Official Amazing Spider-man review thread (All reviews here )

[JazzMan]

The family and I really enjoyed it. Dennis Leary as Captain Stacey was a little too gruff for my taste - comics had him as a more dapper, dignified character. Sally Field was an OK aunt May but the rest of the cast was spot on. I did feel that the Andrew Garfield Peter Parker was a little angsty as compared to Toby Maguire but it worked. I've come to expect deviations from the comics, so this was an impressive twist to the original

Spider-Man didn't go after uncle Ben's murderer after he figured out his purpose.

[Wally's Comics]

This movie is going to take awhile to digest... I think I need some Pepto.

 

It feels like the 2002 movie but for different reasons to me...

 

Not because it was an origin movie, BUT because the first part

heavily out weighed the 2nd part to me.

 

Maybe I was expecting too much, but I maybe one of the few that really didn't like this

movie too much. Matter-o-fact the review in spoiler tags below might conjure up imagery of Armond White!

 

 

Let the Spoiler Review of the Summer's Pop Corn Flick Roll!

 

 

1st off I feel they missed the title BIG TIME,...

 

this shouldn't be called ASM it should've been called "Ultimate" Spider-Man!

 

This movie felt like a modern comic in that (conveniently so) everything came from

Oscorp: Spiderman's powers and origin, web fluid, Lizard etc. Everything was a hap-hazard

mistake that was... well very convenient to the point to stretching belief.

 

One of my big issues with this film is that Spider-Man wasn't really a hero, he was just

covering up for his mistakes and saving people from the mess he made??? Everything he did

as far as being a hero was related to his bumbles. He wasn't really interested in saving people,

he was either trying to find his uncles killer or trying to catch a Lizard that he helped create.

 

I liked the character development, but I think they spent too much time on it in key areas

that could've moved the story along.

 

The first half was decent because of this character development, but it seemed to me that after

the saving the kid on the bridge scene it was like they were trying to wrap things up too quickly.

 

Here is where I go fanboy:

My biggest complaint was the Lizard, I just didn't like the face and this is where this movie

reminds me the most about the '02 movie because I didn't like the Goblin mask.

I just felt I kept seeing the Wizard that turned into a Lizardman in Conan the Destroyer.

 

Anyway my take is this movie had a ton of holes where most are forgivable except

where the heck is the Spider Sense??? What separates Spidey from most superheroes

is that he has an ESP that helps to avoid things like getting shot so he isn't like

an Afleck Daredevil swallowing a medicine chest to kill the pain.

 

It was a popcorn movie at best - I've been playing the PS3 videogame and I like that

even better than the actual movie (and that rides heavily off of the Arkham coat tails)

 

I give this movie a 6 out of 10!

 

It's sad, because there is so much that this could've been.

 

Oh yeah, which Peter Parker in which Universe would've stolen the Milk???

When the thief at the register flipped him the beverage - the morals of the teen that saved

the kid from bully Flash, where did he go? I guess I am old fashioned, I guess...

 

 

 

 

[Primetime]

It was refreshingly different than the original three Spidey films. It was certainly a more modern times version of Spidey but aunt may and uncle ben just didn't seem old enough and themselves. The aunt may from the comics and the first three flicks is old and frail like she should be. Sally Field was too young in this one. I liked the costume more in the first three flicks. He did use his webbing a lot more in this new movie compared to the older ones. Ditko made Parker more nerdy. Romita drew him more "studly". The new movie makes Peter appear less nerdy and more "hip". I missed seeing J Jonah in this one. He adds a lot of flavor and drama to parkers life. Overall, decent and different. Avengers was much better but I'd still watch this one again.

 

My Spidey movie rankings:

 

1. Spidey 2- doc ock

2. Spidey 1- goblin

3. New ASM

4. Spidey 3- sandman/venom

 

BTW, who was the guy Conners was speaking to in jail at the trailer? Osborn? Chameleon?

[Mark 1]

This movie is going to take awhile to digest... I think I need some Pepto.

 

It feels like the 2002 movie but for different reasons to me...

 

Not because it was an origin movie, BUT because the first part

heavily out weighed the 2nd part to me.

 

Maybe I was expecting too much, but I maybe one of the few that really didn't like this

movie too much. Matter-o-fact the review in spoiler tags below might conjure up imagery of Armond White!

 

 

Let the Spoiler Review of the Summer's Pop Corn Flick Roll!

 

 

1st off I feel they missed the title BIG TIME,...

 

this shouldn't be called ASM it should've been called "Ultimate" Spider-Man!

 

This movie felt like a modern comic in that (conveniently so) everything came from

Oscorp: Spiderman's powers and origin, web fluid, Lizard etc. Everything was a hap-hazard

mistake that was... well very convenient to the point to stretching belief.

