Running Time: 2 hours, 16 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Marc Webb
Quick Impressions:
When I first heard about this project, I thought, What?! They’re rebooting the Spider-Man franchise already? What a horrible idea! Then when they cast Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man, I thought, The guy from The Social Network? As Spider-Man? Seriously? What a horrible idea!
But then the rest of the cast seemed so solid—Emma Stone, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Dennis Leary, Rhys Ifans—and then the previews started looking so good. And then, the song from the previews got stuck in my head. And then somehow, suddenly, for reasons I cannot rationally explain, I found myself in a bizarre predicament. Energized and eager to see more great summer movies in the wake of The Avengers, I woke up one morning and realized I was more excited about The Amazing Spider-Man than any other upcoming summer release (including The Dark Knight Rises). Do not ask me how this happened, but it did.
I was so excited about this movie. (For one thing, it looked like fun for the whole family, and that’s always a good thing.) Nothing could dim my enthusiasm—not even when my three-year-old accidentally stuck her fingers into the corner of my mouth as I helped her down from the toilet she had just been holding onto with both hands in the movie theater bathroom just before the previews started. Even after that fiasco, I (a germaphobe if there ever was one) managed to keep my focus on the coming feature.
And, to be honest, The Amazing Spider-Man did not disappoint me. I will say that it’s much darker than its previews suggest (and dramatically darker than any of the Sam Raimi films). For small children, it can be intense. (It definitely devotes a lot of screen time to creepy images and sounds.) And of course, since it’s an origin story all over again, some elements seem annoyingly repetitive. But it still succeeds as both a summer blockbuster and a Spider-Man movie, and in many ways, it surpasses the trilogy directed by Sam Raimi.
The Good:
I’m one of the people who raved about Spider-Man 2 being—if not the best—one of the best superhero movies ever made back when I saw it in the theater, and I am not one of the people who trashed Spider-Man 3. (It reminded me a lot of superhero stuff I looked forward to seeing when I was a very little kid in the early to mid-1980s, and while it was far from perfect, I certainly saw nothing to hate about it. Without a doubt, it was the best Spider-Man movie that came out that year.)
My point is, I think Sam Raimi’s films were above average at the time, and I believe they’ve held up pretty well over the years. But this reboot does feel fresher. Even though it makes me feel unbelievably old to discuss this, ten years have passed since Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man movie, and 2012 is a different time than 2002. The world has changed and so have the expectations of the audience. Maybe starting over isn’t always bad.
Honestly, Andrew Garfield makes a much more compelling Spider-Man than Tobey Maguire. He’s funnier and more brooding. (I’m not saying that Maguire’s performance was bad, but when he was infected by Venom in Spider-Man 3, he was such a polar opposite of his usual self that it’s hard not to suspect that something was wrong with “good Spider-Man,” too. Nobody’s that good. Maguire is a capable actor, of course, and I enjoyed him as Spider-Man in all three movies, but he does make the character indistinguishable from George Michael from Arrested Development.) Garfield brings a welcome edge that makes Spider-Man seem more like a comic book superhero and Parker seem more like an actual teenager.
Garfield deserves a lot of credit for a great performance, but the character of Peter Parker is also different this time around. Even before becoming a superhero, he’s strong right from the start. Unlike Maguire’s Parker, Garfield’s Peter seems happy with who he is. He’s just not happy with some of the people around him. As an early scene shows, he’s willing to stand up for a defenseless peer even if it means taking a beating. When the bully targets him instead, Peter doesn’t think, “Why am I so weak?” He thinks, “That guy is a jerk.” Maguire’s Parker was always more of a meek, self-effacing, beyond socially awkward, goody two shoes. This new Peter Parker is proud to be a science genius, displaying his intellect and gifts more convincingly than the previous cinematic incarnation of the character. And this new more secure-in-himself Peter Parker behaves like a hero and gets the girl’s attention before he has anything to do with any scientifically modified spiders.
Actually, all of the characters are pretty well drawn, and all of the performances are good.
I love Emma Stone, particularly for her sense of humor and ease with comedy. She seems like such a natural comedienne, so she, too, brings a kind of warmth and realism to Gwen Stacy that seemed missing in Mary Jane Watson. I never liked Kirsten Dunst as MJ. To be honest, I found Dunst’s performance extra disappointing because she’d shown such brilliance as a child actor. She was absolutely fantastic in both Interview with the Vampire and Little Women. She was even pretty decent in Jumanji. But her Mary Jane always felt forced, fake, drab, and kind of whiny to me. Gwen Stacy is a more likeable character because she seems more capable, less needy, and more comfortable with who she is. Stone always seems to play characters like this, and she does it very well. She and Garfield have great chemistry. In fact, I would have happily watched a movie that focused solely on their interactions during high school.
Another real strength of the movie is James Horner’s score. I mention this because I noticed it at several moments—once particularly when Peter was sneaking around the secret rooms of the Oscorp lab uncovering the amazing spiders. The music seemed so powerful but not at all distracting. It fit the feel of the film perfectly.
