One of the things that bothered me the most was he seemed really, really distant from Aunt May, not even doing much reaching out to her or mourning with her after Ben died, too big a deviation especially from the classic character and even to a lesser degree the Ultimate version.
I disagree. I felt this was completely in tune to their relationship in the Ultimate line, as there it was more Peter/Ben then Peter/May which is what this film presented early on.
Also, he was responsible for his death so it'd make sense why this Peter seemed distant in some regards. How can he face his Aunt when his actions inadvertently got his Uncle and her husband murdered?
Besides, there was enough present in the film that the two cared for one another, such as Peter covering her up with a blanket when she was passed out shortly after Ben's death, getting angry with her but then quickly realizing it and stepping away from her not to upset her further and then of course the ending where they shared a moment together after he battled The Lizard.
Those were fine adaptations but it felt like he wasn't mocked or bullied very much, more like he was much more often just ignored by his peers.
He got hit in the head with a basketball at the start of the film and was made to flinch by Flash and his crew, his locker was used for a couple making out, he tried standing up for a guy that Flash was picking on and got beat up by it, inviting cheers from the group of kids and even had his camera kicked around as they were walking by. He was clearly seen as a loser who was always to himself, which paralleled Amazing Fantasy 15 with him always doing something of his own where the rest of his peers were always commenting on him being a nerd or something like that.
That felt kind of inconsistent, there were moments of it and they were nice but they felt too isolated (I guess he just found the school science unchallenging and uninteresting, although at one point Gwen says he's second in the class but he doesn't come off that way, I guess that's OK but he seemed pretty uninterested and unapplying himself aside from Connors's specific studies).
That's a fair argument. However, to me, it parallels him being a kid. Some mornings you get in class and no matter how you're doing in the class, you're just not zoned in, just going through the motions, etc.
A lot of it also stems from Sony being Sony with a lot being cut, including Peter drawing out a HUGE equation with Connors and further showcasing his smarts instead of taking his dad's algorithm and writing it out on a piece of paper.
Either way, I'll definitely give you that argument.
I thought the death scene worked (and it's not something that makes Peter more unlikeable than the comics or Raimi film) but it should have been enough, or at least work better, for that inaction and its consequence to get Peter to be a general crimefighter (he even thinks of himself as such and claims to be protecting the innocent) rather than just try to get specific revenge.
This I can agree with to some degree. However, the intent of it was to push Peter through a wrong direction (despite him technically doing good) to be corrected and grow. This film in a lot of ways is one, big origin story.
In the Raimi films, comics, cartoons, etc. it was always just Ben dies, Peter decides to honor Ben's death by doing good and that's it. This was a more extended version of that to me and I thought it worked.