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Comparisons with Director Sam Raimi’s Spiderman trilogy are inevitable and suffice to say there is more than a qualitative difference between them. Directed by Mark Webb, this new blockbuster 3D reboot covers familiar Spiderman ground. Motivated by vengeance at first this Peter Parker is not just a vigilante with an identity crisis. Andrew Garfield as Parker/Spider-Man more than ably pulls off the startling duplicity of innocent nerd/superhero he is completely believable – the weight of loss and guilt are credibly carried off. Clever devices are scripted to bring authenticity to the character, particularly Parker’s joyous discovery of his new found powers expressed with his skateboard along with his maturing sexual attraction to classmate Gwen (Emma Stone). Stone is pitch perfect opposite Garfield and the power of suggestion is curbed only by the film’s PG rating. If there isn’t another film in the works for these two, there should be.

But this is a film about a super hero, and there is no coincidence that our favorites are mostly human — Bat-man,  Super-man, Iron-man and yes of course Spider-man. Parker is a bit of a curiosity in the super hero world. He’s not a business magnate with a huge ego (Ironman), an alien with extraordinary powers who discovers and embraces humanity (Superman) or a complex of psychosis and vendetta driven behavior (Batman), but rather a boy becoming a man who discovers that his gifts come with responsibility. He’s uncomplicated, vulnerable to more than just kryptonite and bruise-able, and certainly not warped. His universe is only complicated by the all too human task of discovering “who he really is” weaving his own metaphoric web on the path to some sort of self discovery.  All of us live with our metaphors, and our heroes not surprisingly have the most peculiar.

And the anti-hero/villain in this Marvel Universe, who by all indications in the mid-credits epilogue, will be more fully developed in a sequel, is not only a scientist gone mad but one himself missing a limb and intent on curing all of humanity’s imperfections. That his methods involve currently topical genetic modification is no surprise and the film points up the assumption of science and technology  to improve our human lot. It takes our hero to defeat the impulse to wipe out that which makes us truly strong in all our humanity: our vulnerability.