The Amazing Spiderman

I was very curious to see what the new Spiderman was like. I was (and still am) a big fan of the first two movies (the less said about the third one, the better) and also as a big comic book geek, this movie had my name all over it (not like The Avengers did, but still).  So,  what's the verdict? Overall positive, I'd say. Andrew Garfield is quite winning as Peter Parker, here more of a loner skateboarder than science nerd. And finally there's a heroine who can match up with him in Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy. One of the things I didn't like about about the first three movies was the character of Mary Jane Watson. They took a perfectly good character, full of intelligence and guts and turned her into a wuss. There was ONE moment in all three movies where she was not like that and that's it. So I was happy to see that not be the case with Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker's first love. She's funny, feisty and intelligent. She calls Peter out on his bad behavior, she stands up to The Lizard (more on him later) and she's smart. It was relief. And it helped that she and Andrew Garfield has so much chemistry together it's ridiculous. But did they really have to kill off Denis Leary? Captain Stacy dies well into the series-they couldn't have kept him around for another movie or two? He brightened the whole place up every time every time he appeared. And now a few words about The Lizard. Really? I have a friend who said that when he first saw The Lizard's tail, he thought "oh, no" and in a "wow, the special effects are really bad" kind of way, not in a scary kind of way, and I felt the same. The Lizard was NOT scary. He was one step above a guy in a rubber Lizard suit and that's pretty sad, considering the Spiderman effects were extremely good. They didn't have to be that bad, I'm sure they could have afforded better-and Rhys Isfans certainly deserved better. But that's just me-I'm sure not everyone thought he looked like a guy in a rubber lizard suit. 


And the guy in the scene after the credits? Totally Norman Osborn. It's the Chekhov rule-if you show a gun in the first act, someone has to use in the third act. You can't spend the whole movie talking about Norman Osborn and never have him show. The question is, who will play the Green Goblin and will HIS special effects be any better?