 

One of my big issues with this film is that Spider-Man wasn't really a hero, he was just

covering up for his mistakes and saving people from the mess he made??? Everything he did

as far as being a hero was related to his bumbles. He wasn't really interested in saving people,

he was either trying to find his uncles killer or trying to catch a Lizard that he helped create.

 

I liked the character development, but I think they spent too much time on it in key areas

that could've moved the story along.

 

The first half was decent because of this character development, but it seemed to me that after

the saving the kid on the bridge scene it was like they were trying to wrap things up too quickly.

 

Here is where I go fanboy:

My biggest complaint was the Lizard, I just didn't like the face and this is where this movie

reminds me the most about the '02 movie because I didn't like the Goblin mask.

I just felt I kept seeing the Wizard that turned into a Lizardman in Conan the Destroyer.

 

Anyway my take is this movie had a ton of holes where most are forgivable except

where the heck is the Spider Sense??? What separates Spidey from most superheroes

is that he has an ESP that helps to avoid things like getting shot so he isn't like

an Afleck Daredevil swallowing a medicine chest to kill the pain.

 

It was a popcorn movie at best - I've been playing the PS3 videogame and I like that

even better than the actual movie (and that rides heavily off of the Arkham coat tails)

 

I give this movie a 6 out of 10!

 

It's sad, because there is so much that this could've been.

 

Oh yeah, which Peter Parker in which Universe would've stolen the Milk???

When the thief at the register flipped him the beverage - the morals of the teen that saved

the kid from bully Flash, where did he go? I guess I am old fashioned, I guess...

 

 

 

 

 

He showed his spidey sense a lot in the movie. Such as when he was in the subway for the first time and those guys were behind him and he was able to know when they were coming from behind and some other area in the movie...such as when the basketball was coming to knock over the paint in the gymnasium...he caught the ball and wasn't looking....stuff like that were examples of the spider sense tingling.

 

 

[Mark 1]

BTW, who was the guy Conners was speaking to in jail at the trailer? Osborn? Chameleon?

 

 

 

I think it was Norman. The Green Goblin. They mention Norman Osborne as dying in the movie when Conners is talking to the coworker in the lab and the guys says that Conners needs to come up with something soon. I predict a Green Goblin return in #2....

 

[nmtg9]

 

7/10 from me. Quite good but no XMen first Class and certainly mo Avengers.

 

Not sure about the guy at the end - must be NO. This was a prison cell so who else could it be?

 

Actually at first I thought it was The Tinkerer.

[TeddieMercede]

Just got another text "Bad acting, weak story, no action!"

 

Sounds good!

 

I found many parts of the movie really hard to sit through, then again I guess they are going after a slightly different audience. I really try to watch and enjoy most every comic movie but this one was difficult, lots of plot holes and didn't like the people playing the 2 main characters much.

[DWL]

I didn't like it.

 

The first hour is boring. Peter Parker as a skater boy?

 

The scene (morning after Parker is bitten) with the toothpaste and the faucets in the bathroom was just dumb. The second part of the movie was much better.

 

Hands down, the effects are excellent. But, overall, in my opinion the movie is not that good.

[Wally's Comics]

This movie is going to take awhile to digest... I think I need some Pepto.

 

It feels like the 2002 movie but for different reasons to me...

 

Not because it was an origin movie, BUT because the first part

heavily out weighed the 2nd part to me.

 

Maybe I was expecting too much, but I maybe one of the few that really didn't like this

movie too much. Matter-o-fact the review in spoiler tags below might conjure up imagery of Armond White!

 

 

Let the Spoiler Review of the Summer's Pop Corn Flick Roll!

 

 

1st off I feel they missed the title BIG TIME,...

 

this shouldn't be called ASM it should've been called "Ultimate" Spider-Man!

 

This movie felt like a modern comic in that (conveniently so) everything came from

Oscorp: Spiderman's powers and origin, web fluid, Lizard etc. Everything was a hap-hazard

mistake that was... well very convenient to the point to stretching belief.

 

One of my big issues with this film is that Spider-Man wasn't really a hero, he was just

covering up for his mistakes and saving people from the mess he made??? Everything he did

as far as being a hero was related to his bumbles. He wasn't really interested in saving people,

he was either trying to find his uncles killer or trying to catch a Lizard that he helped create.

 

I liked the character development, but I think they spent too much time on it in key areas

that could've moved the story along.

 

The first half was decent because of this character development, but it seemed to me that after

the saving the kid on the bridge scene it was like they were trying to wrap things up too quickly.

 

Here is where I go fanboy:

My biggest complaint was the Lizard, I just didn't like the face and this is where this movie

reminds me the most about the '02 movie because I didn't like the Goblin mask.

I just felt I kept seeing the Wizard that turned into a Lizardman in Conan the Destroyer.

