The superhero genre is littered with films that were nothing but hyped-up disappointments, including everything from Batman v. Superman to Captain America: Brave New World. Sometimes, though, the tights-and-flights movies that get a bad reputation are actually worth giving a second chance. Perhaps the best example of this is The Amazing Spider-Man, which is newly available to stream on Netflix.
The Amazing Spider-Man tells a story that we’re now familiar with: dorky high-schooler Peter Parker gets bitten by a spider that gives him fantastic abilities. After Peter loses someone dear to him, he decides to fight crime as Spider-Man and hunt down the murderer he failed to stop before. But he has his work cut out for him because his girlfriend’s cop dad hates Spider-Man, and a mysterious lizard man’s bizarre experiments may harm everyone in the city unless everyone’s favorite neighborhood web-head can stop him.
The Amazing Spider-Man’s Plot Is Its Weakest Link
Admittedly, the plot of The Amazing Spider-Man is its weakest link, starting with the fact that we have to sit through yet another origin story for one of the most famous superheroes in the world. Plus, the shoehorned-in lore about Peter Parker’s parents feels weirdly out of place. And the Lizard is a somewhat disappointing bad guy, right down to his big plot culminating in the weirdest superhero movie trope of them all: firing a big blue beam into the sky.
Why You Should Watch Amazing Spider-Man Anyway
So, if the plot is a bit “meh,” why the heck am I recommending you watch (or re-watch) The Amazing Spider-Man? For one thing, the cast: Martin Sheen and Sally Field do a great job of portraying Peter’s aunt and uncle, lending both humor and gravitas to our hero’s familiar support system. Similarly, Dennis Leary does an excellent job of playing a cop trying to close in on Spider-Man while keeping his daughter safe from the increasingly bonkers threats in the city, including Rhys Ifans’ Lizard.
But the real appeal of The Amazing Spider-Man is Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone: he gives this famous hero a grounded, down-to-earth humor that softens the edges of his one-man war on crime. And she makes Gwen Stacy into someone vibrant, gentle, and warm, the kind of girl next door that audiences can believe Peter would go head over heels for. Plus, the two have an absolutely perfect romantic chemistry onscreen, thanks in large part to the two actors falling in love on set and beginning a relationship that lasted half a decade.
Fortunately, the script brings out the best in each actor, allowing for moments of humor and heart amid all the fisticuffs. The writing gives their interactions plenty of time to breathe, and we get to know our characters as they bounce off each other, their conversations helping flesh out their colorful world. And quite frankly, it’s a fictional world far more entertaining than what we see in many MCU movies like The Eternals and even Sony Marvel movies like Venom.
The Consensus On The Amazing Spider-Man
Critics generally agreed, and The Amazing Spider-Man currently has a 71 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics generally praised the awesome cast and confident direction from Marc Webb, who also directed (500) Days of Summer. Incidentally, the movie has a 77 percent audience rating, meaning that fans liked this web-swinging adventure even more than critics did.
Will you agree that The Amazing Spider-Man is worth a second chance, or is this one film you’d rather see transformed into a lizard? You won’t know until you thwip the remote control over to yourself and stream the movie on Netflix. By the time it’s over, you might just have a new superhero movie, or at least a crowd-pleasing alternative to the slurry of hit-and-miss films now coming out of the MCU.