The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man


Rating 8 out of 10

When I heard they were doing a reboot of SpiderMan only ten years after the original I had to scratch my head. Spiderman III was only released five years ago and it wasn't very good.   Then I hear Spidey is being played by that skinny nerdy guy from the Social Network Andrew Garfield?  Just sounds like a bad idea.  Then I saw a few of the trailers with the giant lizard guy chasing people around NYC.  Okay, I'll give it a try.

I'm sure my comic book nerd brother inlaw can explain to me the big difference in the plots.  This story while similar to the 2002 SpiderMan movie is similar, but also is way different.  Emma Stone is far better than Kristen Dunst.  That does not really matter since they are different people.  MJ, the love of Peter Parkers life is not in this movie.  Now there is Gwen Stacy.  I have not hear of her.  Then again I haven't read a comic book since middle school.  I hear Gwen is also a character in the books.

This Spider-Man movie deals more with the childhood of Peter Parker and what happened to his parents.  Explains what his dad was working on with another scientist before dad dropped Pete off with Uncle Ben and Aunt Mae.  The movie pace drags a bit here as we are being told a story we have mostly heard before.

Once he figures out his powers and stitches his suit the action starts.  The bad guy is a big lizard guy that is out to turn everyone in to lizards like him.  The big star of this movie is the effects.  Clearly things have improved a good bit in ten years.  They were quite impressive in the 2D version we saw (I don't like 3D at all!).

This is a good summer movie that is fun to watch and lots of things go boom and miles of spider webs are spun.  I wouldn't say it's better than the first one, but it's better than most of what is out there now.