Garfield plays a restless and reckless 'Spider-Man'

It’s impossible to avoid the comparisons, so we may as well just get them out of the way early so we can move on.

“The Amazing Spider-Man” — a reboot? Prequel? New chapter? It’s hard to decide what to call it — is pretty much different in every way from the staggeringly successful Marvel Comics-inspired trilogy that preceded it.

The basics are the same: A high school kid gets bitten by a scientifically modified spider, discovers he has newfound super powers, decides to use them as a vigilante crime fighter and takes to the streets of New York in an unforgivingly tight red-and-blue suit.

But in terms of tone, characters, performances and even visual effects, “The Amazing Spider-Man” feels like its own separate entity. It may not be as transporting or genre-altering an experience as those earlier films, especially the first two, but it finds a distinct voice. And a great deal of that has to do with the central performance from Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker.

In the hands of Tobey Maguire, who originated the role in “Spider-Man” a decade ago, Peter was nerdy, scrawny, insecure — that’s how his everyman relatability manifested itself. Garfield plays Peter as more of a misunderstood outsider, a rebel with a chip on his shoulder, a guy who wasn’t afraid to stand up to the class bully even before he underwent his transformation. And that slightly arrogant attitude gives the whole movie a restless, reckless energy and a welcome sense of danger.