What is the difference between Spider-Man (2002) and The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)?  Simply put: the word “amazing.”  By this same logic, I suppose I would not have to point out what makes Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) unique.  I am, of course, being facetious.  Outside of the fact that they are all about the same character, though, according to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), existing in divergent dimensions, there are some things that make each unique.  Count me among the confused when in 2012, or whenever it was I learned of it, I heard that Marvel was making The Amazing Spider-Man with a whole new set of actors.  While I found the result to be mostly fine, I still never completely understood the move.  Recently, I have seen interviews with Tobey Maguire, who did the first three installments, who said the studios had been preparing for a fourth.  And then in The Amazing Spider-Man, we got Andrew Garfield as everyone’s favorite web slinger.  I do not think Garfield and Maguire appearing in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) helped matters.  Then, in my latest viewing of The Amazing Spider-Man, I noticed MCU architect Kevin Feige’s name listed as an executive producer.  Suddenly, things begin to make sense.  I hope the same goes for this review.

We get a different tact from previous entries with the beginning of The Amazing Spider-Man when an adolescent Peter Parker (Max Charles) stumbles upon his father’s, Richard Parker (Campbell Scott), office after it had been broken into by apparent burglars.  Richard enters shortly thereafter and immediately packs up his son and wife, Mary Parker (Embeth Davidtz), taking Peter to stay with the boy’s aunt and uncle, Ben (Martin Sheen) and May Parker (Sally Field).  Mary and Richard are in a hurry to leave the country, but along with their son, Richard leaves a briefcase in the care of his brother and sister-in-law.  Mary and Richard are never heard from again.  Peter grows into a high school teenager (Andrew Garfield), nerdy, but also into skateboards and photography.  He is also willing to stand up to bullies like Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka), who Peter finds holding a classmate upside down and shoving the victimized kid’s face into a slice of pizza.  This attempted act of heroism, which ends with Peter getting punched in the face, is witnessed by Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone).  They seem to harbor an unsaid crush on each other, with her commenting on the brave but stupid gesture.  The blow Peter suffered is noticed at home by Uncle Ben and Aunt May.  Peter attempts to explain it away by saying he fell on his skateboard, but Uncle Ben knows better.  Uncle Ben points out the evidence of a right hook while they are doing some cleaning in the basement.  It is while rummaging through some old items that Peter finds his dad’s briefcase.  Taking it upstairs to his room, in addition to the pictures of Richard with Oscorp’s Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), he also discovers a hidden compartment in the bag.  Inside are a number of documents, and scrawled on one piece of paper is an equation.  Wanting to get to the bottom of what looks like a mystery, the next day Peter decides to travel to the Oscorp building in Manhattan.  Posing as an intern to gain access to the labs and hopefully speak to Dr. Connors, Peter gets swept up in a group of young hopefuls being led by Gwen.  She notices Peter, but decides to let him stay.  During their tour, they are introduced to Dr. Connors, who comes out to talk about his work with cross species genetics.  Shortly thereafter, Peter manages to sneak away, following an Oscorp executive holding a folder with the same symbols as his dad’s secret folder.  Doing so brings him into a room full of genetically enhanced spiders busying themselves with making webs.  They scurry at his entrance, one of them landing on the back of his neck where he is bitten.  If you are at all familiar with Spider-Man lore, I think you know what this means.  While Peter begins to learn the extent of his powers, he also develops a close working relationship with Dr. Conors, eventually sharing Richard’s algorithm.  The scientist believes it key to unlocking genetics and curing every ailment known to man, like his missing right arm, by using the innate abilities of various animals.  So engrossed does Peter get with assisting Dr. Connors that the high schooler forgets one night to help Aunt May get home from work.  When Peter returns to the house, he finds an angry Uncle Ben waiting on the porch.  Peter cannot understand the gravity of the situation since Aunt May is unhurt, and decides to walk away.  Uncle Ben goes looking for him and is tragically murdered by a convenience store robber whom Peter could have stopped.  Peter blames himself, and is not comforted when Gwen tries to talk to him.  Instead, he starts fighting crime as a way of trying to locate the man who killed Uncle Ben.  Doing so brings Spider-Man to the attention of the police, specifically Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary), Gwen’s father.  Captain Stacy sees the wall crawler as nothing more than a vigilante that needs to be brought to justice.  Meanwhile, Dr. Connors is told by Oscorp that he needs to move to human trials of the serum he is developing, or risk being fired.  Thus, he injects himself.  He hopes to regrow his right arm as a lizard would when it loses its tail.  This is the initial result, but soon he is turned into a giant reptilian bi-ped, with his brains intact though clearly addled, but also with the strength of a large animal.  Peter learns of this new menace after a dinner at Gwen’s house when he argues with Captain Stacy about Spider-Man.  Proceeding Gwen and Peter kissing on the roof, and him revealing his secret identity, he hears the chaos being caused by The Lizard.  As an aside, Peter does an appalling job of keeping others from knowing his alter-ego because Dr. Connors learns of it, too.  Captain Stacy finds out when his police briefly capture Spider-Man on his way to face the Lizard at the Oscorp building.  From there, the Lizard intends to disperse a cloud over the city that will change the city’s inhabitants into reptiles.  Captain Stacy ends up helping Peter stop the Lizard, but dies in the process.  Before his last breath, Captain Stacy makes Peter swear to leave his daughter out of Spider-Man’s life.  This last only until the end credits.

One of the familiar refrains from most of these films is Uncle Ben’s admonition: “With great power comes great responsibility.”  In The Amazing Spider-Man, it is rendered a little differently.  This Uncle Ben tells his nephew, “If you can do good things for others, you have a moral responsibility to do so.”  As a practicing Catholic, I prefer this last version.  It speaks more to how the Church teaches people to behave.  The first and foremost duty of every Christian is to have a relationship with God.  That is the beginning, middle, and end of a good Christian life, though as long as one starts and continues to earnestly pursue Him, it does not matter what stage of life in which you begin.  It is from the true seeking of Him that everything else flows.  If you have your Faith centered in this manner, doing good for others is not some kind of imperative as it is cast in the movie, but should come as innately as breathing.  That does not mean that it is going to be perfect, and Peter’s journey shows in a fantastical way (one might call “amazing. . . .”) the challenges the enemy can pose.  We see it first when Peter stands up to Flash.  Yet, after Uncle Ben’s death, Flash offers a kind word to which Peter does not react well.  Flash remarks on Peter’s angry outburst, saying that it feels good to hurt people.  These tests can lead in two directions.  Either we agree with the Flashes of the world, and allow ourselves to get vengeance because we have the might to do so.  Or, we can relent and learn.  Doing good does not involve indulging our violent fantasies, but having the wisdom to know how and when to use our God given talents to help those in need.  It is in this light that the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, as he is often referred to as, probably outshines all others.  He sees his responsibility in a more personal way, and it fuels his drive to keep going out there and slinging webs.

Speaking of webs, The Amazing Spider-Man probably has the most appropriately named directors for one of these movies: Marc Webb.  Outside of this, I am not sure how this one stands out from the other forty-seven, or whatever, Spider-Man flicks.  There is nothing objectionable about it, but neither is it original.