“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’s 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.