You prefer the nerd caricature man. But I have to appreciate that ASM at least tried to make it a but more three dimensional.
Not quite, not even close. One of the more engaging qualities of Raimi's Parker is that he was easy to root for. Nothing came easily for him, and I do mean
nothing. From work, to respect, to the girl, to his friendships, school, the whole nine yards, Raimi's Peter had to work for everything he had, or in many cases lost. To me, this humanized him in a way that Webb's hasn't come close to. Admittedly, Raimi did play up the down on his luck aspect of the character(getting stepped on by the whole world, never getting a drink or finger food at the party, etc.), but at the very least, it was in keeping with his characterization.
Webb's Peter got the girl with minimal effort, thought, or interaction, and there was never any semblance of competition from other men(boys?) or any conflict within the romance. They got together and that was that, perfect couple, no issues. Even Twilight, for as derided as it is and for as many comparisons as TASM draws to it, had more effective conflict and turmoil in the romance than this film.
The issue about his parents could have really been something, but throughout the movie it's simply glossed over; never did I feel that Peter gave a damn about the disappearance of his folks, not in the abstract anyway. Even him seeking out Connors seemed to only satiate some sort of tertiary curiosity, nothing about his parents outside of the plot device(the magic formula) was important once they hit the lab.
Webb's Peter wasn't an underdog, therefore the angst that the movie played up for him seemed largely out of place. Him being a jerk made him unlikable as a protagonist, and he didn't display a shred of believable emotion outside of Ben's death.
Raimi's, by contrast, had emotional range in spades. Maguire could sell any emotion with his eyes alone, but beyond that, there were countless examples of his acting that portrayed the character well also. As I said before, he made me root for him in every sub-plot of his life, because he cared for his love interest, family, and friends, all while trying to balance them with his secret life.
Raimi's Peter may have been a nerd caricature, but there were so many more layers to the character that to classify him as that alone is to trivialize everything else that he went through.
His Spider-man triumphed where Raimi's failed: being funny.
Triumphed? I beg to differ. His Spider-Man was anything but funny. The car-jacker scene seems to be the most oft-referenced scene to support this, but it made him out to be little more than an antagonistic bully than anything else. That's not Spider-Man, nor did it fit well with the film. I'd prefer a Spider-Man that taunts his enemies as a means of getting into their heads, or even passing jabs at lesser foes...but sitting around to ham it up with a thief that's afraid of his own shadow is as cringe-worthy as the worst of Raimi's scenes in his trilogy. The only Spider-Man bit that gave me even a smirk was "Don't make me have to hurt you" during the school battle. Other than that, this is one of those aspects, like the webshooters, that most proponents of the film seem to support simply because it's a bullet point that wasn't in the previous films. It has to be done well first to be a positive. And speaking of the web-shooters, they may as well not have been in the film. Raimi used Spidey's webs more creatively
while lacking them, which is among the biggest travesties of this new franchise.
