Movie Review: The Amazing Spiderman

Did we really need another Spider-Man movie? Not really. We had three, each one a little worse than the previous. I suppose rebooting the series is better than making Spider-Man 4, which I'm sure would be pretty bad. Instead of doing that, Marvel decided to scrap everything, and start over. New actors, new writers, new directors, new everything.
Basically, they recreated the original Spider-Man. But there are some differences.

The Plot
We all know the basic Spider-Man plot. The boys parents die, he lives with his aunt and uncle. During a field trip, he is bitten by a radioactive spider and gets spider powers, like shooting super strong webs and the ability to scale walls, as well as awesome reflexes. After his uncle is killed by a robber, he takes to the streets, and becomes a vigilante known as Spider-Man. And there's the girl. You know, the one he loves, but she doesn't notice him, because he's the nerd, and she's dating the football captain.
That's the plot of the original movie, but the plot of the new movie is actually more believable, and a little better. That being said, there's not too many changes, so if you've seen the original, you know what's coming.
In The Amazing Spider-Man, he isn't on a field trip when he's bitten, he's snooping around, trying to find out about his father's research. This seems more likely then, you know, putting high schoolers in a room with radioactive spiders.
Also, Peter Parker (AKA, Spider-Man) isn't as much as a nerd, as a geek. (The difference is examined here.) He's not beat up daily, and the girl knows who he is. He's still really smart, but he's also kind of cool. He's just sort of an outcast.
Another difference is that Pater tells his love interest that he is Spider-Man early on in the film. And she's the daughter of the Chief-of-Police, who wants Spider-Man arrested.

Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and the love interest, named Qwen. 

The story of the bad guy is also a litte different. I don't want to give too much away though, so I won't talk about that much.
These differences make the movie slightly more interesting, and allow for a few surprises, but you still know basically whats going to happen next.

The Review
I went in to this movie, expecting the original Spider-Man with better fight scenes (as in more realistic due to newer technology). What I got was much more.
For one, I got a large lady next to me who would repeatedly fall asleep and snored. But I also got an interesting new look at Spider-Man.

No, the plot of the movie isn't overly original, but come on, it's a remake. But the differences mentioned above are original, at least for the Spider-Man series.
The love interest being the daughter of the chief-of-police is certainly interesting, and the fact that she knows about Peter being Spider-Man is also interesting. The idea of the girlfriend being the daughter of the guy who wants to stop the hero isn't original, but it works out good here, and they do a good job of not making it a huge deal, and they don't bring attention to how un-original that idea is.
The being bitten by a spider scene also makes more sense, because I never quite got why scientists let a group of students anywhere near radioactive anything.

Peter discovers his spidey powers when
he jumps up and sticks to the ceiling.

This movie is also a tad darker than the original Spider-Man (Read: more epic.) It reminds me of the Dark Knight trilogy (Christopher Nolan's Batman movies). There's more mass panic than there was in the original, and overall it is more epic.
However, there's still plenty of Marvel's classic comedy. Plenty of one-liners and some good laughs.

One difference I didn't mention before, but that I liked a lot, was that Peter doesn't gain the ability to somehow shoot webs from his otherwise normal hands. He builds a cool little contraption that sticks to his hands that allow him to do it. This isn't that big of a detail, but I liked it, and it shows that the writer's didn't recreate the original word for word, they put some actual thought into it.

One thing the original Spider-Man lacked was a strong emotional tug. The scene were the awesome uncle is kileld was pretty emotional, but that was about it. This version has more emotion, but it still feels like there could be a little more.

The Bottomline

This movie isn't really necessary for the Spider-Man series, but it is probably better than anything Spider-Man 4 would have been. The movie is darker than the original, but also more epic and realistic. Overall a good movie, with some funny one-liners and plenty of awkward teens trying to ask each other out.  Great actions scenes, and a solid, but not overly original plot. 

8.25/10

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Interesting Note:
On July 3, 2012, the Facebook page of the film announced that this was a first in a film trilogy that will explore on how Peter Parker was shaped by the disappearance of his parents. The producer, Tolmach has added that there "will be more than one, and at the very least three."