A little information about how I felt upon hearing the news that they were already rebooting the Spider-Man franchise a mere 5 years after the last Spidey film. I thought it was a horrible idea and completely unwarranted. Way too soon. Let the franchise collect some dust and give fans and people in general time to adjust to a new cast replacing the old one or you are just begging to have the inevitable comparisons and they usually aren't favorable to the new cast.

Well, I finally got my hands on this one tonight. Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down? This is definitely Two Thumbs Up. Immediately I knew I was going to like The Amazing Spider-Man just based on the color palate with it's muted tones. Lots of blacks, grays and monochrome which automatically grounds this in "reality" which makes it more inviting to get sucked into the world. The one thing that I really can't stand about most Superhero films and the original Spider-Man franchise is one of the biggest offenders is the candy colored palate that SCREAMS "I'm a comic book movie, look at meeeeeeee". I just love how this film looks.

Okay, visually this looks awesome and the special FX are fantastic, but what about the new cast? I was undecided on the newcomer to the role of Peter Parker / Spidey. But watching Andrew Garfield in the title role, he won me over. Honestly, he is so much better and perfectly cast here and makes for a far more realistic and engaging Peter Parker / Spidey. The movie as a whole just showed a lot more range and depth when it came to human emotion that the other 3 films struggle a lot with. Also, the writing here is way better in depicting a more realistic teenager with new found powers, both as Peter and as Spider-Man. I also dug the casting of Emma Stone, Martin Sheen and my favorite, Sally Field.

I'm the first to admit at being surprised at how much I dug this reboot. From the outset I thought this was doomed. I was wrong. Very wrong. This is definitely worth a Rent if you haven't seen this yet. Fantastic movie and a fun thrill ride. I will explain later why I didn't give it a perfect 5 Stars. It might be obvious as to why. I'll just let you chew on that for awhile.

So does this movie make you reevaluate the first series? I mean do the Sam Rami/Toby McGuire versions seem different now?

I'm seriously hoping that ASM follows the "mad scientist" arc and gets us the Man-Spider and Carnage rather than re-do the Green Goblin arc (which i know is a given given Gwen Stacy, but come on!)

Who would you cast as Carnage if I can ask?

...you know what?  Now I can TOTALLY picture him as Mojo... presuming I know who Mojo is, the dude who rules his own universe like it's his TV channel?  Can't you picture him in a fatsuit making crazy suggestions?  "Hey!  I wanna se those guys fight those guys and maybe throw a banana in there!  Yo know who that is?  That is former President Gerald Ford!  Hey, where's my apple pie!?"