The-Amazing-Spider-Man movie video clips

The beats aren't new, and -- this is crucial -- they shouldn't be. Watching a superhero origin story is like watching yet another cinematic troupe play out a Shakespearean saga, an analogy that Stan Lee, with his faux-Bard posturing, might like. There are liberties taken, certainly, but the essence of it all -- whether the movie is directed by the fortunately named Marc Webb or Sam Raimi or by us, with a phalanx of action figures duking it out in bed -- is the same.

The Amazing Spiderman movie images

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The Amazing Spiderman cast and crew

Directed by
Marc Webb


Andrew Garfield

Emma Stone

Rhys Ifans

Denis Leary

Martin Sheen

Sally Field

Irrfan Khan

Campbell Scott

Embeth Davidtz

Chris Zylka

Max Charles

C. Thomas Howell

The Amazing Spiderman movie overview

We've seen it before, of course. We know he gets bitten by accident, yahoos about his powers, learns tragically about power and responsibility, and is surprisingly adept at sewing himself a spandex costume with significant embellishment.

The beats aren't new, and -- this is crucial -- they shouldn't be. Watching a superhero origin story is like watching yet another cinematic troupe play out a Shakespearean saga, an analogy that Stan Lee, with his faux-Bard posturing, might like. There are liberties taken, certainly, but the essence of it all -- whether the movie is directed by the fortunately named Marc Webb or Sam Raimi or by us, with a phalanx of action figures duking it out in bed -- is the same.

And the reason Spider-Man stands at the very top of the increasingly cluttered superhero heap -- a heap made up of aliens and mutants and shadowy vigilantes and men with really long fingernails -- is because there's a real man underneath that mask. Other heroes veer wildly in personality and character and scope based on writers and artists working on them, but there is only one Peter Parker.

One who is as much about saving the day as he is about the frustration of not having done it more seamlessly; one who is as much about the utter inability to ask a girl out as he is about being a genius scientist; as much about heart, then, as he is about heroics. And, given he's a high schooler, the mask is all about acting out.

Webb's film starts with a knee-high Peter Parker, playing hide and seek with wily parents who elaborately balance hats on broomsticks to confuse the child. He isn't the only one hunting for them, even though that hunt becomes a way of life as he grows up and continues to wonder where -- and why -- they hid. Relentlessly, recklessly he fumbles his way toward answers…

But while the film begins with the boy, it only genuinely kicks off with the girl. Making Parker's jaw drop with her go-go boots and the Vonnegut novel in her hand, Gwen Stacy is a confident, striking platinum blonde heroine who melts our boy right through. It is this impulsive, heady romance that gives a vitally thumping bassline to The Amazing Spider-Man. Even as a slithering foe (compared, in the script, to Godzilla) raises the story's stakes and lends it hihat reptilian chills.

Dr Curt Connors, while lacking of limb, is anything but 'armless. (Sorry, couldn't resist. Spidey'd get it.) A scientist trying to harness the regenerative power of lizards, he grows back his right arm but, in the process, turns into the long-tongued Lizard, a monster who wants to create an equally scaly army. Cue action sequences, each amplified by how genuinely formidable this foe looks. For a film shot in 3D, this doesn't take gimmicky advantage of the format as often, but when things roll, they really roll.

The action is lucid, urgent and importantly imaginative -- Spidey seems to be improvising, desperately, on the fly -- and the bits when Webb lets us look through those friendly neighbourhood eyes as he careens dramatically around the city, putting us right in the middle of a rollercoaster ride, are worth the IMAX prices. 3D this one, true believers.

Strangely for a superhero blockbuster, however, the sentiments overwhelm the setpieces. For one, the cast is smashing.

Andrew Garfield brings a wiry jumpiness to Parker, a constant nervous energy that keeps the character constantly unpredictable. Emma Stone is a treat as Gwen Stacy, ebullient and fresh enough to make up for decades of poorly-cast love interests in superhero movies. Martin Sheen is a very solid Uncle Ben (though it does occasionally seem like the President's turned into a handyman) while Sally Field's Aunt May doesn't click at all, forever seeming like a presence too far from Peter's centre. Rhys Ifans is a great Connors and a fine Lizard, further made fearsome by the humanity he brings to the part. And James Horner [ Images ] hasn't sounded this good in decades.

Webb's strength as a director lies in just how smoothly he flips genres, switching between gears with immaculate ease.

Snap, it's a coming of age story, snap, it's about boy meets girl, snap, it's Jurassic Park [ Images ], snap, it's the best darned Stan Lee cameo in the Marvel universe, snap, it's a blockbuster, snap, snap, snap. And despite maniacal gearshifting -- and some initial sluggishness -- he keeps slowing down to close in on the nuances: on a boy who'd rather use a strand of webbing than reveal intent or identity, on a superhero learning on the job, on a girl falling head-first in love knowing she's in trouble, on promises made and promises broken.

