(SPOILERS FOR FIRST FILM AHEAD)
The Amazing Spider-Man 2:
Two years after the end of the last film, Spider-Man/Peter Parker is doing good for himself. He's graduating high school (even though Andrew Garfield is like 30), he's in a relationship with Gwen Stacy, he's fighting crime, and he's going to be in college. Unfortunately, he still feels the need to resolve the mystery of his parents' deaths, as well as reconnect with an old friend: Harry Osborn, the estranged son of sick and dying Oscorp founder Norman Osborn, who has just moved back to the Big Apple. He also feels the need to address his guilt for pretty much getting Gwen's father (the police captain) killed by the Lizard in the last film. While all this is going down, a new villain arises: Electro. Once a sad and incredibly lonely electrical engineer named Max Dillon (who was also obsessed with Spider-Man), Electro become a being of pure electrical energy after being involved in a horrific accident at Oscorp. Realizing he's been stepped on by everyone in his life and that no one's ever cared about him (including Spider-Man), Electro uses this new found ability to wreck havoc in New York. Spider-Man has to stop Electro from destroying the city, figure out what to do about his troubling relationship with Gwen, deal with the corrupt and manipulative Oscorp, and unravel the mystery surrounding his parents' demise. Now, I will say I enjoyed this film far more than the first film. However, and I know I'm going to get shit for this: I liked Spider-Man 3 more than this movie. I really did. This movie has some big issues. First, the acting: For the most part, I actually liked Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker. He's a bit hipster-ish for my tastes, but he actually did far better this time around than before. I still prefer Tobey Maguire, though. Jaime Foxx was actually really good as Elector. For a guy as suave and cool as Foxx is, he actually plays the pathetic, sad, lonely weirdo role really well. I was kind of creeped out by Max Dillon at some parts, but also felt a lot of pity for him, because he's such a sad and weak person, and you do feel bad seeing him get stepped on and/or ignored by everyone in his life. And as Electro, Foxx was actually pretty threatening and tragic. Electro's new, blue look also worked out way better than if they attempted the classic yellow-and-green suit from the comics. Emma Stone is an okay actress, but here, as Gwen Stacy, I just wasn't feeling it. It's not that she was bad, just very...generic. I feel like anyone could have played her. Sally Field is great as Aunt May. Just a very caring, concerned person. Again, not as good as Rosemary Harris in the Raimi films, but Field pulls the role off. Dane DeHaan (Chronicle, The Place Beyond the Pines) is sort of a mixed bag in this film, something I was surprised by, considering how good he's been in previous films. He's an okay Harry Osborn, and he comes off as more intimidating than James Franco did (although I still really like Franco's Harry). Also, Garfield and DeHaan's friendship didn't feel as genuine as Franco and Maguire's did. In the originals, you really felt like these guys had been buddies for quite some time, and they has their bad spots, but they remained friends for almost the whole trilogy. DeHaan and Garfield are just kind of awkward together. It felt very forced. Okay, this kind of counts as a Spoiler, so just letting you know (even though they show it in trailers and publicity photos): Harry becomes Green Goblin near the end (Goblin actually gets less screen time than Venom in Spider-Man 3), and although the look is cool, I thought he was hamming it up a little too much. Just a tad. I wasn't really pleased with how they fucked with the comic book mythos when it come to the Goblin, and Norman Osborn, and why Harry hates Spider-Man. Speaking of which, Chris Cooper is pretty good as Norman... for the two minutes of screen time he gets! Seriously, why underplay such a big fucking character?! I can say for sure I would take Willem Dafoe's performance over this one any day. Paul Giamatti has a very small role as the Rhino in the movie (seriously, why is he even on the poster?). He basically plays a laughable cartoon character. You can't take anything he does seriously as a threat because he's so over-the-top and cheesy. Giamatti openly acknowledged he purposely over-did his Russian accent and was just having fun being so bombastic. Felicity Jones has a small role as Felicia, Harry's secretary and personal assistant (Felicia is the Black Cat of the comics). Colm Feore appears as Donald Menken, a douchey and corrupt member of Oscorp's board. Marton Csokas plays Dr. Kafka, a psychiatrist as Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane. A female ally of Spider-Man in the comics, here the character is male and is portrayed as this weird, over-the-top, effeminate, mad scientist who experiments on Electro. Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz appear as Peter's parents Richard and Mary. B.J. Novak (The Office, Inglorious Basterds, Saving Mr. Banks) has a borderline cameo role as Alistair Smythe. Denis Leary cameos as George Stacy in a few hallucination sequences. Stan Lee makes a cameo as an astonished attendee of Peter's graduation. Michael Massee cameos as the mysterious "Man in the Shadows" from the last film. The supporting cast, such as Feore, Scott, and Novak do fairly well jobs for their small roles. Now, one of the main problems I had with this casting is that, like I said, a lot the actors either did bad or just okay. That's pretty fucking awful compared to your competition: perfectly cast Avengers, amazing Christopher Nolan Batman performances, and impressive Man of Steel acting. On another note: Initially, I thought the CG was gonna be a problem for me. From the looks of the trailer, it looked like something out of a PS4 game, not a live-action movie. But on the big screen, it actually looked really cool. The visuals were vibrant and colorful, and the action sequences were fast-paced and never felt cluttered or confusing like in Michael Bay movies. Many of my favorite