 

Anyway my take is this movie had a ton of holes where most are forgivable except

where the heck is the Spider Sense??? What separates Spidey from most superheroes

is that he has an ESP that helps to avoid things like getting shot so he isn't like

an Afleck Daredevil swallowing a medicine chest to kill the pain.

 

It was a popcorn movie at best - I've been playing the PS3 videogame and I like that

even better than the actual movie (and that rides heavily off of the Arkham coat tails)

 

I give this movie a 6 out of 10!

 

It's sad, because there is so much that this could've been.

 

Oh yeah, which Peter Parker in which Universe would've stolen the Milk???

When the thief at the register flipped him the beverage - the morals of the teen that saved

the kid from bully Flash, where did he go? I guess I am old fashioned, I guess...

 

 

 

 

 

He showed his spidey sense a lot in the movie. Such as when he was in the subway for the first time and those guys were behind him and he was able to know when they were coming from behind and some other area in the movie...such as when the basketball was coming to knock over the paint in the gymnasium...he caught the ball and wasn't looking....stuff like that were examples of the spider sense tingling.

 

 

 

a lot of that seemed like extremely heightened speed and reflexes, instead of being able to see what was coming and avoiding it. Him getting shot twice (once with a stun gun device and once with a real bullet [in less than a few minutes together] kind of goes against him having this esp principle imho). It's almost like he kind of had it, but didn't - almost like if wolverine was getting cut up in a battle and one large gash wouldn't heal, but the rest would. I know they're trying to make a different story out of this, but this was one of the loop holes to me.

 

 

 

[fantastic_four]

The scene (morning after Parker is bitten) with the toothpaste and the faucets in the bathroom was just dumb.

 

I strongly disagree. I wondered this myself in Raimi's 2002 movie--so Parker just got super-strong overnight--ten times stronger than the average human according to the comics--yet he somehow instinctively knows how to manage that strength and not break things in his environment? Showing him tearing up the bathroom seemed much more realistic--he didn't know he had become strong, so showing him learn to control that newfound strength was an excellent touch, one that Raimi simply overlooked in his version.

[fantastic_four]

Disagree about the Lizard's face looking weird--it was designed to be a mix of lizard and human, and more than that, an allusion to the early appearance of the Lizard in Spider-Man comics. Look at the cover of Spidey #6 below--the one in the film was fairly similar to that, only far more refined in its scaling. Was it aesthetically pleasing? Definitely not. I did find it cool though.

 

[fantastic_four]

Also, I disagree that Peter wasn't a hero. He believed himself that he was covering up his mistakes, yes...but none of what he was blaming himself for was his fault. Was it his fault his uncle died? No, it was the burglar's fault. Was it his fault that Curt Connors used his father's formula to inevitably become the lizard? DEFINITELY not--the blame lies entirely with Connors. Parker's immature tendency to blame himself for not having the foresight to stop bad things from happening marks him as not only human and therefore fallible, but his actions to make things right when they don't turn out that way is heroic. Slightly selfish, yes, yet entirely heroic. Few people do things for completely unselfish reasons, so showing a selfish motivation for doing unselfish things tends to make him far more believable as a character.

[Wally's Comics]

Disagree about the Lizard's face looking weird--it was designed to be a mix of lizard and human, and more than that, an allusion to the early appearance of the Lizard in Spider-Man comics. Look at the cover of Spidey #6 below--the one in the film was fairly similar to that, only far more refined in its scaling. Was it aesthetically pleasing? Definitely not. I did find it cool though.

 

It's nice to believe that this plays homage to that, and I actually thought about this as well,

but then I dismissed it plainly because nothing else really fit into a Ditko design to me.

 

 

[fantastic_four]

It's nice to believe that this plays homage to that, and I actually thought about this as well,

but then I dismissed it plainly because nothing else really fit into a Ditko design to me.

 

Both Raimi and Webb--or at least their screenwriters if not them--picked and chose whatever story elements they wanted from all available Spider-Man lore. Usually they went with the Ultimate designs because they're usually an improved version of Stan's or Steve's original ideas, but sometimes they go with the old versions. In the case of the Lizard's face, I bet they thought the more human-like features of the classic Lizard were just more believable. Having Connors' face constantly morph back and forth from the Ultimate Lizard pictured below--or McFarlane's version which I think was the first that extended Lizard's snout to be more accurately lizard-like--would have just been a stretch. The skeletal structure of a lizard's head is very different from that of a human even if it looks more lizard-like.

 

[zosocane]

Long-time web-head fan over here (dating back to when I first started reading comics in '77). Saw the movie last night.

 

On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give it a 6. It was a better than average film, but not "fun" or "ground-breaking" like first Raimi movie -- rarely (if at all) was the audience laughing or cheering. I remember thinking in the middle of the film that Avengers and Captain America were more engaging. On the PG-13 side, it definitely is a bit "darker," and as a parent still debating whether I take my young kids to see the film with the (IMO) needlessly-extended Peter/Gwen smooching. Even "Madmen" is more discreet with the last-second cut-aways leaving it to the imagination!

