Instead of making a fourth Spiderman sequel, Sony Pictures decide to start all over again. Not that the Sam Raimi’s Spider-man franchise sucked, in fact it is the studio’s most successful films, it’s just they want to make money. Sam Raimi and Tobbey Macguire’s tab is just too big for a studio on the brink of bankruptcy to keep up with. So they hire a fresh (and cheap) brilliant director and fresh talents. So here comes another origin story of Spiderman just ten years apart from the first one: The Amazing Spider-Man, which is surprisingly amazing to watch.
We get to see Peter Parker’s origins as a very young boy who lost his parents for unknown reasons, the next minute he’s a high school kid with all the worldly problems of an ordinary teenager until he was bitten by a radioactive spider. He hasn’t met MJ yet during this time so we are introduced to a new love interest in Gwen Stacey played by Emma Stone. One of the improvements that director Mark Webb((500) Days Before Summer) created a darker and grittier story of Spider-Man. In this film we get to see prominently what makes the superhero amazing; the incredible speed and agility, Peter’s deep intellect in creating stuffs including his artificial web-shooters, superhuman strength, and that funny big mouth trash talking personality. Andrew Garfield did a great job portraying those parts and those parts where he gets beaten up and bruised up ugly.
One of the most noticeable highlight of the film is the great fight scenes. The choreography is impressive featuring raw and physical fight scenes that focused on Spider-Man’s amazing speed and agility and the Lizard’s raw brute strength. I like that scene where Spidey was overrun by several police officers and he somehow beat ‘em all up despite covering his head low because he lost his mask. Another amazing in this movie is the musical score composed by James Horner which sounds really powerful and grand but somehow feels intimate and exclusive of ambition. If this film will is ever to win an Oscar, it’s going to be on what the musical score have achieved. The director, Mark Webb, erased all doubts that he can also handles big projects having only one small film on his sleeve. I just love the way how he took the reboot, it’s darker and grittier but not like Christopher Nolan in Batman Begins; the way he incorporated the heavy emotional aspects into the film; and just the superb job by giving us a respectable film though it borrows a lot of plots from the original film because both are faithful to the comics, but took on a different feel that certainly not like Raimi’s all-things-bright-and-wonderfuladaptation. Emotional. Intimate. Serious. Humorous. Contemporary.
The new cast did well too especially Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey who is a strong and intelligent young woman who doesn’t need of saving. Emma was simply charming with her funny persona she brings in the picture and their onscreen chemistry with Peter Parker is spot on. The villain of the film is The Lizard a.k.a. Dr. Curtis Connors played byRhys Ifans. I found Connors/the Lizard as an interesting character who doesn’t seem to be a completely like The Joker who just wants to see the world burn, but is just a man trying to help fix the world that made a bad decision. He’s a good guy who unfortunately changed into and later overpowered by the lizard’s aggressive nature.
Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield shared remarkable chemistry in the film. A chemistry they too shared off-screen.
But the film does have some issues that we all have to deal with. One is the obvious miscast based on the age of Andrew Garfield who at 27 is portraying a seventeen year old. He doesn’t look that young, and did poorly in portraying Peter as an outcast by choice because he looks cool anyway. But the major drawback of the film is the storyline’s lack of cohesiveness and direction. The film’s main theme according to the tagline was about something that is missing in our lives, but they never developed this aspect, instead it quickly turned into a messed-up and predictable narrative of revenge that ultimately turned into saving the world before midnight. Another theme that goes like this “We all have secrets; the ones we keep, and the ones that are kept from us” seems rather nonsense as audiences ended up asking more questions than secrets getting answered (those bastards, they’re trying to make another franchise again!) And the film, amazingly, lacked some memorable scenes unlike the upside down kiss between Peter and MJ from the original.
But overall The Amazing Spider-Man is really great film for everyone to watch. It’s a different story of how Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man told all over again this time on a heart-warming emotional tone about coping up with guilt, growing up, falling in love, and protecting those you love. Sometime having great powers doesn’t have to mean greater responsibilities. Sometimes becoming a hero is a choice that comes from our moral obligation to help other when you have the power to help them. I think that what makes Spider-Man truly amazing.
Lourd Filmamir 