My impression of the critics crying foul about The Amazing Spiderman re-hashing old territory is that a full on reboot wasn't actually necessary. The modern Spiderman universe has been fleshed out by major blockbuster movies and we don't need to retread that territory. It would have been totally plausible to "continue" the story started with Raimi's films, introducing us to Garfield's Spiderman as fully fledged character. People would buy the actor changes; audiences swallow way more ridiculous things than that, after all. I've got to say that I agree with this sentiment. I haven't seen TAS yet, and part of that is because I don't want to see dweeby Peter Parker get bitten by a spider and have to flummox his way through web slinging in what I can only assume is a very fast paced montage in which minor slapstick elements are employed to increasingly lofty string music as he figures his shit out and then gets a speech from Uncle Ben and meanwhile fumbles his way through trying to cop a feel from a girl who, lets face it, is way out of his league and, assuming this is a high school on planet earth, would probably not really acknowledge his existence, all things being equal.
I dunno, maybe this reboot is aimed at the generation below mine who weren't really able to see the first couple Maguire Spiderman films, but I can't help but feel that a lot of time was surely wasted developing characters and a story that everyone not only already knows but has seen within not-too-distant memory. Wouldn't it have been better to jump right into the fray, introduce some cool villains right off the bat, and have more bad-ass Superhero v. Villain brawls? Of course, I really disliked the previous Spiderman trilogy - I thought the first was just OK and the next two went WAY downhill from there - so maybe getting a clean slate is what the series needed after all.
