The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) Review: Garfield's Underrated Web

Introduction

This review is part of our Sony Marvel Universe Hub - every Sony Spider-Man, Venom and Marvel film ranked and explained.

Here is the honest truth about The Amazing Spider-Man: the internet was wrong about this film, has been wrong about it for over a decade, and Andrew Garfield’s appearance in No Way Home finally gave people permission to admit it. Marc Webb’s 2012 reboot arrived five years after Spider-Man 3 left the Raimi trilogy in ruins, and critics and audiences were not in the mood. Too soon. Unnecessary. A cash grab. The discourse was set before the film even opened.

Rewatch it now and the discourse looks lazy. The Amazing Spider-Man is a sharper, more emotionally honest origin story than Raimi’s first film. Garfield’s Peter Parker is the best version of the character ever put on screen - skater cool, awkward in exactly the right ways, wisecracking under pressure in a way that actually matches who Spider-Man is supposed to be in the comics. And Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy is not a plot device. She is a fully realised person, and the chemistry between the two of them is so genuinely electric it borders on uncomfortable to watch - because you know how the story ends.

This is a 7/10 film. The villain is weak, the third act rushes, and the studio fingerprints are visible on the missing-father subplot that goes nowhere. But the core of it - Garfield and Stone, Webb’s instinct for intimate character moments, the surprisingly smart handling of Peter’s adolescent grief - is genuinely excellent. You should have watched this already. If you have not, fix that.

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The Peter Parker Problem - and How Garfield Solved It

Every Spider-Man film lives or dies on its Peter Parker. The suit is the easy part. Get Peter wrong and the whole thing collapses, because Spider-Man’s superpower is not the web-slinging or the wall-crawling - it is the fact that he is a kid from Queens who is permanently, structurally out of his depth, and keeps going anyway.

Tobey Maguire played Parker as soft and earnest, which worked for Raimi’s more theatrical, heightened New York. The problem was that Maguire’s Parker never quite landed the comedy - the banter, the trash-talk inside the mask - and Spider-Man without wit is a different, lesser character. Garfield understood this. His Peter Parker is not the bullied, bumbling nerd of the comics’ early pages; he is something more interesting: a kid who is brilliant and awkward and cool in ways that do not fit the social architecture of high school. He skateboards. He back-chats authority figures. When he puts the mask on for the first time and takes the suit for a test run, the joy on Garfield’s face lands because you believe he is genuinely having the best time of his life.

The origin story here makes different choices from Raimi’s. The death of Uncle Ben lands harder in this version - not because the filmmaking is more technically accomplished, but because Garfield plays the guilt differently. Maguire’s Peter responded to Ben’s death with resolve. Garfield’s Peter responds with something messier and more honest: a mixture of rage, shame, and the deeply adolescent logic of using a superpower as a weapon to process unresolved grief. He spends the first act hunting muggers not to be a hero but because it makes him feel less helpless. That is a smarter read of the character, and it makes the eventual turn toward actual heroism feel earned rather than inevitable.

Marc Webb’s previous feature before this was 500 Days of Summer - a relationship drama with almost no action sequences whatsoever. Sony’s decision to hire him for a superhero tentpole looked, on paper, like a category error. In practice it was the shrewdest call they made. Webb does not shoot action like a director who grew up loving action films. He shoots it like someone who cares primarily about how people are feeling during the action, which turns out to be exactly right for Spider-Man.

Narrative Architecture: The Boy Before the Mask

The plot follows the familiar beats. Peter is bitten during an unsanctioned visit to Oscorp, develops his abilities, and encounters Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), a scientist whose self-regeneration obsession leads him to become the Lizard. The villain is the film’s thinnest element - Ifans brings genuine intelligence to Connors in human form, but the CGI Lizard is more obstacle than antagonist. Webb compensates by keeping the drama grounded in relationships: Peter and Gwen, Peter and his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen, who makes every minute of his screen time count), and Peter and Captain Stacy (Denis Leary, doing reliable gruff-authority work with more warmth than expected).

For dads specifically: there is a thread running through this film about absent fathers and the weight of legacy that lands differently once you have children of your own. Peter’s search for his parents is deliberately left open, but the way Martin Sheen plays Uncle Ben as a man trying to prepare a boy for a world he does not yet understand is one of the film’s quietly affecting elements. The great-power-great-responsibility scene is handled with restraint rather than portent, which makes it land harder than the more famous Raimi version.

