Amazing Spider-Man has happened. This was the movie that made me believe in hopes and dreams and super-hero movies again. We had some dark times with Superman reboots, Batman reboots (which I loved, but dude, dark) and of course, all but the first three X-men movies.

Now we have come to the Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone era. Take a deep breath, and just enjoy the moment.

Another origin story film. We needed to see Uncle Ben die again for some reason, except, spoiler alert, he’s even more lovable than the last Uncle Ben. Sigh**

Gwen…oh thank the LORD we get Gwen now. And she’s not a blithering idiot. She smart and focused and wonderful. I love her for telling Flash off. I love her for telling Peter off. I love her for staying at the lab even when she’s in mortal danger to help save the world. She is her own brand of superhero.

I think, for this movie, all the Marvel execs got together with the writers and said, “Let’s just get a kid in here and beat the ever living crap out of him as much as possible and have him still get up and save the day. Kay? Can we make that happen?”

Poor Peter. He’s kicked a lot in this particular show. One thing we really learn though, is that guns and physical violence will not clear up all the crimes in this world. For that you need, state of the art science labs, serums, cross-speciation super powers, really cool suits, unlimited financial resources and guns and physical violence. Keep it real, folks. There’s good out there if you dig deep.

The villian is massively brilliant in this one and I hate to see him go bad. He has a goodish heart. It’s nice that there’s only one of him to keep track of though.

Not an enormous fan of Sally Field as Aunt May. I mean, she turns in a beautiful performance but my favorite two Aunt Mays are the first and third. This is Marvel’s fault for giving us so many to choose from.

Love this story, love the writing, love the more realistic feel they went with. So sad at the end, as per usual. I liked the switch up from “With great power comes great responsibility.” To “Your father always believed that if you could do good for someone, you had an obligation to do it.” (That’s straight outa the Bible, by the way.)

Enjoy the next chapter of the Spiderthon! We’ve made it to the good ones.