Let me tell me tell you what I was expecting from the Amazing Spider-Man… Nothing… Zip… nada… Certainly I was expecting good adrenaline rush, fight scenes and special effects but you can get those in a Michael Bay film. I’ll be honest I hadn’t even been bracing myself with the prejudice of lowered expectations. If it hadn’t been for the free pass I hadn’t been planning on seeing it in the theater.
Have I ever mentioned that sometimes it’s nice to be wrong?
The Amazing Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb, was a very pleasant surprise. I hadn’t been looking forward to the reboot of the franchise. Not because I liked where the Sam Raimi trilogy ended with but because I really didn’t want them to start over again. I had hoped that for once I had hoped that Hollywood had faith in the average viewer and tried something different, a complex and new story that challenged everyone. That being said the execution of the origin story was very well done and given gravitas. The sci-fi techno-babble of Peter’s origin story convincing and Martin Sheen’s performance as Uncle Ben made you really believe his death would inspire Peter to be greater than he could possibly be.
I’m not going to say it was perfect. After all, while I liked how they did it, the origin story was still a retread and suffered in the same way all superhero films that deal with the hero’s origin suffer. They always feel like two short film’s sewn together. The first being the origin and the second being the hero’s first encounter with their first real villain. The second acts of these stories always feel slightly tacked on no matter the spectacle. Also it was fairly obvious this film is intended to be the first of a series and I’m not completely sure how well they pulled this off. I’ve noticed more than once that a lot of these series starters (at least the ones that are intentionally the beginning of a series) suffer from a certain indecisiveness. You can tell that they want this to be the first step but at the same time they never seem to be sure whether they have convinced the production company to commit. Because of this, despite dropping hints of more stories, they remain self-contained and whenever this happens they seem to trip up every single time. The other problem I had was this was one of the most blatant examples of “Dawson Casting” I’d seen in a while. (Yeah Gwen, we really believe you’re seventeen)
But what ever I may think about certain characters being too old, it was the cast of this film that made everything work Andrew Garfield played Peter Parker/Spider-Man as a awkward intelligent young man but not as the usual cliche science nerd who is nothing but a doormat until he gets bitten. Emma Stone was excellent as Gwen Stacy making us care for her and worry (provided the next couple of films follow the comic books.) Sally Fields was wonderful as a loving, worrying and long suffering Aunt May. (She may not guess her nephew’s secret but his weird hours and occasional bruises makes it clear to her that he has one. ) Rhys Ifans as Dr Connor served as a flawed roll model who’s breakdown both mentally physically to become the film’s villain. But all in all I think my favorite performance was Denis Leary as Captain Stacy who acts as both an antagonist and as kind of a counterpoint to Sheen’s Uncle Ben in molding Peter’s development as a hero. Even the smaller parts were impressive, well thought out and not the usual clichés the best example of this was Chris Zylka as Flash Thompson instead of writing him as the usual Jock/Bully (even though he clearly was) the writers suggested that he and Peter had a history that was not entirely antagonistic.
All in all while The Amazing Spider-Man may not had everything I was hoping for. It was a very enjoyable way to spend two hours and seventeen minutes. And definitely will get a positive ranking on my live action comic book movie list. (Despite thinking all of the skinks accompanying the Lizard were a little too active for the New York climate.)