scenes were in this category: the first encounter with Electro in Times Square, the chase between Spider-Man and the Rhino, the intense opening on a plane, and the final fight between Spider-Man and Electro and Green Goblin. However, there were also many scenes which just pissed me off a lot, like the montage of Peter searching for clues about his parents set to the song "Gone, Gone, Gone" by Phillip Phillips, which is one of the strangest uses of a pop song in a movie in recent memory. The song is so upbeat and catchy, and the scene should be more emotional. It's just kind of...off. I feel like in a decade or so, people are gonna look at that scene as the thing that dates the movie. It feels like a scene more fit for (500) Days of Summer (which Webb also directed) rather than this film. Speaking of music, the score by Hans Zimmer, The Maginficent Six, and Pharrell Williams is very bland and forgettable, save for the cool techno/dub-step Electro theme ("Paranoia"/"My Enemy"). That scene where they first play that song and you can hear Electro's inner thoughts, which are presented as increasingly intense and ghostly whispers echoing in his head ("They lied to me. They're using me. They're dead to me." etc.) was kick-ass (even though this might date the film, too). But the ending credits sucked, especially when they started playing Kendrick Lamar (which will also definitely date the movie), those pissed me off. Especially when compared to the endings of the Sam Raimi films, which always ended with Danny Elfman's iconic, rousing, and epic musical score. Besides those things, there's some other stuff I didn't like: the Uncle Ben's killer on the run plot is still left unresolved (it seems to have been forgetting among the fray of other plotlines), some character development was rushed (Harry, Max's origin, Norman, etc.), Denis Leary appearing in Peter's head isn't necessary or important to the central plot, the parents' death plot is resolved in a cool albeit rushed way, and the focus on Peter's love life was a little distracting. It's kind of frustrating how much they break up and get back together, it's just sort of annoying. Ultimately, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a fun movie, despite it's many, many flaws. The main hero and villain are cool, the visuals and costumes and effects (including Spidey's new and improved outfit) are spectacular, the darker ending is faithful to the comics, the action sequences are astonishing, the supporting cast is okay for the most part, and the redesigns of characters are kind of inventive. However, it's still a mixed bag: some of the actors ham it up way too much, some plotlines and character introductions are rushed, the music is very bland and forgettable (with the exception of the Electro theme), the relationships between characters felt forced at times, some scenes are just agonizingly awful (like the pop song montage), J. Jonah Jameson doesn't even make an on-screen appearance (which I hated a lot), and the end credits "scene" was bullshit. Is it truly amazing? Hell no. Is it entertaining (in an Iron Man 3 sort of way, which means it was cool but also kind of a let-down)? Yeah. I'd buy it on Blu-ray... maybe. 3/5 stars.
Note: Upon further thought and analysis, I change my original rating. I now feel this is more of a 2/5, at best.
My reviews of the other films:
http://mattcottermovies.blogspot.com/2012/06/spiderman-movies-part-i.html
http://mattcottermovies.blogspot.com/2012/07/spiderman-movies-part-ii.html
A review I enjoyed quite a bit (SPOILERS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJUk8ZHckxo
Another hilarious review (SPOILERS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfXWZmtJzXA
Funny review of original movie (SPOILERS): http://blip.tv/redlettermedia/half-in-the-bag-the-amazing-spider-man-6243706
(SPOILERS BELOW POSTER)
(Image: Wikipedia)SPOILER SEGMENT: Okay, so at the end of the film, Gwen Stacy is taken by the Green Goblin and dropped down a clock tower and Spider-Man has like a 5-second time-frame to save her. He's too far away, so he shoots a very well-placed web, and catches her by the abdomen just before she hits the ground. However, much to his dismay, the force of the fall plus the web catching her snapped her neck, killing her instantly. I was very pleased with how they handled the scene: it was true to the comics, and emotionally troubling, much better than the laughably over-the-top Uncle Ben scene from the first film. It was slightly different than in the comics, but in a good way: they changed the location from a bridge to a clock tower. Early on in the film, Gwen says "time is precious" in a speech during graduation. And where is she killed?: a building dedicated to telling time, so it was kind of symbolic. The one thing that disappointed me was that at the end (just a heads-up: if you are one of those people who are prudes when it comes to swearing, just go away because I'm about the lose my shit in a second), Spider-Man is about to fight the Rhino after five months of not being in the suit. And just as the battle begins: credits. Fuck that. Another two years to see how that battle ended... and that shit was in all the trailers and on posters and everything! Seriously, fuck that shit! Another thing: Harry is now in Ravencroft, and is communicating with the Man in the Shadows about starting the Sinister Six. That could be cool, but I hope they don't rush the shit out of Doc Ock and the Vulture, who are teased at near the end of the movie. Now for the mid-credits scene: the end credits scene is so bullshit, because actually it's just an ad for X-Men: Days of Future Past. They make you think for a second it's going to be connected and maybe Spider-Man and X-Men will team up, but nope, it was a fake-out. Almost as bad as when Captain America: The First Avenger just showed a trailer for The Avengers at the end. I think it would be better to just not have one as opposed to tricking people into thinking they're seeing when and crushing their hopes by revealing it's just an ad. Fuck that shit, too. END OF SPOILERS
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