The Amazing Spider-Man

The Retold Story

Action/Sci-fi ‧ 136 minutes ‧ PG-13 ‧ 2012 ‧ 5 min read

"Really? You seriously think I'm a cop? Cop in a skin-tight red and blue suit?"

I have never been objective about this one and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The Amazing Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb and starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, and Denis Leary, was the first film I ever saw in a movie theater, and it is a large part of why I love film at all. There is something about seeing Spider-Man on a massive screen for the first time as a kid that stays with you in a way that is difficult to explain to someone who did not experience it. What I can tell you is that coming back to it now, it holds up better than people give it credit for, even as the things that do not work become harder to excuse the more times I watch it.

Marc Webb was a strange choice on paper, a director whose only prior feature was the intimate 500 Days of Summer, handed a studio superhero reboot five years after the last one. But his instincts translate better than expected. He keeps the camera close and lets his actors talk, and the film has a looser, more naturalistic rhythm than the genre usually allows. It does not feel assembled so much as it feels shot, which is a distinction worth making when so many films in this space feel like the product of a committee rather than a director.

Andrew Garfield is the best thing about this film and it is not particularly close. His Peter Parker is lanky, funny, and quietly self-destructive, a kid who deflects with humor and wears his insecurities loudly rather than folding inward. He feels pulled from an early Ditko comic more than from any screen version that came before, and there is a genuine love for the character in his performance that comes through in every scene. He commits to it completely, finding real emotion in moments the screenplay does not always deserve, and his physicality is exceptional throughout. He moves like someone who genuinely cannot believe what his body is suddenly capable of, and that specific quality is much harder to perform than it looks.

Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy is the benchmark for superhero love interests, full stop. She is sharp, warm, and entirely present, never waiting around to be relevant to the plot, never reduced to worry and reaction. The chemistry between her and Garfield is real in the most literal sense, the two of them having started a relationship during production, and their scenes together are consistently the best thing on screen. They are loose and warm and funny in the way actual relationships are, not the cleaned-up version most blockbusters settle for. Denis Leary as Captain Stacy earns his scenes as well, bringing a dry authority that makes his third-act arc land harder than the film probably has any right to expect.

The Lizard is the film's weakest link, though Rhys Ifans works harder than the material demands. His early scenes with Peter establish a genuine mentor dynamic and there is real warmth there, but the Lizard as a villain is underbaked in ways the film never fully recovers from. His motivations shift whenever the script needs them to, his plan for New York makes only passing sense, and the creature design is generic in a way that undersells the character entirely. He is not bad so much as he is unfinished, and the gap between what the film wants him to be and what it actually delivers is noticeable throughout.

The parent subplot is the clearest example of the film working against itself. The mystery surrounding Richard and Mary Parker is introduced early, woven through the middle, and then quietly dropped before the third act as if everyone involved agreed midway through that it was not going anywhere useful. It pulls focus from the emotional story the film is actually trying to tell, takes up time that could have gone to Peter and Gwen or Peter and Uncle Ben, and adds nothing that the core of the character does not already provide on its own. Peter Parker is not interesting because of who his parents were. He is interesting because of who he decides to become after losing them, and the subplot never seems to understand that.

For all of that, the film is genuinely good, and I mean that without the cushion of nostalgia doing the heavy lifting. James Horner's score is warm and inventive, the web-swinging has a first-person immediacy that still holds up, and more than anything else, the film gets Peter Parker right in the ways that matter most. Garfield and Stone alone are worth the price of admission, and Webb builds enough genuine feeling around them to carry the film past its weaker moments. It is imperfect, and it knows it, but as an entry into the world of my favorite hero of all time it earns a solid 4/5.

(The sequel does not.)