‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ Reviews Off To A Lukewarm Start

The Amazing Spider-Man has already gotten off to a pretty good start overseas, and today we’ll be able to see how well received the reboot is here in the States. But what do the critics have to say about the film?

To sum it up, somewhere between “good” and “passable.”

Initially, comic book fans were worried when Sony announced that it would be rebooting the Spider-Man film franchise so soon after the previous three films–after all, it’s only been about five years since the last. It seemed too soon for The Amazing Spider-Man, but Sony went ahead with it anyway.

Those concerns were well founded, but it sounds like the filmmakers did a relatively good job pulling it off, all things considered.

E! Online’s Peter Paras said in his review that while the movie overall was solid, Peter Parker’s “origin” story could have been handled better. That, and the origin story falls flat because, well, it hasn’t been all that long since we’ve last seen it.

“The worst that can be said about The Amazing Spider-Man is that if not for an emotionally invested Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, the origin plot feels unnecessary. Part of this is because—and here’s where the fans are right to complain—we just saw Parker bitten by a radioactive spider in 2002. The other is that the new back story involving the mystery of what happened to Peter’s parents is done via lame flashbacks and never really pays off.”

Not all critics were impressed by The Amazing Spider-Man, though. The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis thinks that the reboot feels largely unnecessary, largely due to the fact that Spider-Man feels about the same as he did in the last three movies.

“..unlike Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins,” which reconceptualized the big-screen franchise, ushering it into the noirish reaches familiar from both the initial comic book and Frank Miller’s 1980s “Dark Knight” redo, this “Spider-Man” feels like one of those unnecessary software versions, more Spider-Man 1.5 than Spider-Man reborn. ”

Do you plan on seeing The Amazing Spider-Man?