Okay, finally saw the Amazing Spider-Man and my verdict? It's pretty good...in certain parts.
First of all, I thought the action choreography was also well-handled, particularly the web-slinging and wall crawling sequences from Spider-Man which I definitely think surpassed the Raimi movies. Perhaps that's, in part, because you know there are certain moment in which you can tell it's an actual person swinging as opposed to a completely CGI figure, which helps to better sell the illusion. Not to mention the POV shots actually looked great as well (although why in the world they felt it necessary to chop up the first one that got shown in the teaser trailer I have no idea). It's definitely come a long way from ten years ago
I also thought all the performances we're really well done, in particular Martin Sheen's portrayal as Uncle Ben and, surprisingly, Denis Leary's Captain Stacy (although technically he is playing himself to a degree). Andrew Garfield was pretty good, although I think he plays a much better Spider-Man than he does Peter Parker, but I think that's a fault of the material he has to work with rather than his acting ability. I mean, whenever he was in costume, that was definitely Spidey right out of the comic book, poses, quips, and all. You can tell he definitely was having fun playing the part and really got into it. And I also like how the film actually SHOWS Peter is a budding scientist rather than just telling us.
By contrast, Rhys Ifans made for a great Dr. Curt Connors but a lousy Lizard, which certainly wasn't helped by the awful design choice. Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy certainly makes for a more capable and active love interest for Peter than Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane did in the Sam Raimi films, but she kind of came across the same as Dunst personality-wise at times and, while she and Garfield have good chemistry, the romance wasn't as engaging or developed. And while I liked Sally Field as Aunt May, she was criminally under-used in this story.
That leads me to the story, and my gosh, was it a complete and utter mess! Don't get me wrong, there ARE good and decent moments in the film, but some of those moments get ruined by inconsistent tone, choppy editing, and poor pacing. Interestingly enough, all the retold origin elements (which, yes, do follow nearly the same identical beats as the Raimi film) are actually the best parts of the movie, particularly the moments when Peter is discovering his powers (although I think Peter trying to stop Flash from bullying the student and the glass breaking when Peter slammed the front door should have been cut). But the moment after Uncle Ben's murder is when things began to slide off the tracks until, by towards the end of the film, the movie has completely derailed. Granted, I understood what the film was trying to get across with Peter wanting to get revenge on his Uncle's killer and how he learns, thanks to Captain Stacy, how he's not actually helping others, but what should be his driving motivation--his belief that his Uncle's death is his fault and that he wants to make amends--is all but non-existent and the fact that his Uncle's death and the search for his killer gets sidelined in favor of the Lizard plot doesn't help either, particularly when everything about that was by far the weakest and illogical aspect of the entire film.
Same goes for the "untold story" about Peter's parents, which, to be honest, even if the scenes that emphasized it were back in the film, it still wouldn't have added much to the overall story apart from what happened to Iffan Khan's Dr. Rafta. Oh, and BTW, the carjacker scene STILL doesn't make any sense (again, how did Spidey get into a locked car or even know the carjacker was going to steal that particular car in the first place?) and that scene with the crane operators was FAR cheesier and nonsensical than anything Raimi ever did in his Spider-Man films. However, the best scene of the film by far is the moment where Spidey saves the little boy from the car; that truly captured the essence of Spider-Man, I thought, and showed how he had became a real hero.
So overall, a pretty decent film, better than Spider-Man 3 anyway, but not quite up to the level of the first two, in my opinion. 2 1/2 out of 4 stars for me.
