The Amazing Spider-Man - Review. More like Okay Spider-Man.

It seems that Webb tried to keep away from Raimi's Spider-Man, but there is too much 'same, same, but different' going on. We get Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) teaching Peter that people with something to give the world, have a responsibility to do so, but we don't get the "With great Power comes great responsibility." We get given a very familiar villain, Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) aka The Lizard. Who has a disorder very much similar to Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin; a voice in his head turning him from genius do-gooder to all out psychotic. He does differ from Green Goblin in looks though, looking more like a Goomba from the horrible 90's Super Mario Brothers: The Movie, than a Power Rangers Reject. There is a very familiar origin story that we already know, that is then ramped up, like Webb thought "Oh, well they know the rest."

The problem I had with this reworking of the Spider-Man legacy is that it doesn't rely too much on convention. We have already been given the origin story before, it didn't need to be covered again.

Webb doesn't fail though; he is backed by a wonderful cast. Andrew Garfield takes over for Tobey Maguire and does a great job as Spidey/Parker. While the love interest is their again, it's now Gwen Stacy (played by the somewhat typecast Emma Stone). Stone and Garfield have some delightful chemistry and their scenes together are great. Replacing J. Jonah Jameson is Gwen Stacy's father George Stacy (Denis Leary), who happens to be the NYPD captain heading up the search for the vigilante Spider-Man. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Captain Stacy, actually, and the character feels like he has one of the more fully formed arcs in the film. Leary's turn as a dad protective of the teenage scoundrel sniffing around his daughter is a lot of fun. Ifans makes a suitable villain, even in CG, though his change in behaviour is hard to shake off. The other performers - mainly Field and Sheen- do decent work with their roles, but are limited by the typical footsteps of the script.

The film features some striking imagery, such as Spidey splayed out on a full web in the sewers, or the tiny figure of Peter standing atop a skyscraper, truly giving us the scope of what a man who climbs 80-story buildings would look like. Yet, the darker, grittier approach often feels off, like in an early sequence when Peter faces a gang of thugs on a train, it feels more campy than courageous. That's the tone I felt during most of the film.  

The Amazing-Spider Man is not a bad film. It just doesn't feel like it accomplished what it set out to do. I suppose though this will hopefully be a lesson to reboots; you don't need to go back to origin 101 no matter how much you jazz it up. There also isn't a need to copy other films ("Let's go dark like Nolan!") there is no success in that unless it's done right, and with the right character. Hopefully this franchise will go the way of the original trilogy, X-Men, and Nolan's Batman and we'll see a brilliant second film. That said it's a decent flick as long as you can leap over the script flaws and get into the swing of things.

3 out 5

Nic Shaw