Virag's Movie Reviews: The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

This was easily the most pointless studio film since J. J. Abrams's Star Trek.  Not surprisingly, The Amazing Spider-Man was not as dishearteningly horrible as ST, but it was pretty fucking awful.  Spidey was thrown together without much thought only to keep the character of Spider Man with Sony and to keep him from appearing in The Avengers 2 once Marvel got the rights back.  It is especially silly to keep rebooting a series and cranking out an origin story every decade, but the film industry is not well-known for embodying talent, creativity, or good sense.  In this movie, Peter Parker is back in high school and apparently in the center of the most successful genetic engineering program in history.  This Peter Parker is not a working-class orphan, he's a super genius and super weapon created by his father and others at Oscorp in New York City.  He's the most important and most dangerous person who ever lived!  Once he gets activated, he starts showing off his new powers so openly that everyone in his high school would figure out he's Spider Man, even Flash Thompson.  Speaking of Mr. Thompson, what is a dumb jock football player bully doing at an exclusive and selective science high school?  Why would they even have a team?  Never mind.  Everything that was interesting about the Sam Raimi films is missing here.  The cast is okay, but Charlie Sheen's dad and the Flying Nun and the Lizard are wasted.  Spider Man himself is an unlikable, smarmy jerk.  This movie was dumb, and pointless, and bad.