Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

Towards the end of The Amazing Spider-Man, one of Peter Parker’s highschool teachers states to the class (please excuse the paraphrasing) that “In all of fiction, there only exists ten stories, but at the end of the day, there’s really only one: ‘Who am I?’”. If this isn’t some statement from the writers about the nature of film reboots, and The Amazing Spider-Man‘s retread of the original Spider-Man‘s plot specifically, then I don’t know what is.

Don’t be fooled by Sony’s marketing that this summer’s web-slinging sequel is the “untold story” of the Spider-Man saga; The Amazing Spider-Man is a full-fledged reboot of the series that started only ten years ago, and whose last entry is barely five years old. Originally supposed to be Spider-Man 4, Sony went into reboot mode after their much-publicized falling out with original trilogy director Sam Raimi. As a result, we have a film whose sole purpose of existing is to make sure Sony hangs on to its lucrative Spider-Man license, lest it revert back to Disney and Marvel to tie in with their massively successful Marvel Cinematic Universe and The Avengers canon. However, in this case, it’s clear that Sony should have just taken one for the team, as they neither understand nor care about the source material. Through an asinine script that betrays the characters to a faux-”dark and edgy” vibe that attempts to nix the “best” (read: most marketable) of both Christopher Nolan’s Batman films and the Twilight saga (and succeeds in neither), The Amazing Spider-Man achieves the impossible in somehow ending up worse than Spider-Man 3. 

Part of the film’s pre-release marketing was the fact that this take on Spider-Man would be closer to the comics. Spider-Man’s web-shooters are now homemade, rather than organic like the previous films, and he is now more sarcastic and snarky. And it’s true, those parts are closer to the comics. Literally everything else isn’t.

As a reboot, The Amazing Spider-Man finds it necessary to retell Spider-Man’s origin (because movie audiences can’t be trusted, apparently), but retreads the exact same same ground as the 2002 original. Except this time, they get it wrong.  I understand updating a character’s origin for modern times, or putting it in a new context, but it’s another thing entirely to completely squander what makes the character’s origin thematically important. Marin Sheen is great as Uncle Ben, but the script robs all the of weight from his tragic death, opting instead to focus Spider-Man’s origins on the mystery of his missing parents – which, by the way, never gets resolved, cheaply holding out for the already in-development sequel.

In the midst of retelling Spider-Man’s iconic origin, the film also extensively explores Peter’s life. Updated for the Twilight generation, Peter Parker is no longer the quintessential geek. Now, played by the dreamy Andrew Garfield, he’s portrayed more as an edgy skater kid (albeit still a genius), a social outcast not because of his smarts or awkward looks but because. . . well, the film doesn’t really go into that really. The film instead decides to divert from potential character building moments to instead focus on mind-bogglingly stupid scenes such as Peter using his newfound spider-powers to beat the high school bully at basketball, or a skateboarding sequence set in an abandoned warehouse that would have felt more appropriate as part of an 80s montage.

The biggest problem with the movie is that things have no rhyme or reason for happening – they just simply are, because that’s what’s required of a Spider-Man movie. Why is Peter an outcast? Because he just is. Why does Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) fall in love with him? Because Peter needs a love interest (and because Gwen needs to inevitably die when they introduce the Green Goblin in the sequel). Why does he call himself Spider-Man? Because the movie’s called The Amazing Spider-Man, duh! Even the film’s villain, the Lizard (awkwardly portrayed by Rhys Ifans), lacks a coherent motivation for existence, and whose ultimate plot comes off more as an obligation to give the film a final set-piece action sequence.

I wouldn’t go as far as to call the film a failure – it features some of the most exciting and inventive action in the franchise, Andrew Garfield provides the best Peter Parker that the horrible script allows, and Stan Lee gets one of his best cameos – but to call it flawed would be a massive understatement.