Believe it or not, I'm not really hating on this movie as much as one would expect from reading my initial review of The Amazing Spiderman
The highlights: the characters Gwen Stacy, Captain George Stacy, Peter Parker, Uncle Ben and Aunt May (Martin Sheen and Sally Field) and Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans) are all very well portrayed and acted and Peter and Gwen had great chemistry (but I still prefer Mary Jane over Gwen) the fights between Spiderman and the Lizard were all top notch, the CGI was top notch and I had zero problems with the new Spiderman costume design.
if you stop reading there, I can recommend this one, it's an adequate reboot, it get's the job done once again but i did have several problems with the film...
The Cons:
1) the new Peter Parker origin seems contrived and dare I say, forced...
(I wont say "unbelievable" because it's not, it's a comic book movie and so I can look past a teenage kid fighting a giant lizard while being shot at by the police. I can look past the goofiness of Parker when dealing with car thieves and criminals, and his heroics saving the kid from the car was amazing, of course it should be, he's Spiderman.)
BUT...everything that happens inside Oscorp that leads up to Peter being bitten by the radioactive spider seems forced and contrived, apparently there is zero security at Oscorp, the ding-bat lady at the front desk at Oscorp who is on to Peter pretending to be someone else still lets him steal a badge even after she knows it isn't the "right" person never asks for any ID or anything. Those Oscorp digital door locks are way too easy to gain access too, doors are left unlocked and nobody in the white lab jackets seems to care that Peter is running amuck, loose in a top secret area of Oscorp. Peter gains access to the room filled with spiders due to an unlocked door, get's bitten and turns into Spiderman with heightened abilities and super Spider strength. Was the believability removed in order to move the film along due to time constraints? Believability should never be sacrificed to speed up someting so important as Spiderman's Origin especially since it was done once before and done correctly (better) Marc Webb rushed the early part of through this and it shows. Oscorp security is a joke and one best left unspoken.
2) the running time of 136 minutes seemed to drag on and on forever. Everything about this movie's pacing seemed off, Almost like the director refused to "trim the fat" out and get to the point. The fights (once they eventually start) are quick and cool, but then they are over and the movie slows back down to a snails crawl again and Curt Connors starts in with his diabolical plan and those oscorp guys start talking and Flash Thompson shows up, Uncle Ben dies before the Lizard arrives so that part is lumped unceremoniously into nothingness about Peter not having two cents to buy a bottle of milk at a grocery store, the store owner get's robbed, Peter refuses to help him and then the robber shoots and kills Uncle Ben after he charges him on the street.
It just seemed like this movie was basically broken down into two halves: Peter's (flawed) origin story and Curt Connor's Lizard transformation and the final showdown. I guess after watching three Spiderman movies of superior quality, I didnt really want to sit through 45 minutes to an hour of build up to an inferior retelling of Parker's origin because we'd already seen it once. Cut to the chase.
3) Gwen Stacy is linked to EVERYBODY. ok it's believable that Gwen knows Peter because they attend the same high school, I get that. Is it believable that she also works with Curt Connors as his admin and Intern in the lab at Oscorp AND her father is the Police captain? No, it's not.
In fact, Gwen Stacy didnt even need to work at Oscorp at all, she doesnt do much for that plot but direct a tour group through the hallways when Peter meets her and that whole part is flawed because of the lack of security... she doesnt NEED to work with Curt Connors at all and then having her father be the Captain of the Police force would appear normal but working at Oscorp and having her father be the captain? I cried fowl here... too many coincidences for me.
overall: 60/100 (and Sam Raimi's Spiderman was much better told)
