I was looking forward to Sam Raimi and company to get another kick at the Spider-man cinematic universe. The third Spidey film wasn't anyone's favourite of the series, though I didn't have an overwhelming hatred for it that many a nerd had. I think any mistake that the film had seemed thanks to the studio forcing in one too many villain and an unneeded love triangle aspect to the script. Too many characters and too much greed to sell a few more action figures. There was also no real wrap-up of a trilogy ending, which made me really want to see how this team would have wrapped things up if allowed to produce a fourth film.

Considering the box office success of all three films, you would have thought that something could have been hashed out for a fourth team-up. As far as I understand it, the confusing chain of event's was that Sam thought the script needed more work, Sony said there was no more time to work on a script, so they got rid of Sam and then spent an extra year or so re-assembling a creative team and new cast. Now, I'm no Hollywood mogul, but in that time could Sam not have just been given time to fix up his fourth Spidey film?

Alas it wasn't meant to be, and Sam has moved on to direct a new Oz film and produce a new Evil dead re-imagining. The Spidey re-boot found a new director in Marc Webb (who directed the excellent 500 Days of Summer), and a new Spidey in British actor Andrew Garfield.

Being a geek and a lifelong Spider-man fan, despite any hesitation or annoyance at another origin story, I was looking forward to the movie. I enjoyed the film very much, the actors all step up to their iconic comic book character performances, and Marc Webb and his fx team do manage to bring a few new things to the Spidey movie style.

It's only flaw is that no matter how good it is, now it is just another Spider-man movie. When Sam Raimi's original was released a decade ago, it was something new up on the big screen, it was a character that up until that point had been on the printed page or in mostly sub-par animation form. I'm not sitting on the edge of my seat and counting down the days til the fifth outing though. Having said that, any critiques at unoriginality aside, it was a very good film. I still can't help but geek out and enjoy fight scenes between Spidey and a giant lizard monster, and I still got choked up at the fate of Uncle Ben.

Seeing Spidey for the first time was exciting, seeing Spidey for the fourth time just isn't all that overly amazing anymore.