There’s a moment late in the new Spider-Man film during which one of Peter Parker’s (Andrew Garfield) teachers says that some have remarked there are only ten stories in the world. One of her professors retorted “There is only one: ‘Who am I?'”
I was kind of hoping she would say “There is only one: ‘Spider-Man origin stories.'” Judging by the film series, that’s all there appears to be.
Four Spider-Man films have been produced since 2002; three of those films have dealt with Parker’s origin. Two (Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man) have told the story quite explicitly while a third (Spider-Man 3) retold and needlessly complicated the relatively simple tale.
Granted, it works in all of these films (though less-so in the second sequel) because that origin story is powerful in its simplicity: An orphaned nerd raised by a kindly aunt and uncle receives unexpected power via radioactive spider bite and fails to use it for good, causing the uncle’s untimely death. Consumed by vengeance, he goes after the man who has wronged his adoptive family, having learned the hard way that with “great power comes great responsibility.” Shortly after stumbling upon this realization, he decides to use his newfound power to defeat an evil agent of the multinational Oscorp, all the while falling in love with a beautiful classmate and worrying that that love will be her doom.
Amazing Spider-Man hits all of these notes, just as Spider-Man hit them 10 years ago. Substitute Garfield for Tobey Maguire, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) for Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), and The Lizard (Rhys Ifans) for The Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) and you’ve got a rebooted series. These new actors inject a real buoyancy into the proceedings: Garfield and Stone* are better than Maguire and Dunst, while Uncle Ben is played this time around by Martin Sheen.
After the origin’s out of the way we get to the meat of the story: Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans) has, with the help of Peter, discovered how to perfect a formula for combining human and lizard DNA. He wants to use it to help regenerate an arm long-since gone and thinks that saurian source code is just the trick to do it. Unfortunately, it has a ghastly side-effect: It turns Dr. Connors into a raving reptilian monster with plans to remake the whole world in his image.
(Remember Magneto’s big plan to turn a bunch of international diplomats into mutants in the first X-Men flick? Yeah, it’s kinda like that. Less on the magnetism; more on the biological warfare.)
The set pieces are stunning, though the point-of-view sequences showing Spidey’s learning the webslinging ropes feel a bit disjointed. And there appears to be a whole missing subplot about Peter’s parents: Some kind of mysterious calamity befell them, but we’re never quite sure why it happened or who did it, just that it involved Oscorp. A teaser at the end revolving around their mysterious disappearance sets up the inevitable sequel, but it feels repetitive and tacked on without giving us a big reveal, as Marvel’s other properties have excelled at doing.
These quibbles aside, it’s a fine movie: perfect summer fare and sure to entertain the kids with its deft blend of action and humor. I would like to spend a moment defending The Amazing Spider-Man against attacks from those who claim it is “unnecessary.” I’ll take such complaints more seriously when they get upset the next time a studio releases the umpteenth version of A Christmas Carol or they decry the Shakespeare Theatre for putting on yet another production of Romeo and Juliet. Spider-Man is an archetype with a powerful backstory and a shockingly deep bench of classic villains. They could remake this movie once a decade for the next century and audiences would still come out—because it works.
What more are we looking for in these summer months?
*As an aside, can I just say that Emma Stone is delightful? She’s never not charming. That’s it.
