bookmark c5!

43. Dream, Hoax, or Imaginary Story

I'm with Ted in that I quite like The Amazing Spider-Man despite my feeling that rebooting the movie franchise was unnecessary. But I'm OK with it even if it isn't necessary; Marvel runs two different Spidey universes concurrently in the comics these days, this Marc Webb-directed film is just another universe.

The movie isn't flawless, there's a little too much borrowed from Sam Raimi's 2002 edition of Spidey (some is to be expected), and it does seem like it probably had a major edit and even some reshoots late in the game, which is never a good thing. You'd think that if something was fundamentally wrong enough to require reshoots and huge re-edits, it would be weeded out long before filming, but apparently not. Mostly I think this because the promotional stuff for the movie — all the trailers, most of the TV ads, even some of the posters — feature lines, clips, bits of one sort or another that are not in the final movie. A few that were probably just cut for time or flow — the football coach asking Peter if he wants to play football after he accidentally dents a goalpost, for example — but others that seem fairly major and that are likely tied to some of the dangling plotlines that Lara references above.

But it's fun, the casting is great — Andrew Garfield can't really pass for 18, but he behaves with teenagery mannerisms that go a long way toward making it work — and I eagerly await the sequel.

Though I do hope the costume gets some alterations.