which makes his hatred of Spider-Man kind of stupid, considering).

 My first thought about the design in the movie was “Welp, sucks for you if you were hoping Killer Croc would eventually show up in a Batman movie.”

I really disagree.  Leagues better than the Avengers, this one had actual character development. 

Still better than Tobey “mopey face” McGuire. Sorry! I loved the new Spider-Man. The new fighting and web-slinging moves were tight!

 It’s funny, Garfield is way more believable as a high schooler than Maguire was and yet he’s actually a year older than Maguire was in the first film.

I was wondering about that, too. Peter was obsessed with finding this guy, and then all of a sudden he just… forgets about him. I’m imagining him later on thinking “Oh, wait, was there something I forgot to do? Dammit… did I leave the stove on? What was it…”

He definitely has the goofycute high schooler thing down.

I actually thought that made sense, coupled with Leary’s monologue about Spidey only stopping specific crooks and not helping or stopping anyone else. He realized that he didn’t need to get revenge to be a hero, he needed to actually be a hero.

It’s the same way that Batman feels about Joe Chill. Depending on the story he either confronts him or is robbed of that chance, but either way he realizes that mere revenge isn’t enough to change things.

He only seemed horrified at the end when he was cured.

We only get two real character moments with Connors post-Lizardfication, and they are both when he is supercrazy. 

The issue I felt is that they tried to coalesce two concepts of the Lizard. One being the man Connors forced to transform into the monster Lizard but still having awareness of what the monster does (ala Jekyll/Hyde and Banner/Hulk) and the other being the man Connors completely losing himself to the monster Lizard and not having his intelligence and sanity anymore (ala modern interpretations of Killer Croc).

Both concepts work fine in comics and on-screen but the reason they’re so disparate is because it typically comes after years and during writing shifts, etc, not in the span of two hours without any sense of consistency whatsoever.

Honestly the movie didn’t even need so clear-cut a villain as the one they had, I felt like Peter’s reticence to become a hero was enough conflict that merely having Connors lose his agency and be The Lizard full time would have made as much sense. I’m glad they didn’t go with Goblin again but I’ll never understand why Connors enacts the same plan he was so horrified at to start with. If he wouldn’t allow Oscorp to do human trials on unwilling patients without it being properly tested, why would he suddenly decide that he needed to gas the city when it was clear how devastating the formula was? It’s way too clear cut a plan for a crazy person, and like the review mentioned Gwen should have just smashed the shit out of the device when she had the chance, or broken it in a way that would have backfired.

Ultimately it’s such minor issues because I loved the rest of the movie, I just hope that the sequel has a slightly more solidified villain.

I don’t think canon can be wholly considered here. The story is an amalgam of various arcs for Spidey and I actually liked them having Gwen know about Peter being Spider-Man so early on. I hated 500 Days Of Summer but I enjoyed the romcom elements here.

“And why is security at Oscorp so lax? The transformative bite that turns Peter Parker into Spider-Man takes place in a lab that, despite being labelled “RESTRICTED ACCESS,” isn’t even locked.”

I just got back from seeing it right now & its worse then that. How did Parker get powers from a spider, when those spiders had nothing apparent to do with the gene slicing animal project that didn’t work until after he gets powers?

I’m sorry, but thats like CERN spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a super collider for over a decade, only to find that the Higgs Boson partcile was inside the fridge inside the staff kitchen & it had been there all along.

It’s ironic that the “My love interest can’t know my secret identity” thing has become so uncommon nowadays that it would seem original. That used to be the standard protocol.

But yeah, the entire Spider-Man/Stacy dynamic was reversed in the movie. In the books, George Stacy knew Peter was Spider-Man, but never said anything. And his dying request was that Peter take care of Gwen.

Gwen, meanwhile, blamed Spider-Man for her father’s death and died before ever finding out the truth about what happened.

That would have been a lot better than what we got, but hey. Still better than Raimi’s flicks.

Yeah, I think the movie is going to get unfairly criticized for dropping the “But what happened to Uncle Ben’s killer?” story. That storyline did get resolved, but the resolution was Peter realizing that he was still acting selfishly and that saving people has to be more important than getting revenge.

From an emotional standpoint the crane scene was great, but the movie could have done a better job of setting it up. The general public didn’t know what was going on or what was at stake, so it was hard to buy that they’d put so much interest into seeing if Spider-Man could make it downtown.

