Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone starred in 2012’s Spider-Man reboot, a young-adult romance billed as ‘a superhero movie for the Twilight generation’.
How do you reboot Spider-Man, Marvel’s biggest character, after Sam Raimi’s popular blockbuster trilogy? For Columbia Pictures and director Marc Webb, the answer came from a mix of comics from the 1960s run right up to the 21st-century Ultimate Spider-Man, as well as the prevailing cinema box-office trends of the time.
Taking the franchise back to the origin story, The Amazing Spider-Man hit cinemas in 2012, both the 10th anniversary of Raimi’s Spider-Man and 50th anniversary of the character’s comic debut. The other big superhero-centric movies of the year were The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and Chronicle.
Young-adult (YA) fiction adaptations like The Hunger Games were also making waves at the box office. The Amazing Spider-Man landed in the summer between the two concluding chapters of The Twilight Saga, Wrapping the story of Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), 2012’s Breaking Dawn Part 2 became the highest-grossing film in the franchise.
Contemporary reviews of Webb’s film called it “a Spider-Man movie for girls” (Madame Web could never!) and there are definite nods to the Twilight generation in the film’s conception and tone.
Superficially speaking, it’s a high-school romance story in which a moody guy with superpowers and unruly brown hair courts a girl whose dad is a cop. He also comes to her bedroom through the window at night and despite their mutual attraction, he repeatedly warns her he’s no good for her romantically. These connections are easily drawn.
Added to this, Pattinson was also reportedly on the studio’s original casting wishlist for Tobey Maguire’s replacement as Peter Parker. Over time, this list expanded to various once-and-future YA movie stars, such as Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games), Alden Ehrenreich (Beautiful Creatures), Frank Dillane (Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince), and Logan Lerman (the Percy Jackson movies). But it also included English actor Andrew Garfield, who was officially cast in July 2010.
Joining the cast as Peter’s first love Gwen Stacy in October 2010, Emma Stone bucks a trend in superhero movies by being an unusually active female lead. She — not our hero — is the top student in their class, working an Oscorp internship when she’s not at school, and she’s introduced saving a pre-spider-bite Peter from a beating by school bully Flash Thompson (Chris Zylka).
It’s only a shame that the Spider-Gwen comic series didn’t come along until 2015, because given just a little massaging, the first act of this as filmed could be the first act of a Spider-Woman movie instead. Spider-Gwen later appeared in the excellent animated Spider-Verse movies. Her origin story, in which Peter becomes the Lizard instead of Spider-Man, was adapted in the prologue of 2023’s Across The Spider-Verse.
As it stands, Peter and Gwen’s relationship is central to The Amazing Spider-Man, which takes its name from the original Spider-Man comic title and adapts elements of its story arcs in the 1960s and 1970s for a modern YA audience.
Spider-Man remains the protagonist, so with its marketing focus on “the untold story”, the secrets around the lead guy and his mysterious family become a motivator for Peter himself more than Gwen. For all that this needs to be a different Spider-Man movie, it hardly breaks the mould.
The first hour of The Amazing Spider-Man is still given over to retelling the tragic death of Peter’s uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Peter’s subsequent turn to vigilantism. “With great power comes great responsibility” is a mantra that bears repeating, but Webb’s film tries to distinguish the reboot instead and the message gets muddled.
The sub-plots revolve around Peter’s mentor Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) becoming a monster and some vague hints about the Parkers’ family history, but the best aspect of The Amazing Spider-Man is unquestionably Garfield and Stone’s megawatt screen chemistry.
Like Pattinson and Stewart, the two stars wound up dating in real life after this — which also happened with Maguire and Kirsten Dunst in the original trilogy and Tom Holland and Zendaya in the MCU reboot. But to give credit where it’s due, Webb’s experience directing (500) Days Of Summer helps in making their scenes pop — never mind the spider-themed surname!
It helps that they’re also more cheerful than the Twilight leads ever got to be. As seen in 2021’s crossover Spider-Man: No Way Home, Garfield is funny and charming even when tasked with playing Peter as a vindictive skateboarding loner. Stone’s performance is full of indelible moments like her blinding grin when she learns she’s the only one who knows Spider-Man’s identity. The scene ends with Gwen watching adoringly as he hurls himself off a rooftop and gulping: “Oh, I’m in trouble”.
