Although Spider-Man 3 was a financial success, critically it was met with very mixed reviews from the choice to not bring back Alvin Sargent to write the screenplay, Danny Elfman's refusal to work with Sam Raimi, and the controversial decision to feature 3 villains, 2 of which are barely featured and the "main" villain was radically changed to become a sympathetic figure.
Originally, Spider-Man 4 was planned to simply continue the story, but it was not clear if Tobey Maguire or Sam Raimi would return for a 4th film. Maguire was noticeably aging and could no longer portray a man in his early-to-mid 20s as well as suffering from more back pain as time went by. Raimi notoriously had conflicts with the studio and Marvel Comics, who both wanted the main villain to be the Lizard, Dr. Curt Conners, a character who had been featured in the previous 2 movies. Raimi, on the other hand, wanted to have the Vulture as the lead antagonist. Suffice to say, most fans were immediately disgusted to hear that after ruining Sandman and Venom in a single movie, they were not pleased to hear Sam Raimi wanted to use quite possibly the worst Spider-Man villain and wanted to cast John Malkovich, an actor known for being a little too over-the-top as the villain.
Columbia wanted to go along with their plan anyway, choosing to recast Spider-Man as their original 2nd choice, Jake Gyllenhaal, and pretending that Peter Parker always looked that way. Unfortunately for them, actors started dropping like flies because they all had loyalty to Maguire, Raimi, or both. It was then decided to cancel Spider-Man 4 and just reboot the whole franchise from scratch with a new director, but the same production team, giving more leeway to Marvel, who had proven that they could make faithful-to-comics movie adaptations after the successes of Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America.
The review, after the break.
The Amazing Spider-Man re-tells Spider-Man's origin story, with the inclusion of plot points never before even hinted at in the Raimi trilogy. The movie hammers this home by starting the movie with a flashback to when Peter Parker was a child and tells how his parents had to abandon him with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, but does not get into much detail, preferring to slowly reveal what it was that Richard Parker did and what he knew.
In the Raimi trilogy, Peter Parker is portrayed as a nerdy dork who is as unpopular as could possibly be, bullied by just about every student in his class. In this reboot, Parker is still a nerd, but lacks the dork or geek qualities that Raimi was obsessed about. Instead, Marc Webb decides to portray Parker more similar to how he behaves as an adult in the comics and even shows that Flash Thompson is not really that bad a kid.
Many details are changed along the way (including the total exclusion of Mary Jane Watson and any mention of her existing), but in the end, Peter Parker is still bitten by a genetically mutated spider, although this time they were created thanks to Richard Parker's work in cross-species genetics with Dr. Curt Conners, who is now an employee of Oscorp, rather than a teacher at Empire State University. The Spider-Sense is more accurately portrayed in this movie, being a warning flash of danger rather than slowing down time and increasing Spider-Man's reaction time, but the biggest change compared to the previous films is that the spider bite does not give him the ability to shoot webs, just like the comics.
Many fans feared that this film was going to be dark for the sake of being dark, especially after one very early review pegged the film as "Twilight for boys". It's safe to say the movie is still funny and does not have unnecessary grimness. Although I'm not the biggest fan of how the Lizard was changed in personality and appearance, it actually works for the film, despite the Lizard's incredibly stupid villainous plot, which is sadly a carryover from the comics: wanting to turn the whole world into lizard people.
Emma Stone is definitely a much better Gwen Stacy that Bryce Dallas Howard was, who basically played the role as being a dumb blonde archetype who was weirdly brilliant despite her behavior. This Gwen is the Gwen old-time comic readers know and love, although the issue of her inevitable death is always hanging in the back of the mind.
Andrew Garfield does a great job as Spider-Man and really makes the character his own, making Spider-Man into the trash-talking superhero comic fans know and love. He also plays up the New York accent while in costume, which makes things even more hilarious, considering as Peter, he doesn't seem to talk very much to anyone.
There is a little bit of cheesiness here and there, but I put that blame squarely on Columbia for being the incredibly interfering studio that they are.
Final Score: 4 Spider-Butts out of 5
It's definitely not as good as Spider-Man 2, but it is definitely light years better than the first and especially third movies. As an origin story, it is far more compelling than getting the spider-bite out of the way as soon as possible, and does not have Parker immediately graduating from high school due to Garfield actually looking like a 17-18 year old. My biggest disappointment with the film was that Uncle Ben's words of "With great power, comes great responsibility" are never spoken, although they are paraphrased in different ways more than once. What I was most pleased with was depicting Flash Thompson being nicer to Peter after Uncle Ben dies and even showing off his fanboyism of Spider-Man at the end of the film.
So about that post-credits sequence...
It's well-known by now that every single Marvel movie since Iron Man has a post-credits scene that either hints at a sequel or a different film in the Marvel universe. The Amazing Spider-Man carries a sequel hook after the initial credits (before the scrolling credits) that depicts Curt Conners in jail and speaking with a hooded man in the shadows who seems to appear and disappear into thin air, having a discussion about the "truth" about Richard Parker. Conners tells the Man in the Shadows to leave Peter alone, and then the credits resume. So who is the Man in the Shadows? Norman Osborn is never shown on-screen, only a silhouette that could be filled by any actor. It could possibly be him, since he is said to be dying. It's unknown at this point, which is just plain awesome, because films are sorely lacking sequel hooks where the audience legitimately doesn't know what's going to happen next.
Columbia Pictures green-lit a sequel in the middle of filming, not even waiting for the film to enter post-production. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will more than likely hit theaters in 2-3 years.
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