When I first heard back in 2010 that they were rebooting the Spider-Man film franchise into a new series with Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) playing the titular hero, I was...skeptical to say the least. Me and a lot of people worldwide were gonna have trouble forgetting the Raimi directed films (the last of which came out just 3 years before this announcement). Despite that; I was willing to give this film a shot. It had a few things going for it:
Andrew Garfield had proved himself to be a talented actor as evidenced by his performance in The Social Network (2010). The guy they hired to replace Raimi; Marc Webb had recently directed 500 Days Of Summer which is one of the romcoms that I actually loved. Although I found it odd they chose a romance director helm a Spider-Man movie, I was at ease with it. Considering that Sam Raimi mainly did horror comedies before making a Spidey film. Plus the idea of them keeping Peter in high school and actually exploring what life is like for him there was something I did want to see in the movies since it's why I loved Ultimate Spider-Man, which is my favorite Spidey comic series to this day.
Despite all that...they messed it up anyway. It's a pretty mediocre film and an even worse Spidey adaptation. The first problem is that the film doesn't offer much that's new. Despite the film being marketed as "the untold story", it's the same old shlock. We get to see Peter in high school, crushing on the girl, getting bitten by the spider, the argument with Uncle Ben which ens with Ben lecturing him on responsibility, Peter letting a burglar escape with some line about how it's not his problem, Ben getting shot, the manhunt for the killer, Spider-Man fighting a green villain who was actually a scientist with a personal connection to Peter, etc. It's the exact same stuff and it feels like the film is just going through the motions with all of it. As a result; nothing feels genuine and I feel like I'm watching some Sony executive checking off his list of thing to include in a Spider-Man movie. Peter's parents could've been the only new thing the film offers and that's a subplot the film hardly ever focuses on.
Familiarity is far from being the only issue with the storytelling in this film. The tone is extremely inconsistent. This was a problem that was much worse in the sequel but it's still pretty bad here too. The film can't decide whether it's trying to be grounded or cartoony. Scenes of completely different tone follow one another in such a weird way that I kept wondering if they cut something. Here's an example:
Peter's uncle is dead and Pete feels responsible. We get a sad scene of him mourning and then a darker scene of him getting into a fight with the guy he assumes is the killer. Then a really "awe inspiring" montage of him on a manhunt as Spidey that's full of humor. Then a COMPLETELY 'humorous' scene of him messing with a car thief. Followed immediately by an intense confrontation with May about his injuries. Like..what. None of these transitions happen smoothly. It's like I'm watching 3 different films. Why can't things progress smoothly in this film? Oh and I use the term 'humorous' lightly because...it's really not funny. A lot of these subplots don't even go anywhere. The thing with the killer is dropped completely. Peter's parents stop being relevant the second he becomes Spidey and that plot doesn't even give us any new information. Peter had parents who vanished and that's it. We'll let you know how it goes in the sequel. UNTOLD STORY.
The acting is...eh. I wasn't too big on Andrew Garfield's performance as Spidey. I don't know whether to attribute that to the directing or the writing but he didn't do a good job. He didn't embody the pushover everyman that Peter Parker was during high school so I honestly don't get why he's playing the outcast in this film. Nothing about him is dorky. To quote honest trailers: He's an "athletic, intelligent, rebellious, attractive, well dressed, likable teenage....loser" Even the guys behind the movie couldn't make it work so in the first 3 mins of us meeting Peter; they have him screw up talking to a girl, get beat up and get his camera kicked. Just throwing it all in 3 damn minutes. Everyone else was...serviceable. Dennis Leary as George Stacy was probably my favorite in the film.
The villain was so forgettable. The reason that Doctor Connors is such a compelling villain in the comics is because his motivation for turning himself into the Lizard was his family. His desire to be a complete man for his wife and a father his son could look up to. The film cuts out his family from the story entirely and that makes his motivation weaker. Although Rhys Ifans gave a pretty good performance, the writing was generic and forgettable. His design looked like a goomba from that really old terrible Super Mario Bros movie.
There are good things about the film too. I found the romantic chemistry between the two leads to be very engaging. A lot of that can attributed to the director having done a romance movie before so he can do scenes of two people talking like that really well. The Peter and Gwen scenes were by far the highlight of this film and I think both Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone did a great job during those. This is helped by them dating in real life at the time.
The score by the late James Horner doesn't hold a candle to the extremely memorable Danny Elfman theme from the previous films but it's still pretty good. The vfx looked pretty great for the most part and the film has my absolute favorite Stan Lee cameo (which is the only moment in the film made me laugh btw).
But all of those good things are bogged down by 2 hours of them completely missing the point to Spider-Man. That's the biggest problem with the film. It's made by a bunch of people who don't understand the character. They made Peter into an unlikable character who gives away his secret identity to a girl he's had less then 3 mins of screentime with up to that point, he's verbally abusive to Aunt May for no reason, he breaks a dead man's promise at the end of the film, and he's a jerk to the police. Having Spider-Man learn responsibility because Captain Stacy lectured him on the fact that he's not helping people, instead of them having Ben's death be the cause was just dumb. It belittles the impact that death should have on Peter's character. The film even ends with him doing something really selfish and then cuts to the epic triumphant final web swing that the other Spider-Man movies have done. The difference is that those films did it when Peter moved FORWARD in some way.
Overall it's not a god awful movie but it's pretty bland by offering the same old stuff we've seen before and it misses the mark on who Spider-Man is. The only real reason this film even happened was so that Sony could keep the rights to the character away from Marvel. I doubt there was any real artistic motive in mind when producing these two films. This rebooted franchise didn't hold a candle to the original Spider-Man trilogy and I can understand completely why it failed after two films and Marvel got the rights back to the character.
I'm being very generous in giving this film a 5/10. I'm glad I'm done talking about these two films so I can get to the Spidey movies that are actually interesting.
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