There has been a bunch of mixed feelings about the idea of The Amazing Spider-Man. The idea of rebooting the franchise and retelling the origin again kinda feels unnecessary. While that may be the case to some extent, I was still willing to give this movie a chance. Which leads me to what I am about to say; in my opinion, The Amazing Spider-Man is WAY better than the first and third spider-man movies in many areas. The only reason it is not quite as good or better than Spider-man 2 is because of the character development in regards of the main villain, but I will get to that latter. So if you are done sharpening your pitchforks, lets jump right into my review.

The first good to say about this movie is Peter Parker himself. Andrew Garfield bitch slaps Tobey McGuire's portrayal from just the first 20 mins of the movie alone. You feel that he is an social awkward teenager who keeps to him self, he feels more developed,realistic and likeable. Peter comes off as a kid that feels tormented by his social status rather than some emo jerk and I was rooting for him all the way through. Plus his chemistry with Gwen Stacy was just as great as her character. Webb does a solid job establishing their relationship by giving it a 500 Days of summer feel to it and it is proven by the dialogue between those two. Also I felt more for Ben Parker and May Parker in this version than in Sam's version. For example, Ben has more screen time and a little more development with Peter here than he did before, so when he dies I kinda felt that tragic moment unlike how I felt about his death in the first one. I felt Ben Parker was more alive as a character in this version as well as Aunt May. Dr Conners/Lizard is a more mixed bag. While the lizard looked good and I did sympathize with Conners a little, he did not have that special quality like Doc Ock, Green Goblin or the Sandman. He is not a terrible or even a mediocre villain by any stretch but he does leave something to be desired. Not a bad villain but not amazing, still enjoyable.

Though flawed, what makes the Lizard enjoyable is his fights with Spider-Man thanks to the great cinematography and the visual design. They are on par if not better than the fights in Spider-Man 3. To be honest I have only to major problems with the movie. One is that Peter tends to take his mask off a lot in this film. There were about two or three scenes where I was like " well he is in the sewers or in this place were there is nobody so whatever" but there were a bunch of times were you as the audience just scream " DUDE!! Put on you're mask." The second complaint is that they do not clearly resolve the search for Ben's Killer sub-plot in this movie.I assume they plan to conclude it in the sequel but I am not sure how much of a pay-off that would be seeing as how it might feel as though it should have been wrapped up in this one.

There is one last thing I want to talk about this movie before I close out this review, it is about the comparison between this and the Dark knight in terms of the vibe. First off, this is not a dark and gritty Spider-Man. It has little bit of darker tones but it is not the Dark Knight dark. You can tell that DK was somewhat of an inspiration but in the right areas. For example, they wanted to make it feel like a more realistic world and protagonist without deviating from the source material and turning Peter into some brooding, dark anti-hero. He is still Peter Parke/Spider-Man. He is still a jokey character but more relateable. So in short The Amazing Spider-Man does not feel like a DK rip-off. Also the dark knight is not the first dark superhero movie, so to say that every superhero type movie that tries to be " dark" is automatically copying off the Dark Knight is kinda silly to me at least.

It is flawed, but The Amazing Spider-Man excels thanks to great characters, great action, great story, great cinematography, a few heartfelt and humorous moments. The Amazing Spider-Man is much more than just some movie to tie you over until the Dark Knight Rises is released. It may still feel unnecessary to some, but it is still damn good.

HIGH MATINEE!!!!!