The Amazing Spider-Man is a 2012 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man and sharing the title of the character's longest-running comic book of the same name. It is the fourth to portray Spider-Man in film distributed by Walt Disney Pictures and Marvel Studios and a reboot of the film trilogy preceding it by 2002–07 that was distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment. The film was directed by Marc Webb and written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves . This is the first Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 2 film and lead-in film to Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Plot[]
A young Peter Parker discovers his father Richard Parker's study has been burgled. Gathering up hidden documents, Peter's parents take him to the home of his Aunt May (Field) and Uncle Ben (Sheen), then mysteriously depart.
Years later, a teenaged Peter (Yelchin) attends Midtown Science High School, where he is bullied by Flash Thompson (Zylka) and has caught the eye of the beautiful Gwen Stacy (Woodley). At home, Peter finds his father's papers and learns he worked with fellow scientist Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans) at Oscorp. Sneaking into Oscorp, Peter enters a lab where a "biocable" is under development from genetically modified spiders, one of which bites him. On the subway ride home, he discovers that he has developed spider-like abilities.
After studying Richard's papers, Peter visits the one-armed Connors, reveals he is Richard Parker's son and gives Connors his father's "decay rate algorithm", the missing piece in Connors' experiments on regenerating limbs. Connors is being pressed by his superior, Dr. Ratha (Khan), to devise a cure for the dying (but unseen) head of Oscorp, Norman Osborn. In school, Peter gets into trouble after a basketball challenge with Flash in which Peter accidentally shatters the backboard glass. His uncle changes work shifts to meet with the principal and asks Peter to replace him walking home with Aunt May that night. Peter gets distracted and helps Connors regenerate the limb of a laboratory mouse. Peter's failure causes an argument with his uncle and he leaves. At a nearby deli, a cashier refuses to let Peter buy a chocolate milk since Peter is two cents short; when a thief named Cletus Kasady (Hall) suddenly raids the store, Peter indifferently observes. While searching for Peter, Uncle Ben attempts to stop Kasady and is killed. Cletus Kasady escapes as Peter finds Ben on the sidewalk.
Afterward, Peter uses his new abilities to hunt criminals matching the killer's description. After a fall lands him inside an abandoned gym, a luchador-wrestling poster inspires him to create a mask to hide his identity. He adds a spandex suit and builds mechanical devices to attach to his wrists to shoot a biocable "web". Peter accepts a dinner invitation from Gwen, where he meets and has a tense conversation with her father, police captain George Stacy (Leary), over Spider-Man's motives. After dinner, Peter reveals his identity to Gwen and they kiss.
After seeing success with the mouse using lizard DNA, Ratha demands Connors begin human trials immediately if Osborn is to survive. Connors refuses to rush the drug-testing procedure and put innocent people at risk. Ratha fires Connors and decides to test Connors' serum at a VA hospital under the guise of a flu shot. In an act of desperation, Connors tries the formula on himself. After passing out, he awakens to find his missing arm has regenerated. Discovering that Ratha is on his way to the VA hospital, Connors, whose skin is turning green and scaly, goes to intercept him. By the time he gets to the Williamsburg Bridge Connors has become a violent hybrid of lizard and man, tossing cars, including Ratha's, over the side of the bridge. Peter, now calling himself Spider-Man, snatches each falling car with his web-lines.
Spider-Man suspects Connors is Lizard and unsuccessfully confronts the creature in the sewers. Lizard learns Spider-Man's real identity via the name on an abandoned camera and follows Peter to school where they fight. In response, the police start a manhunt for both Spider-Man and Lizard. The police corner Spider-Man and Captain Stacy discovers that he is really Peter. Lizard plans to make all humans lizard-like by releasing a chemical cloud from Oscorp's tower, to eliminate the weaknesses he believes plague humanity. Spider-Man eventually disperses an antidote cloud instead, restoring Connors and earlier victims to normal, but not before Lizard mortally wounds Captain Stacy. Before his death, Captain Stacy makes Peter vow to keep Gwen safe by leaving her out of it. Peter initially does so, but later at school suggests to Gwen he may see her again.
