Maguire's Peter actually had a personal, professional, and scholastic life to speak of, and his performance reflected the challenges of balancing those with his secret life as Spidey. There was a sincerity to his performance that Garfield has yet to match for me, and it's a travesty that several of the important aspects of Peter's life are glossed over in the new movies. Aside from that, Garfield's Peter is a tad too dependent on Gwen to shine at all. I'm worried more than ever for the third movie because of this (among many other reasons), as the rest of what makes him Peter Parker hasn't been explored in any sort of meaningful way. Tobey wins here across the board.
In response to the OP, I'm not sure how you can say that the college years were done better in the new movie. The character actually went to school, did homework, and interacted with classmates and the staff in the old trilogy. So far in TASM, college life, as well as the Bugle, has been relegated to a singular line of dialogue. Speaking of which, I'll take this time to say that neither movie really captured what made the college years special for Peter.
This particular period of his life is where he came out of his shell; it didn't spontaneously happen at high school graduation after a pair of forgotten tragedies and a broken promise.
The Harry, Flash, MJ, and Gwen dynamic was solid gold on the pages, and even though college was fairly important to Peter in the previous trilogy, it was used more as a device to highlight his struggles. In this new film, it was an afterthought. Still hasn't been properly explored on the silver screen if you ask me.
As for the portrayal of Spider-Man, right off the bat I'll give Garfield a nod as he looks excellent in the costume (either one). He really has an ideal Spider-Man body type, and although I do think that Tobey looked fine in each movie, Andrew simply looks better. Enough said on that. He also has a great voice for the character; he exudes confidence and excitement whenever he speaks in the costume, which is absolutely essential for the character. This is probably the one area where I think Tobey is
really lacking as Spider-Man; it was a bit tough to buy into him at times when he spoke, as his delivery wasn't always on point. Aesthetically, Garfield wins.
Now I'd like to give my 2 cents about Spidey's quick-witted personality. A lot of people dish on Tobey's interpretation of the character, but I don't think it was bad at all, just subdued. He had plenty of quips and one-liners, they simply weren't as overblown as what we've seen in the new movies, which brings me to my next point. As I've said several times before, the opposite extreme is never the answer to a perceived problem. Scenes with the car thief and the Rhino highlight this perfectly for me. In the former, the whole issue was taken way too far, and it felt as if the filmmakers were simply doing it to show off their hilarious, edgy new Spider-Man. Didn't work for me.
With the Rhino, they somehow managed to turn it up to 11, with Spider-Man clowning around in the back of a van with plutonium, and then practically rehearsing a stand-up comedy routine to the villain while cars are being rammed and pancaked all over the streets. Let's not forget that this is in broad daylight with countless people in danger. There are other examples, but these are the two that I found to be the most grating. Spider-Man is a wise guy, but the stuff we saw on display in these two movies was just too much. It was both irresponsible and inappropriate , and quite frankly, Spider-Man should know better than that. If anything, he reminded me more of Deadpool, and that ain't Spider-Man. I'll go ahead and say, however, that this is more a problem with the writing than it is anything else (like most of the problems with these movies). The creative team just doesn't seem to understand when to rein it in more often than not.
I'll give Andrew the benefit of the doubt and say that he has a higher ceiling, but the writing has to be there for him to live up to his potential, bar none. His heart is in the right place; he's obviously very passionate about the character, so it's unfortunate to see that the crew around him doesn't seem to share his enthusiasm and dedication.
