Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

As it turns out, not much - and you have to suffer major deja vu to get there. You get the impression Webb wanted to take The Amazing Spider-Man to places it's never been to, but can't tear himself away from the form guide. For example, having Gwen Stacy instead of Mary-Jane Watson is a conscious choice to do something different, but the character is the self-same love interest (albeit with different colour hair). You feel the choice of The Lizard for chief villain is less about how the character slots into Webb's Spidey universe, but is more about being the only guy not yet picked on the playground. That struggle, trying to be fresh and familiar, ends up cocooning The Amazing Spider-Man into a web of mediocrity.

This reaches a head in the movie's most iconic exchange: the sacrosanct moment in which Peter's Uncle Ben teaches him that "with great power comes great responsibility". Webb has clearly been told it's absolutely vital that this scene be included - hell, it's the only reason Uncle Ben exists as a character: to impart his wisdom and then fuck off dead - but Sheen's dialogue is squirm-in-your-seat awkward. I'm paraphrasing, but the line is something like "With immense abilities there comes a huge need to account for one's self" or something equally obtuse. JUST SAY THE DAMN LINE. Either spit it out or leave it unsaid.

Time and time again, you're constantly reminded that you're watching a movie you've already seen, but through a slightly different lens. Everything about The Amazing Spider-Man feels familiar yet out of sorts.

Younger viewers, too young even to be taken to Spider-Man 3 in 2007, might enjoy it much more than I. At some point, it was inevitable that the superhero genre would no longer be pitched solely at overgrown children like me. I have no problem with that, just as I have no problem with any movie aimed at an audience that doesn't include me. But to redo Spider-Man while the franchise is still so vivid in the memory, and to trace over lines drawn by another so lightly you barely make an impression, feels like a blatant cash-grab at the expense of existing Spider-fans.

For starters, he doesn't even look like a lizard. As predicted, he looks like a Goomba from the Super Mario Brothers movie. Reptiles have a pretty distinct look - you wonder if anyone involved with designing the character has ever actually seen any. His motivations are foggy (Become evil? Check! Hate on Spider-Man? Check! Do big mad thing to the entire city for some vague reason? Check and check!) and his limitations are equally mysterious. So he's a hugely powerful green rage monster (ahem) but one capable of eloquent reasoning in his human voice? He's a brilliant scientist that's happy living as a clumpy great frog thing? (*fart noise*)

Webb puts together a few half-decent action sequences but offsets them with a number of odd scenes. One excellent set-piece midway through sees Spider-Man juggle a number of cars thrown off a bridge, hanging them from his webbing like wet laundry out a window. However, before that we have to suffer the mandatory 'I've just discovered my powers and they totally rock' scene, which takes place in an abandoned warehouse that's filled with skate ramps, like the first level of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

One astoundingly heavy-handed scene later in the film sees Spidey helped to his goal by the citizens of New York - not by carrying him or tending to his wounds, but by aligning cranes. There's no stand-out sequence and few money shots you didn't already see in the 17 trailers.

The Amazing Spider-Man just feels dreadfully disjointed. Nothing really affects anything else. You don't buy that Gwen and Peter make for a dramatic relationship; you don't feel like Spider-Man and the Lizard share much commonality; the missing parents angle ('The Untold Story', remember) goes nowhere save for a cheap mid-credits sequel sting. You don't even get the feeling that Peter Parker ends the movie wanting to continue being Spider-Man - it just ends. Amazing? Nope. Totally average. Even if you've never seen a Spider-Man movie before in your life, you still won't get what all the fuss is about. So again, ask yourself... what was the point?