The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) arrived only five years after the Raimi trilogy ended, and the reason for the hurry was contractual rather than creative. Sony could only keep the Spider-Man rights by releasing new films at set intervals. If it failed to, the rights would revert to Marvel. So this film came out of a schedule, not a need to restart anything. The result shows it. Peter Parker being bitten, his uncle dying, his discovery of his powers, all of it had been told five years earlier and is told again here. What the film adds sits in two places. First, a new thread about the disappearance of Peter's parents. Second, Gwen Stacy; the character Emma Stone plays is not a girl waiting to be rescued but someone working in the lab and directly involved in what happens. Andrew Garfield's Peter is more irritable and more sardonic than Tobey Maguire's, and closer to the comics' habit of thinking out loud. The Lizard played by Rhys Ifans was criticised for his post transformation design. It did well commercially, but the series stopped before a third film and Spider-Man eventually moved into the Marvel universe. It runs 136 minutes. Good for: superheroes and 2010s blockbusters. Fine with teenagers. Less good for: half the story is familiar, the first half is slow, and the darker scenes are murkily lit.