Review of Spider-Man (1977) by Michael E — 27 Mar 2018

2012 rolled around and we got the long awaited reboot of your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. After the absolute mess of a spider's web that Spider-Man 3 was, the smartest thing to do was to hit the reset button and in that, we got a new Peter Parker. In my opinion we got a better one.

Now I got to put on record, I love my boy Tobey as Spider-Man and he was ok as a Peter Parker. As well as that, Spider-Man 2 will always be a favourite of mine. But with Andrew Garfield we got a slightly better Peter Parker, and an even better Spider-Man that was closer to the comics. Garfield brought a young fresh take on Parker, even if not quite accurate. I never really seen Peter as a smooth talking student who gets the girl, but the relationship is saved by the chemistry both of them have together. Garfield and Emma Stone were reportedly dating during the timing of the filming and you can tell. They're chemistry spills all over every scene and you can't help but root for them.

Garfield as Spider-Man was the best Spider-Man we had got, up to that point. When Peter puts the suits on, he's meant to get confidence, he's meant to become cocky. That's exactly what we got, with a favourite line of mine being, "My weakness. Small knives. Anything but knives". There was never a time where it felt the same and it really felt like a fresh new take on the character. Spider-Man's clashes with the police and being a proper vigilante felt more grounded as well. In the original trilogy, Spider-Man was just accepted but in today's world, a flying man in suit would be deemed crazy and hunted down. The drama between Gwen's dad and Spider-Man were great to watch and created real drama that pushed the movie on, much more than what was supposed to be the main villain.

Ah, the main villain, what to say. Curt Connors was a good character, right up to the point where he went crazy and turned into a big lizard. He completely lost all motivation and went from trying to cure his own limb, to poisoning the whole city and wanting them to become lizards. It didn't really make sense and it feels if the final act had been more secluded, it would have been more important. The whole city doesn't have to be in danger to make a good villain. The VFX weren't really up to scratch either for a character like that.

Finally the minor storylines in this movie didn't really work for me. Peter's parents being spys and murdered seemed forced, even though in the comics they do work for SHIELD. The Uncle Ben storyline didn't work for me either. At least in the original trilogy there was a reason that he was attacked, he was picking up Peter and his car was hijacked. In this one he was just out for a dander looking for a moody Peter, something neither really had to be doing. It's any wonder that Uncle Ben was cut from the new Spider-Man reboot.

DIAGNOSIS - MINOR SURGERY.

Another origin for Spider-Man that we got but maybe didn't particularly need. Saved by a really strong chemistry and probably the best Spider-Man we have had so far, the Amazing Spider-Man had a lot of potential but fell for a bad villain and worse minor storylines. Although it does have possibly my favourite Stan Lee cameo ever, what a man.