The Amazing Spider-Man: Do I Still Hate It Four Years Later?

So, lets not beat around the bush here. I have been vehement in my hatred of the Amazing Spider-Man “franchise” (if two movies can possibly count as a franchise); specifically the first one. I think they are an exercise in abusing a name to make money and, while they did try to do something different by introducing a plot that basically made Peter Parker destined to become Spider-Man because of a weird science plot involving his parents, it turned out to be a boring, bland mess that’s only real achievement is making Peter the snarky asshole that we wanted in the original trilogy while striping away the timelessness of the character by making him a skateboarding, Angry Birds playing “social outcast” the likes of which is only designed to resonate with teenagers going through their rebellious phase. But that’s kind of part of the problem. The whole thing that makes Peter Parker a great character isn’t is snarky attitude or his quips. It’s his humanity, his humility. He’s one kid going out to make a difference because he feels guilty over failing to do so in the past. But, from what I remember, this Peter is much less the timeless symbol for carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders while still trying to be a student, a boyfriend, an employee, and a nephew. It’s about modernizing a hero that doesn’t need to be modernized because the root of the character that literally anyone can relate to. Ever failed to live up to a responsibility? Bam! Spider-Man'd. As much as Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man to protect those who can’t protect themselves because he let Uncle Ben die, he is also doing it because he knows it’s the right thing to do. He realizes that when you have the power that he does, you should use them to make a difference. That goes for anything in any aspect of life.

So, some background, my Spider-Man was the Fox Kids cartoon show from the 90’s that a lot of people say is trash because of the censorship put on it by Fox and Marvel. This censorship was imposed to avoid the angry comments that they got from parents irate at Fox showing violence in shows like the X-Men cartoon and Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. Despite the show’s toned down violence (seriously, Spidey couldn’t even throw a punch in the show), the plot was pretty good and surprisingly holds up well today, even if Peter’s shirt is distinctly 90’s.

Yikes...

I had the toys, the clothing with his face all over it, pretty sure I even had the light up shoes, I read the comics…I was a Spider-Man fanatic, and still am, even if it’s more reserved today. Hell, my favorite wrestler became Rey Mysterio practically because of his resemblance of Spider-Man, including his kick ass Spider-Man costume. 

Above: My childhood

So, when the 2001 Spider-Man movie came out, you bet your ass I begged my Grandpa to take me to see it day one.

And it was amazing. I finally got to see my hero brought to life by a real person. I got to see him swing through the city. I got to see his costume fully realized, I costume I wore for Halloween at least 4 times. I got to see him fight a weirdly Power Rangers-esque Green Goblin. I got to see Mary Jane, Harry Osborn, Aunt May, Bruce Campbell. It was everything I ever wanted and more. And all it did was further my love. Then came another especially fantastic movie in Spider-Man 2, with that crazy ass train scene that is still in my opinion the best scene in any comic book movie ever. Suddenly, other superheroes were getting their time to shine. It wasn’t just the land of X-Men, Batman, and Spider-Man. The Hulk, Hellboy, Daredevil, V for Vendetta…they all got movies. What Blade and Men In Black started, Spider-Man revolutionized to the point where anything was fair game. And as exciting as all these heroes were, none of them matched my hype for Spider-Man 3.

And I love that movie dearly, even if I’m the only one and nobody agrees with me. But that’s not what this post is about. The Spider-Man and X-Men franchises eventually sparked the big box office success of the comic book movies, which of course led to the Marvel Movie empire. After Spider-Man 4 wound up in development hell thanks to the mixed reaction of Spider-Man 3, Sony decided that, to keep up with Marvel and Fox, they needed to pony up and reboot their money maker in a brand new Spider-Man movie. And once again, I was hyped, but to a much less extent. I have very fond memories of the first three movies, including the literal only tolerable Nickleback song ever written. Spider-Man is magical enough to even make Nickleback palatable.

But the more I heard about the movie, the less I cared. I’m not the biggest fan of the Lizard, I don’t really care about Peter’s parents (and really, who does?), and it was missing the characters that I was familiar with like Mary Jane and Harry Osborne. Instead, they went with Peter’s initial love interest, Gwen Stacy. In addition, they cast Andrew Garfield, who’s face I just want to punch over and over again. Dunno why, just something about him. This wasn’t the nerdy Peter that I had known and loved that still ended up getting the girl. This dude was man-pretty, and for some reason that bothered me, despite in recent years Peter being drawn much more…um…handsome?

Dem abs

So, 2012 rolled around and The Amazing Spider-Man was released. And, people liked it…I guess. I’ve heard people say that it’s better than the original trilogy and I’ve also heard it’s the downfall of comic book movies in general. Aggregate scores have it sitting around a 6/10, which isn’t as high as the original two movies, but is respectable. It also did really well in the box office. But none of that is neither here nor there. Fact of the matter is, I hated this movie when I first saw it. And I’ve only seen it once because of that hatred. It didn’t have the “Chipotle Effect”, in that when I first am subjected to it I dislike it, but later grow fond enough to buy it up to 3 times a week……………..

