The Amazing Spider-Man was doomed before it was even released. First there was the talk of the studio’s desperate pitch to get it made so they could hold onto the rights for this character, and then there was the misguided promo campaign advertising the movie as “the untold story.” This wasn’t the untold origin story of Spider-Man; it’s just a better told story than the Sam Raimi version, even though I enjoyed the first two movies of that trilogy very much despite a third installment of which we shall not speak.
Marc Webb proved with 500 Days of Summer that he had a unique vision for presenting characters and relationships, and while he continued that in Spider-Man, with the awkward teenage chemistry of non-teenagers Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, it was his technical work that caught my attention. Moments like the arachnid-like shadows appearing behind Peter as he ventures into the sewer, the oversaturated blue scene conveying the wonderment of the lab where Peter suffers his fate, and just the way the red suit felt like it had an actual person inside of it as opposed to the cartoony CGI feeling of the previous movies. This is a project that would have been an embarrassment if places in the wrong hands, and instead I would insist that it was one of the best made superhero movies to date.
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