The Amazing Spiderman was truly amazing

So, I just got back from the new Spiderman movie, free ticket because it's technically based on a book, meaning I can write a review on the movie for the magazine I write for.  It was AWESOME.  I really liked the original Spiderman movie from 2002, despite the fact that I was never really able to see Toby McGuire as Peter Parker.  He just didn't fit the part very well.  And his character was written COMPLETELY wrong on top of it to compensate for Toby's style of acting, and the eccentricities of the director Sam Raimi.  It was a fun movie with a great sequel, and a mediocre sequel, but at its heart it, in my opinion, missed the personality of the character completely, and felt a little cartoony.  Which is fine seeing as how it's based on a comic book and all.

The Amazing Spiderman felt a lot more realistic and gritty, like the Chris Nolan Batman movies as compared to the cartoony Joel Schumacher ones.  It felt a lot more realistic, the special effects WERE a lot more realistic because 90% of them were practical effects rather than bad CG, and they got Spiderman's personality right this time.  Spiderman has one real defining character trait, he's an insufferable smartass.  It's not a hard thing to mess up, but Sam Raimi managed to do it.  Andrew Garfield is SO much better as Peter Parker than Toby McGuire EVER was.  He fits the part so much better, and his American accent doesn't slip once in the entire movie (He's Irish).

After the first three Spiderman movies I was somewhat resigned to the fact that any Spiderman movie ever would be full of cartoony CG.  I saw a special on the making of this one last week on the syfy channel and they actually used very little in the way of CG.  There were a couple things that they found impossible to do, mostly with him fighting the Lizardman, but there were very few parts where I looked at it and said, yeah, that's CG right there.  The majority of the special effects were the actual actor in his actual Spiderman suit on cables with springboards and blue screens with actual aerial footage of the actual New York City matted into the background and it looks SO much better than the CG garbage we got in the first three movies.  Andrew Garfield trained for months to learn how to do all of the flips and stuff himself, because he didn't want to use a stuntman even though his face is completely covered half of the time.

This movie has probably the best Stan Lee cameo of any Marvel movie.

So yeah, if you like Spiderman, or would like to see a really fun action movie, totally go see The Amazing Spiderman.  It's got a lot more of a realistic feel to it than the previous movies, it has a lead actor that fits the part so much better, they got Spiderman's personality right, they got his web stuff right this time, and the special effects are amazingly realistic with very little CG.  Even the Lizardman was an actual guy in a suit for all of his closeups and for some of the action scenes too.  This was an all-around better movie than the original Spiderman.  Go see it, you won't be disappointed.   And stay about halfway through the credits for an Avengers and/or Spiderman 2 tie in scene.  It could go either way.  But considering that Andrew Garfield has already been signed for Avengers 2 I'd say probably Avengers.