In a closing-credits scene, Connors, in a prison cell, speaks with S.H.E.I.L.D. director Nick Fury (Jackson) who asks if Peter knows the truth about his father. Connors replies, "No" and says because it would cause a that not even Spider-Man could stop. Connors demands Peter be left alone before Nick Fury disappears.
Cast[]
- Anton Yelchin as Peter Parker / Spider-Man
- Max Charles as Peter Parker as a 4-year-old
- Shailene Woodley as Gwen Stacy
- Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors / Lizard
- Denis Leary as Captain George Stacy
- Martin Sheen as Ben Parker
- Sally Field as May Parker
- MIcheal C. Hall as Cletus Kasady
- Irrfan Khan as Dr. Rajit Ratha
- Chris Zylka as Flash Thompson
- Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
Reception[]
Critical reception[]
The Amazing Spider-Man was the last Marvel Comics based film that Ebert ever reviewed before he died. He regarded it as "probably the second best" within the Spider-Man film franchise.The Amazing Spider-Man received mostly positive reviews by critics upon release with critics praising the performance of Anton Yelchin. The review aggregator film site Rotten Tomatoes reported a 73% approval rating, based on 279 reviews, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The consensus: "A well-chosen cast and sure-handed direction allows The Amazing Spider-Man to thrill despite revisiting many of the same plot points from 2002's Spider-Man." On Metacritic, as of July 5, the film had received an average score of 66 out of 100, based on 42 critics, signifying "Generally favorable reviews". According to Rotten Tomatoes yearly lists, (by using a weighted formula of the critics review in the site) it was placed number 32 on its list of best comic-book movies in 2012 and was placed number 36 in 2013. CinemaScore's audience graded it an A-. Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter felt that the film was satisfying, explaining that Webb directed with emotional and comedic touches and provided a darker depiction and a stronger romance than the original. Boyd Van Hoeija of Variety described the film as a "mostly slick, entertaining and emotionally involving recombination of fresh and familiar elements". A columnist of The Village Voice, Chris Pakham felt that the film was faithful to the comics and that "Yelchin's spindly physicality evokes the Marvel illustrations of the 1960s." Conversely, Lou Lemenick of the New York Post wrote that the film was dull and uninspiring and felt that it did not compare to Batman Begins and was "a pointless rehash in the mode of Superman Returns." New Yorker critic Anthony Lane described the film as "running out of nimbleness and fun, and the promise contained in its title seems ever more tendentious." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called the film "memorable in pieces but not as a whole" and said that its best element is the relationship between Peter and Gwen, while the Lizard "is not quite an opponent for the ages." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an A- describing the film as "a friskier, sweeter-natured variation" when compared to Raimi's work. She explained that the most "amazing" element was not the "blockbuster wow!" but instead the "intimate awww." Claudia Puig of USA Today explained that "as a new chapter in the superpowered arachnid saga, it stands on its own quite nicely, focusing more on human emotions than on a panoply of special effects." She said "where Tobey Maguire in the original Spider-Man trilogy was earnest, Garfield's Spider-Man is whip-smart and likably cheeky, with an undercurrent of teenage angst." She also called the film "as much a coming-of-age story as a crime-fighting action saga." Christy Lemire of the Associated Press described Yelchin's Spider-Man as an arrogant and misunderstood outsider, giving the film a "restless, reckless energy and a welcome sense of danger." She also concluded that Webb was a different sort of director, saying that while Webb's big set pieces lacked Raimi's imagination, they conveyed "emotional truth" and "a pervasive sense of humanity". However, Ty Burr of The Boston Globe felt that the film lacked the original's pop grace and the pulpy joy, saying the film was "dumbed down, tarted up" and "almost shockingly uninspired". Burr evaluated it as "the worst superhero film since Green Lantern". Colin Covert of the Star Tribune also felt that The Amazing Spider-Man is weaker than its predecessor and described it as "The Notebook in spandex". