The Amazing Spider-Man: B-
The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
The Spider-Man franchise has been very busy these past 11 years. In 2002, we got our first ever glimpse of Spider-Man at the cinema. Tobey Maguire was given the job of portraying the nerdy and shy Peter Parker - and the results weren’t that bad.
The second Spider-Man came in 2004, again a fairly rounded entertaining film. The third however wasn’t. Spider-Man 3 was sloppy narratively. It stumbled about like a drunk walking home on a Friday night. Having said that, the original Spider-Man franchise was - I thought - an adequate trilogy of films. So it did surprise me when I found out they were rebooting so quickly after.
In 2012, we got Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Marc Webb’s (aptly named director) The Amazing Spider-Man. I couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit sorry on Tobey Maguire before I watched this film. Tobey had been etched into everyone’s conscience as Spider-Man and it was going to be strange not seeing his baby face on screen being serenaded by Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. But those feeling’s of guilt soon past.
I was ready to move on pretty quickly after The Amazing Spider-Man knocked Tobey and co. out the park. It was far more real, touching and featured generally better acting. Although the plot does return to areas that are touched upon in Spider-Man in 2002, the character development is far more intimate. Some critics were quick to jump on the “didn’t need to be rebooted” bandwagon, and those fears may of been just.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was released a month back and didn't quite live up to it's previous rebooted older brother. It suffered from an gluttony of characters that marred the films overall impact. It is impressive that they managed to fit so much into The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the narratively it worked— to some degree— but you couldn't help be feel let down by it's preposterous overuse of characters. Unfortunately, this has downgraded The Amazing Spider-Man from a B+ to a B-. Still room for improvement.
