We all know the story, right? Wimpy kid gets bitten by a radioactive spider, develops spider-like powers, dons spandex, decides to fight crime. We all know the story. We all know the story so well that "bitten by a radioactive (insert creature here)" has become shorthand for developing special powers. We all know the story.
We've seen it two films already - plus sequels. We've seen it in innumerable cartoons. We've seen it onstage. We've even seen it in comics, Spidey's original home. We all know the story.
So, given that we all know the story, you'd think that the makers of the latest Spiderman movie would move through that bit at a brisk pace, allowing them to get on with the business of plot and character arc, protagonist and antagonist. You might even think that that as the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire Spiderman movie is only a few years old, they'd forgo the whole origin story entirely because hey, as I might have mentioned previously, we all know the story, right?
Wrong. Sadly, the makers of the new Spiderman movie do not think you know the story. They think you don't know it so much you have to be told. The whole thing. In great detail and at great length. In fact, they think this part of the story is so unknown to you, so fresh and new, that they have devoted over an hour of their movie to retelling it. Again. At great length.
Still, they reason to themselves, we have An Important Story to tell. At least, I guess that's what they reason to themselves because the film has more endings than the Lord of the Rings trilogy, each one more portentous than the last, building to a climax that just made we want to stand up and scream "just finish the damn thing, already!"
In between the beginning and the end, the film has about an hour to tell its story. But oh what a story it is! You see, there's this guy who wants to regrow his arm so he injects himself with this lizard serum stuff and his arm regrows because that's what lizards do but then it turns him into a giant lizard, see, and then he goes crazy and tries to turn everyone else into lizards because that's what lizards do too, see, but Spiderman has to stop him because the lizard guy (who doesn't have a cool name and is just a lizard guy rather than, say, Lizardguy) is impervious to bullets because that's what lizards do, too, and so he and Spiderman have a fight and Spiderman wins and then it ends. At great length. As I think I mentioned.
This is a film that is so much less than the sum of its parts. Andrew Garfield is okay as Peter Parker/Spiderman although the great difference in character between the two (PP all tongue-tied and incoherent, Spidey all snappy wisecracks) is never explored or explained. Dennis Leary is subdued as the crusty copper, doing his best to protect his city and his daughter. Martin Sheen is as dependable as ever as Uncle Ben although something odd is happening to his teeth as he gets older. Sally Fields is wasted as Aunt May, although as a character in the comics she never really did much apart from worry and get kidnapped by bad guys. The design and effects are good enough, with Spidey throwing some very Ditko shapes (fun to see) although the CGI is, as it always is, weightless and like a videogame. The story aside, there's nothing really much wrong with it - it's just terribly, painfully, disappointingly, arse-numbingly dull.
There was a brief moment, after Inception, when it looked like Hollywood had realised that summer blockbusters didn't have to be dumb. There was a similarly brief moment, after The Avengers, when it looked like Hollywood realised that being a superhero - and superhero movies in general - could be fun. Sadly, the Amazing Spiderman proves that neither of those lessons has been learned - at least, not by those involved in this movie.
Overall, this is a pointless reboot of a series that didn't need rebooting. You - and the character of Spiderman - deserve better. Avoid.
