It’s safe to say this about Sony’s reboot of the Marvel Comics’ superhero: With great special effects and action (plus strong character development) comes great response at the box office.
“With great power comes great responsibility” was the memorable quote from Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man in 2002, which helped propel a film franchise into the box-office stratosphere and launched a plethora of comic book blockbusters.
Arriving only five years after Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man doesn’t feature a similar memorable quote, but it’s probably safe to say this about Sony’s reboot of the Marvel Comics’ superhero: “With great special effects and action plus strong character development comes great response at the box office.”
Independent filmmaker Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) takes over for Raimi and a Brit who has never been in an action movie before (Andrew Garfield, The Social Network) takes the reins from Tobey Maguire as the wisecracking, web-swinging teenager Peter Parker. Also, blond-haired Gwen Stacy (Garfield’s real-life girlfriend, Emma Stone, The Help) is Spidey’s love interest—not the fiery red-head Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst).
Webb’s film makes deliberate departures from Raimi’s original, focusing heavily on the hero’s high-school life as a skateboard-riding outsider and expanding on Peter’s quest to understand why his parents disappeared when he was young. His search puts him on a collision course with Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), his father’s former partner whose evil alter-ego, the Lizard, becomes Spider-Man’s nemesis.