The fight choreography is fantastic, too. Spider-Man’s nimble fighting style works really well. It highlights the agility and grace that sets him apart from other superheroes.
Best Scene:
My favorite part of the movie happened as Peter discovered his new powers. The scene that unfolds when he awakes suddenly on the subway has amazing fight choreography and wonderful humor. And my stepson and I laughed throughout the sequence of scenes when Peter awakens the next morning and notices that something is way off.
I also particularly liked the opening scene. What struck me about it was that what Peter initially mistakes for his father seems to have been put there deliberately. What adult plays hide and seek like that? Game on, Dad, you psycho! I thought that part perfectly established the tone of his relationship (or lack thereof) with his parents.
Best Scene Visually:
The movie had a darkly charming visual aesthetic. As I read over that, I notice that it sounds like it means nothing. So I’ll be more specific. Peter’s surprise encounter with the spiders looks really cool and probably looked spectacular in 3D.
(I wish someone would develop 3D technology that allowed movies to screen in 3D and 2D on the same screen simultaneously. That way, if you wanted to watch the movie in 3D, you could cough up the extra money for the glasses, and if you’re my three-year-old, you could just watch in 2D without complaining that your ears hurt.
Even though I kind of hate 3D, this movie I actually wanted to see in 3D, but since my daughter wanted to see it and won’t wear the glasses, that didn’t happen.)
Best Action Sequence:
Watching the relatively unusual way the Green Lantern diffused tension at a party last summer, I became acutely aware that all comic book movies usually feature at least three carefully constructed encounters between the hero and the villain. Somebody puts a lot of thought into these action scenes. Each battle has to engage the audience and stand apart from other superhero fight scenes.
With all of this in mind, I found Spider-Man’s mid-movie showdown with the Lizard pretty gripping, particularly his eventual escape through a drain. It seemed like a pretty thoughtful scene. Where would a lizard hide? Where is a spider at its worst?
As he eventually made his way out of the sewer, I thought, Ah, waterspouts! The old enemy of spiders!
I actually thought the later fight scene in the school was one of the weaker parts of the movie, though my three-year-old found it pretty hilarious and laughed throughout.
Funniest Scene:
I loved what Emma Stone did with the “touching something up” line. In fact, that whole awkward scene between Gwen and Peter in the hallway was pretty amusing, thanks to good comic timing and impeccable delivery by both actors (who work very well together and have great chemistry on screen, incidentally).
Stan Lee’s cameo also got a lot of laughs.
The Other Performances:
Right away, I loved Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, though both he and Sally Field looked so much older than I thought they should. Everybody ages, I guess, but it seemed like the movie deliberately frumped them up an awful lot. Sally Field didn’t really come into her own as Aunt May until the end of the movie, but I like her in everything, and I liked her here.
Rhys Ifans made Dr. Kurt Connors so likeable and convincing that I hated to see him become the villain. (Are any Spider-Man villains actually evil?) Irrfan Khan also added a great sense of restrained menace as his creepy Oscorp boss.
Dennis Leary was pretty great as Captain Stacy. And I was shocked to see C. Thomas Howell show up. Isn’t it supposed to be the Batman movies that reclaim lost stars of the 1980s?
The Negatives:
I thought the movie lost a lot of energy when the Lizard finally emerged as the villain. It also got much, much darker at this point, which is not a bad thing (unless you’re three and terrified of the Lizard), but it was a marked tonal shift. This movie is so much darker and edgier than any of the Raimi Spider-Man movies, which at some moments seems like a good things, at others, a bad one. Personally, I think it drags just a bit between Peter’s initial discovery of the Lizard’s lair and the big finish. At no point does it become boring or unwatchable, but at a couple of moments, I found myself thinking, This movie is pretty long, which is not a good thing.
Also, I liked the way this reboot slightly altered Peter’s origin story, but the parts that were the same felt so unwelcome and rehashed. For a while, I thought Martin Sheen would be in it to the end, and they’d kill off Sally Field. Uncle Ben’s speech motivating speech seemed awfully rambling here. I wanted to pull Peter aside and whisper, “What he’s trying to say is, ‘With great power, comes great responsibility.’” That line was definitely overstated in Spider-Man (2002), but it seems almost too talked-around here.
I didn’t like the way the conflict between Spider-Man and Captain Stacy was resolved, either. I mean, this is Spider-Man, right, not Harry Potter? Good grief! Poor Peter! Can’t he hold onto any father figure with those sticky, web-crawling hands?
Overall:
My favorite moment of The Amazing Spider-Man came when my three-year-old watched him swinging through town near the end of the movie and asked suspiciously, “Hmm, is that safe?” It’s just as good as any of the previous Spider-Man films, better at some moments, not-quite-as-good at others. But I liked the whole movie, and I’m sure we’ll buy it when it comes out on Blu-ray.