3) The Amazing Spider-Man
This is a movie that seemed to suffer from people’s expectations and foregone conclusions before it was ever released, which is fair because that’s the way these things work. In theory, it was destined for dismal failure, coming out just ten years after the last Spider-Man chronicled Peter Parker’s origin story, and did a respectable job of doing so. What was worse is that the publicity before the film’s release hinted at something of a twist on the origin story, and yet when actually faced with the reality of what ended up in the movie, it was pretty much all origin, no twist. Selling someone on this in description only would have been impossible. And it has been impossible. I’ve tried.
What it needs to be sold on is the incredible skill of the directorial hands of Marc Webb, the perfect embodiment of the protagonist by Andrew Garfield, the predictable likeability of Emma Stone, and the wider collaborative effort that made this movie a vast improvement over the 2002 version, in terms of tone, action sequences, dialogue scenes, everything. It made Peter Parker seem much more like a real person, gave him more emotional motivation and paid off these motivations in a more satisfying way, partially because he was more sympathetic thanks to Andrew Garfield’s utter adorableness.
It was also able to do far more visually interesting things than Sam Raimi’s version, which I liked. But all that is hard to talk about before seeing the movie, let alone before it even gets made. I do know that at this point, I’d trust Marc Webb with any material he chooses to take on.