Info:

Genre: Superhero, action

Director/s: Marc Webb

Running Time: 136 mins

Budget: $230 million

Released: 13 July 2012 (South Africa)

After a decade of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man (three films to be precise), Marvel Entertainment have rebooted the franchise with fresh faces, a new Spidey costume and an ‘alternate’ storyline, labeling this film as ‘The Untold Story of Spider-Man’.  Untold eh? Well, I find that rather confusing since The Amazing Spider-Man is essentially identical for all intents and purposes to 2002’s Spider-Man, which was a superior origin story.  And that’s just it, The Amazing Spider-Man is yet another origin story, that does not add anything new or creative enough to justify its existence.  Seriously, how many damn times do we need to see uncle Ben get killed, or Peter Parker being bitten by the spider that gave him his powers? It’s ridiculous, and to exacerbate matters further, The Lizard is the lamest villain out of all the bad guys put to screen, I think Peter Chao said it best – if you were a super-powered lizard man, with super lizard powers why on earth would you want to make every other human being a lizard person? It would render your powers useless as you’d effectively be putting everyone on the same level as you.  There’s also been a lot of debate over who the better Spider-Man is, Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield, with Spider-Man 3 being referenced continuously as the reason for Garfield being superior.  Then again, it is a given that fan-boys would attack the weakest link of the series as opposed to its greatest strength, or has everyone forgotten just how good Spider-Man 2 really is?  That’s not to say that The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t worth watching, it has its moments, one scene involving a battle in the school’s library was quite entertaining and the addition of web-shooters is a nice touch, it’s just not enough to make this film truly great…or good for that matter, despite imdb’s ridiculous 7.6 rating.

Conclusion

We really, really did not need another origin story, as a continuation of the series would have enabled film-makers to focus on a completely new story as opposed to yet another retelling.  The Lizard is a shitty, uninteresting villain, that epitomizes the tired plot device of – Good-scientist-has-accident-and-turns-into-mutated-villain, and Andrew Garfield doesn’t seem to fit the Peter Parker mold all that well.  Overall, The Amazing Spider-Man serves as a 136 minute distraction at best, lacking any originality that may have warranted a second viewing.  Disappointing.

Grade: C-