127. The Amazing Spider-Man

Title: The Amazing Spider-Man
Genre: Action, Fantasy, Thriller
Year: 2012

Summary: A young Peter Parker discovers his father Richard's study has been burglarized by an unknown thief. Gathering up hidden documents, Peter's parents take him to the home of his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, then mysteriously depart.

Years later, a teenaged Peter attends Midtown Science High School, where he is bullied by Flash Thompson and has caught the eye of the beautiful Gwen Stacy. At home, Peter finds his father's papers and learns he worked with fellow scientist Dr. Curt Connors at Oscorp. Sneaking into Oscorp, Peter enters a lab where a "biocable" is under development from genetically modified spiders, one of which bites him. On the subway ride home, he discovers that he has developed spider-like abilities.

After studying Richard's papers, Peter visits the one-armed Connors, reveals he is Richard Parker's son and gives Connors his father's "decay rate algorithm", the missing piece in Connors' experiments on regenerating limbs. Amazed by the formula Peter gives, he asks Peter if he would visit him again in his lab after school, to which Peter agrees. Connors is being pressed by his superior, Dr. Ratha, to devise a cure for the terminally ill (but unseen) head of Oscorp, Norman Osborn. In school, Peter gets into trouble after a basketball challenge with Flash in which Peter accidentally shatters the backboard glass. He is rebuked by his Uncle Ben that he had to change work shifts in order to meet with the principal and asks Peter to replace him walking home with Aunt May that night. Peter deliberately ignores Ben's order and helps Connors regenerate the limb of a laboratory mouse. When he comes home, Uncle Ben is angry at Peter for not picking up Aunt May and leads into an argument, and then Peter storms out of the house to the streets. At a nearby grocery store, the clerk disallows him a drink for being two cents short, and when a thief suddenly raids the store, Peter indifferently observes and lets the thief escape in exchange for revenge on the store clerk. While searching for Peter, Uncle Ben attempts to stop the thief but is killed. The thief flees as Peter finds Ben dead on the sidewalk and mourns for his death. Then, as he and Aunt May are informed about the killer, Peter realizes it was the thief he should've stopped from the grocery store.

Afterward, Peter uses his new abilities to hunt criminals matching the killer's description. After a fall lands him inside an abandoned gym, a luchador-wrestling poster inspires him to create a mask to hide his identity. He adds a spandex suit and builds mechanical devices to attach to his wrists to shoot a biocable "web". He apprehends many criminals, but does not succeed to find the real killer. Peter accepts a dinner invitation from Gwen, where he meets and has a tense conversation with her father, police captain George Stacy, over Spider-Man's motives. After dinner, Peter reveals his identity to Gwen and they kiss.

After seeing success with the mouse using lizard DNA, Ratha demands Connors begin human trials immediately if Osborn is to survive. Connors refuses to rush the drug-testing procedure and put innocent people at risk. Ratha fires Connors and decides to test Connors' serum at a Veterans Administration hospital under the guise of a flu shot. In an act of desperation, Connors tries the formula on himself. After passing out, he awakens to find his missing arm has regenerated. Learning Ratha is on his way to the VA hospital, Connors, whose skin is turning green and scaly, goes to intercept him. By the time he gets to the Williamsburg Bridge Connors has become a violent hybrid of lizard and man, tossing cars, including Ratha's, over the side of the bridge. Peter, now calling himself Spider-Man, snatches each falling car with his web-lines, saving Ratha and including a boy he saves from a burnt car.

Spider-Man suspects Connors is Lizard after seeing his science work at his lab and unsuccessfully confronts the creature while tracking him in the sewers. Lizard learns Spider-Man's real identity via the name on an abandoned camera and follows Peter to school where they fight. In response, the police start a manhunt for both Spider-Man and Lizard. The police corner Spider-Man and Captain Stacy discovers that he is really Peter. Lizard plans to make all humans lizard-like by releasing a chemical cloud from Oscorp's tower, to eliminate the weaknesses he believes plague humanity. Spider-Man eventually disperses an antidote cloud instead, restoring Connors and earlier victims to normal, but not before Lizard mortally wounds Captain Stacy. Before his death, Captain Stacy requests Peter promise to keep Gwen safe by staying away from her. Peter initially does so, but later at school after he learns about making promises he is unable to keep, he suggests to Gwen he may see her after all.

In a post-credits scene, Connors, in his prison cell at a mental asylum, is approached by a mysterious, unseen man in the shadows who asks if Connors told Peter the truth about his father. He replies, "No", and demands Peter be left alone before the man disappears.