It’s time for another swing though the city with everyone’s favorite web-swinger, Spider-Man. Once again directer Marc Webb, who brought us the previous 2012 reboot/remake/reimagining, The Amazing Spider-Man, brings back Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Sally Field for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Adding to the mix this time around: Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan, and Paul Giamatti. Peter Parker runs the gauntlet as the mysterious company Oscorp sends up a slew of supervillains against him, impacting on his life. He must stop the craze fixated Electro and the new threat of the Green Goblin before they destroy everything he holds dear.
There is no denying it, we are living in the golden age of comic book movies. Hell, they’re now almost considered their own genre. And most of them are huge, over priced special effects box office blockbusters where the stakes are high and everything explodes. There’s nothing wrong with that, at all. But the movies still run the gamut of results in the fair mix of successes or failure. With The Amazing Spider-Man 2, there was lots of promise and hope, but ultimately it has way too many issues to make it what it could have been, and just keeps in right where it should be, just a good action flick and not the best Spider-Man movie to date.
With saying that though, the movie has tons of positive things about it. But most of them have to do with character development and things we love from the comic. The positives do outweigh the negatives for sure, but the negatives become so glaring that it’s hard to ignore them once they happen. And the fault of that mostly has to do with the director, Marc Webb, and the screenwriters of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, Transformers). It felt like everyone was way too greedy in what they wanted in the movie. There’s just too much going on that doesn’t have to do with the main plot. Now, it’s not story heavy like Spider-Man 3 by any means, but it very well could have been.
There are too many sub-plots going on, which drag down the main story: Peter’s brooding time, Peter’s continued search for answers about his parents, Harry Osborn coming back into his life, his relationship with Gwen and his Aunt May, trying to be Spider-Man and Peter and have a life too, and so on. There’s only so much time we can spend on some of these themes, and it seems the filmmakers didn’t know which to cut, so they kept them all in. It starts to feel like the pieces to a puzzle that wont fit together properly. Rather than mixing up the tones and themes, they just hope it all comes together in the end like a neat little bow. It does not.
But what does work is the talent of this cast. The returning actors, Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Sally Field, are all great. There are many scenes between them that will break your heart. These are some of the finest actors working together. Every scene Peter has with Aunt May is wonderful. Sally Field is the perfect choice for this role. Emma Stone is Gwen Stacy. She is the girl next door that Peter and the audience fell in love with in the comics. She is seamless. If anything can be said, it’s that Marc Webb knows how to get great performances out each one of these three actors. They’re worth the watch of the movie alone.
Adding newcomers to franchise can be tricky, and here the filmmakers did a decent job, it’s not great, but for a comic book movie it works. We have Jamie Foxx as the Electro. They massively change his origin from comic to screen, it works for the story they have crafted here, but it’s not great. And Foxx looks menacing and has some good qualities being the bad guy, but he more of less comes off as a second villain when he’s billed as the main one.
The introduction of the Green Goblin, a name which they never use, is forced and really only there for future movies. Dane DeHaan is the weak link of the film. He’s just creepy, and not in the good way for a villain to be. His whole portrayal of Harry Osborn is off putting. His becoming the villain happens so fast that you have no time to get used to it. It feels like the filmmakers didn’t want to give him time to become a character, they just hoped for you to remember him from those others films, and that’s why he’s a bad guy. Also, why bring in Chris Cooper as Norman Osborn in basically a cameo for no other reason than to be like, “Look! It’s Chris Cooper.” It could have been worse, they could have hired a great actor with an evil looking goblin face and then covered it up with a green robot suit… oh wait.
It’s clear that the filmmakers and studios have a plan, because all this movie does is set up that next wave of films. There are five villains in this. Five! Now only three actually become “super villains” but they introduce so many just for the possibility for future projects that the movie ends up becoming a showcase for future things instead of focusing on what they have right in front of them now. Example: Paul Giamatti as the Rhino. He has two scenes and barley five minutes on screen. He’s another set up for later movies. As is when we see all the weapons in the “super secret evil bunker”: Doctor Octopus’s arms, Vulture’s wings, etc. They even introduced Felicia Hardy, who later could become the Black Cat, but there’s absolutely no need to keep giving us more future villains while leaving the ones in the movie out in the cold. At the end of the movie, it’s unclear who was the real villain of the movie. I’d say time was the most vicious villain of all.
The special effects are flawless. But almost to a fault. There are full scenes where you know for a fact you’re not watching any actors. It might have well been a CGI animated movie. Looks great, but very noticeable. Especially the swinging though the city scenes, which are so jarring that if you have any kind of motion sickness issues, do not see this in 3D, you will be sick.
Also very jarring is the music. The score Hans Zimmer did was fine, but all the contemporary cool hip-hop and hipster music they use feels so out of place. It’s another example of the filmmakers trying to have their cake and eat it too. Clearly Peter Parker likes hipster emo rock, as evident in the movie where he listens to his iPod and rocks out to it. So to have heavy hip-hop beats later are way out of place, especially when they’re used whenever Electro does anything at all. It’s used in an almost stereotypical fashion, it’s not insulting, but it does make you stop and go “hmmm”.
As stated, the positives out weigh the negatives, but mostly due to the great character choices being made by the actors. If you’re a comic fan, the beautiful moments between Peter/Gwen and Peter/Aunt May are almost a perfect depiction of how they are in the comic. Those are the scenes that stand out the best in the flick and remind you why Peter Parker/Spider-Man is to date one the greatest comic book heroes. If you know comic book history, you know this movie can only end one way. At least it can’t be said at least one of the writers read a comic at one point. But needless to say, there are some amazing emotional scenes that make up for the mess of the script, some damn fun action and Spidey moments. This is a good movie, definitely better than the first one, but still has a long way to go before it’s a great movie.