I went and saw The Amazing Spider-Man. I remember reading articles from concerned fans about a reboot of a series happening so close to the release of the final installment. I admit I was also worried about how this would turn out. I thought I would spend the duration of the movie thinking about how it stacked up against the ones that I had just recently (in the last ten years) seen in theaters. Just a few minutes into this reboot, however, Toby McGuire, Kirsten Dunst, and James Franco were pushed to the back of my mind as I was drawn into this new story. The overall arch of the story is nearly identical to the original. There's awkward teen Peter Parker dealing with gaining super powers and responsibility. There's a love story and tragedy and heroes and fighting and victory! What sets this Spider-Man apart from the originals is that it is bigger. I'm not saying they Michael Bay'd it and added huge special effects and aliens and explosions and giant robots. I'm saying they made every experience in the movie bigger. The characters were deeper. You feel with them and follow right beside them as they battle the trials. Peter Parker's past is more thoroughly explored posing the question, "how would this teenager feel about his real parents?" We see Peter come full circle as he becomes a hero instead of a cocky teen pretending he's doing a great service by beating up bad guys. We find Spider-man truly discovering himself and why he's going to do what he does. They don't focus too much on the love story though it is still present. The importance of these things I think is that motives become more clear, story line is more defined, and it connects with audiences better than shallow stories and big special effects. I feel it took the comic book out of the movie allowing the artists to truly explore the possibilities of the story. Of course this moving is not lacking in amazing special effects and amazingly choreographed fight scenes, but because they're not the total focus there is just more movie to watch. Take all that and add a wonderful cast including Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Sally Field, Martin Sheen, Rhys Ifans, and of course Denis Leary. I very much enjoyed this movie and feel that it is a good direction for the franchise. I hope they can build on this movie and bring a few more installments of Spider-Man.
Let me know what you thought of my view of The Amazing Spider-Man
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