This holiday weekend, there is more than one milestone celebrated by Transformers. For better and for worse, Sony brought back Spider-Man in a completely different form than Sam Raimi's trilogy. The two-movie franchise has found its own place in the superhero space, just not the one it intended. It was coming out at a time when reboots were still finding their footing and fans of Raimi's saga had been hoping for a replacement for Spider-Man 4. There were at least three remakes of Star Trek and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Well, the aforementioned Transformer. Despite all that, and coming a little over a month after the first Avengers movie took over the entire planet, Amazing 1 managed to get both solid reviews and a $758 million global box office, securing this Spider-Man's cinematic future. The CW-fictation of Spider-Man is what the Amazing Duology is all about. Is it possible that it was just called Spider? The director of 500 Days of Summer plays up the melodrama of Peter and Spider-Man in comparison to the director of Raimi's trilogy. Andrew Garfield's portrayal of the young Peter is more messy than Tobey Maguire's portrayal of the young Peter during the 2000s. With the way he talks and cracks wise with Emma Stone, the movie feels more like a romantic story about a superhero than a superhero story about a romance. There is a lot of angst and repetition for multiple CW shows because they fail to let lessons sink in. It's not so for a feature film, which is what doomed the second Spider-Man movie.
Garfield brings a lot of physical strength to the fights against the Lizard and looks great when swinging through New York, but he really shines when it comes to the angst behind the fights. He succeeds at feeling like he is constantly alone and just wants to connect with someone because of all the guff that is thrown at him. Even when we catch up with the character again in Spider-Man: No Way Home, he is still unable to shake off his mindset of being a teenager. He can't fully relate to Peter and his cinematic predecessor, who have gone through equally chaotic events as himself in their lives, as he winds up in the reality of the MCU. Tobey doesn't take the fact that Peter has to call him on it and give him a moment to be appreciated very seriously.
The most difficult of the three Spider-Man eras has to be the Amazing duology. In our current age of critically re-examining people and things we previously wrote off or hated it is the easiest way to win over people. Maybe we have become more tolerant of different takes on the superhero genre, or maybe this iteration of PeterParker just offers more to work with on a character level since prior to No Way Home, Holland's Peter could feel more like an audience POV fan. The two movies have found their audience, and their stars have continued to find success, regardless of the reason. There has been a lot of appreciation for Garfield since these films ended. Stone has built up a strong resume over the past decade and has been able to navigate the franchise game via Dreamworks. In the decade since, rising stars like Garfield, Stone, and DeHaan have been treated better by blockbusters, which has been good to see.
It wasn't clear how long the franchise would last even as it was getting off the ground. As they try to figure out how to sketch out their future in the superhero genre, Sony is aware of the fact that any former superhero actor could wind up coming back, something that they are actively aware of. The third movie in the Spider-Man series might stay as a "what could've been" instead of a "real" thing. When we last saw Peter, he was ready to go out and do the work again, but No Way Home left him feeling a bit lighter than when we last saw him. For a franchise that was at its best during the quieter moments, it's fine that the movie doesn't conclude with Peter getting the family he's always wanted.
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