ultimately, it could have easily been a continuation of the raimi series as opposed to a reboot. new directors, new writers, recasting - it happens all the time. if they had handled it the right way it could have been injected as an 'untold tale' of peter's high school days after 'the bite'."The Amazing Spider-man" definitely lived up to its adjective. The only issues I have with it are the re-hashing of his origin, the paraphrasing of "With great power comes great responsibility" and the fact that the only thing SONY/Columbia Pictures liked from the Raimi trilogy was the way Peter apparently made the Spidey costume out of used red and blue basketballs.
It was filmed in 3-D, not converted, so it's worth the extra scratch if you care. Especially for the first-person webslining shots.
I also forgot one other sticking point - Peter Parker was just a little too cool. Peter doesn't get yelled at by the principal for skateboarding in the school hallways - he only gets yelled at for missing and/or sleeping in class because he spends all night getting the crap kicked out of him by animal-themed crooks.
which brings me to the re-hashing the origin thing again. it was unnecessary to show 'the bite' in 'real time' again. it could have been handled in a flashback, sort of like how the 'spectacular spider-man' animated series started with peter's first summer vacation from high school after the bite. we still get flashbacks to it, but we're already in the action, he's already spider-man.
as for paraphrasing "with great power comes great responsibility" - i don't know why it was modified. it was paraphrased well, but it stuck in my craw because it just wasn't right. not as bad as uncle ben saying "rise above" in the godawful musical, but still... maybe they thought it was hokey?
the costume pattern design didn't bother me as much as it initially did. it looks 'correct' enough, even if there are some extra red stripes and some odd parts that shouldn't be blue. but the texture... it's annoying for two reasons - one, because it's basically just a more extreme version of the first costume, with raised webbing (thankfully not metallic) and bumpy cellular structure. like i said, it looks like it was made out of used basketballs. second, the fact that the same technique has been used on EVERY FUCKING SUPERHERO MOVIE since the first spidey. if it's not leather or body armor, it's bumpy rubber with some sort of cellular structure motif. enough already, come up with something new. i mean they did the same thing in 'superman returns' (as well as the forthcoming 'man of steel'), 'fantastic four' and 'green lantern'.
as for peter being a little too cool, it was really that one scene where he's skateboarding in the hallway for a second and a half before being yelled at - but it's early in the movie and is basically a character-establishing shot. then there's a handful of scenes where he's teased/picked on. for the most part andrew garfield hits the right tone of 'socially awkward' but there were a few instances where he swam dangerously close to "high functioning asperger's".