The Amazing Spider-Man

Coming a mere five years after the universally reviled, yet still hugely successful Spider-Man 3, the question that should have been on everyone’s mind with The Amazing Spider-Man reboot announcement was whether or not it was too soon.  It’s no secret that Hollywood loves bringing successful, old franchises back to life, but to my knowledge this marked the quickest turnaround, where all involved, director and actors, had been replaced with virtual newcomers, unproven in the realm of the blockbuster, yet still hoping to ride the built-in audience for many sequels to come.  Luckily, the Spider-Man universe, as with Batman, comes with several different storylines, and a revolving cast of villains from which to choose; although in carrying the moniker of the character’s flagship series, The Amazing Spider-Man, this reboot suggested a stricter adherence to the Marvel history, and the internet was ablaze with anticipation from fanboys at the possibilities.  For the rest of us, that the tale of an immature boy becoming a crime-fighting superhero, all the while learning about loss and responsibility and the meaning of true love, be well-crafted, was the only necessary requirement; after all, this wouldn’t be the first time any of these themes were attempted in a Hollywood production.  Sometimes this stuff seems like it could write itself.  But not The Amazing Spider-Man.  This film required no less than three scribes, and 140 minutes, to basically tell no story at all, lest you consider a callous assumption of plot points as mere dots through which to connect incoherent and lazy character developments, to be the pinnacle of entertainment.  While it might be de rigueur these days from Hollywood, I call foul on the way all involved in the film seem to relish taking audience enjoyment for granted; this is a long, boring, manipulative slough through familiar territory, and especially in the wake of the high bar set by Sam Raimi and Christopher Nolan in the superhero genre, a completely inexcusable cash cow, milked right before our eyes.

There’s no need to delve too deeply into story here.  Peter Parker is an immature high school boy, who was orphaned by his parents, and for most of his life has been living with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben.  He is awkward, gets picked on at school, has a crush on fellow student Gwen Stacy, and loves science.  I’m sorry, I mean he’s misunderstood.  One day he finds an old briefcase that belonged to his father, and after doing an internet search for the name of a company found on some papers inside, he is soon led to the one-armed Dr. Curt Connors, who many years ago was working with Parker's father on crossing genetic material among living things, like lizards and spiders, for the purpose of regenerating cells and curing diseases.  We all know what happens next, to Peter, to Uncle Ben, and to Dr. Connors; it's not that any of these plot points are particularly troublesome to the film, but the problems arise with the way they are woven together. 

Most fatal to the film is its pacing.  Through a very easy process of elimination, due to a dearth of characters, it is obvious who the villain is going to be, yet by the clock on the wall this person does not become the villain for seventy-five minutes.  The majority of that time is all origin story, setting aside a good ten minutes for Peter Parker to explore and master his new found powers, with a skateboard in a deserted factory.  Then there is the fate of Uncle Ben, which is supposed to have a huge impact on Parker, yet through a compressed-time montage of attempts at crime-fighting and perfecting his costume, he is on the street wisecracking to criminals and showing off for the audience mere minutes after that fatal night.  This event is supposed to set him on his path of responsibility, though it should probably be mentioned that his irresponsibility is almost solely depicted by Parker forgetting to pick up Aunt May one evening, forcing her to take a cab.  That negligence precipitates a huge scolding by Uncle Ben, which is meant to inform the audience just how terrible Peter Parker is, and how much he needs to grow.  It’s all so juvenile and unimaginative, and borderline offensive with respect to how the film just abandons Aunt May after Ben dies, showing her disheveled and devastated, while Peter dismisses her concerns and treats her like an annoyance as he comes in and out of the house at all hours.  He completely takes her for granted, and so does the screenplay, siding with its hero, and by extension so does the audience.  Some responsibility.  By the time the villain roars to life, and the film winds itself up on autopilot to coast through one noisy, artless action sequence after another until the end, there is no joy to be had, no interest to be invested in any of the characters, the whole thing becoming one gigantic bore.  A screenplay is the foundation for the means by which an audience is transported from their reality to the characters’ reality; it is a film's most finely-tuned instrument.  And it’s obvious the filmmakers were working from a checklist, and assumed any matter of mention of Spider-Man was worthy of appreciation.  Ultimately, the only responsibility Parker learns, as with the only irresponsibility that was detailed, is that he needs to listen to people in authority.  But in the end he remains just as feckless as in the beginning.

The Amazing Spider-Man is a pale imitation of what Sam Raimi managed to create, especially with Spider-Man 2, one of the greatest superhero films of all time.  Director Marc Webb, hailing from the indie-hit (500) Days Of Summer, is out of his league here, completely inept at bringing these kinds of scenes to life with the camera.  He is clearly more comfortable with dialogue exchange, but in this film it serves only to call attention to the awful script.  And I might add, it is quite inexcusable the level of subjugation inflicted on his female characters.  I already mentioned Aunt May, but there are similar transgressions with respect to Gwen Stacy, the only other female character in the film.  These two women are subjected completely to the whims of the writers, and by extension Peter Parker.  Their first kiss is presented as Parker overcoming his awkwardness with several starts and stops, until he finally man’s up by shooting a web around her and spinning her back into his arms, Emma Stone making Gwen Stacy completely lose her breath.  But the real offense comes later, after Parker promises Stacy’s father that he will stay away from her to keep her out of danger.  Parker completely ignores her, even through an obvious emotional turmoil, until one day she shows up crying at his doorstop, and discovers the promise he made.  He blows her off, but then some time later, during the film’s final minute, he mentions that some promises aren’t worth keeping, and Stacy, who is sitting in front of him in school, just cracks a smile.  Gwen Stacy is a ping-pong, and nothing more.  She exists for no other purpose than as an object at the whims of the writers, and Peter Parker.  I longed for Mary Jane Watson, the strong female character at the center of Raimi’s Spider-Man films, and the upside-down kiss in the second one that was the culmination of the desires of two actual human beings, independent and clearly defined.  The exhilaration of that scene is what cinema is all about, that is its transportive power.  The Amazing Spider-Man is a bloodless bore that goes out of its way to  ruin what could have been a slam-dunk, spinning its wheels faster than its hero can spin his web.

*1/2 out of *****