Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

This is tangentially relevant movie, right? I reviewed all three of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies a while back, and I had the draft for both of the Amazing Spider-Man movies on the blog for quite a while, but never gotten around to proofing it. But since Spider-Man's kind of a hot topic for the past month (disclaimer: I haven't actually seen the newest MCU movie) I decided to rewatch these two and brush off the review for this movie.

Amazing Spider-Man is... it's a pretty solid movie. And I wasn't even bothered the slightest bit that this is basically remaking the original Spider-Man -- sure, a lot of the broad strokes of Peter Parker's origin story is covered in this movie, but ultimately I feel like Amazing Spider-Man does enough things differently to stand on its own. Admittedly, though, that might just come with the territory of being a comic-book fan who doesn't really care that some aspects are repeated in a reboot. Maybe that's the big problem -- that this is a reboot, and people have much less of a tolerance to reboots of superhero franchises when there are so many superhero movies out there. That's why when the MCU finally rebooted Spider-Man for the third time, they just handwaved away all signs of his origin story. But this review isn't about the MCU reboot, or even the Sam Raimi movies. It's about The Amazing Spider-Man. 

And... and the plot of the movie itself is relatively simple, being an origin story to Spider-Man while expanding and tying together several aspects of the mythos together. Chief among them is the fact that Richard and Mary Parker are involved in some kind of mysterious incident that led to their deaths, and that incident involves the mega-corporation Oscorp and its research into animal-human genetical modification. All of this is perhaps a bit convoluted, but I feel like this movie does a pretty good job at laying it all out, giving a twist to the "boy gets bitten by genetically-engineered spider" formula. 

The movie does spend a fair bit of time exploring Peter Parker's life in Midtown Science High School, and... and a lot of it does kind of feel like it's obligatory. There's Flash Thompson the bully, there's Gwen Stacy the love interest girl... though Peter Parker himself, played by Andrew Garfield in these two movies, is a lot more confident and lacks the 'bullied meek geek' vibe of Tobey Maguire's version of the character. Perhaps that's what's lacking and what makes the school scenes don't work quite as well. 

Peter kind of stumbles into Oscorp and gets bitten by that good old genetically-modified spider, and just like some incarnations of the character's origin story. This also leads to the first significant meeting with Gwen Stacy -- while the romance between Peter and Gwen does kind of take up a huge chunk of the two Amazing movies, I did find the chemistry between the characters to be quite fun to watch. We also get to meet our antagonist, dr. Curt Connors -- later known as the Lizard -- though at this point he's not driven crazy yet and ends up being a mentor to Peter, being a former coworker and friend of Peter's parents. Curt Connors is acted pretty well, but he perhaps just isn't that interesting of a villain. There's a degree of sympathy in his motivations, in that he's basically forced to rush through with his human trials in order for the regeneration serum to be available for the use of Oscorp's head, Norman Osborn, but it's admittedly pretty shallow.

Peter learns his superpowers and revel in it, ultimately getting the attention of the people in his life when he accidentally beats up Flash Thompson. Peter gets so swallowed up in his general irresponsibility and his reveling in his powers that he starts missing time and forgets to pick up Aunt May, leading to a cascade of events and arguments with Uncle Ben and Peter indirectly causing Uncle Ben's death when, while throwing a tantrum, he lets a thief run away from a convenience store. Uncle Ben gets shot, and... and we actually do spend a fair amount of time with Ben and May in this movie. While they're not super developed or anything, I did feel for Peter when Uncle Ben got killed. 

We get a bit of 'great power, great responsibility' going on as Peter tries to hunt down his uncle's killer, while also slowly developing his costumed 'Spider-Man' persona and all the gadgets. One interesting conversation that I feel the movie doesn't really build up enough is the talk between Peter and Gwen's dad, police captain George Stacy. There's a bit of talk about vigilantism and accountability, but ultimately it just devolves into a pissing contest because both men take it personally.

Curt Connors, meanwhile, refuses to test the serum on innocent people while also not wanting to lose his job at Oscorp... and in an act of desperation, stabs himself with the serum, mutates into the Lizard, and basically spends the second half of the movie being a deranged man who... I guess his final plan is to try to turn everyone in New York into lizard-people. It's admittedly pretty on brand for the Lizard to do something like this, but I really don't think that it's enough to carry the movie on its own. We do get a lot of great set-pieces. The slow buildup to the Lizard, unseen to the audience, rampaging on the bridge was great. The fight in the school was particularly fun, with Spider-Man scuttling around the Lizard's larger body while vomiting web; or the fun cameo with Stan Lee in the foreground oblivious to the fighting behind him. 

Ultimately, the climax of the movie happens with Spider-Man earning the allegiance of George Stacy -- who manages to unmask Spider-Man and decides to trust him. There's also a sweet (if overly long) moment of the crane operators of New York setting up a clean line for Spider-Man to reach Oscorp Tower. Gwen's huge role in the climax is to make the antidote, which is nice. Spider-Man and Captain Stacy defeat the Lizard and counteract the lizardification serum, but Captain Stacy gets mortally wounded. 

And the movie just kind of goes off with a bit of an epilogue -- Peter stays away from Gwen for a while as per Captain Stacy's request, but ends up reneging on that promise. Connors gets approached by a mysterious man from Oscorp and implies that there's something mysterious about the circumstances behind Peter's father. 

And... and it's honestly a fun movie with a pretty fun side-cast. I guess its biggest problem is having a villain that isn't the most compelling to carry the entire movie -- ironically, the sequel would have the opposite problem where multiple villains with compelling stories are squashed into a single movie, and neither are developed well. It does spend a good chunk of its runtime retreading old ground, admittedly, for anyone who's seen the original Sam Raimi Spider-Man, but honestly? I do think that it's a pretty solid adaptation and origin movie, if nothing else. A pretty fun movie to revisit.