Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

Five years after Spider-Man 3 landed in cinemas with a thud, can director Marc Webb help the Spider-Man franchise soar once more? Here's the JOE verdict.

After Sam Raimi gave us an Emo-fringed, disco-dancing Peter Parker in the quite frankly terrible Spider-Man 3, cinema-goers could have been forgiven for wanting a much-deserved break from Marvel’s biggest superhero.

However, due to contractual obligations that requires third-part studios to use Marvel heroes within a certain a span of time, lest the characters revert to their original studio – think of 20^th Century Fox’s recent X-Men: First Class reboot – Sony Pictures announced two years ago that Spider-Man was heading back to high school for an “Amazing” reboot.

As only the aptly-named director Marc Webb’s (500 Days of Summer) second film, not to mention the eyebrow-raising casting of 28-year-old star Andrew Garfield as a high school teen, Spidey fans have had cast a skeptical eye over every Amazing Spider-Man development in the past two years. Thankfully, Webb and Garfield have surpassed expectations.

One of the main problems in rebooting Spider-Man is that unlike Batman – who has a fictional setting that can be gothic (Tim Burton’s Batman) or eh… Chicago (The Dark Knight Rises) and numerous of different tones to fit a director’s vision – is that there is a formula that must be rigidly adhered to for our favourite web-slinger.

So just like Sam Raimi’s original effort ten years ago, Amazing Spider-Man features a spider taking a bite out of Peter Parker, New Yorkers rallying behind their hero, an inspirational line or two from Uncle Ben before his unfortunate death (bless them, the screenwriter try so hard not to say “With great power, comes great responsibility”, and high school bully humiliation when our protagonist is newly umbued with powers. It all feels extremely familiar at times, yet thankfully Webb has higher ambitions.

What truly distinguishes our new version of Spidey is Webb’s expertly handled romance between Garfield’s Peter Parker and his real-life lover Emma Stone’s (adorable as ever) Gwen Stacy – a character last seen in a relatively redundant role in Spider-Man 3.

With impressive hair and equally admirable skateboard skills, Garfield’s Peter Parker is a little less nerdy than that Tobey Maguire’s take on the role and as such, when he dons the mask he’s a lot more confident and assured when facing foes.

Whether he’s mocking two-bit crooks (“You found my weakness… it’s small knives!”) or literally shutting up villains with a blast of webbing to the face, this is a more engaging, more spirited Spider-Man than we’ve seen before.

Likewise, the character of Gwen Stacy is clearly enamoured with Parker before he’s even made a trip to Oscorp’s spider-testing area and thus when the two become an item, Webb wisely decides not to stretch out the discovery of her boyfriend’s dual identity.

With her police chief father (Denis Leary, in fine form) sending nearly the entire NYPD to track this new masked vigilante, Parker and Stacy’s relationship takes on a forbidden love approach that makes our hero probably the most coveted super-powered boyfriend since Edward Cullen. Granted, any Twilight nods won’t appeal to this film’s fan base yet if anything the romantic scenes of The Amazing Spider-Man are surprisingly more satisfying than its action aspects – which sometimes feel the result of a reduced budget.

Ifans' villainous transformation

It simply wouldn’t be a Spider-Man movie without one at least one villain becoming the product of a scientific experiment gone wrong and in this case it’s Rhys Ifans’ Lizard character, first introduced as Oscorp’s Dr. Curt Connors.

Connors knows more than he's letting on to Parker about the teen's parent mysterious disappearance a decade previous but before the film can delve deeper into the enticing backstory... whoops, he's turned himself into a giant lizard.

Sadly, considering the naturalistic romance plot and organic discovery of Parker's abilities (a chain-swinging montage is a real highlight), the Lizard villain feels a poor choice, as it requires too much suspension of disbelief from audience.

Ifans is fantastic as ever and it’s refereshing to see that desperation rather than megalomania motivates his character’s transformation yet the Lizard design itself is uninspired and feels like something the Incredible Hulk should be brawling rather than Spider-Man.

A poor villain aside, The Amazing Spider-Man is still a very satisfying blockbuster that checks the requisite origin story boxes yet succeeds in numerous areas which Sam Raimi hadn't ten years ago, yet suffers also by comparison in others.

From here, however, Webb is free to plot his own course for Spidey and free of any creative shackles, we expect him to soar just like his titular hero. Surprising yet familiar, The Amazing Spider-Man heralds the return of a beloved cinematic icon and this time around, there thankfully isn't an embarrassing dancing montage in sight.