Directed by Marc Webb
Written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto
Orci, Jeff Pinkner, and James Vanderbilt
Based on characters created by Stan
Lee and Steve Ditko
The first Amazing
Spider-Man movie looked like a step in the right direction for the
reboot. Its decompression of the origin events, addition of wit and
humor that had always been missing from the original trilogy, and
great use of a villain all made it a winner. And that all makes it
so disappointing to see it all fall apart so quickly in the sequel.
Peter Parker
(Andrew Garfield) is reeling from the events of the previous film,
but has also quickly become the people's hero as Spider-Man. But
things go bad as he has to deal with his fractured relationship with
Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), the emerging supervillain and Spider-Man
fanboy Electro (Jamie Foxx), and mysteries about his parents
connected with Oscorp.
There's a lot of
weak points here, but praise is deserved here for several points.
The action sequences are very well done, tightly filmed and with
excellent special effects. They're the easy high point of the movie
as a whole. There's also Jamie Foxx's performance as Electro/Max
Dillon. While there's problems with the writing that I'll get to,
early on, we see him as someone pathetically sympathetic, even as he
gets transformed. His scene of “attacking” Times Square shortly
after being transformed isn't this big first fight against the
villain, it's a sad moment of a normal guy who really doesn't want
the power he's suddenly stuck with. And finally, the score here is
excellent. The character's leitmotifs are done well, and the dynamic
nature means that triumphant Spider-Man swinging music gets suddenly
turned into heavy electronic beats when the villains come in.
But sadly,
nothing can fix the narrative problems here. The film doesn't really
move, it lurches around randomly. The first half of the movie even
feels completely different from the second half. None of the Oscorp
plotlines become relevant until later, and they just don't spark any
interest. Electro's interesting nature as a sympathetic villain
definitely seems like it could work, but his sympathies are lost by
the end. There's no “redemption equals death” or anything, he
just becomes a standard villain. The same goes for Dane Dehaan's
Harry Osborn, whose transformation from diseased boy with a father
he hates to outright villain is almost ridiculous. It even hinges on
Peter and Spider-Man being a jerk to him for no reason—not really
something you want out of him. And then there's the Gwen Stacy
subplot. You can literally hear the movie grinding to a halt any
time it stops to focus on Peter and Gwen's romance, which is
uninteresting, creepy (at one point Peter admits to stalking Gwen
while they were broken up, and Gwen just laughs at it) and poorly
written (this is a movie that actually contains the line “It says I
love you because I love you” with no irony). And as if that wasn't
bad enough, the chemistry never really hits between the two. Which
is weird when Andrew and Emma are dating in real life. Instead,
Peter and Harry have more sparks flying between them (and in all
honesty, would've explored a much more interesting dynamic that comic
fans haven't seen before).
ASM2's exciting
action scenes can't gloss over a story that's just plain badly
written. And when you compare this against the Marvel Studios
output, it gets obvious that Spider-Man already needs another reboot.
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