9 Ways The Amazing Spider-Man Almost Turned Out Awesome
They very nearly didn't need Marvel's help.
The Amazing Spider-Man is now officially over. Andrew Garfield is a former Peter Parker, The Sinister Six will never assemble (at least not with Dane DeHaan at the head) and you'll never have to suffer through Electro's dub-step soundtrack again.
Across two films, Sony managed to take the once most popular superhero in the world and turn him into a bland establishment that life-long fans couldn't give a toss about. After The Amazing Spider-Man 2 under-performed, the studio were so desperate they went running to Marvel involved, and thus the hero will be rebooted yet again in next year's Captain America: Civil War (if not in another movie before).
It's not an overly surprising run of events. The whole sub-franchise was built on Sony's desire to retain the character (they have to make a new film every few years, or the rights revert back to Marvel) and once it was off the ground they seemed more concerned with building a multimedia empire than delivering good Spider-Man movies.
The depressing thing about all this is that Sony oh so nearly made it good. They had a talented director, a central cast with actual chemistry and Spider-Man 3 as a show of how to not do it. In fact, at multiple points during the development processes of the two movies, Sony actually had the opportunity to turn in something worthy of the "Amazing" title, but squandered it for some reason. Money probably.
These aren't vague fan wants either (there's no solving Uncle Ben's murder or cutting down the number of villains here), but actual ideas that almost made it to the screen in the two The Amazing Spider-Man movies.