Amazing Spider-Man (4 Stars)

This is a film that I have difficulty rating. When I first saw it in the cinema I gave it five stars. When I watched it on Blu-ray two years later I dropped the rating to four stars. After watching it today I felt tempted to drop the rating further, but after thinking about it for a while I decided that four stars is a fair rating. It's not a bad film. In fact, it's a very good film. Its problem is that it stands in the shadow of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films. It's poor in comparison, so I can only judge it fairly by not comparing it. Or maybe it's the other way round; maybe comparing it with the other films is the only way to judge it fairly.

It's a repeat of Spider-Man's origin story, as told in Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man". Peter Parker is bitten by a spider and Ben Parker dies. Those are the fixed points crucial to the story. Everything else is changed. Instead of being bitten on a school trip, Peter Parker is bitten when he impersonates an intern to enter Oscorp. Instead of Ben Parker being killed in his car he's shot when he tries to stop a mugger. The school bully Flash Thompson isn't a football jock, he's the captain of the basketball team.

I could go on and on listing more details, but one thing stands out. This film has the sub-plot of Peter's relationship with his father. Richard Parker was an Oscorp employee who bred the spider that bit his son. A notebook left behind by Richard Parker contains a formula that Dr. Curt Connors uses to transform himself into a human lizard.

It's my attitude to the father-son sub-plot that makes it difficult for me to rate the film. This is a feature totally alien to the comics. Peter Parker's father is irrelevant in the comics. He's dead. That's all. Telling a story about Peter's father isn't just a minor change in details in the origin story, it twists the premise of Spider-Man beyond recognition. If I accept Richard Parker and his scientific background I can just about give the film four stars. If I rejected the story I'd have to give the film three stars at most. It's a dilemma.

Let's just talk about something positive in the film. Stan Lee has a delightful cameo as a school librarian. In the 11-second scene he scans a book while listening to music over headphones, oblivious to the fact that Spider-Man and the Lizard are fighting behind him.

Success Rate:  + 1.3

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