The Gwen Stacy Effect: Webb’s Real Achievement

Here is what Marc Webb actually got right, and what no other Spider-Man film has managed to replicate: a central romance that functions as a real relationship rather than a plot device.

Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy is not a prize or a motivation. She is the smartest person in several rooms, she knows Peter’s secret from relatively early in the film, and she actively participates in solving the central crisis rather than standing somewhere waiting to be rescued. Stone and Garfield had already begun dating during production, which created a lived-in ease that no amount of coaching could manufacture. The coffee-shop conversation. The bedroom window scene. The argument about whether Peter should keep his promise to her dying father. These scenes do not feel like superhero-film romantic filler. They feel like two people who actually like each other, fumbling through something they did not expect to find.

This matters for the franchise in a broader sense. The emotional weight of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - and of Garfield’s return in No Way Home - is built entirely on the foundation Webb and Stone lay here. If you do not believe in this relationship, the sequel’s climax does not work. Webb earns the emotional credit in this film that the next one spends.

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Craft: Webb Shoots New York Like He Means It

Webb is not a visual director in the way Raimi is - there is no Evil Dead-trained camera expressionism, no Dutch angles deployed for gothic effect. What he brings instead is a composer’s sense of rhythm and a rom-com director’s instinct for the intimate moment inside the spectacle.

The New York cinematography by John Schwartzman is notably grounded. The city feels like a city, not a backdrop. The first-person web-swinging sequence - a brief GoPro-style shot from Peter’s point of view as he swings through Manhattan for the first time - remains one of the franchise’s most effective sensory moments. It lasts perhaps twenty seconds and communicates the physical joy of what these superpowers would actually feel like better than any elaborate CGI set piece in the film.

The action choreography deserves more credit than it received. Webb works to develop a fighting style for this version of Spider-Man that emphasises improvisation and physical intelligence: Peter uses his web not just as transport but as a tactical tool, setting traps, creating geometry in three dimensions. The high school fight sequence early in the film - where Peter has not yet put on a suit and is just instinctively dealing with a group of bullies using his new reflexes - is one of the cleanest pieces of action direction in the entire Sony Spider-Man catalogue. It is funny, it is specific, and it tells you everything you need to know about who this version of Peter Parker is.

The film’s best scene, though, is not a fight. It is the subway car sequence where Peter, having just discovered his abilities are amplifying overnight, tries to work out what is happening to him on the commute home from school. He accidentally shreds a passenger’s jacket with his adhesive hands, triggers a brawl when the man objects, demolishes the interior of the carriage with accidental super-strength, and ends up dangling from a rail with a girl’s shoe stuck to his face. It is perfectly staged slapstick that also communicates exactly what it feels like to have your body do things you did not ask it to do. Any parent who has watched a child navigate the chaos of adolescence - the growth spurts, the mood swings, the running into doorframes at new heights - will recognise the joke immediately.

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Is The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) worth watching?

Yes, more than its reputation suggests. Andrew Garfield is an excellent Peter Parker, Emma Stone is terrific as Gwen Stacy, and Marc Webb brings real emotional texture to the origin story. It rates a 7/10 and deserves a second look from anyone who dismissed it in 2012. The internet’s verdict was too harsh and No Way Home has given people the context to see that.

How does Andrew Garfield compare to Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man?

Different strengths. Maguire nailed awkward, earnest Peter Parker for Raimi’s more theatrical, heightened version of New York. Garfield plays a cooler, skater-kid Peter who is wittier and physically more convincing as a street-level hero. The right answer depends on whether you want dramatic weight or kinetic energy - both are valid interpretations of the same source material.

Do you need to watch The Amazing Spider-Man before No Way Home?

Not strictly required, but the emotional payoff of Garfield’s scenes in No Way Home hits considerably harder if you have watched both Webb films first. His reaction to saving MJ - the moment his own Gwen Stacy could not be saved replayed with a different outcome - only lands at full weight if you have the backstory. Do the two-film run first.

Is The Amazing Spider-Man suitable for kids?

Rated PG-13 for action violence and some intense sequences involving the Lizard. Kids aged 10 and up should handle it comfortably. Younger children may find the Lizard transformation scenes unsettling - the creature design is more genuinely reptilian and threatening than most MCU villains, which is actually one of the film’s better qualities for older viewers.

Where does The Amazing Spider-Man fit in the Sony Marvel Universe?

It is the first entry in the Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield continuity, which runs through The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and culminates in Garfield’s emotional return in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). These three films form a complete arc - incomplete as a self-contained trilogy, but one of the more emotionally coherent through-lines in the entire Spider-Man franchise.