Ricky Church revisits The Amazing Spider-Man as it turns ten years old…
It goes without saying Spider-Man is one of the most popular superheroes ever created. For nearly 60 years, Marvel’s wall-crawler has captured the imaginations of fans young and old alike with the struggles he faces both as a superhero and young teenager/adult through three different live-action iterations. Today marks the 10th anniversary of the second live-action Spider-Man as Andrew Garfield donned the costume in The Amazing Spider-Man, Sony’s reboot of their Spider-Man film series from director Marc Webb.
When Spider-Man 3 was released in 2007, many wondered if that would be the end of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man series starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst or if they would continue. While Raimi did attempt to make Spider-Man 4 the plans eventually fell threw and Sony opted to instead give the series a reboot much like the Batman film series with 2005’s Batman Begins. A mere five years after Spider-Man 3, The Social Network‘s Andrew Garfield portrayed Peter Parker/Spider-Man in a new take on the classic hero.
The Amazing Spider-Man follows the typical origin for the webhead: Peter Parker is something of an outsider at high school with an incredibly gifted and intelligent mind until one day he is bitten by a mutated spider and gains superpowers. After the death of his Uncle Ben and learning the hard way that with great power there must also come great responsibility, Peter becomes Spider-Man and fights crime.
Though the film follows the traditional origin much like Raimi’s first Spider-Man, it takes the Batman Begins approach by placing Peter Parker in a more serious setting and a tad more realistic world than Raimi’s fantastical trilogy. It also set out to explore new aspects the previous films didn’t touch on such as Peter’s parents and why he’s living with his aunt and uncle to begin with, tying their scientific work into mysterious dealings at Oscorp and what would eventually give Peter his powers. Not only that, but it also took place firmly in Peter’s high school life whereas Spider-Man very quickly took Peter out of high school to a college setting once he became Spidey. To this end, it utilized characters who were not really used or fully realized so it would further differentiate itself from the previous films.
Garfield gives a fine performance as Peter in Amazing, though his take is rather different from both Maguire’s and the comic’s portrayal. Whereas young Peter is typically shown to be very nerdy and awkward, Garfield’s Peter isn’t quite as much of an outsider as other iterations. He’s almost presented as a laid back and ‘cool’ guy as he rides his skateboard in his school’s hallways, stands up to a bully in defence of another student and often has wavy, unkempt hair, though he is still somewhat awkward as he mistakenly believes a girl is about to ask him out and doesn’t know how to deal with it or his initial struggles to talk to Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy. There is also a slight more focus on Peter’s intelligence as he works with his father’s old lab partner Dr. Curt Connors as well as Peter’s methods to develop the Spidey suit from scratch.
Perhaps one of the biggest aspects to Garfield’s Spider-Man is how he has a very clear arc throughout the story. Not to take away from Maguire’s performance as Peter in Spider-Man, but once Uncle Ben dies as an indirect result of Peter’s inaction to stop a criminal he fully dedicates himself to be a hero and stop as much crime as possible. Garfield’s Peter is similarly spurred to action in the wake of Ben’s death, but he is initially far more motivated by revenge as he hunts down the man responsible for killing Ben. Nowhere is this more exemplified than a sequence of three consecutive scenes.
First, he has dinner with Gwen and her family at her home and gets into an argument with Gwen’s father, a New York City police captain, over whether or not Spider-Man is helping the city. Peter believes he is helping reduce crime and save people whereas Captain Stacy not only points out Spider-Man ruined a months-long undercover operation, but has noticed a pattern that all of the criminals he has captured are similar in appearance, leading him to deduce Spider-Man is looking for one person in particular. Garfield’s silent reaction and facial expression sells Peter’s realization that yes, he hasn’t really been helping save people and has just been using that to justify his actions. Which leads into the following two scenes as Peter reveals to Gwen he is Spider-Man and then jumps into action to save people from the Lizard’s attack on a bridge, fully embracing the idea he actually has to save people and be the hero they need as he rescues a young boy. That marks the moment Peter truly becomes Spider-Man and Garfield sells the growth from that point on very well.
