A reboot may not necessarily be a bad thing. In the last 10 years we’ve seen good reboots of James Bond (‘Casino Royale’), Star Trek and, more remarkably, Batman (‘Batman Begins’ and ‘The Dark Knight’, by Christopher Nolan). But there should be a reason for rebooting a franchise (modernize the character, find a different audience), which is lacking here.
‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ tells, again, the story of how a teenager Peter Parker became a superhero, this time played by an overacting Andrew Garfield. The main novelty comes with the love interest of Spider-Man, which in this case is not red-headed Mary Jane but blond Gwen Stacy, interpreted by charming actress Emma Stone. The villain is also a new one, The Lizard, a scientist that ends up as an enormous, powerful lizard as a result of a failed experiment.
The director, Marc Webb, was appointed after having released only one movie, the indie flick ‘(500) Days of Summer’ (2009); he tries to give more importance to the actors and the love story between Peter Parker and Gwen, but the flawed, conventional script doesn’t leave much room to real feelings and emotions.
The new Spider-man movie is not a bad film in itself; it provides some spectacular moments and decent performances from the supporting cast (Rhys Ifans as The Lizard, Dennis Leary as Captain George Stacy, Sally Field and Martin Sheen as Parker’s uncles) but it doesn’t add anything new to the franchise. It’s a missed opportunity to be more faithful to the original story or give the character some depth.
(No Ratings Yet)
