The Amazing Spider-Man
I enjoyed but didn’t love <PERSON> 2002 film. The novel pairing of a director out of his comfort zone and a pair of Hollywood stars du jour seemed on the face of it to be a great match-up, but <PERSON> proved emotionally inaccessible and his lack of chemistry with <PERSON> was palpable. The physics were off in the showpiece web-slinging scenes as well, which always bugged me.
<PERSON> reboot shares a similar setup: he’s new to action films, having directed just one prior feature (the indie hit 500 Days of Summer), and he’s picked two rising stars to play <PERSON> and his love interest. This time, the casting (and the chronology) works. 698
<PERSON> scruffy, awkward <PERSON> cracks both wise and goofy opposite <PERSON> blonde <PERSON>. They’re hard not to like.
<PERSON>, like <PERSON>, takes his time with the origin story, establishing the inspiration behind the costume and the genesis of the hero’s “web-shooters”. The source material is comically contrived, but this version appears more at ease with itself, while never crossing the line into self-knowledge. And it really shines in the staging of its acrobatic sequences — instead of observing at arm’s length, there’s an immediacy and closeness to the action, the camera moving in unexpected ways while never losing its sense of position.
I lost interest in <PERSON>’s trilogy well before the second entry was done, but I’ll be back for another round here. 698