The Amazing Spider-Man

Much like the Raimi trilogy there’s a plethora of issues with The Amazing Spider-Man but it has one thing that trilogy never did: chemistry. To me, this film is truly the anti-Raimi Spider-Man film. The fun comical tone is gone and replaced with a more gritty, serious one. The romance between the two main characters feels natural and sensual and not creepy and completely non-sensical. The casting of characters is pitch perfect, with phenomenal actors really enhancing the script, and not lines given with monotonic delivery and no emotion.

I can’t stress enough how good of a casting Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are as Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy. Are their characters expertly written? No, however, the ability for these actors to sell their lines and weird character choices is nothing short of great. The pure electric chemistry between the two is something else, there are moments where you feel like you shouldn’t be watching them, like you’ve just invaded their privacy. You believe that they’re in love and despite some strange dialogue, every conversation is so sexually charged between them it doesn’t matter.

While Parker’s character is a little muddled, going from angsty teen to nerdy teen to cool teen with no real reason, his Spider-Man is on point. The quippiness and the playfulness of his hero is far more inviting and entertaining to watch than Magure’s understated Spider-Man. The whole journey we get with Peter becoming Spider-Man was so natural and fun to watch, this slow progression to how he becomes the friendly neighbourhood hero was far more enjoyable to watch, all be it less iconic than Maguire.

However, while this may be the “anti-Raimi” film, it also feels like a cheap imitation of the original. Beat for beat this is Spider-Man, and while you might think well that’s obvious it’s an origin film and there isn’t much room to change that story, there’s direct minutia that are in the original that exist here. Like the whole Uncle Ben scene being indirectly Peter’s fault. But what’s also weird is that this film tries so hard to avoid being an imitation of Raimi’s, like the classic “With great power comes great responsibility” scene that instead in this film becomes Uncle Ben rambling for a minute implying this sentiment yet never saying these words.

Webb coming off of (500) Days of Summer has expertly showed his ability to direct romantic scenes, and the scenes between Peter and Gwen are the best in the film to no surprise. However it’s clear that Webb isn’t an action director, and in a superhero film filled with action this makes many of these scenes, which are supposed to be grand, fall flat. Even in the worst of the Raimi trilogy there’s notable action scenes that are iconic, which can’t be same about any in this movie. However there’s some good cinematography as well, there feels like some choice was put into how the film looked to fit the tone and it did it well.

This film goes to show the power of acting, when this film is good it’s great, the character dynamics feel so natural and you get invested in their relationships. However for a film to be good, there needs to be a plot and a story you’re invested in with a well written script that actors don’t have to try their best to make passable.