Film: The Amazing Spider-Man

It's going to be really hard to talk about The Amazing Spider-Man without comparing it to the Sam Raimi trilogy (of which I think 1 is fine, 2 is better and 3 is just one big fat raspberry), but from my perspective, I don't think that's really going to do the new film much harm. Also, for a proper comparison, this blog does a brilliant breakdown that I almost entirely agree with. Superhero movies are, by nature, treading a dangerous line of cliches, and it's usually very easy to pick the best (Avengers Assemble) from the worst (Hulk). For information: IMDb, for hilarious perceptiveness: TV Tropes.

Before I get into the story aspects, I've got to put it out there that Andrew Garfield - due partly to being just an excellent specimen of human being - is twice the Spider-Man Tobey Maguire was. I think Maguire is a good actor, but he just wasn't right for my idea of Spider-Man; too wet, too dopey and without any sex appeal to speak of (and the guy's wearing a spandex body suit).

But, to the point. I really liked the extra element of humour in the new Spider-Man - I never read the comics, but I used to watch the animated TV show as a kid, and Spider-Man's quippy one-liners were sadly lacking in previous efforts.

Now I've tried for a good ten minutes to think of a word other than 'realistic' to describe what I thought of the plot, but I got nothing. When I say it's 'more realistic' than other superhero movies, I'm trying to explain that I thought the characters were more perceptive, Peter Parker was more flawed and the details of character and story were all surprisingly three-dimensional for a story so not-rooted in realism.

I also have to spare a thought for Emma Stone. I've expressed my love for her before, but seriously guys, Emma Stone is wicked. In terms of her character, I (and my eardrums) seriously appreciated that she took the character of Gwen Stacey beyond the Kirsten Dunst school of 'Be Thrown Around And Scream A Lot'. I tell you what though, I'd really like to see a superhero film in which the girl was the superhero, and boy was the stay-at-homer. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single girls-superhero film in which the boys weren't also superheroes - can you? (That's not rhetorical - seriously, can you?)

That said, it wasn't perfect. I didn't like the not-infrequent cases of Protagonist Does Something Profoundly Dense To Move The Plot Along - the scene in which Peter gets bitten by the spider was shouting-at-the-screen levels of idiotic.

There were also some classic superhero/action movie cliches, the most eye-rolling example being the 'Before I Die Speech'. That 'Here Are Lots Of Deep And Heartwarming Moments And Now That I've Said Everything Important In A Not-Very-Subtle Poorly-Voice Please Excuse Me While I Die' which gets very:

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