Revisited - The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

One of my favorite heroes has always been Spider-Man and when anything comes out that's about the web head I'm usually all in however I wasn't in 2012. You see I grew up with Toby as my Spider-Man so when they came out with a reboot with a whole new story and cast, I was particularly bitter about it. Of course, I ended up watching it and fell in love with both the new story and cast. It was a great superhero movie and great spider movie even though toby is still my favorite as well as the second spiderman film being my favorite of any hero movie. Andrew though is a great spidey and really loves the character and you cane see it in his acting. This film however, felt like a diamond in a rough at times. It had it's problems but it balanced them out with great casting as well as great dialogue and great character arcs. You can tell the people behind this film really cared for the end product.

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 series of the same name. It is the fourth theatrical Spider-Man film produced by Columbia Pictures and Marvel Entertainment, a reboot of the series following Sam Raimi's 2002–2007 Spider-Man trilogy, and the first of the two The Amazing Spider-Man films. The film was directed by Marc Webb and written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves from a story by Vanderbilt, and stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Campbell Scott, Irrfan Khan, Martin Sheen, and Sally Field. In the film, after Peter Parker is bitten by a genetically altered spider, he gains newfound, spider-like powers and ventures out to save the city from the machinations of a mysterious reptilian foe.

Development of the film began with the cancellation of Spider-Man 4 in January 2010, ending director Sam Raimi's Spider-Man film series that originally featured Tobey Maguire as the titular superhero. Columbia Pictures opted to reboot the franchise with the same production team along with Vanderbilt to stay on with writing the next Spider-Man film, while Sargent and Kloves helped with the script as well. During pre-production, the main characters were cast in 2010. New designs were introduced from the comics, such as artificial web-shooters. Using Red Digital Cinema Camera Company's RED Epic camera, principal photography started in December 2010 in Los Angeles before moving to New York City. The film entered post-production in April 2011. 3ality Technica provided 3D image processing, while Sony Pictures Imageworks handled CGI effects. This was also the final American film to be scored by James Horner and released during his lifetime, three years before his death on June 22, 2015 from an aircraft accident, as well as the penultimate film for both production designer J. Michael Riva and one of the producers Laura Ziskin, who died on June 7, 2012 and June 12, 2011, respectively. J. Michael Riva's last film as production designer was Django Unchained, released five months later and Ziskin's last film as producer was The Butler, released one year later in 2013.

Sony Pictures Entertainment built a promotional website, releasing many previews and launched a viral marketing campaign, among other moves. Tie-ins included a video game by Beenox and Activision. The film premiered on June 30, 2012 in Tokyo, and was released in the United States on July 3, ten years after release of Spider-Man (2002), in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D formats. The reboot received a mostly favorable reception, with critics praising Andrew Garfield's performance, the visual style, James Horner's musical score, and the realistic re-imagining and portrayal of the title character, but criticized the number of underdeveloped story-lines, noting the film's deleted scenes. The film was a box office success, grossing over $757 million worldwide, becoming the seventh highest-grossing film of 2012. A sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, was released on May 2, 2014.

A young Peter Parker discovers that his father Richard Parker's study has been stolen. Peter's parents gather hidden documents, take Peter to the home of his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and then mysteriously depart.

Years later, a teenage Peter attends Midtown Science High School, where he is bullied by Flash Thompson, and has caught the eye of Gwen Stacy. At home, Peter finds his father's papers and learns his father worked with fellow scientist Dr. Curt Connors at Oscorp in the field of cross-species genetics. Sneaking into Oscorp, Peter enters a lab where a "biocable" is under development from genetically modified spiders, one of which bites him. He later discovers he has developed spider-like abilities, such as super-strength, sharp senses, reflexes, agility, and speed.

After studying Richard's papers, Peter visits the one-armed Connors, reveals he is Richard's son, and gives Connors his father's "decay rate algorithm", the missing piece in Connors' experiments on regenerating limbs. Connors was being pressed by his superior, Dr. Ratha, to devise a cure for the dying head of Oscorp, Norman Osborn. In school, Peter is exposed 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 ask Peter to walk May home for him that night. Peter forgets to do so distracted while at Oscorp helping Connors regenerate the limb of a laboratory mouse. At home, he and Ben argue, and Peter leaves. At a nearby deli, a cashier refuses to let Peter buy milk when Peter is two cents short; when a thief suddenly raids the store, for giving a can of milk to Peter, he allows him to escape. While searching for Peter, Ben attempts to stop the thief and is killed. The thief escapes as Peter finds Ben dead on the sidewalk.

Afterward, Peter uses his new abilities to track down criminals matching the killer's description. After a fall lands him inside an abandoned stadium, a luchador-wrestling poster inspires him to create a mask to hide his identity. He adds a spandex suit and builds mechanical web-shooters out of wristwatches to attach to his wrists to shoot a cable "web". Later, at dinner with Gwen's family, he has a tense conversation with her father, police captain George Stacy, over the new masked vigilante'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. 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 Veterans Administration 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. Peter, now calling himself Spider-Man, snatches each falling car with his web-lines. Peter suspects Connors is the Lizard; following a battle in the sewers, the Lizard learns Spider-Man's real identity via the name on an abandoned camera and follows Peter to school, where they fight again. Police start a manhunt for both Spider-Man and the Lizard, corners Spider-Man by taking off his mask, and Captain Stacy discovers that Spider-Man is really Peter. The 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. Gwen infiltrates Oscorp and creates an antidote cloud, which Peter eventually disperses, restoring Connors and earlier victims to normal, but not before the Lizard fatally wounds Captain Stacy.

Before his death, Captain Stacy requests Peter avoid Gwen, in order to keep her safe. Peter initially does so, but later at school, suggests to Gwen he may see her after all. In a mid-credits scene, Connors, in a prison cell, speaks with a man in the shadows who asks if Peter knows the truth about his father. Connors doesn't know, and demands that Peter be left alone, before the man disappears.

Overall, I love this film and feel that it's underrated at times in the grand scheme of hero films. The locker scene along between peter and flash is one of my favorite scenes in any hero film as it showcases the characters and the acting beautifully. Sure, the villain can be corny at times, peter can be seen as selfish, and sometimes changes to spidey's story are made in a weird way to just distance themselves from Rami's Spider-Man which makes the film worst at times but overall, the film does a good job in most places. It defiantly better than Far From Home which I hated because it didn't feel like a spidey movie but more so just generic garbage. This film is a spidey film and one worthy watching. Ricardo Signing Off