**Spoilers. Don't read if you care about plot details**
I definitely went into the movie wanting to love it, but it didn't do it at all for me. How can you make a movie about Spider-Man's origin, and change nearly everything about his origin story?
How come Peter's a whiny, angsty, skate-boarding hipster instead of an awkward, kind-hearted, science nerd? Why is Connors working for Oscorp? Furthermore, why were Mary and Richard working with him? Peter never even got to create his patented web fluid, he just stole it from Oscorp! They decided to cut the entire start to his career, as a wrestler, and instead Ben died because Peter threw a hissy fit and started crying at a mention of his father who he barely even knew. Then Captain Stacy gets killed by the lizard, and tells Peter to keep Gwen out of his life, when in the original story he pretty much says the exact opposite, telling Peter "Be good to her son. She loves you so very much." Not only were some pretty major plot points messed up, but so many other things just didn't make sense.
Why does Spidey's ability to stick to walls and web swing suddenly become a huge issue when he's somehow hit by a random police bullet? Dr. Connors even had to catch Spidey from falling after he slid down a bunch of windows and somehow didn't remember he could stick to them...
Why does the lizard look like King Koopa? Is it that hard to animate the lizard mouth that he's always had? Cause I'm pretty sure they did a fairly good job of it in the Jurassic Park trilogy.
The film was more like an amalgamation of ASM, Ultimate Spider-Man, and some ideas that Sony threw in because they thought they could make more money by turning it into a trilogy.
I think Emma Stone and Rhys Ifans were the only redeeming qualities to the film. They did a great job playing Gwen and Connors, but everything else about the movie just confused me, or left me feeling "meh".
This pretty much sums up the way I felt about the movie. They just seemed to go a little too far to try and distance themselves from the previous flicks and just totally alienated me.
The costume wasn't as bad as I had thought it might. I guess when you make the movie as dark as this was, you just can't see it. On the screen, in movement and in the darkness it looked close enough to the way Spidey has looked since the early 60s that it didn't matter that they changed it to this new ugly design.
This whole flick just seemed so dark and un-Spider-Man like. It seemed gloomy and seemed to miss some of the light heartedness that I tend to expect from Spider-Man.
I'm still shaking my head that at first they seemed to play down the science nerd bit - then all of a sudden he's making web shooters.
Adding Gwen to Peter's high school years rather than college didn't bug too much. She is a science major, so I guess it makes sense that she might be an intern at Oscorp. Although, it would've made more sense to me to have Peter as an intern there.
Did I miss something? Peter's got the camera set ups (which was cool), but should'nt there have been some sort of set up for him to sell the pics? (And yeah, the name tag on the camera for Connors to find was just the stupidest way to move the plot forward).
I wanted to love Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy. But, something was missing... she just seemed to old to be a high school kid.
Andrew Garfield may be the perfect Spider-Man... but he's no Peter Parker. I enjoyed the New York accent, something I never expected from Spidey - but, it makes a whole lot of sense.
Denis Leary was perfect as Capt. Stacy. The second he found out Peter was Spider-Man I knew he was going to die. Terrible storytelling.
This just never came close to being a fun movie for me. The bad just outweighed the good... and there were times I thought this was going to be pretty good despite some reservations.
