When I first heard that Hollywood was remaking Spider-Man so soon after the original trilogy I was very sceptical, it sounded to me like they were running low on new ideas so decided to re-use an old one purely because they knew it would make them a lot of money. It appears I wasn't far wrong. Though I do appreciate the attempt to make this new film more like the original comics, for instance making Peter's love interest Gwen instead of MJ and leaving out Harry as Peter didn't meet him until college, I believe that there were still gaping mistakes in the movie. The most obvious for me is that Gwen's father was killed by Dr Octopus in the original comic books, not The Lizard. While I understand that to have used Dr Octopus as the villain would have been repetitive as he was included in the previous trilogy I still believe it renders the supposed point of making the new films utterly moot. A secondary flaw with the plot, for me, was that 12 year-old Gwen Stacey had achieved the position of Head Intern at the multi-billion dollar company Oscorp, no 17 year-old in the world would have a job like that, if for no other reason than lack of qualifications. This may seem a very insignificant detail to prey on, but I feel that if that much time and money is going to be invested then problems like this shouldn't exist, it's just laziness as much as anything else.
Having not read the original comics, I can't say whether this was originally written as her job, but if it was then it simply means I blame Stan Lee and not the script writers. Another negative is that I also preferred McGuire's portrayal of the superhero, he possessed a geeky, innocent quality which worked brilliantly when playing the role of Peter, especially for science nerd Peter, whereas Garfield had a more edgy, rebellious look about him, he looked more like a cunning villain than a confused, newly radioactive teenager. Overall, the film is watchable, but this is mainly due to the fact that Spider-Man is a well-known and lovable character, however, when dissected, it is clear that this standard of plot would have no success if it wasn't for the classic adventurer.