A broken nerd costs a lot less money to replace than a broken backboard.

In the case of Spider-Man, it’s also a lot easier to emote when you’re not wearing a full face mask. Without thought bubbles or narration, you’ve pretty much just have facial expressions to get across the message, “Oh… I wonder if he went this way…”

But either way, with Joe Chill there is SOME resolution. I’m not saying that Peter needed to hunt the killer down, as that would go against what he learned about not seeking revenge. After he made the transition from vigilante to superhero, though, I just would have appreciated a single line or something about Uncle Ben’s killer, instead of them just dropping it entirely.

You have a good point about the two disparate interpretations. If they were going for a Jekyll/Hyde, Banner/Hulk thing—which I personally think would have been more interesting, but I really like Bruce Banner—having Connors be so lucid and intelligent while in Lizard-form was a bad choice. Every time he spoke it kind of ruined the moment for me.

I noticed that, too! Peter and Connors only implemented Richard Parker’s algorithm—the thing that makes the whole project work—AFTER Peter was bitten. Soooo the project worked the whole time (worked better than post-algorithm, even!) and Connors had just never bothered to check on the spiders in his super-insecure lab? What the hell?

Awwwwww. :(

I agree with this post. I loved Garfield as Peter Parker, he gave so much life to the character that was lacking in Toby’s portrayal. The alarm clock scene was possibly the best comic relief in the universe. Emma Stone won me over a few times, which is pleasantly surprising for me since I tend to have low expectations from male story writers on female characters. 

I have to agree with the Lizard as well. He seemed a little strange, sort of one-dimensional. There was one scene where he randomly starts talking to his ‘other half’ and I couldn’t help but think they were drawing parallels to the Green Goblin of the first Toby movie (which handled that whole concept MUCH better than this movie did).  The Lizard was sort of remorseless and I didn’t really see any shred of humanity in him until the end, making him a rather unlikable character.

That was what I was expecting to happen (Gwen blaming Spider-Man) but then I realized the movie was already 2.5 hours in and that it wasn’t a desirable cliff hanger.

I recall in the trailers them asking Peter to play football, but I don’t remember seeing that in the movie. Was it cut, or is my memory just bad?

I actually thought that this movie was way better than the previous trio.

Wait, what?  Avengers had like a million movies that had “actual character development”…what movies did you watch leading up to it?

???
The lizard makes those shifts all the time in the books.
There are plenty of stories where he has the Conner intellect but the Lizard evil intent, and if he gets agitated or excited he looses it and goes full on Primitive Lizard instinct and not intelligence at all.

Yeah, I thought the writing on the female characters was incredibly weak all round, though I think the performances by the actresses were good. The women in this film were just INCREDIBLY passive. Gwen dates Peter even though he -as you point out- is stalking her in a really creepy way (and while we’re on the subject I see this a lot in media recently. Why do we keep rewarding male characters for this sort of behaviour?). I went to see it with a girlfriend and we were both hoping Gwen might get in on the action at the end but she just hands the cure over to her father and waits on the ground while the men do the fighting. Aunt May was not so much a character as an occasional obstacle to Peter’s sneaking around. There was that scene near the beginning where she’s arguing with Uncle Ben and he snaps at her to stay out of it, and it really bugged me because I’d be furious if someone spoke to me like that in my own house but she just steps back and says nothing. 

An that was only one of a dozen issues i had with this movie. It was kind of terrible. Apparently a lot was cut from the film, with constant script rewrites & reshoots.

Yeah, that “two sides” scene was so stupid and unnecessary. It never comes up again and it’s basically only there so Connors’ plan is revealed, but the plan is so stupid there is no need for it to even exist.

@twitter-21606690:disqus Well there was the fact that the Wanted poster is still on Peter’s corkboard, so he knows he’s still out there and sees that face every time he goes into his room.

I have one word…

Butt.

Pretty much agree with this review. I had high expectations thinking it was going to be similar to the kick ass flick, Avengers but was a little let down. Maybe the sequel will be far more better since the writers will know what we want by the time the production kicks in.  

Least the soundtrack is good, downloaded it immediately after getting home from a midnight screening.

 After the movie ended, several people asked why didn’t the helicopter lighting the way just give Spidey a ride already!?  Why make him jump and perform tricks when they could have just flew and dropped him, saving everybody a lot of trouble and Spidey in particular a lot of unnecessary suffering.

