The (not so) Amazing Spider-Man

To me, Sam Raimi's original Spider-Man films are as close to "perfect" comic book movies as you can get. Even with its flaws, Spider-Man (2002) perfectly re-introduced a classic character to the masses, and did so with strong characters, a great cast, a strong script, some iconic moments, and lots of fun.  Now, just 10 years later, Sony has issued a reboot of the series.  With the origin of Spider-Man still pretty fresh in the public conscience, to make this venture worth making, Marc Webb and co. really needed to make this noticeably different than Raimi's universe - the fatal flaw is that he failed at doing that.  Although the direction, acting, action, etc. is solid enough, beat-for-beat it follows the same path as Raimi's Spider-Man, and I'd argue doesn't exceed in any area over its predecessor.

First what I liked about the film: as expected from the guy who brought us (500) Days of Summer, the relationship angle between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy is one of the film's stronger aspects.  In fact the movie works much better whenever we're watching Peter Parker in his "real life," but as soon as he pulls on his trademark mask get ready for some slick, generic looking video game cutscenes.  My favorite (and unfortunately underused) character was Captain George Stacy, played by Denis Leary, who gets some of the funnier lines in the film.  The Lizard is a disappointingly generic and boring villain in this film.  His story follows very closely to that of Norman Osborn in the first Spider-Man (guy absorbs super-serum, guy turns into monster, guy wrecks havoc), but when you're competing with the likes of Willem Dafoe, a guy who can make even a Power Rangers mask seem intimidating, Rhys Ifans just doesn't make the cut.

Although on a mechanical level almost everything "works" in this film, I personally can't get past how by-the-numbers it is and how much this felt like the studio had a tight grip over it.  The sad thing is that the obvious success that this will be at the box office will likely inspire studios to go this route over and over: simply make a "darker" reboot of a successful franchise (but let's be honest it's a reMAKE, not a reboot), and it's practically like printing money for yourself.  There's nearly nothing in this film I couldn't have guessed would be in it by watching the trailers and/or merely reading about it.  It's moderately entertaining, but I wish the film didn't exist all the same.

Rating: C