THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN - marc webb - 4.9 / 10

As a character, Peter Parker / Spider-Man is fascinating.  The story of an unpopular, picked-on science geek orphan suddenly acquiring superpowers can go lots of interesting places.  When the story is told well, as in the Sam Raimi / Tobey Maguire version from a decade ago, it can be pretty powerful (enough so to overcome nonsense like the Green Goblin in an old lady's sweater cradling Spider-Man in his arms).  But when told poorly, as it is here, it's just one more story about a superhero with a tragic past and loads of daddy issues (and seriously, enough with the superheros with dead parents already).

Coming so soon on the heels of the previous Spider-Man films, it’s impossible not to compare them to each other.  Certainly, The Amazing Spider-Man would still be a mediocre film even without Raimi’s superior version to contrast it with, but since the plots of the films are so similar and the time between them so short, the deficiencies of this latest version are even more glaring.

Despite being billed as 'the untold story,' the plot here is pretty much the same as in the Raimi version.  The changes Marc Webb and his screenwriters have made are largely cosmetic.  And, in fact, some of these superficial changes are for the better.  Dropping the whole thing where Peter first designs his Spider-Man costume so he can compete in a ridiculous wrestling match, for instance, was a good choice.  But for the most part, the changes do little to hide the fact that this film has no brain and even less heart.

Whatever faults Raimi’s films had (mainly that they were cartoony and occasionally corny), they undeniably had a ton of heart.  The second film in his trilogy, in particular, remains one of the best films in the short history of the superhero genre.  (I caught the last ten minutes on cable the other day and it gave me chills.)  Webb’s version has no emotion at all.  It’s just going through the motions, never threatening to be interesting or insightful, merely contenting itself with telling a slightly more modernized version of the story in as straightforward a way as possible.  Things happen because the story needs them to happen, not because Webb wants to do something interesting with them.

The problem with turning Spider-Man’s origin story into a film is largely one of length.  There’s an awful lot of story to cram into one movie.  Peter has to be established as a social outcast science nerd with a photography jones and a crush on the girl next door.  Then he needs to get bitten by a radioactive spider, develop his powers and figure out how to use them.  Then, when his uncle dies because of Peter’s inaction, he finally becomes Spider-Man.  The film also has to find the time to establish a villain for Spider-Man to defeat in the climax.  And, on top of all that, Peter and the girl next door (Mary Jane Watson in Raimi’s version, Gwen Stacy here) have to fall in love and do it believably enough so that the film’s closing moments actually land with some kind of impact.

Raimi, wisely, streamlined this story as much as possible.  Webb, on the other hand, has decided to shove even more into it.  This time around, Peter’s parents are introduced in flashbacks, wasting precious minutes of screen time while they react to a broken window by bustling Peter off in the middle of the night to go live with his aunt and uncle.  This adds nothing except the implication, never followed through on, that Peter’s parents might have been murdered.  It doesn’t do anything to better define Peter as a character or further any particular theme.  It just wastes time.

Webb also has Peter design and build web-shooters that deploy the signature webbing Spider-Man uses to swing from building to building.  Leaving aside the absurdity of the idea that a sixteen year-old kid with almost no resources could design, test and build a material as versatile, strong and compact as this, just the fact that he has a finite amount of the webbing guarantees he’s going to run out at some critical moment late in the film.  Making the change from the Raimi film’s organic web-shooters to mechanical ones in The Amazing Spider-Man takes up precious screen time while simultaneously making the story more predictable and less believable.  Not a good choice.

With all this plot to churn through, little time is left to develop the emotional and thematic connections that made Raimi’s films-- the first two at least-- work so well.  The relationship between Peter and Gwen, for example, suffers mightily.  They go from tentatively (but endearingly) deciding to go out at some ill-defined time in the future to Peter coming over to meet Gwen’s parents to them suddenly in love and talking about Peter’s powers.  Those are literally all of the scenes that focus on Peter and Gwen’s relationship.  Even with actors as likeable and talented as Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone (and they are really the only reasons to see this film), there’s just no way to develop a believable connection in such a short amount of time.  And if the audience isn’t invested in that relationship, there’s precious little emotional heft to the climax of the film.

The Amazing Spider-Man’s villain, Dr. Curt Connors a.k.a the Lizard, is similarly given very little time to develop.  He goes from being a kindly scientist with a mild god complex to a supervillain bent on turning the entire city into lizard creatures in the span of a single scene.  And, after Peter’s Uncle Ben dies, his widow, Aunt May, is given something like five sentences of dialogue for the rest of the film.  Her relationship with Peter is basically nonexistent.

The film’s other major weakness is Webb’s uninspired direction.  Dialogue scenes are shot like a bad television drama (lots of over-the-shoulder shots that move to handheld when people start yelling at each other) and the staging is mostly laughable.  A scene where Peter tests his webbing, for instance, finds him crash-landing in a completely empty outdoor café on a completely empty Manhattan street in the middle of the day.  And the less said about the scene where Peter, having just gotten his spider powers, dunks on the school bully and breaks the backboard the better. 

The film does occasionally come alive when Spider-Man starts swinging around the city where the focus on actual stunt work adds a bit of realism that was decidedly lacking in the (pretty terrible) CGI action of Raimi’s films.  But then, of course, Spider-Man starts doing battle with the Lizard, a fully CG creation, and any hint of realism is out the window.

But the over plotting, the poor direction and the not particularly impressive CGI just make the film pedestrian and kinda boring, no better or worse than similar blockbuster hokum like Iron Man 2 or The Incredible Hulk.  What really sinks it, what really makes the film actively bad, is the ending.  As with Raimi’s film, The Amazing Spider-Man ends with Peter breaking up with his lady love because allowing anyone to get close to Spider-Man puts them in danger.  In Raimi’s film, Peter himself makes that decision, choosing to walk away from Mary Jane despite his love for her because he knows she’ll be safer if she’s far away from him.  In this version, Gwen Stacy’s dad orders Peter to stay away from his daughter and then dies in Peter’s arms.  Thus, when Peter attempts to follow his command and disappears from Gwen’s life, his heart’s not really in it.  In the Raimi film, Peter made the hard choice.  He did what he thought was right.  You can argue the merit of his decision, but it was his decision.  Here, Peter is simply following a command, one he doesn’t want to follow at that.  And by the end of the film, it’s clear that he’s not going to stick to that promise very long.  I suppose this is meant to be evidence of how great the love between Peter and Gwen is, that nothing can hold it back, a sort of Twilight-esque spin on the story.  But instead it reads both as Peter not being able to make the hard decisions himself and then not being able to follow through on a promise.  It’s a weak, decidedly un-heroic note on which to end the film. 

The Amazing Spider-Man also goes out of its way to have Spider-Man crack jokes and taunts even when they’re not necessarily appropriate.  Despite Andrew Garfield’s facility with a one-liner, the cumulative effect of all the joking is to make Peter seem like a bit of a brat.  Add that to the ending in which he appears to be spurning the dying wish of the man who saved his life and Peter starts to become downright unlikeable.  That ending cements this version of Peter Parker as a ‘hero’ not worth rooting for.  Not only is he incapable of making the tough decisions required of a hero, he can’t even follow through on them when someone else has made the decision for him.  He’s an entitled brat, which, I suppose does make him the perfect ‘hero’ for a generation of kids who take their parents with them on job interviews.