{"id":1011,"date":"2012-07-12T15:43:31","date_gmt":"2012-07-12T15:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/?p=1011"},"modified":"2026-10-30T19:15:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T19:15:19","slug":"the-amazing-spider-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/entertainment\/film\/the-amazing-spider-man\/","title":{"rendered":"The Amazing Spider-Man"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Amazing Spider-Man we see a reboot\u00a0of the Marvel Comics Spider-Man franchise, where the director Marc Webb strives for a more serious and edgy look to distinguish it from its predecessor [that starred Toby McGuire]. To that end, aside from Spider-Man and his nemesis (The Lizard), this version has no other cartoonish characters\u2014like the former film’s Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jamison, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attempt wasn’t unlike the approach Batman Begins (starring Christian Bale) employed to differentiate itself from the earlier, more cartoonish versions of Batman (starring Michael Keaton, and later, Val Kilmer and George Clooney).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, despite some strong performances, slight twists in the Spider-Man storyline, and good special effects, nothing in The Amazing Spider-Man was strong enough to prop up an anemic script that lacked character development, depth, and engaging dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Amazing Spider-Man<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, it often seemed a bit helter-skelter: little if any evolution of Peter Parker’s perception occurred regarding what has happened to him; the relationship between Parker and his love interest, who seemed to just be there for the sake of appearing — it was rushed and automatic, making the whole affair seem like an undesired task that the script wanted to just get out of the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story begins with Peter as a boy playing hide-and-seek. He enters his fathers study to find it tossed. When his father enters moments later, he quickly checks that his secret files are safe, then collects them, his wife, and his son, and dashes off to his own father’s blue-collar home in Queens, New York City. In a short scene, he leaves Peter — and his briefcases for safekeeping. Then he and his wife leave, never to be heard from again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast-forward about eight years, and Peter is now in high school. We see him toting his camera, though no storyline ever develops around his photography. In the schoolyard, he tries to intervene on behalf of another nerd being picked on by the school jock\/bully, and takes a beating, but gains Gwen’s admiration and interest for the effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The big mystbout the documents father’ss dad hid at his fathers, wa briefcaseow fthe basementsement in a briefcase — after a waUncleeak forces him and uncle Ben to e everything upstairs –, revoaboutnd an equation regarding crpecies experiments that he and his partner had been working on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his quest to learn about his parents’ disappearance, Peter tracks down his dad\u2019s former lab partner, the one-armed Dr. Curtis Connors, who is working at OzCorp. Conveniently, Peter\u2019s love interest, Gwen Connors, is Dr. Connors’s lead intern. Despite heavy security, Peter strolls around, following an employee who enters a room with the same symbol outside it that Peter saw on his father’s papers. When the employee leaves, Peter manages to duplicate the complicated password. Inside, he finds a room full of spiders and webs in some type of process or experiment. Before leaving the premises, yes, he gets bitten by a spider that found its way into his shirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His transformation happens suddenly while he naps on the subway en route home. Unlike the previous Spider-Man story (2002)\u2014which had Peter battling sickness, dizziness, and confusion through the night while his body transformed metabolically\u2014 the Amazing Spider-Man wakes from his short train nap fit and able after a drop of water falls on his forehead, startling him. He seems only mildly mystified as to why his hands are sticking to things (most notably a girl’s top that he accidentally pulls off her). He ends up fighting off her enraged boyfriend and others in a mildly humorous Keystone Cop-ish comedy of errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Peter appears at Dr. Connors’ home to reveal he is his father’s son, the doctor invites him in and explains what he and Peter\u2019s father worked on years earlier: cross-species experimentation they believed could cure human ills. Peter gives the doctor the equation he retrieved from his dad’s briefcase, but without saying where it came from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The doctor believes the equation to be the missing link to the success of his cross-species experiments. Pressured by the henchmen to find a cure for the dying Norman Ozgood (the Green Goblin in the 2002 film), and with the partial success of test rat subjects that grew back missing limbs, he injects himself with the hope that the serum would provide him the ability to regrow the missing lower half of his own arm, and save his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He emerges as The Lizard, which Spider-Man has to battle to protect the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Garfield was excellent as Peter Parker, delivering a terrific performance as the conflicted, somber high-school nerd turned web-slinging superhero; the only other bright star was Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, his love interest\u2014who Parker doesn\u2019t just admire from afar in this rendition, but actually connects with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the possible exception of Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curtis Connors and the Lizard, the script doesn\u2019t provide anything for the other characters to do; there are no meaningful subplots beyond the police captain being Gwen\u2019s father, no interplay or memorable dialogue, and nothing for the audience to love, hate, be inspired by, or feel empathy for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Spider-Man [starring Tobey Maguire] made its big-screen debut in 2002, it was arguably the best superhero film to date, with several successful sequels to follow, leaving one to wonder what the point of this new, recycled version by Marvel is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the exception of replacing MJ (the elusive girl Peter pines for, eventually gets the interest of, but ultimately avoids a relationship with to keep her safe in the 2002 film) with Gwen Stacy (a girl who sees him as a love interest from the start, from whom he can\u2019t stay away from in the current film), the absence of the Daily Bugle Editor-in-Chief, and the addition of the no-nonsense police captain (Denis Leary), there\u2019s nothing of note new here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a mildly entertaining film with good special effects and a few laugh lines. But lets not call it Amazing.
2 1\/2 Stars<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Amazing Spider-Man we see a reboot\u00a0of the Marvel Comics Spider-Man franchise, where the director Marc Webb strives for a more serious and edgy look to distinguish it from its predecessor [that starred Toby McGuire]. To that end, aside from Spider-Man and his nemesis (The Lizard), this version has no other cartoonish characters\u2014like the former\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ba_format":"Film review","ba_short_answer":"","ba_case_file":"","ba_archive_note":"","ba_updated":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[182,183,184,186,187,101,185],"class_list":["post-1011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","tag-andrew-garfield","tag-emma-stone","tag-martin-sheen","tag-marvel-comics","tag-movies","tag-nyc","tag-sally-fields"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2283,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions\/2283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brieaustin.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}