Written by William Cutforth

Edited by Matt Wilson

 

The decision to re-write the story of Peter Parker and his alter ego was welcomed with open arms after the disaster that was ‘Spider-man 3’. Any die-hard Spider-man fan understands that Venom shouldn’t be a bit-part villain. Tobey Maguire was never a popular choice, as he didn’t seem to have the charm that goes with Peter Parker. When it was announced that Andrew Garfield would reprise the role, it was met with mixed reviews. Some people weren’t too sure who he was, but were still asking themselves “will we will see a different Spider-man then the one we saw in Tobey Maguire?” The answer: we definitely did. Andrew Garfield had the charisma to pull off the version we wanted to see, and the humour was perfectly translated from the comics onto the screen.

The story in ‘The Amazing Spiderman’ was a little weak in places and it could have been better, for example the search for Uncle Ben’s killer, which was one of the main focuses of the first Spiderman film, wasn’t tied up in the film. However there were plenty of good points including the difference between Gwen Stacy in this film and Mary-Jane in the original three. There was more empathy for Stacy than there was Mary-Jane and you felt a greater connection between Peter and Gwen. The only downside is that at times it did feel like a rom-com, but that was to be expected when Marc Webb (the director of ‘500 days of Summer’) took the lead in this project.

Rhys Ifans played a fantastic villain in the Lizard and it was a villain that if you aren’t a Marvel Comics fan could be unfamiliar to you. I prefer it when the superhero films choose the unfamiliar characters because there are some superb Spider-man villains out there. Now who is hoping for a Kraven the Hunter film? Probably anyone who has read the comics.

CGI was maybe taken a bit too far for the film. I know a man in a latex suit squirting spider webs and having “spider sense” is never going to be realistic (here we were all hoping), and I know it was probably done to make it feel a bit more like a comic, but the amount of CGI that films are using in modern times is getting ridiculous.

Overall, ‘The Amazing Spider-man’ was a fantastic reboot and one that was needed. The cast is great, the story is great, we can only hope that Sony don’t screw us over and repeat the sequence of two brilliant Spider-man films followed by a terrible third (though there’ll more than likely be more than three this time as they’ve announced they want to release a Spider-man film every year).