Disagree.  I think Avengers was much, much better in character development, even ignoring its preceding movies.

Can’t agree with you more on this one. This movie to me even though not as good as the first two back 2002 & 2004 on the emotional, & entertainment level this one was a solid RENTAL / LOW MATINEE.
1) Had too many flaws in the story, way to many convent plot points to move the story along from A to B. Sally Fields and her use of Aunt May was poorer than poor and at the end with her & Andrew Garfield that is the biggest f&%k you to the audience in terms of lazy writing & just plain old fashion common sense.
2) Dr. Connors was barely even touched in the movie & was never truly explored as a character in what you could see the potential for as a desperate bid of retaining what he lost. Plus if we’ve got the Lizard as a villain I wanted to see more and more of the reptile part of his brain take over & not pull that same stunt from Spider-Man 1 with the Green Goblin. His plan too was just so typical lets make everyone like me because I’m the freak and everyone should be like me because I think I can save them from what were never told.
3) I thought Gwen Stacy was written alright but we never saw her explain anything nor go into any length of scientific discussion with Parker, Dr. Connors, or her other peers at Oscorp. Felt like she was written just like Mary Jane as little more then arm candy for the archetypical hero.
4) Now for Uncle Ben a.k.a Martin Sheen who I thought was decent in the role but nothing memorable and call me old fashion but I wanted to see something like what we saw in Spider-Man 1 with that death scene and the emotion that was behind it. This was over before it even started and left you wanting resolution. Also I don’t get what people are getting at by saying that we see Parker here grow into the role of the hero when he the hero has still let his uncle’s killer go free. Some hero, can’t even put his own uncle’s murderer behind bars because that’s not important to the script. Now Martin Sheen & Cliff Robertson were both great as Uncle Ben and you could see both of them putting 100% percent behind their performances. But what I miss is the heart, Sheen is that type of character that even in his old age has never given me really that sense of a father like figure but more so a frustrated guardian.
5) Osborn & Harry? Okay I know that they aren’t as important to the story now as they were before but for gods sake I wanted to see what Osborn looked like and now have this same illusive man image that we get now with every damn villain these days. Also where’s Harry? Peter’s only friend I mean we all know that they threw them together for artistic licenses in the first movie. Even so in this one we could maybe have an appearance of Harry trying to sweep Gwen off her feet but failing as she gives Parker the wondering eye. You know simple things like that give a film much more depth.
6) The bridge scene along with several others was just the biggest waste of character development in place of convince. Though my biggest problem with this film was Captain Stacy. Now I know he dies in the series but why in the first flick? & if the Lizard was freezing due to liquid Nitrogen why not aim for the head? I wanted to see Captain Stacy take on the role of Parker’s surrogate father until say Gwen’s death in say the third flick. I just felt it was again wasted potential of a character and no real act of valor or heroism was protrayed here because of again logic. Such as how did Captain Stacy get into a locked down building without anyone knowing about it?
7) Bullet Time? Where was my bullet time this would have been that flick where bullet time could have been used and made perfect sense as to how Spider-Man views the world.

I don’t remember that, but there might have been a trailer I missed…

You are dumb. Connors specifically states “no subject has ever survived” implying that something special (and IRRELEVANT) about Peter made him not die and therefore become super. This isn’t a science fiction “explain why it works to me” kind of movie. Who cares why it works? It’s not real. At all.

 I’ll grant the Uncle Ben / Aunt May moment was a bit odd, but the earlier points I just can’t see.

1) Peter wasn’t stalking Gwen at all, he just had a picture of her (like any shy boy would do at that age of a girl he liked, frankly), and the fact that she worked at Oscorp was a complete coincidence. He was there for the scientist who knew his dad, not her.

2) Get in on the action? She’s a teenage girl without superpowers, what is going to do? Scream at it? Her father was a police captain with body armor and a shotgun, and Peter is.. well. freakin spider-man. This point just seems kinda silly, don’t ya think?

except that if “no subject has ever survived” then those spiders were not part of thegene splicing project. An if they aren’t part of the gene slicing project, then where did Parker get his powers from?

reaqlly? Because i thought the writing of the characters across the board was weak. No need to quanitify to just female characters, it was all terrible.