I always feel I have to qualify that I don’t approach superhero movies objectively. I’m either too generous or too critical given my childhood love of the genre. I desperately want to love them, so when I am disappointed I can be fairly vindictive in my opinions. In this case, I was incredibly disappointed in the rebooted ‘The Amazing Spiderman’.
I don’t believe a film should be rebooted unless you can make it better than the original (most notable example of a successful reboot is ‘The Dark Knight’). All the ingredients are here for success; an all star cast with up and coming talent alongside veteran Hollywood royalty, state of the art special effects, and an impressive blockbuster budget. Director Marc Webb fails to capture any of the magic and wonder that made the original 2002 Spiderman such a worldwide hit.
The original Spiderman, starring Tobey Maguire, was one of the first films to take superheroes seriously and achieve box office super status. It’s hard to remember a time when super hero movies didn’t fuel the box office, but it’s only been for the last 12 years. Now Spiderman and his story is a well known commodity. The first Spiderman director, Sam Raimi, was able to capture the wonder and excitement of a high school kid discovering he was a superhero. The rebooted Spiderman has none of that. It seeks to impress with flashy technology and a super villain monster that is surprisingly poorly animated. All of this mired in a dark and visually unimpressive atmosphere.
British Import Andrew Garfield takes on the role of Peter Parker this time around. I was excited as I was impressed with his work in ‘The Social Network’ and I was looking forward to seeing what he could do. The female lead is Gwen Stacey (played by the lovely Emma Stone) replacing Mary Jane Watson. Garfield and Stone are an item in real life, but you would never know from the awkward chemistry they display on screen. Each scene was meant to convey bumbling puppy love, but random unimpressive dialogue combined with lack of chemistry provided no real connection. Sally Field and Martin Sheen are completely miscast to play Aunt May and Uncle Ben. Columbia Pictures just went for the big star power instead of properly casting the roles. Aunt May is as pivotal to the Spiderman character as Peter Parker himself, yet Sally Field seemed relegated to a small supporting role. Instead of being Peter’s moral compass, she simply seemed to be the generic worried mother figure.
My main beef with Garfield’s performance was that he’s a better actor than what he showed here. His twitchy mumbling interpretation was difficult to understand at times and failed to capture the All-American lovable nerd that Tobey Maguire channeled so perfectly. I’m always amazed when Brits or any other nationality can capture an American accent (no on can do it better than Gary Oldman). Garfield did it fairly well (despite playing a Brazilian) in ‘The Social Network’, which is why it surprised me here where he went for most of the world’s interpretation, which is a constant string of mumbling. I consider this lazy acting.
As for the plot of the movie, the story itself was fairly comic book generic; mad scientist, evil corporation, science experiment gone wrong. Ryhs Ifan plays Dr Curt Connors (Ryhs is a gifted actor, but a little old to be the bad boy that the press reports recount). Connors is a one armed scientist who was once a colleague of Peter’s father. He is exploring the use of cross species genetics to regrow his arm, much the same way lizards can grow back a tail. This study links into Spiderman’s origin story of being bitten by a mutated spider. I will say that I was intrigued how the two stories were intertwined.
The Lizard was a poor choice for a villain as he was never that good in the comics. As a kid, I would always pass on any Spiderman comic with The Lizard on the cover. On the big screen it’s no different. The movie slowly dissolves into a monster movie reminiscent of ‘Godzilla’ (a reference unwisely made several times throughout the film). Nevertheless, Rhys does the best he can and his performances when he is still human are among the best in the film.
The story of Peter’s origin is retold with a modern twist (i.e cell phones, high tech computer labs). I will say many things in this version are more true to the comic, like Gwen Stacey being his high school love instead of Mary Jane as well as the nature of his famous webbing. The one thing that was glaringly missing was the catch phrase that is the essence of Spiderman; ‘With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility’. A simplistic phrase, but one that has for decades been associated with the character. Gwen’s father, who just happens to be the Police Captain pursuing Spiderman, is portrayed by the adequately annoyed Dennis Leary. I wasn’t really sure why Spiderman was his top priority when there was a giant lizard terrorizing the city. Also, while there were several shots of the cover of The Daily Bugle, the absence of longtime nemesis and Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson was very noticeable (I can’t remember a single issue that didn’t have him). Personally, I think no one could come close to J.K. Simmons interpretation from the original film, so they decided to not even try.
A lot of the reviews I’ve read discuss how this story is deeper and flows better through ‘space and time’. I found it to be the exact opposite. There were several situations throughout the film that were forced and didn’t fit well into the storyline. A scene where a grateful construction worker attempts to help Spiderman by lining up cranes throughout the city falls flat and really turned out to be unnecessary. Dialogue and emotional outbursts seemed random and overacted. Something people rarely comment on, but annoyed me to no end was the soundtrack. Sound is a film’s unrecognized hero. The right tracks can cause any array of emotions desired. It can build suspense, cause terror, or even add humor to flat dialogue. The sound choice in this was horrible and at times didn’t even fit the scene. It’s not meant to be noticed (almost subliminal), so for me to notice how bad it was has to say something (hopefully about the film and not me).
I’m baffled by the positive reviews this film is getting. Even some close friends whose opinions I respect have said good things about it. I don’t see it. This was as bad as last year’s Green Lantern and I hope it doesn’t go any farther than this (judging by the weekend box office take, there probably will be a sequel). I haven’t been this disappointed since ‘Quantum of Solace’.
I rate this film * 1/2 stars
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