Judged on its own as a Spider-Man flick, I had some complaints. The commercials lead me to believe we'd be getting a snarkier Spidey, and a couple good jabs aside, it was a bit of a let-down. My real disappointment, though, is that Parker isn't nerdy enough. Giving him back mechanical webshooters is fine, but even Gwen notes that he never seemed that into science. So they showed him watching an online video about some OsCorp tech, and then there's webshooters. Ehn? Yes, I see the Einstein poster, is that shorthand for him being a big nerd that you just don't want to show? Was the actor just not given that good a script? Or not directed well? I never really got that he was into, well, anything but Gwen, and maybe skateboarding.
I was also in the crowd of people that don't care about his parents. For me, Spider-Man was never really driven by their loss to seek a life as a crimefighter. We had decades of comic books where they weren't a topic for his character. But I get that, if you want to reboot a set of movies and do something different, that's an angle you could explore. Except, they kind of didn't? I mean, it drove him to seek out Dr. Connors, but after that, I guess we're waiting on the next couple movies? And Connors. Hmmm. I like Ifans. And Dr. Connors was decent. But the Lizard's plan, when you think about it, was, well, a bit suspect. Spider-Man was only an issue when he got in the way. There was no real connection there.
They did get some things really right, though! The fight scenes are very well done. And the bridge rescue scene was damn near perfect (even if the later payoff was laughably silly.) Emma Stone and Denis Leary both did damn good jobs. Maybe with a better script, Andrew Garfield could have given us a better Parker/Spidey, which would help cover up the weakness of the plot. Whatever the cause, the more you think about the movie, the less it holds up.