Amazing Spider-Man also makes a point to really highlight Peter’s intelligence, especially when it comes to creating his suit. The film again takes an approach from Batman Begins by explaining how nearly every piece of his costume works, from wearing such a skin-tight suit to give himself more speed and control while swinging to creating the classic webshooters, something the previous films avoided by giving Peter organic webs that shoot out of his wrist as another side-effect from his spider bite. This works pretty well for the most part as it makes Garfield’s Spidey more distinct from Maguire’s and explores different aspects to the character.
The film’s supporting cast gives nice performances. Garfield and Stone have great chemistry as Peter and Gwen, enough so that many fans prefer their relationship than either Maguire and Dunst’s or even Tom Holland and Zendaya’s in the MCU films. Stone in particular stands out as she is not regulated to the damsel in distress Dunst was placed in in each of her films as Stone’s Gwen actively participates to prevent Lizard’s plan from being carried out and is quite intelligent in her own right. Dennis Leary’s Captain Stacy is a nice balance of a stern and by-the-book police officer and a loving father while Martin Sheen makes an excellent Uncle Ben along with Sally Field’s Aunt May. Rhys Ifans is a little underdeveloped as Curt Connors/Lizard, but makes a great mentor for Peter and has good chemistry with Garfield while Irrfan Khan’s Osborn lackey Rajit Ratha is fairly intimidating with his cold demeanor and not-so-subtle threats.
One of the interesting aspects to Amazing Spider-Man are the story beats Sony decided to keep and cut from the finished film. Gone are many of the references to Richard Parker and Connors’ mysterious work for Oscorp and how that related to both the death of Peter’s parents as well as why exactly he gained these abilities when he was bit by the spider. Webb had intended for a long-form story to play across his films with Amazing serving as set up and one deleted scene plants many of those seeds as Connors explains to Peter a bit more of what he and Richard were working on followed by Khan telling Peter he has no idea how special he truly is. Yet despite Sony deciding to cut those references, they still kept parts of those story beats in as well as a mid-credits scene further hinting at Norman Osborn’s nefarious agenda which was meant to build up to Spider-Man facing off against the Sinister Six in a later movie.
Many of these threads and changes, as well as the more realistic setting, didn’t sit well with some fans at the time. It can also be argued the film went out of its way to separate itself too much from the Raimi trilogy, going so far as to only have Uncle Ben slightly reference Peter’s creed “with great power comes great responsibility” rather than say it fully out loud. However, many of the changes did work as they offered more of a character driven story for Peter. The film’s visuals of Spider-Man webslinging through New York are also some of if not the best special effects of Spidey swinging around in any of the Spider-Man films, though Lizard’s design and effects could have been improved more.
It’s a shame at the time of release a lot of fans didn’t quite buy into Garfield as Spidey and the Amazing Spider-Man 2‘s lack of critical and box office success put the final nail in the coffin for Webb’s story and Garfield’s time as Spider-Man. However, if there is one positive to be had it is how Garfield got a shot at redemption in the recent Spider-Man: No Way Home as his Spider-Man travelled across the multiverse into the MCU and interacted with Maguire and Holland’s Spider-Man, even getting more closure to his character after the tragedy of Gwen’s death in Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Amazing Spider-Man is not a perfect Spidey film, but Garfield delivers a convincing portrayal of Peter Parker/Spider-Man and his chemistry with his fellow cast, most notably Martin Sheen and Emma Stone, does wonders for how much you buy into their relationships. Webb’s direction is solid as the action is great and the effects offer some of the best Spider-Man visuals in the series. With Garfield having made a resurgence in No Way Home, today on Amazing Spider-Man‘s 10th anniversary is a perfect day to reflect on an underrated film and performance.
Ricky Church – Follow me on Twitter for more movie news and nerd talk.
