"The Amazing Spider-Man" - 2012 - movie review

The reboot nobody asked for is finally here. Why a studio would choose to restart a fabulously successful franchise that's only a decade removed from its launch is now officially a moot question; or is it? I, personally, cling to the belief that as customers we pretty much decide what's moot and what's relevant. So I'm not going to shy away from the 600 pound gorilla in the room with this review.

My biggest gripe with the 'reboot' of Spider-Man is the same as everyone else's: having to sit through another retelling of the origin story. Didn't we get all that out of the way already and wasn't it just a few years ago? In order to justify this rehashing of the familiar the film makers promised us the "untold" story but as far as I can tell the only thing untold here is the beginning where the film makers substitute genetic engineering for radioactivity as the causal agent for Spidey's superpowers. I guess radioactivity was just too old school. After all, it's not like people are wary of radioactivity anymore. Heck there's been hardly any meltdowns in the past couple of years so I can see why the writers would feel compelled to tilt the narrative toward something more timely.

With what must surely be the big "untold" element out of the way I was left wondering "what else could the movie possibly bring to the table that would justify spending my hard earned money on?" Well, how about how they reveal that Peter Parker is actually a d*ckhead? That's right. According to Marc Webb and Co those of us who were faithful fans of the web-slinger for years and never knew him as anything other than a dutiful son/worker/boyfriend got it all wrong. He's actually just a smartass with a smartphone. A wise-guy with a secret and few redeeming characteristics other than his claim to victimhood. Hey, maybe that's the big "untold" story! Peter the weiner! Or maybe the big untold story is that this is not actually a Spider-Man movie. They just licensed the name and kept it "in the spirit of".

So after the first hour or so I began to feel I was finally up to speed on all the "untold" stuff and I was feeling better about being ripped off, uh, I mean buying a ticket. I recalibrated my expectations and settled into watching this movie about an unsympathetic, 30-something teenager who bears more than a little resemblence to "Black Spidey" from "Spider-Man 3" (except he's nowhere near the dancer). This new Spider-Man-type character also lives with an Aunt May, though (in keeping with the "Black Spidey" theme) this Aunt May has dark hair, not the grey hair of the actual Aunt May. (Wait a minute! Maybe that's the "untold" story. Aunt May is using "Just for Men"!) This new Spider-Man-type character discovers that his late father worked with a guy named Dr Curt Connors; a wack-job who decides to grow back his missing arm by modifying his DNA with that of a lizard. Predictably this experiment doesn't exactly work out and the resulting Dr Curt Lizard sets about causing all kinds of trouble for everybody.

The second hour brings together the two narrative lines: the d*ckhead growing into his superpowers and the wack-job growing into a lizard and proving he's too much for the po-lice to handle. A showdown is inevitable (but does anyone care?). In the middle of all this is the police chief: who also just happens to be the Spider-Man-type character's girlfriend's father. He specializes in mis-reading leads and mis-interpreting evidence. The ensueing mayhem along with the penultimate scene where Spider-man rescues a boy trapped in a car dangling over the East River seem like little more than minor outtakes from Marvel's truly marvelous "The Avengers".

The Amazing Spider(type)Man is not a bad movie per se. The technical people have all done their jobs admirably. It's well crafted and all with most of the actors doing a pretty decent job too (though it must be said that Emma Stone (Gwen Stacey) and Andrew Garfield (PP) have about as much on-screen chemistry as oil and water and Sally Fields is not Aunt May and never will be). It's just not a movie that has a place to fill and in attempting to create one the film makers have conjured up a movie that's unneeded, unwelcome, disrespectful to the canon, boring and tedious in its pretended sincerity. I take some solace however in imagining that this miscarriage of a movie may yet prove to be the catalyst for exactly what it purports to be: a needed reboot of a beloved franchise.

Johnny Rotten famously quipped "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" as the Sex Pistols stumbled off the stage at the end of their one and only real US tour in 1978. As I walked out of the theater after seeing this movie his quote was the only thing that came to mind.