But yeah, you get it. I was a butthurt comic nerd who wasn’t receptive to change. Maybe I was just jaded and was looking through rose tinted glasses? Well, that’s not the case. I just rewatched the Sam Rami trilogy and they're still great. But at the same time, I rewatched the X-Men movies and realized that they were movies that were good for their time, but showed lots of age. So maybe I was just biased? That seems more plausible. Whatever the case, I wanted to figure it out for myself. So, I figured now would be the perfect time to revisit it and decide if I still think it’s a steaming pile of garbage or if I was just too critical four years ago when it was released. Was past me correct? Am I still butthurt? We’ll find out shortly.

*One day later*

So, it’s better than I thought. But I still don’t think it’s as good as the original Sam Rami Trilogy (Yes, even part 3). On the plus side, I did find a LOT more positive about the movie this time around than I did the first time I watched it. On the negative, the things that I disliked about the movie have only gotten worse with age.

For starters, I still personally don’t like Andrew Garfield. It’s nothing against how he plays the character, I just don’t like his face. It’s not even that he’s playing Peter Parker, it’s literally just his face. I realize that’s probably not the most legitimate complaint ever laid on this movie, but it still stands. He’s got a very punchable face. Which i guess makes the fact that he keeps the mask on most of the movie a plus. Tobey Maguire's tendency to pull the mask off at every given moment in the original Sam Rami movies was one of my few negatives for the movie.

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Getting past that, my arguments of Andrew being a shitty Peter Parker are right out the window. While I loved Maguire playing dopey, nerdy, hopeless, and hapless Peter Parker, the staggeringly awkward portrayal here by Garfield is just as good and much closer to how people my age would remember Spidey. The sarcastic tones of Spider-Man Post 1970 really come to life in this movie. Sometimes in funny ways and other times in cringe inducing ways. Spidey is an asshole to his opposition, it’s a mental game he plays to get the upper hand. But it’s not normally as over the top as Spidey “cowering” in fear from a dude holding a knife. On the other hand, the banter he has with Dr. Connors, specifically during the fight scene inside the school, is great. Him threatening The Lizard while getting his ass kicked is great.

But, I digress, synopsis time! Starting from the beginning of the movie, we open with Peter’s parents going off to die (spoiler?) and them leaving him with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May. He goes to school, gets made fun of for no reason, gets scolded for skating indoors, gets punched and then goes home. What a day. When he gets home, he finds a briefcase his dad left before he left to die, identifying a dude named Dr. Curtis Connors as his dad's colleague.

Naturally, Peter goes to find him, gets bit by the now famous Radioactive Spider, and then BAM! Spider-Man. Well, sort of. What would a Spider-Man origin story be without Uncle Ben dying after giving the “With great power comes great responsibility” line before Peter disobeys that, letting the wrestling promoter get robbed by the dude who eventually kills Uncle Ben. Oh, what’s that? None of that happens? Uncle Ben doesn’t give the legendary speech that literally sets Peter up to become Spider-Man? And he doesn’t even wrestle Macho Man or anything? No? Okay…

Pictured: The REAL star of Spider-Man (2001)

Well, I can’t fault them for doing something different, which they did, and it’s…fine. It’s not as good as the original epicenter of his morality, but it gets the job done. As the story unfolds, we meet Captain George Stacy, played by Not Willem Dafoe (AKA Dennis Leary). In this movie, he plays the role of J. Jonah Jameson because reasons. For those that know anything about Captain Stacy, they know that Captain Stacy is one of the biggest advocate for what Spider-Man does, defending his vigilante justice. In this movie, he’s an asshole. Because we need someone to hate Spider-Man since nobody else can. Now, to be fair, I guess that in alternate universe stories, Stacy is less of a fan of Spider-Man, but y'know...that just like, whatever man.

Speaking of hating people for no reason, Dr. Connors, a lizard expert, is working on a thing to give humans traits that lizards have to regrow limbs. Like the arm he is missing. He’s doing it to cure Norman Osborne, AKA The Green Goblin, AKA he’s not in this movie. Osborne is dying of horrible Plot Device Disease (PDD), and Connors is under pressure to get this Lizard Science working on people. He and Peter (who’s a genius, btw) figure out a way to make it work on mice, and Connors injects himself because if he doesn’t, Osborne will have him killed.

This turns him into the abomination that is The Lizard. And he looks dumb. The design is not only disloyal to the classic look of the character (Alligator-like snout and tail, raptor looking legs…cloths…) and goes for a cross between the Ultimate Lizard and a the horrible face of the original design. Now, I know it’s not cool to be all “IT’S DIFFERENT AND I HATE IT!!” but…just look at it. It’s awful. The design is awful, the CGI is awful, and his motivation is awful.

