Sally Field, Martin Sheen, and Emma Stone make for a fantastic supporting cast, and Andrew Garfield is far and away the most talented person to ever play Peter Parker.

But the Peter Parker material almost makes up for it all. And it’s one of the ugliest, most poorly shot superhero movies ever. The Amazing Spider-ManĪmazing Spider-Man also gets a bad rap.

But don’t mistake curiosity for unheralded greatness: This movie was a mistake. In retrospect, this makes it a curious artifact of blockbuster maximalism, a movie full of movies. It’s even not that hard to imagine how the three of them, up against Jamie Foxx’s unstable take on Electro, still could have resulted in a fun throwback to ’90s blockbuster ridiculousness, a modern successor to Joel Schumacher’s campy Batman films.īut the movie doesn’t stop layering things, giving mysterious backstories to everyone it shows off, mourning characters before they actually die, always gesturing slightly offscreen, trading a Spider-Man story for a Spider-Man RPG sourcebook. The same applies to Dane Dehaan’s unsettling and edgy take on Harry Osborn, back from some time away. Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker and Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacey remain an inspired pairing trapped in a movie that never really feels like it’s about them. Which is a shame, because everything else is … not amazing. Paired with a costume that is even closer to the classic comics look than the one Tobey Maguire sported, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 serves up one of the best rendered big-screen Spideys to this day. The film is brimming with light and color, supercharged with a digital effects team that really knows how to make Spidey look, well, amazing. Let’s start with what this movie does well.

Spider man 1 full movie 2002