The Amazing Spider-Man - A Review
As soon as they announced they were rebooting the Spider-Man film franchise I was torn. A part of me was like, “It’s too soon you money-grabbing douchebags!” and another part was like “Anything to wash away the mess that was Spider-Man 3!” As we got closer, I got more excited and more convinced the film was going to live up to the name. The costume looked incredible, I knew Andrew Garfield would nail the role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man and I had every bit of faith in Marc Webb after 500 (Days) of Summer. But I walked out of the cinema half an hour ago and I’m having seriously mixed feelings.
Peter Parker lives with his Aunt and Uncle after his parents mysteriously left in a hurry when he was a child. Now at high school, Peter has found clues about the kind of scientific work his father was involved in. This leads to him to Dr Connors, a man who hopes to develop a cure for all the set-backs mankind suffers, including his lack of a right arm. While visiting Dr Connors in his lab, Peter gets bit by a genetically engineered spider, becomes the web-slinging hero that we all know and love. He then manages to start dating Gwen Stacey,( the daughter of the police captain who is intent on bringing Spider-Man down) and tries to trying to solve the mystery of his father’s work. Oh, yeah. He takes photos too.
It was a beautifully shot film. The scenes with Spider-Man swinging around were captured perfectly and the scene on the bridge was particularly well handled. However, I’m still not convinced the 3D adds much value, even to something on this scale.
Just as I thought he would be, Andrew Garfield was spot-on as the guilt ridden Peter Peter and the witty, charismatic Spider-Man. Emma Stone was great as Gwen Stacy and Martin Sheen and Sally Field were well cast as Uncle Ben and Aunt May. Rhys Ifans’ Dr Connors was well portrayed. But they all struggled with a weak script and weren’t given a lot to work with.
Because this is a reboot, I was hoping they wouldn’t focus on the Spider-Man origin story as much. I knew they would weave their own tale (pun intended) because otherwise people would assume the origin story of the original film would still be the origin for this Peter Parker. Instead they focused on the origin bit too much by trying to tangle it in with Peter’s own origin and his relationship (or lack of) with his parents. But as soon as he becomes Spider-Man, his parents are forgotten about and the questions that we were promised would be answered remain answerless. Which wouldn’t be a problem if we were getting swept up in the plot but the film was so slow in the first act that I just kept thinking to myself that we’ve seen all this, we know he becomes Spider-Man so let’s just get this all out of the way so we can get on with some real plot!
The ‘real plot’ was Dr Connors and his dream to be able to use a knife and a fork at the same time. I understand his motivation. Who doesn’t love having two hands? But I don’t get why he was so evil when he became the Lizard. He was perfectly nice before. Are all lizards inherently evil? Then he had the problem that the villains in the first two Spider-Man films faced. They had no-one to talk to! How does a villain share his evil plan with the audience if he isn’t sharing it on screen with anyone?
In the first film, Osborn spoke with the Goblin (which makes sense). In the second film, Doc Oc spoke with... his tentacle-claws (pushing it a bit.) In this film, Dr Connors first speaks to a camera (which worked well) as he conducts more science but later on, he just talked to himself. Which was painful to watch. It felt so cheesey and forced. At least it was in his head I suppose. But as soon as Spider-Man stops his plan and Dr Connors returns to normal, he’s a nice guy again and saves Peter’s life. Which is bullshit. If the guy had been showing some remorse as the Lizard, some kind of guilt but convincing himself he was doing the right thing, I might have bought it. Instead we’re forced to assume that just because he’s big, scaly and got claws that he’s a naturally going to be a bastard. But this is a problem a lot of Spidey’s villains have. They’re generally nice guys who have something they can’t control and WHOOPS now they’re evil. Whereas, for example, most of Batman’s villains are just evil or evil with proper motivation. The Joker? Insanely evil. Bane? Grew up in a prison. That’s going to make you a little evil. But just because a guy is big and green doesn’t make him bad. Look at the Hulk!
I might be alone here but I really liked Danny Elfman’s score for the previous films and I was keen to see what they would do with the new film. I had no idea who they had on board for the score this time round. Around half an hour into the film I remember thinking, “Jeez, this music is bad. It sounds a hell of a lot like the score from Titanic.” Low and behold, James Horner did the score and he did a terrible, terrible job. Half the time it was felt like the music was building to something that never happened and half the time it felt like the score to a daytime soap. The piano music that was played while Gwen nursed Peter’s wounds was close to ruining the entire scene for me.
It might sound like I didn’t like the film at all. That’s not true. I really enjoyed it and a lot of that was down to the cast and Stan Lee’s cameo was his best yet. But I’ve spent months convincing people that it wouldn’t be the same as the first film, that we’d get something different but the first forty-five minutes to an hour felt far too familiar. I think the sequel (as with the original sequel) will far out-strip the first film and really find it’s own ground. They’ve already started planting the seeds with the un-answered questions about Peter’s parents, Dr Connors involvement and of course, Norman Osborn who turned up at the end (although it’s not confirmed it’s Osborn, all we know is that he has a hat and had some kind of authority over Connors and sounded EXACTLY like Willem Dafoe). Obviously depends on how much money this film makes but I’m sure it’ll do well enough to warrant a sequel.
All in all, a welcome return for the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. I just wish he’d turned up a lot quicker so we could have seen more of him and less of what we’ve seen before.
7/10
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