The Amazing Spider Man movie

Coming barely a decade after Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man, the "reboot" called The Amazing Spider-Man is clearly unnecessary and ought to be shunned for all kinds of reasons - chiefly to deliver a shock to the system of Hollywood execs whose primary job is finding merchandisable "franchises" and studio "tentpoles." But for all its underlying cynicism, the new Spidey picture is pretty damn good. The lesson should not be that lazy multiplex viewers and Comic-Con fanatics will pay to see anything with Marvel's name on it, but that first chapters - a.k.a. "origin stories" - are easier to make and more reliably fun. By the time part three of a blockbuster superhero saga rolls around, the lead ...