I was always sort of take-it-or-leave-it where the DC heroes were concerned: saw most of their movies. liked some. But the Marvel U was where I lived as a kid, and one of my great moviegoing pleasures ever was seeing Raimi finally bring the real Marvel magic to the big screen; that experience can't be displaced or replicated, and that will always be my big-screen Spider-Man.
That said, I enjoyed Amazing Spider-Man for the most part. Much has been made of the chemistry between the leads, and it's no joke: it's always tempting to dismiss these on-set romances as some press agent's dream, but it's actually hard to imagine anyone working closely with these two kids and NOT falling in love. I've enjoyed Garfield's work since Red Riding (and my sister raved about him after seeing Salesman when she was in New York), and I thought he knocked this out of the park, particularly since a lot of the obvious "puny Parker" cues are missing from the script. Stone's as funny and adorable as she usually is, though the script misses a big opportunity: when Capt Stacy makes Peter promise to keep away from Gwen, and keep her out of danger, the choice not to follow through with that should have been hers (i.e., no one gets to make those decisions for her), rather than Peter's, but I'm glad we're not going to have to spend the sequel watching them slowly get back together.
The changes to the "official" mythos don't seem that much more drastic than most adaptations; I think that they stand in sharp contrast to Raimi's more faithful integration of them, though, which will understandably rankle much of the faithful.
Thought the action stuff was fine (I was a bit disappointed there wasn't more of the Spidey POV stuff, though: not that it was groundbreaking or anything, but it was an interesting approach). Wonky moments here and there, of course, but nothing that really took me out of it.The last act is choppy and does go on a bit, and I agree that the score is hideous (though it's possible that I'm being influenced by the fact that it sounded as though every trailer I sat through was using the exact same beats as Horner's score, so I was already sick of it before the movie started).
Not The Avengers by any means, and not anything I'd put in place of Raimi's first two. But I think it'll do well on the strength of Garfield and Stone, and I don't have a problem sitting through it again with friends next weekend.
