The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man

Columbia Pictures, 2012

Directed by Marc Webb

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans

Three stars

Not quite "untold," but entertaining nonetheless.

Ten years ago, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man launched the comic book genre into the very upper echelon of Hollywood box office bets. Bryan Singer had revived the genre only two years before, assembling a killer cast for a surprisingly weighty live-action version of X-Men, and in the years that followed, we'd see adaptations of everything from Daredevil to Fantastic Four, but Spider-Man was the first to smash box office records. Needless to say, what was established by Raimi and Singer's films (each the first in respective trilogies which bottomed out on their third installment) has grown into a film genre of its own, one that has largely defined the last decade in cinema. Other directors would come along and take the form to higher levels (Christopher Nolan and Jon Favreau are the most obvious figures), but as far as doing the original legwork, a lot of credit must be given to Singer and Raimi. I can still remember seeing the first Spider-Man film on opening day, and I must confess that, back then, I loved it. Repeat viewings would reveal what I now find to be shoddy storytelling, awful acting (though it's not really the fault of the stars - the film was horribly miscast), and weak CGI, not to mention the single worst theme song of all time, and the rest of the series didn't do a whole lot to transcend those problems. Spider-Man 3, even five years after its release, is still a laughingstock, and while not quite the low water mark for comic book films (nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever be worse than Batman & Robin), it's still one of the most disastrous and unintentionally hilarious movies I have ever seen(or perhaps it was intentional, given Raimi's roots in campy horror films).

Enter the reboot, which comes in to sweep up the pieces of the franchise almost exactly ten years after Raimi's original. It's a similar arc to that of X-Men, which also saw a reboot with last year's X-Men: First Class, and much like that film, The Amazing Spider-Man's finest scenes are those that focus on its pair of young and extremely talented leads. But First Class aimed to play like a prequel, with numerous references to the original (including one brilliant cameo), and a completely separate story with only a few overlapping characters. Right out of the gate, The Amazing Spider-Man makes the mistake of choosing to retread the origin story that was already aptly covered in the first film, and indeed, some portions of the two movies are almost identical as a result (the biggest offender being the storyline that surrounds Martin Sheen's Uncle Ben character). For that reason, The Amazing Spider-Man has earned one of the worst critical tags a movie can gather: unnecessary. The writers who have called it that are certainly not far off, as at its worst, The Amazing Spider-Man is essentially an improved version of Raimi's original, but I believe there's more to this film than that: director Marc Webb (who helmed one of the best romance films of the last decade with 500 Days of Summer) wisely chooses to focus on the love story this time around, and the romance between Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) soars at heights that the Peter/Mary Jane storylines never reached for a single frame during the first trilogy. That's because Garfield, a should-have-been Oscar-nominee for The Social Network, and Stone, who delivered the break-out performance of the decade (so far) in Easy A, are significantly more talented than their predecessors. The two share an electric chemistry that leaps off the screen, and both bring more nuance and humor to their characters than Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst were ever able to find in theirs. In short, the screenplay, which is solid but unoriginal, manages to thrive thanks to the life these two stars inject into it: things wouldn't work out so well in lesser hands.

It also doesn't hurt that the screenplay (written by Steve Ditko, James Vanderbilt, and Marvel's own Stan Lee, who gets his most splendid cameo to date here) adheres to and honors the Spider-Man source material better than the first film did. Where Raimi's film cherry-picked some of the most memorable moments of the comic book, with little regard to continuity, the screenwriters this time around seem more focused on paying tribute to the source and building a set-up for a more compelling series arc (a la Nolan's Batman trilogy). It's also that quality of the film that forms the most convincing argument for retelling the origin story: it feels like we could, conceivably, get a much stronger and more fully-formed trilogy this time around, in which case skipping the genesis segment would result in things feeling incomplete down the road. And the first third of the movie is actually quite well executed, with Martin Sheen doing some brilliant work in his brief appearance, Garfield having a ton of fun with the "discovering the powers" bits, and Stone and Garfield sharing some deliciously awkward onscreen encounters. Indeed, the "origin story" parts of the film are so entertaining and so well done that it's hard to imagine the film without them. Undoubtedly, the film retreads things we've seen before, but it's a testament to the talents of director Marc Webb (do we think they chose him for his last name?) that, really, retreading familiar ground has rarely been this fun. Contrasting July's other superhero opus (the sure-to-be-bleak The Dark Knight Rises), Webb injects The Amazing Spider-Man with a romantic frivolity and comedic edge so irresistible that, damn the action scenes, I wanted more of it. Luckily, Webb acquits himself quite well as an action director also (thankfully avoiding the "shaky cam" method that many inexperienced directors employ), and he ultimately orchestrates the project in a much less heavy-handed manner than Raimi did (minus one forgivably cheesy indulgence near the film's climax).

All told, The Amazing Spider Man is a top-tier summer blockbuster and is just a notch below the best superhero films. The cast is the film's biggest advantage, surrounding the fantastic young stars with a list of some of Hollywood's most seasoned veterans, from Sheen to Sally Field to Denis Leary, all the way to Rhys Ifans' Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-eqsue villain. Garfield is the ideal Spider-Man, trading Tobey Maguire's consistently anguished facial expressions for a guy that accidentally becomes a hero and spends a good deal of the film's runtime cracking jokes. The action set-pieces are exciting but not exceptional, and Ifans' villain (the Lizard) is far more compelling in human form, but those things don't seem to matter much here. The heart of the film is in the human aspect, just like it was with Nolan's first Batman film and just like it was with the original Iron Man. The Avengers will likely remain this summer's top form of escapist fun, and the Batman finale will almost certainly take the lion's share of acclaim, but Webb has found in Garfield and Stone the perfect characters to build a franchise on, and he's accomplished something that only the best comic book movies have done: he makes it less about the mask and more about the man behind it.