THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Marc Webb). 136 minutes. Opens Tuesday (July 3). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNNN
Ten years after Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire first brought Spider-Man to the screen – and only five years after the lame third entry that laid the web-head low – the franchise gets a fresh start in The Amazing Spider-Man. And it mostly works.
The key story points are still the same. High-school nerd Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is imbued with the proportional speed and strength of a spider after an encounter with a genetically enhanced arachnid, and driven by tragedy to become a superhero. But the road map is different, using an unnecessary backstory about Peter’s long-dead parents to give our hero a broodier side.
This time around, Peter follows a clue about his late father’s work to scientist Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), whose experiments lead Peter to the Spider of Destiny and turn Connors into the movie’s Big Bad, the rampaging mutant known as The Lizard. And the role of Peter’s romantic interest is filled by Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), whose police captain father (Denis Leary) is hell-bent on taking New York’s newest masked vigilante off the streets.
Marc Webb, who made (500) Days Of Summer, gives the big 3-D web-swinging set pieces a thrilling, vertiginous energy, but he doesn’t have the confident editorial style Raimi brought to his first two pictures. This is a somewhat bumpier ride at two and a quarter hours, it could stand to lose 20 minutes, or add 20 more.
That said, the actors make this Spider-Man feel pretty amazing indeed. Garfield’s awkward, self-doubting spin on Peter is very different from Tobey Maguire’s wide-eyed wonder, and the layers Stone brings to Gwen make her every scene pop.
If Sony has to keep making these movies, this is as good a way to go as any.
