THE
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN
A young Peter Parker is playing hide-and-seek with
his scientist father when he discovers his father's study has been broken into.
His father, Richard, gathers up hidden documents, and Peter's parents take him
to the home of his Aunt May and Uncle Ben then mysteriously depart. Years
later, a teenage Peter attends Midtown Science High School, where he is bullied
by Flash Thompson and has caught the eye of Gwen Stacy. At home, Peter finds
Richard's papers, and learns his father worked with fellow scientist at OsCorp.
Faking his way into OsCorp as one of a group of high-school interns, Peter
sneaks into a lab where extremely strong "biocable" is being created
from genetically modified spiders, one of which bites him. On the subway ride home,
he is shocked to find strange spider-like abilities manifesting.
After studying Richard's papers, he visits the one-armed Connors at
home, 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. Connors is being pressured by his superior, Dr. Ratha, who
needs Connors to devise a cure for the dying, unseen head of OsCorp, Norman
Osborn.
In school, attempting revenge on Flash, Peter gets in trouble, forcing
Uncle Ben to switch a work shift in order to meet with the principal; he tells
Peter to pick up May tonight for him. Peter later meets Connors at OsCorp, and,
ignoring a call from Ben, sees the limb-regeneration formula work on a
laboratory mouse. When Peter returns home, Ben scolds him for having neglected
to pick up May. Peter storms off, and Ben searches for him. Ben confronts a
thief who has just robbed a deli where Peter had just been. As Ben and the
thief wrestle over a gun, Ben is killed. The killer escapes as Peter runs to
his uncle.
Afterward, using a police sketch, 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.
Later, he adds a spandex suit for mobility and inadvertently becomes a folk
hero. He accepts a dinner invitation from Gwen and meets her family, including
her father, police captain George Stacy.
Ratha says Connors must begin human trials immediately if Osborn is to
survive. Connors refuses to rush the drug-testing procedure and put innocent
subjects at risk. Ratha fires Connors and says he will test Connors' serum at a
Veterans Administration hospital under the guise of flu shots. Desperate, Connors
tries the formula on himself, and after passing out and awakening finds his
missing arm has regenerated. Learning Ratha is on his way to the VA hospital,
Connors, whose skin is growing scaly and green, goes to intercept him. By the
time he gets to the traffic-jammed Williamsburg Bridge, Connors has become a
superhumanly strong hybrid of lizard and man, tossing cars, including Ratha's,
over the side. Peter, now calling himself Spider-Man, saves each fallen car
with the biocable "web" he fires from mechanical devices on his
wrists.
Spider-Man suspects Connors is the Lizard, and unsuccessfully
confronts the Lizard in the sewers. The Lizard learns Spider-Man's real
identity and attacks Peter at school. The police hunt both Spider-Man and the
Lizard, with Captain Stacy learning Spider-Man's real identity. The Lizard
plans to make all humans lizard-like by releasing a chemical cloud from
OsCorp's tower. Spider-Man eventually disperses an antidote cloud instead,
restoring Connors and some earlier victims to normal, but not before the Lizard
fatally claws Stacy. The dying Stacy makes Peter promise to keep Gwen safe by
staying away from her. Peter initially does so, but later decides to see her
after all.
In a scene during the end credits, Connors, in a prison cell, appears
to speak with a man who asks if Connors told Peter the truth about his father.
Connors replies, "No" and demands he leave Peter alone before the man
mysteriously vanishes.
