Movie Review: The Amazing Spider Man

Nathan Young

12 years ago

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On Friday I went to see the latest movie to come out of the Marvel Library. The Amazing Spider Man is a reboot from the original 2002 Spider Man franchise. I have some highlights and some lowlights about this movie. As always if you do not want to know about this movie do not read below. SPOILER ALERT!

This movie was different in the beginning than the 2002 movie. We got to see Peter Parker’s parents but it was only brief. Peter’s father named Richard discovers that someone has broken into their home and the parents takes Peter to their aunt and uncle and then disappear. This Peter Parker and Spider Man played by Andrew Garfield is socially awkward. He is bullied by several students and is not very talkative. But he does have a crush toward Gwen Stacy played by Emma Stone. This part of the movie easily reminded me of my experience in school being bullied by many and also social awkward. Peter finds the papers from his father and Uncle Ben played by Martin Sheen tells his son that his father worked with Dr. Curt Connors played by Rhys Ifans at Oscorp. Of course the movie is based in New York City but you can always tell the giveaways that part of the movie was shot in California. The biggest giveaway for me is the traffic lights.

Peter fakes his way into Oscorp among a group of high school interns and finds out that Gwen works there. Of course Gwen and Peter have a little talk away from the group. Peter then sneaks away into a concealed room where a very strong biocable is being created from genetically modified spiders. One of the spiders gets onto Peter and bites him which starts doing crazy things to him. While on the subway back home he starts a fight but knocks out all of the people fighting him with everything from a pole to his body. I really like this scene as Peter is trying to figure out what is going on while beating up the people fighting him. And I also loved the technology during the Oscorp scenes. There was enough technology in there to almost pass out any hardcore geeks or nerds.

Peter studies his father’s papers using Bing (sorry I like Google) and goes to the home of Dr. Connor. The doctor is shocked that Peter is Richard’s son and Peter gives the doctor the “decay rate algorithm”, the missing piece in Connors’ experiments on regenerating limbs. During this scene we also get to see Peter’s reflexes in crazy mode. Dr. Connors is under pressure by his supervisor Dr. Ratha to find a cure for the dying head of Oscorp Norman Osborn. So Dr. Ratha has a plan to take this serum to a local Veterans Administration hospital under the guise of a flu shot which is so wrong. More on this later but even more cool technology scenes such as a massive hologram. I felt so good and happy seeing that huge hologram in the movie.

Meanwhile Peter gets revenge over his bully named Flash at school and gets in trouble. I loved how Peter handled that basketball in the movie. Peter and Uncle Ben has a visit at the principal’s office. Peter then goes to Oscorp with Dr. Connor to work on the serum with that cool technology. But Peter forgets to pick up his Aunt May and this makes Ben angry. Peter and Ben have an angry meeting and Peter storms off while breaking the glass in the front door. This is the beginning of the downfall of Uncle Ben. A rude clerk at a store won’t let Peter get 2 cents from the take a penny dish to pay for milk. But the person behind Peter has intentions to rob the store. The robber starts to get away but is confronted by Uncle Ben where he is shot and dies. This was a great scene that was shot in Los Angles because of the traffic lights.

Peter uses the police sketch of the killer and becomes a criminal hunter. This was a part of the movie where I felt it was too rushed. How did peter get the name Spider Man and the costume idea. I thought the 2002 movie did a better job with that. But I thought the spandex suit of Spider Man was awesome and I liked the mechanical devices that launches the biocable web. I also liked how cocky and talkative this Spider Man was. His jokes and talk to the criminals he was going to catch was funny and great. But he was also a target to NYPD captain George Stacy; the daughter to Gwen Stacy. Peter goes to Gwen’s house through the fire escape and his dad catches him in her room and invites him to dinner. Peter and George get into a talk over Spider Man that ends when George has to go on a police call. Peter and Gwen have a kiss scene which I found weird and Peter shows off some of his abilities to Gwen. Of course I really do not get any love scenes in movies. I find them just being very weird as you should know that I have never dated and almost at age 26. Some of you would find that shameful.

Dr. Connor is now this weird lizard creature and is terrorizing the Williamsburg Bridge. Spider Man has to rescue a kid who is in a car that is dangling over the river. Spider Man rescues the kid and then goes into the sewers to see where the lizard is at but it turns out to be a bad plan. The lizard finds out that Spider Man is Peter Parker and the lizard and Spider Man has this epic fight scene at Peter’s school. The best scene was Stan Lee being a librarian and listening to music while the epic fight is happening behind him; that gave everyone a laugh. After the fight scene at the school Spider Man is being chased by the police while Gwen is at Oscorp cooking up an antidote. Spider Man is almost arrested by George Gwen but Spider Man convinces George to let him go and fight the lizard. All of the fight scenes were awesome!

The lizard gets confronted by the police but releases this chemical agent that turns the police into lizards which was very ugly. The construction workers line up their cranes to get Spider Man to the Oscorp Towers and we have this epic fight scene between the lizard and Spider Man. George Stacy helps to stop the lizard while Spider Man replaces the chemical agent with an antidote and everyone is returned to normal. George is killed from the lizard’s injuries and gives Spider Man a promise to keep Gwen away from Peter and Spider Man but that does not last. I felt like the last parts of the movie were predictable but packed a lot of action that anyone should love.

I felt like The Amazing Spider Man did not reveal too much more than we already knew from the 2002 movie. The CGI and computer graphics were much better in this version and I really liked the Spider Man costume. Sure the movie is going to do well but the only reason why this movie was made so Sony can keep the Spider Man license from Disney. And I felt like this movie overall was not worth the remake 10 years later. I for one is getting tired of all of these remakes and I would love to see something original. Movies are slowly becoming this remake factory and that is something I would not like to see. At least I can still enjoy Ultimate Spider Man on Disney XD.

All images copyright by Marvel.