Review - The Amazing Spider-Man

The Good
+ It's Spider-Man
+ <-- That guy, Andrew Garfield
+ Emma Stone
+ It's freaking Spider-Man!

The Bad
- No Willem Dafoe
- ...
- I fail at "bads" in movies this year

Spoiler Danger
None



You know, sometimes it feels good to be wrong. Today, I was wrong, oh so very wrong. And it feels great. It actually feels a lot like I want to go put on a Spider-Man costume and swing through the streets of downtown. Right now. I am giddy, and I feel a lot like a little kid.

That's a pretty good way to feel.

I just got home from watching The Amazing Spider-Man, and damn it all, it lives up to the name. In all honesty, I really, really, REALLY didn't want to like this movie. By way of explanation, I'll offer up my high regard for the first two movies of the original trilogy (I don't acknowledge the existence of a third movie in that "trilogy"), my love of Sam Raimi's attention to the source material, and Tobey Maguire's rendition of Peter Parker. I disliked the removal of Raimi as director of Spider-Man after the third, admittedly awful, movie. Oh, and Spider-Man is basically my favorite super hero of all time and has been since I was sucking on pacifiers and still pooping in diapers.

A lot of that led to my general feeling of meh on the new Spider-Man. How could they reboot the series after just five years? How could they justify removing all the cast and crew? How could they?

The answer looks something like this.

Maybe not really what the answer looks like, but the picture is hilarious and I had nowhere else to put it.

Much to my surprise, I'm sitting here writing this, and I know that I actually liked this movie more than the ones I'd previously held in such high regard. Don't get me wrong, I still love the old movies, but there's just so much this one did better. I'll list off a few of them over the course of the next few paragraphs. 

First - and this is a mighty big first - Andrew Garfield is a WAAAAAAAAAAY better Peter Parker than Tobey Maguire. Hands down, no competition; I've never seen this Andrew Garfield fella, but daaaaaaaamn. He knocked the role out of the park, to be cliche about it, nailing all the little awkward moments that have always endeared the character to audiences (myself included), the engaging wit, the weight of responsibility, the internal conflicts... and so on and so forth. One thing Garfield and the writers changed up a bit from the Maguire version of the character was Parker's sense of rightness, a principal he is more clearly governed by. Instead of having to wait until he discovers his powers before we learn about his ability to stand up for people, one of the opening scenes has Parker standing up for a smaller boy and getting his ass kicked for it. I loved that moment and the evolution of the character. Besides, Garfield's Parker wasn't quite as (I hesitate to use the word, but it seems to fit) goofy as Maguire's version. This brought some maturity to the role, but the writing and acting was such that I never felt we'd lost any of the quirkiness that defines Peter Parker as a character.

One of the things that has always put Spider-Man ahead of all the rest of the masked and caped types is the fact that the story, the real story, takes place when Parker is not Spider-Man. Spider-Man was the embodiment of Peter's responsibility to society, but the part that's always been most fascinating, at least to me, is the way he weights that responsibility against his real life - his school, his family, his girlfriend - and the toll that takes on him. We've seen a lot of super heroes evolve into having that kind of outlook on the story - The Dark Knight trilogy, for example, is very much centered around the psychological impacts being Batman has on Bruce Wayne - and I think Spider-Man has a lot to do with that. Back on topic, I think that Garfield does an excellent job portraying that side of things, better than Maguire, which is a very large reason why I find myself liking this reboot better than the original franchise.

The guy playing Spider-Man wearing a red suit to an opening event = win!

One of the other things I found especially awesome was that Spider-Man maintained his sense of wit even when he was in the suit. I watched the 2 previous movies before going to see the new one, and I have to say that this one did a much better job of keeping Peter Parker as himself even while in the costume. There wasn't quite as much clever banter with the bad guys in the previous two, and I am a HUGE fan of the scene with the car thief. And the cop afterwards. 

Oh, and the spiderweb in the sewer...AWESOME!

Emma Stone is also very clearly a better actress that Kirsten Dunst, so that's another check in the W column for this movie. Dunst was always the part I liked least about the original franchise (emo bar dancing notwithstanding). Seeing her replaced, be it as a different character, makes me all kinds of happy inside. Even better are the just amazing scenes she shares with Garfield where all they have to do is look at each other and you can sense the chemistry. Check.

Martin Sheen. Check.
Denis Leary. Check.
Sally Field. Check.
Awesome soundtrack: Check.

The camera angles in this movie are also just fantastic. I loved the way Raimi shot Spider-Man, and this movie does it just as well... if not better at some points. Case in point, I especially loved the few times we got to experience Spider-Man swinging in first person. That was a rush in 3D.

Speaking of 3D, I'm normally not a fan, but this movie rivals Avatar in it implementation and general awesomeness of the 3D. Even more than at Avatar, this movie showed me the potential of 3D as being more than just a gimmick.

I read in one review that, for this movie, they tried to have Garfield actually do more in the suit than Maguire had previously. In the review, they said it came off as awkward and preferred the CGI action sequences. I couldn't disagree more. I don't want to say that it made the movie more "realistic" but it did. Besides, Christopher Nolan has been making me appreciate how awesome movies can be when doing special effects and stunts the old fashioned way - with actual people. Garfield (and/or his stunt double) is very convincing as Spider-Man in the flesh, and I'd argue from now until the next movie comes out that this approach is the correct one.

That's not to say the CG scenes were not good, because they certainly were. The final dash through the city right before the climax is a thing of sheer beauty and had me grinning ear to ear.

On that note, I'd also love to give kudos to the team for keeping the whole Spidey helps New York, New York helps Spidey moments going. Those scenes are always slightly cheesy and immensely heartwarming, and I positively love them.

Much remains to be seen in this new franchise. What will happen to Gwen? How will Norman Osborn, so brilliantly played in the last franchise by Willem Dafoe, factor in? What villains can they use that haven't already been done by the first franchise? I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but I will say that if they keep things going at the pace this first movie establishes, we'll have the first super hero movie franchise that can legitimately compete with the Dark Knight trilogy.

There are a million more things I could talk about here that made the movie awesome (Stan Lee scene, Parker's stupid grin when he walks in on Aunt May at the end of the movie, the incredible intensity of the whole climax, etc., etc., etc. I will, however, leave you to discover these things for yourself.

In the meantime, I'm going to go see if I can find any of my old Halloween Spidey costumes and practice swinging between the houses in my neighborhood.

Score: 10/10