ChainsawAsh said:
It helped that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone were dating IRL while making those movies.
That's no guarantor of onscreen chemistry, as lots of listicles have chronicled over the years. IMO, Stone is definitely a better actress than Dunst, and is better than what I've seen of Zendaya so far, and Garfield is definitely a better actor than Maguire, and likely better than Holland also, though Holland is so dang distractingly cute it's hard to tell. Also, I maintain that
ASM1 Gwen is the most layered and believable heroine in any live-action Spidey movie thus far, so it's no surprise that I consider their romance the best - another point in
ASM1's favor.
Holland and Zendaya are super-cute together, no complaints there, but apart from her odd persona, I don't feel that I know much about her MJ yet at all. I
am glad to just now learn, however, that her MJ is not actually Mary-Jane Watson, because I'm all for mixing things up in these endless reboots, and not recycling names for brand-new, otherwise entirely different characters just because one can. (Yes, having her be named MJ rather obscures that, but, oh well.)