Plot: Peter Parker is your average high school teenager, but after discovering his father's old briefcase he begins to question his parents past and their mysterious disappearance. This leads him to OsCorp to question his father's old business partner Dr. Connors, a one armed scientist, experimenting with reptilian gene splicing in hopes to regrow his arm. While there Peter is bitten by a radioactive spider. You know the rest.
WARNING: There will be some very tiny spoilers throughout the review.
I was very unhappy when Sony announced their decision to scrap Spider-Man 4 and reboot the series. It was even more questionable when they hired on Marc Webb to direct, when his only other film had been the brilliant but complete opposite end of the spectrum, 500 Days of Summer. Did we really need to take Peter all the way back to high school or could we have simply just continued the franchise on with a new cast?
I watched the originals and they have not aged well, nor after seeing this film did I like the way Sam Raimi handled the characters. This film is better. It’s better than all three of Rami’s films.
Sony has come back and told the true origin story of Spider-Man. The first film was good for its time, but it wasn’t accurate in terms of how the story went in the comic. Yes, you have to sit through fifty minutes of the exact same movie you had to sit through the first time around, but this time they got it right.
The cast in this film packs a better punch than the previous films. Andrew Garfield is a more accurate portrayal of Peter Parker. He looks like he’s in high school, something Tobey Magurie’s Peter Parker wasn’t as convincing of. He has more charm as the struggling teenager as well. They also nailed Parker’s Spider-Man persona better. Spider-Man is a wise-cracking, cheesy one liner type character and they did a better job of portraying Spider-Man as what he really is, a teenager trying to handle being a superhero. Parker is now set up for a proper franchise where he can mature along the way.
Instead of diving right into the Mary Jane love interest, fans get to see Parker’s first love interest, the lesser known character Gwen Stacy, played by Emma Stone. If there was one thing I always hated from the original series, it was Kirsten Dunst. I’m not a fan and never was. Emma Stone is actually treated as an intelligent woman in the film. Gwen doesn’t have to be rescued by Spider-Man three times in the film like Mary Jane did every go around. She is intelligent and holds her own. It’s a shame we’ll have to lose her when Mary Jane ultimately comes into the picture. Hopefully Mary Jane won’t show up until the third film, and this time I hope she is portrayed as a more intelligent character instead of a dumb girl who gets kidnapped by the villain in every film.
I loved Aunt May and Uncle Ben from the previous series, but this time they get a little more star power with Sally Field and Martin Sheen. They really took the time to build a better relationship between Peter and Uncle Ben this go around, but strangely once Uncle Ben is shot they downplay the affect it has on Peter. Uncle Ben’s death is what pushes Peter to be the man he becomes and after they build this great relationship between the two, they kind of just skip over the affects his death had on Peter and Aunt May. The same goes with Peter and Aunt Mays relationship. Aunt May is a major character but she really takes a backseat in the film. I hope to see more of her the next go round.
And finally Rhys Ifans and Denis Leary round out the cast as Dr. Curt Connors and Gwen’s father Captain Stacy. Ifans doesn’t do a terrible job portraying the disfigured scientist, but they certainly don’t give him much to do. However I really liked Leary in the film. He doesn’t have a huge role, but he really makes his scenes count. Overall, the cast makes a better impression this go around.
The film itself has a more serious tone to it. It’s not dark in the sense of The Dark Knight, but it isn’t a kid friendly film like the previous films have been. It’s more violent and more graphic. When Spider-Man takes on The Lizard he bleeds, he doesn’t get a ripped suit like Maguire did. He gets ripped open, he’s hurt, he can’t walk. As an audience, you really feel the struggle instead of the happy go lucky fighting from the previous installments.
I really like the way Webb handled the characters. Now looking back, Sony had no choice but to reboot the franchise because Raimi kept killing off characters. It’s nice to know that The Lizard is still in the back pocket for another film. He teased us with OsCorp. Norman Osborne is never seen in the film, nor is Harry, but he is mentioned multiple times. Norman Osborne is a major villain in the Marvel universe and Raimi killed him off on the first go around.
This film surprised me on every level. It is a little drawn out the first half of the film, but they have good groundwork going forward now. I’m going to give Sony credit for this one, but if I have to sit in a theater in 2022 watching another reboot, I won’t be happy.
Final Verdict: 8/10
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