Why I love Andrew Garfield’s per­for­mance in The Amaz­ing Spider-Man

Super­hero movies: they can thrill you, amuse you and boy can they ever bore the pants off you. How many bring a tear to the eye, though? It might lack the grit of Christo­pher Nolan’s Dark Knight tril­o­gy or the wit of Ant-Man, but 2012’s The Amaz­ing Spi­der-Man is a com­ic-book romp that knows how to push all the right emo­tion­al but­tons. And it’s all down to star Andrew Garfield, who wears his heart on his sleeve, right next to those web shoot­ers, as Peter Parker.

As he’d pre­vi­ous­ly shown in David Fincher’s The Social Net­work, Garfield is an actor who always man­ages to raise a movie’s emo­tion­al bar. In the first of direc­tor Marc Webb’s two Spi­der-Man films, the British actor brings a real sense of teenage vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to the famil­iar boy-gets-bit­ten-by-mutant-spi­der sto­ry that he makes all that CGI web-sling­ing far more involv­ing than it has the right to be.

Webb’s aim was to dif­fer­en­ti­ate his reboot of Sam Raimi’s fiz­zled-out fran­chise by ground­ing it in the emo­tion­al real­i­ty that had char­ac­terised his quirky 2009 rom-com (500) Days of Sum­mer. What might it real­ly be like for an inse­cure, orphaned teen to devel­op arach­nid-aug­ment­ed super­pow­ers? Garfield sum­mons his vis­cer­al response by get­ting deep inside his role. ​“He hyp­no­tis­es him­self and he cre­ates a char­ac­ter that is filled with nuance. It becomes behav­iour,” Webb told Van­i­ty Fair.

In the film’s open­ing moments Garfield estab­lish­es Park­er as emo­tion­al­ly lay­ered and relat­able. His bean­pole build makes him seem ungain­ly and per­haps a lit­tle weak but he’s no wimp; he’s awk­ward around girls but not com­plete­ly hope­less, polite but a rebel at heart. In short, he’s the kind of strug­gling school kid almost any­one can iden­ti­fy with.

In mod­ern Hol­ly­wood cin­e­ma, dom­i­nat­ed by rapid close-ups, the eyes are where it’s all going on, and Garfield is a mas­ter of the under­stat­ed glance. In the scene where Park­er gets the plot rolling by find­ing his dead dad’s brief­case, he con­veys his con­flict­ing emo­tions with three brief looks. First, an accusato­ry stare at Uncle Ben (Mar­tin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sal­ly Field): why hadn’t they shown him this before? Sec­ond, a cut to his teary eyes express­es his grief for his lost par­ents. Final­ly, inter­mit­tent wide-eyed flash­es por­tray his excite­ment: might this brief­case answer his ques­tions about his par­ents and identity.

Such fleet­ing, uncal­cu­lat­ed ges­tures – a nar­row­ing of the eyes, an agog mouth – are the build­ing blocks of Garfield’s per­for­mance. Inside, Park­er is try­ing to keep his tur­bu­lent teenage feel­ings in check and these sub­tle sur­face flick­ers reflect that strug­gle. Out of con­text, that accusato­ry stare at his beloved aunt and uncle might not mean much, but hav­ing just seen him aban­doned by his par­ents as a nip­per and his sur­prise at find­ing the brief­case, we under­stand his resent­ment about being left in the dark. Garfield’s under­play­ing gives us just enough to fill in the emo­tion­al blanks, draw­ing us in deep­er by forc­ing us to use our imaginations.

Thus by the time Park­er is bit­ten and begins dis­cov­er­ing his pow­ers, you’re right there with him, feel­ing that same sense of release as he swings super­hu­man­ly round an aban­doned ware­house. Many of the best moments come as his pent-up emo­tions spill out: the teary argu­ment with Uncle Ben that pro­ceeds his mur­der; his tongue-tied attempts to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly tell girl­friend Gwen Sta­cy (Emma Stone) that he a) loves her and b) is Spider-Man.

But Garfield’s skill at keep­ing the view­er close pays off most when the film hits CGI over­drive. Because we’ve under­stood every move that’s put him into the Spidey suit, you feel his pres­ence whether the fig­ure swing­ing across the screen is real or a bunch of pix­els. As the action con­tin­ues, his expres­siv­i­ty and chat­ti­ness behind the hood (antic­i­pat­ing Ryan Reynolds in Dead­pool) and his ten­den­cy to rip the mask off when­ev­er he’s not required to hide his face keeps the dual iden­ti­ties neat­ly inter­twined. What dri­ves Park­er dri­ves Spi­der-Man: he’s the most nor­mal super­hero on the block. The mirac­u­lous result is that some­thing feels at stake amid the dis­ori­ent­ing spec­ta­cle of the film’s action sequences.

Nowhere is this clear­er than when he’s unmasked before Gwen’s NYPD chief father (Denis Leary). Sud­den­ly, he’s plain old Peter Park­er again with only his mixed-up teen emo­tions to fall back on. Quiv­er­ing rage gives way to watery-eyed resolve as he pleads with Leary to let him go and save Gwen from The Lizard (Rhys Ifans). In less­er hands, such a pro­longed emo­tion­al break from the action might not have worked, but under Webb’s direc­tion it pro­vides one of the high points of any Spi­der-Man film.

The rel­a­tive fail­ure of 2014’s The Amaz­ing Spi­der-Man 2 sad­ly brought Garfield’s reign to a pre­ma­ture end, but for a brief moment he gave us per­haps the most hon­est por­tray­al of Spi­der-Man yet.