I enjoyed this movie very much, and rated it 9/10. I was in a pretty cheerful mood as I drove home from the theater. It was definitely not an "empty" movie to me...but I also don't have much of an urge to talk about it. I'm sensing that from some other people as well. And I think there's an easy explanation for that:
It's practically the same movie as Raimi's 2002 film.
To be fair, this was not a shot for shot remake of the first
Spider-Man movie. A lot was different. But despite how much the differences (such as the mysterious disappearance of Peter's parents, Gwen Stacy, and Captain Stacy's manhunt) were advertised, none of them really amounted to much. Peter's parents are a big deal in the first part of the movie, then just fade away and become a virtual non-issue. Gwen interacts with Peter, but doesn't really push or challenge him in any way. Captain Stacy appears fairly late in the movie, gets a few scenes, then passes away.
Meanwhile, so many of the same beats are there: Peter having fun testing out his powers, Uncle Ben dying, a kindly scientific mentor becoming the villain after an experiment gone wrong, Peter turning away his love interest out of a sense of responsibility, etc.
So despite not being a literal remake of the 2002 movie, it
feels like one. TASM really doesn't tread any new ground. It does exactly what the 2002 movie did, bettering it in some ways while falling short in others. It duplicated greatness, which means that it did well for itself. But it didn't change the way things were done.
Not yet, at least. Despite how much I think Raimi was screwed by the studio and his own disloyal fans (who pushed for Venom) in
Spider-Man 3, I was not exactly enthusiastic for his proposed fourth film. Spidey was a damaged series by that point. While TASM doesn't break new ground, at WORST it's completely harmless. And it gives the series a fresh start. We're guaranteed to learn more about Peter's parents in the sequel, and I'm hopeful that Norman Osborn will get a better costume than he did in 2002.
