Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield (Jaimie Trueblood/Columbia Pictures)

“I know your name; I just wanted to know if you knew your name.”

In your typical coming of age movie, it’s the kind of line that would be said by the pretty, smart-alecky teenage girl to the teenage boy who doesn’t yet know his own strengths. In this coming of age movie, Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) is talking to Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield), and his answers to the eternal adolescent questions, “Who am I?” and “Why is my body changing?” have consequences beyond a Friday date. Superhero creation myths inspire moviegoers of all ages looking for a leader, but they particularly resonate with the teen set. The painful body transformation and the discovery and development of natural talents speak to a difficult process we all go through: growing up. Who doesn’t hope to emerge from their pimply, awkward cocoon a hero?

Marvel’s arachnid reboot has a lot of people asking, “Why?” If the particulars aren’t that different from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies, what’s the point? The cynical answer is money. But with different personalities behind the masks and a different director at the helm, old stories can become new again. As fresh actors breathe new and different lives into adaptations of Shakespeare, so different personalities can refresh familiar pulp characters. And as Peter Parker takes to heart a bit of wisdom passed on by an elder, The Amazing Spider-Man’s theme of identity recalls a piece of Shakespearean advice: To thine own self be true.

The set-up for super heroics takes time, but if finding your voice is the main thread of this new web, then a latex costume is the end, not the means. The movie patiently establishes Parker’s backstory, but it all feels integral to the plot: We are there when the young Peter Parker loses his parents, we see how the adolescent Parker falls low in the pecking order of Midtown Science High School, we are thrilled when the bullied becomes a hero. Is dealing with villains so far removed from dealing with the guy stealing your lunch money?

The Amazing Spider-Man is a story of science and the responsibility of the scientist, but also about basic human responsibility. We are not defined by our powers but how we use them, whether it is intelligence or the ability to dodge bullets and scale tall buildings with highly-developed webbing.

Rhys Ifans (Jaimie Trueblood/Columbia Pictures)

But the talented can be outcasts as well, and the Spider-Man story is that of an outsider. Tobey Maguire’s funny-looking Peter Parker was more of a permanent outsider. Andrew Garfield’s leading man looks make it a challenge to convey that same sense of vulnerability (and also to play a high school student when he’s pushing 30). But Garfield finds the self-conscious groove of a kid who has not yet grown into his looks and his gifts, and conveys the thrill of a kid from the outer boroughs who learns to conquer Manhattan, one skyscraper at a time.

This is the sophomore effort from director Marc Webb, whose debut was the indie rom-com (500) Days of Summer. That script suffered from a jumbled chronology that didn’t make an uninteresting plot any more interesting, and a severely underwritten Zooey Deschanel, whose defining traits as a character seemed nothing more than treating Joseph Gordon-Levitt badly and liking Ringo Starr. She had no apparent talent that I could determine, whereas Stone’s Gwen Stacy is smart, loyal and brave. Ifans seems a bit hemmed in by his role as a one-armed scientist gone saurian, but Martin Sheen and Sally Field shine quietly in minor roles as Peter’s guardians.

Spider-Man‘s script, by James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) with fine-tuning by Harry Potter veteran Steve Kloves and Alvin Sargent (who worked on Raimi’s Spidey movies), is perhaps most successful as a coming-of-age tale. It’s not without flaws, and the unpromising trailer focuses on one of them. It’s not very inspiring, or funny, to watch a bratty young hero just learning how to use his powers taunt a common thug. But this is just a small part of his character arc. The Amazing Spider-Man works as an action movie, but it works even better as that action is superimposed on the trauma of becoming an adult. A sequel is already in the works (stay tuned for a post-credit scene oozing with conspiracy); the kid still has some growing up to do, after all.

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The Amazing Spider-Man
Directed by Marc Webb.
Written by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves.
Rated PG-13 for teenage angst and nasty things that require the attention of a superhero.
Opens today at all the multiplexes.