Hello fellow movie lovers! Time for another summary and review from Momma Love! I'm doing a summary of this one because it's not too different from the one made back in 2002 so you won't get spoiled by much. New villian, new love interest, and a new take on Peter Parker (in some ways). I saw The Amazing Spider-Man two days ago with my dad (who is awesome) so I'm getting this down while it's still fresh in my mind. Without further a-do, here's The Amazing Spider-Man.
Warning, this is a Summary if you do not wish to be spoiled head straight to the next page for the review!
Alright, where to begin... the beginning sounds nice! The movie starts off with a delve into Peter Parker's past with his parents when he was a little kid (wiki says 6 year old Pete, movie credits said 4). He's playing hide-and-go-seek with (I'm guessing as it was never clarified) his father. While looking for his father he notices that his fathers office is completely trashed. He's calls to his dad and he notices a paper that his father has retrieved from a drawer with a false bottom. The paper is "titled" of sorts with two zeroes slashed diagonally (I'm pretty sure that has a scientific name I just can't figure it out right now) and it will come into play later in the movie. Peter's parents send him to live with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May until the whole thing blows over.
10-13 years later we see Peter Parker in High School (not sure how old he is) trying to defend someone who is getting bullied by our resident tough guy, Flash Thompson. Peter gets the ever loving crap kicked out of him until Gwen Stacy comes to his rescue. There's some flirting between the two and they seem like actual teenagers. Our hero then goes home to find that his Aunt and Uncle's house is flooding (the basement) so he's instructed to go down there and retrieve anything valuable. Of course he comes across his fathers old briefcase, custom made with it's own secret compartment. He finds the mysterious papers from the false bottom of the drawer and he intends to confront his Aunt and Uncle about it. There's a heart warming tale of how his parents met and then the mention of Dr. Curt Conners, a close friend to Richard Parker (Peter's dad) and worked at OSCORP together. Peter then fakes his way into an internship showing... gallery... program, whatever, and gets access to the research levels of the OSCORP building in hopes of understanding his fathers disappearance more. Turns out that Gwen Stacy is the Head Intern to OSCORP and she's leading the other interns around. More flirting ensues and the Peter decides to break away from the pack after some cross species genetics babble with Dr. Conners. He bumps into a guy carrying a folder with the same two symbols as the ones in his fathers bag so he follows him. This leads him to a room full of spiders weaving webs since OSCORP manufactures titanium strength spider webs (exaggeration). He plucks one of the strings and several spiders fall on him, he manages to brush most of them off but is bitten by a lone spider. When he returns to the rest of the interns, Gwen has noticed that he came from an area that he wasn't supposed to. She confiscates his badge and kicks him out (playfully and nicely so there is no awkward tension).
BAZINGA. PETER HAS SPIDER POWERS!
After some hilarity on the part of Peter's spider hands sticking to some girls clothing and accidentally ripping it off, Peter returns home to study up on Dr. Curt Conners. After getting nowhere with "common spider bites" he goes to Conners house where he reveals himself to be Richard Parker's son. He then gives Conners his fathers "decay rate algorithm" which is what the symbols on the papers were all about. This happened to be the missing piece in his research for gene splicing lizard and human DNA so he can recover his lost limb (and save Norman Osborne, the dying head of OSCORP).
The next day Peter tries to humiliate Flash for beating on him while using his spider powers but ends up destroying the backboard to a basketball hoop and is sent to the principals office. Peter's Uncle Ben shows up and tells Pete (after chastising him for taking revenge as it doesn't make you feel any better blah blah bla) to pick up his Aunt May at nine since he had to change shifts to come to the school. Peter kind of ignores this and goes to OSCORP where they try the serum out of a mouse that only has three legs. It's a complete success so Peter ho-hums home just to get yelled at by his Uncle Ben for forgetting to pick up his Aunt May. Peter yells back about him acting like his father and runs out (shattering the front door). So Uncle Ben decides to chase after him. And what does any teenager need after yelling at a parental figure? Milk. Too bad the convenience store clerk refuses to give it to him because he's short two cents stating it's "not their policy". Peter is about to storm out when the guy behind him robs the cash register and tosses him the milk, thanks lowly criminal! On the way out the clerk asks Peter to go and get the money back but Peter cleverly throws his words right back at him, "it's not my policy". That same thief goes on to shoot his Uncle who should've just stayed home. Uncle Ben dies and
SPIDER-MAN IS BORN.