 

Unlike the Raimi movies, I liked the fresh and more original costume, the web-shooters, the extensive use of webbing, the sarcastic taunting (right out of the comics), the police chasing Spidey (right out of the late 60s/most-of-the-70s era Spidey) and the high school "vibe" because, after all, Peter is supposed to be 16 or 17 in his origin era. Flash Thompson was done well, how he is a jerk at the beginning and then warms up later.

 

On the down side, one of the keys to the Spidey mythos is the wanton murder of Uncle Ben and the guilt-trip Peter has for not stopping The Burglar when he clearly had a chance (AF15). Here, Peter wasn't that close to stop the Burglar, and The Burglar's shooting of Uncle Ben was almost in self-defense. Anyway, my point is that the scene doesn't generate much of a reader/audience reaction the way AF15 and Raimi #1 do.

 

And the Lizard killing Captain Stacy? No, please! Gwen didn't seem all that bothered by her dad's death. They could have killed him in the sequel via Doc Ock (or the Green Goblin if that's the path they with to take) and re-enact ASM #90, where Captain Stacy in his dying breath tells Peter to take care of Gwen, thus signaling to the reader that he knew Peter's secret for a long time. The movie just misses the mark on this completely.

 

And Gwen as a heroine of sorts getting the antidote prepared in the lab she works at? C'mon, gimme a break.

 

Soundtrack was utterly uninspiring. And the Lizard didn't look like the Lizard ...

 

Gee, maybe I should downgrade my rating from 6 to a 5 ...

[fantastic_four]

On the down side, one of the keys to the Spidey mythos is the wanton murder of Uncle Ben and the guilt-trip Peter has for not stopping The Burglar when he clearly had a chance (AF15). Here, Peter wasn't that close to stop the Burglar, and The Burglar's shooting of Uncle Ben was almost in self-defense. Anyway, my point is that the scene doesn't generate much of a reader/audience reaction the way AF15 and Raimi #1 do.

 

The burglar's shot wasn't anywhere close to self-defense. Burglar drops gun...Ben sees this and decides to disarm him...they both get to the gun at the same time...burglar pulls trigger while struggling for the gun. Self-defense would involve Ben pointing the gun at the burglar, not Ben trying to take it so the burglar can't use it to hurt someone. I found the twist of Peter not finding the burglar to be a compelling one...if Peter finds and takes out his burglar the same night as Ben dies as he does in AF15 and Raimi's 2002 film, then the chances of him continuing to be a vigilante/crimefighter are much less, but in this film's version he starts to fight crime in an effort to find that original burglar, extending his motivation beyond the catharsis of finding him immediately.

[Wally's Comics]

Gee, maybe I should downgrade my rating from 6 to a 5 ...

 

You are not alone, I was being pretty generous with my rating of 6 as well.

 

There is no reason why any Spider-Man movie can't be as good as Iron Man, TDK,

or the Avengers for that matter.

 

Anyone that says this movie is even close to those standards are just fooling themselves

in their fanboyhood.

 

 

 

 

[fantastic_four]

Gee, maybe I should downgrade my rating from 6 to a 5 ...

 

You are not alone, I was being pretty generous with my rating of 6 as well.

 

There is no reason why any Spider-Man movie can't be as good as Iron Man, TDK,

or the Avengers for that matter.

 

Anyone that says this movie is even close to those standards are just fooling themselves

in their fanboyhood.

 

Haven't noticed anyone suggesting it was better than those three you listed--there's a pretty big point spread to place the film between 5/6 and the quality of those three films.

[mt1000]

Not really sure all the arguing about whats better. Pretty sure everyone has their own opinion. I really enjoyed Avengers, but if I were to go see either Avengers/Amazing spidey....Id choose Spidey at the moment. Personally I saw tons saying Xmen first class was amazing. Well I thought it was extremley corney and everyone i went with was like WTF are we watching (with the exception of basically Magneto) but again its just my opinion.

[fantastic_four]

Not really sure all the arguing about whats better. Pretty sure everyone has their own opinion. I really enjoyed Avengers, but if I were to go see either Avengers/Amazing spidey....Id choose Spidey at the moment. Personally I saw tons saying Xmen first class was amazing. Well I thought it was extremley corney and everyone i went with was like WTF are we watching (with the exception of basically Magneto) but again its just my opinion.

 

If you're an action fan and a comic book fan, Avengers is going to be one of your favorite comic book films ever. If you're not as into action or comics, Avengers doesn't have the same more-universal appeal that a film like Iron Man, The Dark Knight, X-Men First Class, or Amazing Spider-Man (Webb)/Spider-Man (Raimi) do. They're all fine films though.