I am in total agreement with you about the mechanical web. The way it was done in this movie, it's just made into a hinderance. He didn't create the web himself, he just steals it from Oscorp. And the moment someone took a video of the mysterious Spider-Man slinging through the city, Oscorp would have realized that someone is stealing their work. That's almost a plot hole that Oscorp is not following up on an investigation of someone using their revolutionary billion dollar idea. And now he has got to regularly steal web from Oscorp. It was more comic accurate to use mechanics but they went about it a sloppy way with little thought.
This could be something they could address in the sequel. Especially if Norman is introduced. With him there, he'll take an obvious interest in Spider-Man and have very strong suspicions about him. And one of the things he could find out himself is how he got the webbing from Oscorp. I was thinking for the sequel, at the end of the film, Norman will find out Spider-Man's identity. This could be very cool, especially with Harry and Peter's relationship in the mix.
Something else I didn't like... how they just sort of passed over the creation of the suit.
The creation of the suit was all of 15 seconds. They show him putting the lenses into the mask and creating the logo but that was it. The suit has so much damn incredible detail in it and it just comes from nowhere. Although, we could assume he purchased it online since he was looking at spandex on different sites. Is that what you guys assumed?
I liked it. At first I was worried that we would see this whole creation scene when we saw the making of the eyes, but then that's all we saw. We knew Peter made the suit himself, but not to the extent of showing the details. The eye thing I could believe where that came from. But in making that suit? That material? In pretty much everything we know, even without showing Peter making it, he had to have made it himself. There's no other way. But if we were to see him making it, how could we believe this kid just came up with these materials and created this elegant suit himself? These two things conflict with eachother so it's better not to show it. Leave it to the imagination.
Now, he looked on the internet to find material. After not appearing to find anything, did he just give up and make the material himself or did he eventually find it online?
I didn't mind the painting of the symbol either though. It's one of those things where you can imagine it yourself without seeing it, but it was still cool. It's just Peter sitting there and however making the suit himself with that kind of mterial isn't something I can really believe.
Raimi just showed the drawing as an original fantastical idea by Peter and it wasn't until after his death that he took that drawing seriously and considered to use this idea to do good.
More time or more scenes don't equate to being better.
It's the art of subtlety, my friend. I promise you it's there. They just aren't throwing it in your face. And the scene you suggest? Raimi didn't even go there until SM2, so...
It's there, but not the point where I felt it at all times. After Ben's death you saw Aunt May's and Peter's reaction, but then continued where he was looking for the bad guy, which was great. Especially that scene afterwards when he beat up that thug and was chased. When Peter was being ganged up by those thugs and was fighting them off, the music, and that scene made you feel and understand what Peter was going through.
Then it was dropped in favor of the Connors plot. It didn't feel like this continuous thread existing all through. Yeah you had the mention of responsibility and Peter feeling responsible for him, but screenplay wise, it just didn't feel emotionally cohesive enough where I could connect the dots emotionally throughout the plot. With the Raimi film, you had that one wide shot of Peter coming home and telling Aunt May, then the post graduation scene. I also liked how SM2 confession scene was a sequel/continuation of this one. Peter finally having the courage to confess to Aunt May all this time is really powerful.
Going from Peter looking at the drawing, to the hero montage really felt like Peter as Spider-Man was doing all of this good because of Uncle Ben. It continued and his actions spoke. Not to mention, you had the reflective relationship of Harry/Norman and Peter/Norman throughout the film and Norman's offer resulting in Peter's line at the end about Ben being his real father. It all tied together in a nice bow.