I swear i didn't photoshop this

He suddenly goes from “I want to make people strong by having them overcome their handicap” to “I WANT TO MAKE PEOPLE STRONG BY MAKING THEM LIZARDS!!” which as a motivation reeks of them not having any idea on how to make the Lizard work. And it’s not hard man. Gators in the sewer, that’s how they did it in his origin. And this wouldn’t be a big deal if it had any weight to it. It’s too flimsy of a reason to be a villain; and in a series marred by poor motivation, this one is even worse than Electro’s in the sequel.

So, they battle a couple times, Captain Stacy is all like “Don’t date my daughter, brb, gonna die now”, they launch an antidote to a chemical weapon Connors is about to unleash and then Gwen Stacy (oh, by the way, she’s in this movie too) is all like “why didn’t you come do my dad’s funeral? Dick move man” and Peter’s all like “I can’t”. And then it’s over. It’s a decent flick with some flimsy as fuck storytelling and some truly awful CGI for a big budget Sony production, but in the end it’s fun enough to be good. 

However, the main problem I have with the whole movie is the choices it made to be different, not that it just is different. Yes, Gwen Stacy is the original love of Peter’s life. But to anyone that hasn’t read the 60’s and 70's comics or wasn’t even born around that time, the characters of Gwen and George Stacy have little draw to them. Mary Jane has been Peter’s wife in the comics since the 80’s and is in literally every media version of Spider-Man since. They chose The Lizard, one of Spider-Man’s oldest adversaries, they chose the Stacy’s, and they chose to change the origin. So, why choose old characters to draw in older comic fans and then make Peter a bumbling modern day douchebag skate punk that will only resonate with a younger audience? I get that the idea is to modernize Spider-Man and tell a story that hasn’t been told before, but there’s a reason that the story of Peter chasing his dead parent’s past hasn’t really been dwelled on much in the comics: nobody cares. And this movie does a poor job of making the viewer care. Hell, I didn’t mention Gwen in the entire synopsis because she’s almost useless in the movie really. Emma Stone does a great job playing her, and she does play a semi-pivitol role towards the climax, but she’s weightless in this movie. She has great, GREAT interactions with Garfield, and the two have so much chemistry you’d almost think they’d go on to date in real life.

Oh...

The point that i’m trying to get at here is that while the movie is trying to do something different, in doing so it loses the heart of what made the original story so great. Maybe I’m wrong, and older audiences who actually grew up reading The Amazing Spider-Man when it was serialized in the 60’s and 70’s loved the portrayals of the Stacy’s and the newer, hipper Peter Parker. It just seems like a bit of a bait and switch to me to get in long time Spider-Man fans who do love the older characters and wanted to see them portrayed like they remembered. Not only that, but they didn't even use the actual catalyst for Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man. Yeah, Uncle Ben dies, but there's not really that life lesson talk that makes Peter feel his remorse. Do you need to say "With great power comes great responsibility" explicitly to get the idea across? Of course not, but goddamn...Ben yells at him for not picking up Aunt May and then he dies and that's it. Peter's sad about it and then they move on. I think May is in the movie maybe twice after. And they don't call much attention to Ben being dead or it's effect on Peter. He gets mad once at a bully who comes to apologize and then we move on. And it sucks, because the dude that plays Uncle Ben is excellent in this movie! Him giving the speech would have been great! His interactions with Peter are great. He's a huge plus to this whole movie. And to see his performance and Ben's entire role in Peter's development wasted is sad. 

Once he dies, the responsibility thing kind of goes out the window. And that't the biggest problem. We don't see Peter constantly letting people down. We don't see the struggle to maintain balance in his life. He forgets to pick up Aunt May while Ben is still alive (which, how? Peter doesn't even have a car...) and he forgets eggs after he's dead. That's it. Losing the aspect of this as a job really takes a lot away from Peter. It's not showing him miss class to be Spider-Man, it's not showing him miss dates to be Spider-Man, it's not showing him missing out on family plans to be Spider-Man. There's no consequence to being Spider-Man on a personal level. And if you haven't been keeping track, that's the whole goddamn point. He's too busy skateboarding to have responsibilities. And i don't care if he did it in Tony Hawk, we don't need it in a movie set to Coldplay music!

Pictured: More of my childhood. Not Pictured: Coldplay music

But i don't want to end this on a huge complaint.On the flip side, we got the sarcastic asshole Spider-Man that a lot of people my age are more familiar with and complained was lacking in Sam Rami’s Spider-Man. The action is better, even if it does look downgraded from Spider-Man 3’s climax with Venom and Sandman, which I can say with 100 percent certainty, still holds up and is actually really impressive even 9 years later. The Indierific directing of Marc Webb actually helps this movie a lot because his strong suit is intimate interactions, which are plentiful and well done here. Watching the characters in this movie interact is great, especially Peter and Gwen.

It’s just a shame that this Spider-Man and his interactions aren't in a movie that actually lives up to its namesake. For everything positive the movie does, it does something else to undermine itself. It's not nearly as bad as I thought it was. Dare I say that The Amazing Spider-Man is actually pretty good. But one thing's for sure about it; it might be good, but it damn sure isn’t amazing.