And on Spider-Man, who scuttles. His movements aren't immediately graceful, often a flailing, akimbo mess. Garfield gives the character stammering nerves and Webb visually jerks him like a whimsical puppeteer, moving his limbs before the rest of him. It's a dynamic new way to see Spidey on screen, and as he gets better -- both at his job and at realising just what his job is -- this new Spider-Man soars. And Webb lets us tag along for the ride.

The Amazing Spiderman movie review

Just five years after the ropey Spider-Man 3 crawled out of the multiplex plughole in 2007, starring an increasingly jaded and malign-looking Tobey Maguire, the reset button has been pressed. We have gone back to the beginning with a new star, a new villain, a smarter, leaner and more interesting "origin" storyline and that all-important adjective restored to the title. And it is amazing how potent and entertaining the Spider-Man myth continues to be: the bullied brainy teenager whose weakness and unpopularity are somehow alchemised into super-powers.

The casting is just right. As if moving back in time, Andrew Garfield is the Spidey Sean Connery, as opposed to Tobey Maguire's Roger Moore. He looks clever, physically slight yet wiry, with exactly the right hunched and passive-aggressive body language when needed. Garfield's Peter Parker is a science star and all-round high school mathlete in the traditional mould, but in this movie he's allowed a soupçon of outsider cool on account of having a skateboard. This item is – sadly, perhaps – ditched the moment he gets his powers, showcased in spectacular action sequences. Garfield does look like a leading man. However, at 28 years old he may not be able to carry off playing 17 for all that much longer.

The director, Marc Webb, is known for his relationship comedy (500) Days of Summer, and this is a more feminised and emotionally literate Spider-Man. There isn't the same emphasis on secret identities and hiddenness and having to grit your teeth and bottle up your feelings while the woman you're in love with swoons over Spider-Man and is politely turned off by your conventional academic attainments. This is a Spider-Man who comes out to the people who are important to him pretty quickly. And there is no alpha-male/beta-male badinage between Parker and the irascible newspaper editor J Jonah Jameson. That character doesn't appear here, and Parker does not feel the need to earn pocket money selling pictures of Spidey to the press. In the digital age, that market may have collapsed in any case.

Peter Parker's arachnid destiny is made manifest from the get-go, and for me the narrative has more power. Instead of the arbitrary happenstance of getting bitten by a radioactive or genetically modified spider, Parker is the orphan of troubled scientist Richard Parker (Campbell Scott) who was working on inter-species DNA splicing, before being killed with Peter's mother in a mysterious car wreck. His work is now being carried on by the faintly sinister Dr Curt Connors – played by Rhys Ifans – a man with just one arm, who longs for a lizard's ability to regrow limbs. Poor Peter is now hopelessly in love with classmate Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) and is being looked after by his tolerant Uncle Ben, played by Martin Sheen (effectively reprising the blue-collar dad he played opposite Charlie Sheen in Wall Street), and Aunt May, played by Sally Field. He blags his way into Dr Connors's lab and sneaks into a top-secret room where spiders are being experimented upon. The rest is superhero history.

The transformation scenes are tremendous. Having been bitten, Garfield's Parker goes into a delirious, feverish state, pop-eyed with anxiety and over-excitement as his body assumes new strength and the ability to hang upside down. Without knowing what he is doing, Parker semi-accidentally beats up around half a dozen menacing guys in a subway carriage while stammering and apologizing like a New York Hugh Grant. At home, he virtually destroys his bathroom before learning his own strength. The terrible fate of Uncle Ben, and Peter's own concomitant guilt, is sharply sketched out.

Rhys Ifans is a terrific Spidey villain, the best since Alfred Molina's operatically mad Doctor Octopus: he is a researcher who once had a lot of good in him. Connors started out with a genuine need to cure human frailty and his genetic research involves computer-modelling, incidentally, not live animal experimentation. But his terrible flaw is that stump where his arm was: it isn't long before Dr Connors's work on lizards gets dodgy, and his face turns into a handbag. The transformation unlocks a certain drama-queen quality and during one confrontation with Spider-Man he quotes Michelangelo's sonnet The Silkworm: he dreams "That, changing like the snake, I might be free/ To cast off flesh wherein I dwell confined!"

And so we are back in the swing, although as ever, there is the vexed question of what exactly is horizontally overhead that Spidey is swinging from. A jutting flagpole perhaps? Because using webs attached to the corners or sides of buildings can surely result only in hitting the ground or the wall before the downswing is complete. Well, never mind. The sheer exhilarating spectacle of Spider-Man launched again through the city, utterly free, is still great.