Peter then dones the first version of the Spidey suit just to cover his face so he can chase after the man who killed his uncle with the description the police gave him. Somewhere in the middle of all this we have a bit of a bonding moment between Flash and Peter who gives his condolences on his uncles death. After awhile he turns into the actual Spider-Man (after procuring some web shooters from OSCORP as in the comics he can't actually shoot webs from inside him as the 2002 misled you) after dropping into an abandoned wrestling arena and sees a mask on the wall which he models the suit after (there's some joke about him wearing spandex though). He then gets the girl (who happens to be the daughter of the police chief who called a city wide man hunt for Spider-Man) and in the middle of all this Dr. Curt Conners tries the lizard serum thing on himself and turns into a big mother trucking lizard. He gets his arm back though, that's a plus. Conners goes to intercept that one guy (who is of no real importance) that Peter ran into at OSCORP (he's trying to get human trials started with the serum Conners created) and the big mother trucking lizard. (I can't remember the next sequence of events very well) Peter heads back to OSCORP to check on Dr. Conners but sees that the mouse they injected with the lizard gene stuff has turned into a lizard thing and ate another mouse, he then gets news of something turning over cars on the Williamsburg Bridge and he rushes to their aide.
Spider-Man confronts the lizard thing and it scurries off somewhere while a man is begging Spidey to save his son who is trapped in a car Pete threw over the bridge attached to a strand of his web. He goes to retrieve the boy but the car catches on fire (don't know how that's fucking possible seeing as there was so spark). The kid is saved and the people now think of Spider-Man less as a guy in a unitard attacking civilians and more as a guy looking out for the people.
Now we move to Spidey trying to figure out who is the Lizard even though he's pretty sure it's Dr. Curt Conners. He makes a very intricate web in the middle of the sewer (he saw a bunch of lizards going down there and connected the two) where he waits for the Lizard to move (there's also an award for a picture of Spider-Man so he's rigged a bunch (or one, you can't really tell) to go off when certain strands of his web are pulled). When a bunch of small lizards start heading in one single direction, he gets ready to jump into action before getting attacked. Peter is thrown into the sewers and comes out and some random point while the Lizard looks at the back of one of the cameras and sees "Property of Peter Parker". Now the Lizard knows who Spider-Man is so he decides to take a trip upstream in the sewers to emerge from a toilet and to attack Peter Parker. There's a epic battle (and a very funny cameo for Stan Lee, love that guy) which results in the great hunt. The Lizard escapes and gets ready to release the serum in the form of a bio agent into the air of the greater part of NYC. And since the police are in pursuit of both Spider-Man and The Lizard they capture Spidey first. After a confrontation of the police chief and Pete he decides to reveal himself. The chief lets him go but not before one of his dumb ass officers shot him in the leg. Now Spidey has to travel across town with a bum leg and the clock is ticking.
But with the help of the father of the boy he saved on the bridge, several opportunities open for Spidey to travel. He gets to the tower the Lizard is currently climbing and THE BATTLE OF ALL BATTLES ENSUES. GWEN STACY IS MAKING THE ANTIDOTE, POLICE CHIEF STACY IS AIDING SPIDER-MAN BEFORE HE GETS GUTTED AND DIES, AND SPIDER-MAN SAVES NYC BY DISPERSING THE ANTIDOTE TO THE TOXIN TO ALL OF THE BIG APPLE(it was actually a very epic battle I'm just paraphrasing). There's a funeral (oh, and Mr. Stacy made Pete promise to stay away from his daughter seeing as heroes always have villains who wish to hurt what the hero cherishes most) and then some words spoken between Peter and Gwen, and then THE END. There's a credits scene where we see Dr. Curt Conners talking to somebody (or himself, he's probably crazy) in his cell. Yes, one of Spider-Man's villains actually survives this movie. But the important part is we definitely know from this credits scene that there is definitely going to be another Spider-Man movie in the near or not-so-near future.
Now onto the next page for my review!