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times felt that the reboot provided better reasons for why Peter Parker adopts his superhero role, even if the origin story didn't need to be told once again. He also remarked that it was "probably the second best" of the four Spider-Man films after Spider-Man 2, explaining that Lizard was lackluster compared to that film's villain, Doctor Octopus, and had the dramatic range of Godzilla. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal, pointed out that "the truly amazing thing is that most of what happens to Peter Parker in the first half of the film has already happened in previous chapters of the Spidey saga", that "what's old is old again." However, Randy Myers from the San Jose Mercury News found it "the best Spidey yet", describing it as "strong, bold and well-acted." He felt that a viewer couldn't help but feel déjà vu, but that the work shows greater "dimension". Dana Stevens at Slate magazine believed that the film was an "absolutely unnecessary" retelling of the origin story, although it avoided "the common comic-book adaptation trap of gloomy self-seriousness". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone also opined that the "unnecessary" reboot pulled stellar performances from Yelchin and Stone and touches the heart. Anton Yelchin received good notices for his performance. Bob Mondello of NPR said, "Here comes another Spider-dude: This Anton Yelchin guy. So he'd better be really something, right? Well, as it happens, he is." Tom Charity of CNN found Yelchin's "combination of fresh-faced innocence, nervous agitation and wry humor ... immediately appealing." Stephanie Zacharek of Movieline said she "had no specific desire to see the series resuscitated. But watching Yelchin and Woodley made me think doing so wasn't such a bad idea". Mary F. Pols of Time said that even though the story was familiar Yelchin and Webb made it feel "convincingly fresh and exciting."
Box office[]
The Amazing Spider-Man earned $262,030,663 in North America and $490,185,894 in other countries, for a worldwide total of $752,216,557. As of December 2013, the film is the 51st highest grossing film, the seventh-highest-grossing 2012 film, the ninth highest-grossing superhero film, the lowest-grossing Spider-Man film, the sixth-highest-grossing film distributed by Sony/Columbia and the highest-grossing reboot of all time worldwide. In North America, the film earned an estimated $7.5 million during its midnight run at 3,150 locations, including $1.2 million from 300 IMAX venues. On its opening day, a pre-holiday Tuesday, it set a Tuesday-gross record with $35 million (previously held by Transformers). The next day, the film dropped 33.4 percent to $23.3 million—the second-highest non-opening Wednesday. Over the three-day weekend, it grossed $62.0 million. This pushed the film's six-day gross to $137.0 million, which was smaller than those of Transformers ($155.41 million) and Spider-Man 2 ($180.07 million) among past Fourth of July releases.[249] Although the film did not match its predecessors, Sony Pictures stated, "In the world of relaunched franchises, this is a spectacular success by any measure". For example, both Batman Begins ($79.5 million) and X-Men: First Class ($69.9 million) (both were non 3D-movies) opened significantly below The Amazing Spider-Man.[251] It remained at the number 1 spot for ten consecutive days, until the opening day of Ice Age: Continental Drift.[252] The film was originally the highest-grossing reboot of all time domestically until beaten by Man of Steel in 2013. Outside North America, The Amazing Spider-Man grossed $51.1 million on its five-day opening weekend (June 27 – July 1, 2012) from 13 markets, with strong openings in many Asian countries. In India, it earned $6.0 million, a record opening for a Hollywood film. Kercy Daruwala of Sony Pictures in India felt very confident that the presence of famed Indian actor Irrfan Khan would enhance attendance. Opening in an additional 61 markets, the film made $127.5 million over its second weekend. The movie ranked number one in over 30 countries. In Indonesia, it broke the opening-weekend record with $4.5 million while, in the UK, it opened to £11.1 million ($18.1 million) which is about equal with Spider-Man 3 (£11.8 million). In its last market, China, The Amazing Spider-Man grossed $33.3 million over its seven-day debut, which is more than Spider-Man 3’s lifetime box office in China. As of August 27, 2012, the movie's highest-grossing territory is the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta, where it has grossed $40.4 million.