The New Spiderman

Ten years ago when the first Spiderman was released I was finishing up my first year at Snow College. I loved the movie and developed an instant crush on Tobey Maguire (this was before I had matured and realized that tall skinny guys with beards is where it's at). The sequel was better than the first and I listened to the soundtrack on repeat for months. The day I graduated with my Bachelor's my mom, sister and I saw Spiderman 3 and it was awful.

When I heard they were considering a fourth installment with (no longer attractive) Tobey Maguire I balked. When I heard they were instead going to make a reboot, only 5 years after the last one, I was openly skeptical. But then they announced Andrew Garfield as Spidey. Swoon. I developed a crush on him after The Social Network. He has kind of amazing hair. Just sayin'.

My mom, sister and I saw The Amazing Spiderman on the Fourth and it was great! It was of course better than the third  Spiderman, but also great entirely on its own. The transformation of Peter Parker into Spiderman is done really well, with a nice backstory/mystery of Peter's parents and what happened to them. Peter's love interest is Gwen Stacy instead of red-headed Mary Jane Watson and I like the switch up. I know it's a departure from the comics, but I like that Gwen knows Peter's secret and they work together to stop the Lizard. I do not like love triangles and I hope they keep it out of subsequent films.

Garfield is really great with the emotional scenes; when he's trying not to cry my heart melts. When Peter is trying to ask out Gwen I squirm with him. He also plays Peter  less as a nerd-nerd and more as a cool-nerd. The action is great too, as director Marc Webb tried to stay away from CGI as much as possible. The Avengers might be more dazzling and wham! bam!, but The Amazing Spiderman is just as good. I look forward to the following films.