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A so-so Spider-man


The Amazing Spider-Man
DIRECTED BY: Marc Webb
STARRING: Andrew
Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin
Sheen, Sally Field
CERT: 12A

Why? That’s all, really. Just, why?
If Sam Raimi’s perfectly acceptable Spider-man had been filmed in Japanese, or Swedish, or Proto-bloody-Eskimo, I could understand why Sony might be eager to cash in with an English remake. But remaking a film that your own studio released, in perfectly acceptable English, as recently as 2002, practically just the other day? More than a little cynical and not that amazing at all.
Of course, they’re not calling it a remake, but a reboot. Or better still, an origin story – that most beloved of summer friends. Which might hold water, if it was some kind of drastic departure from the other origin story Raimi told, way back in the mists of time ten years ago but, apart from the odd tweak, it isn’t.
In this version, we learn that Peter Parker (now played by Andrew Garfield) ends up living with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May (Sheen and Field) after his parents die in a car crash. Instead of getting acquainted with that radioactive spider while on a school field trip to Columbia University, this Peter meets his eight-legged fate while visiting his scientist father’s former partner, Dr Curt Connors (Ifans) at a top secret research laboratory.
The result is the same though. Peter discovers his nifty powers, has some fun, indulges in a little revenge, goes vigilante, then endures a personal crisis and a lengthy lecture or two  about what to do with these wild new abilities. Great power and great responsibility, you know the jazz. Though not strictly in those words.
He’s also met a fine young girl, whose name is not Mary Jane Watson. It’s Gwen Stacy, and she’s played by Emma Stone, an excellent young actress who makes a far less annoying Spidey heroine than Kirsten Dunst, whose fine reputation may never recover from all that terrible squealing.
Peter and Gwen’s budding romance is complicated a tad, however, by the fact that her daddy (Denis Leary) is the police captain whose job it is to bring down the friendly neighbourhood arachnid.
Meanwhile Dr Connors has his lab shut down, putting a spanner in his search for a biomedical serum that will help him grow a replacement for his missing arm. Thanks to Peter and his late daddy, Connors hits on what he believes to be the magic formula. One injection later, he promptly turns into a giant lizard. Not surprisingly, he goes a bit mad and takes it out on the city and its longsuffering residents, who must be asking themselves how many more times they will be flung carelessly from cars and buildings and bridges, ­ or if any mad villain will ever think of something new. Well, now that you mention it…
Don’t worry, whatever happens, the Distinctly Average Spider-Man and his friends in the special effects department are there to save the day. If that means a final half hour of tedious CGI action, with nothing certain but victory, well, isn’t that what audiences want? No? Really? Hmmm.
Maybe we’d want it just a bit more if we hadn’t all been here before ­ and if we hadn’t already gone down this road with superheroes and Transformers and Avengers a hundred bazillion times in the decade since Tobey Maguire pulled on the Spidey tights and went a-flying.
This kind of action is old and boring, but clearly it’s too much to ask that, if the suits insist on a remake, then they might insist that the talent bring something new to the party. They might also insist on a director who’s up to the task, rather than hire a music video veteran (yes, another one) like Marc Webb, whose only previous feature film was the atrocious 500 Days Of Summer.
Webb does a little better when he scales things down and focuses on the relationships in the film, and there’s some genuine chemistry between Garfield and Stone. Garfield also manages to give Peter a slightly darker character but the writers keep trying to undo the good work with crap dialogue, a serious lack of humor (Raimi and friends could never be accused of that), a major absence of good old cheesy superhero enthusiasm and possibly the worst villain ever.
The kindest thing that can be said about conceiving the idea of an evil lizard, is that it happened while watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and that massive intoxication was the culprit.
I presume they also saw bats, but sadly the bat was taken. His new movie will be upon us soon, too. Whatever it’s like, it can’t be much duller than this.

 

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