Garfield adds welcome sense of danger as ‘Spider-Man’

It’s impossible to avoid the comparisons, so we may as well just get them out of the way early so we can move on.

“The Amazing Spider-Man”: A reboot? Prequel? New chapter? It’s hard to decide what to call it as it is pretty much different in every way from the staggeringly successful Marvel Comics-inspired trilogy that preceded it.

The basics are the same: A high school kid gets bitten by a scientifically modified spider, discovers he has newfound super powers, decides to use them as a vigilante crime fighter and takes to the streets of New York in a red-and-blue suit.

But in terms of tone, characters, performances and even visual effects, “The Amazing Spider-Man” feels like its own separate entity. It may not be as transporting or genre-altering an experience as those earlier films, especially the first two, but it finds a distinct voice. And a great deal of that has to do with the central performance from Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker.

In the hands of Tobey Maguire, who originated the role in “Spider-Man” a decade ago, Peter was nerdy, scrawny, insecure. Garfield plays Peter as more of a misunderstood outsider, a rebel with a chip on his shoulder, a guy who wasn’t afraid to stand up to the class bully even before he underwent his transformation. And that slightly arrogant attitude gives the whole movie a restless, reckless energy and a welcome sense of danger.

At the helm, Marc Webb is a very different sort of director. He may not have sounded like the most obvious choice for a hugely anticipated blockbuster based on his only previous feature, the romantic comedy charmer “(500) Days of Summer.” His big set pieces may lack some of the imagination that director Sam Raimi brought previously, but they’ll do. More important, though, he conveys an emotional truth, a pervasive sense of humanity.

Webb’s deft touch is especially clear in the scenes between Garfield and Emma Stone as Peter’s classmate Gwen Stacy, who has to be the cutest science geek on the planet. Stone and Garfield have a sweetly flirty chemistry. But there’s depth and sensitivity there, too, since she’s the only one who knows his secret for a long time.

The script from James Vanderbilt, Steve Kloves and veteran Alvin Sargent begins when Peter was a boy. A sudden threat forces his parents to leave him with his Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field) before disappearing forever. As Peter grows into a teenager, he begins to ask questions about who they were, especially his mysterious scientist father (Campbell Scott).

This brings him to the gleaming high-rise where his father’s former partner, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), is deeply involved in some groundbreaking, and unproven, genetic research. When Connors finally tests his latest formula on himself, the results don’t exactly turn out the way he (or the unsuspecting residents of Manhattan) might have hoped. The destruction he causes in his altered state, and Spider-Man’s attempts to stop him from causing even more, provide the basis for the film’s obligatory noisy showdowns.

Which brings us to the use of 3-D: “The Amazing Spider-Man” didn’t need it. Webb barely applies this de rigueur trick but he never puts the technology to its fullest use to make you feel immersed in this world.

Basically, the 3-D feels like an attempt by the studio to sling more summer moviegoing dollars into its web.