PLOT
A young Peter Parker discovers that his father Richard Parker’s study has been burglarized. Peter’s parents gather hidden documents, take Peter to the home of his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, and then mysteriously depart and never return.
Years later, a teenage Peter attends Midtown Science High School, where he is bullied by Flash Thompson, and has caught the eye of Gwen Stacy. At home, Peter finds his father’s papers, and learns his father worked with fellow scientist Dr. Curt Connors at Oscorp in the field of cross-species genetics. He also discovers his parents were killed in plane crash and that’s why they never returned. Sneaking into Oscorp, Peter enters a lab where a “biocable” is under development from genetically modified spiders, one of which bites him. He later discovers he has developed spider-like abilities, such as super-strength, sharp senses, reflexes, agility and speed.
After studying Richard’s papers, Peter visits the one-armed Connors, reveals he is Richard’s son and gives Connors his father’s “decay rate algorithm”, the missing piece in Connors’ experiments on regenerating limbs. Connors is being pressed by his superior, Dr. Ratha, to devise a cure for the dying head of Oscorp, Norman Osborn. In school, Peter is exposed after a basketball challenge with Flash, in which Peter accidentally shatters the backboard glass. His uncle changes work shifts to meet with the principal, and asks Peter to walk May home for him that night. Peter forgets to do so, distracted while at Oscorp helping Connors regenerate the limb of a laboratory mouse. At home, he and Ben argue, and Peter leaves. At a nearby deli, a cashier refuses to let Peter buy milk when Peter is two cents short; when a thief suddenly raids the store and Peter allows him to escape out of revenge on the cashier. While searching for Peter, Ben attempts to stop the thief, and is killed by a gunshot. The thief escapes as Peter finds Ben dead on the sidewalk. Peter realizes than if he had apprehended the thief, Ben would still be alive.
Afterward, Peter uses his new abilities to track down criminals matching the killer’s description. After a fall lands him inside an abandoned gym, a luchador-wrestling poster inspires him to create a mask to hide his identity. He adds a spandex suit and builds mechanical devices to attach to his wrists to shoot a biocable “web”. He also discovers he can climb up walls like a spider. Later, at dinner with Gwen’s family, he has a tense conversation with her father, police captain George Stacy, over the new masked vigilante’s motives. After dinner, Peter reveals his identity to Gwen on the roof, and they kiss.
After seeing success with the mouse using lizard DNA, Ratha demands Connors begin human trials immediately. Connors refuses to rush the drug-testing procedure and put innocent people at risk. Ratha fires Connors and decides to test Connors’ serum at a Veterans Administration hospital under the guise of a flu shot. In an act of desperation, Connors tries the formula on himself. After passing out, he awakens to find his missing arm has regenerated. Discovering that Ratha is on his way to the VA hospital, Connors, whose skin is turning green and scaly, goes to intercept him. By the time he gets to the Williamsburg Bridge, Connors has become a violent hybrid of lizard and man, tossing cars, including Ratha’s, over the side. Peter, now calling himself Spider-Man, snatches each falling car with his web-lines.
Spider-Man suspects Connors is the Lizard and unsuccessfully confronts the creature in the sewers. The Lizard learns Spider-Man’s real identity via the name on an abandoned camera and follows Peter to school, where they fight again. Police start a manhunt for both Spider-Man and the Lizard. The Police corner and capture Spider-Man by tasing him. They take off his mask and Captain Stacy discovers that Spider-Man is really Peter. The Lizard plans to make all humans lizard-like by releasing a chemical cloud from Oscorp’s tower, to eliminate the weaknesses he believes plague humanity. Gwen infiltrates Oscorp and creates a cure. Spider-Man then eventually disperses an antidote cloud instead, restoring Connors and earlier victims to normal, but not before the Lizard mortally wounds Captain Stacy. Before his death, Captain Stacy tells Peter that he was wrong about him and that the city needs him. However, knowing Spider-Man will always have enemies and that Peter is Spider-Man, requests Peter promise to leave Gwen out of both of his lives, in order to keep her safe. Peter initially does so, but later at school, suggests to Gwen he may see her after all.
Normally I don’t give away mid or post-credit scenes, but since it’s been eight years, and it never went anywhere…
In a mid-credits scene, Connors, in a prison cell, speaks with a man in the shadows who asks if Peter knows the truth about his father. Connors doesn’t know, and demands that Peter be left alone, before the man disappears.
REVIEW
When the movie was first announced, I was actually kinda intrigued with what this new movie could bring, and the previews were really hype me up. And in the end that’s all it was, hype. Andrew Garfield, had an unusual portrayal of our favorite science major, in that half the time, you wouldn’t think he was a science major (unless you see him chatting with Doc Connors). Then there’s his quest to find Uncle Ben’s murderer, it’s starts off as a relevant plot point, but gets dropped by the time Captain Stacy shows up. Really the only things the movie had going for it, was the chemistry between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone (as well as her portrayal of Gwen Stacy), the performances from Dennis Leary, Sally Field, and Martin Sheen. As well as one of the best scores by James Horner. Overall, this movie just hasn’t aged as well as I hoped.
RANK: 3 out of 5
As I mentioned in the intro, I already tackled TASM 2, so next, we look at the official start of the Sony Marvel Comics Universe: Venom
The Cutting Room Floor 