The Amazing Spiderman 2 - Review

It’s been too long since I have written a movie review, so I will cut right to the chase. Saw this one with an awesome group of people which is always step 1 if you want to have a great time at the theater. If you can’t no worries… because this thing is pretty freakin good and I am going to go into some detail as to why.

First off we are NOT over burdened with the storyline trying to make you care about 15 different villains at once. The depth in this film is so finely tuned and so complete that I actually found myself tearing up about Gwen and Peter and what it would be like to face the odds they were up against. You can not watch this movie through cynical adult eyes where nothing ever works out. You will want to sit back and take yourself to a time when you were in and out of relationships and wore spandex suits and flew all over the city saving the day. In all seriousness this thing is very character driven and has just layers and layers of depth. I actually feel myself cheering for Andrew Garfield now and converting in my head to the series new visions. Dane DeHaan is almost hauntingly good in this as Harry Osborn and Sally Field delivers a holy cow performance that has you both laughing and feeling tugs at the heart strings. On top of all this the character I thought I would MOST dislike in the film turns out to be just flat out EPIC. I no longer want the old Electro but I have high hopes of seeing this one again Jamice Foxx came out swinging and I loved that. Emma Stone is even more dynamic than usual as Gwen has some gut wrenching moments herself. Oh I should mention the soundtrack alone is probably the best ever for a superhero movie. Not joking…(see every fight scene).

We also get some gap filling scenes from the first movie and reason as to why certain things were happening including a lot more groundwork on Peter’s father’s work which is a central plot point for this series. This film does have some weak points which I hope will get sorted. 1) The Rhino design was troublesome for me to begin with and after seeing the film and Paul Giamiatti scenes as him…no…no. 2) Oh, did I say weak points? What I meant was weak “point” as in singular.

Don’t expect a science lesson here, we are talking about a dude made of electricity and a web-slinging hero who seems to have gotten a lot stronger since the 1st installment. My advice, sit back and enjoy the ride, this in my opinion is the best SPIDERMAN yet. Yes I just typed that out loud.

I give this movie a 6 out of 7. Rating Definition – A SPECTACULAR MARVEL OF AWESOMENESS THAT MAKES CUTE CAT VIDEOS LOOK LIKE THE HUGEST WASTE OF YOUR TIME IN HISTORY. This is the movie that you will try and walk by at the store and not be able to. You will buy it forgetting you already have it. Then one day a friend will come to your house. They will tell you how much they love this movie and you won’t even tell them you have 2 in your collection. Because you can’t give it up. You have to have 2.

Amazing Spider-Man 2: The Rise of Electro

I went in to The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise of Electro with mixed feelings. I was excited because The Amazing Spider-Man was a top-notch flick, and the second instalment was shaping up to be more of the same. However, the same teasers and trailers that had me amped up also created some doubts. Primarily, I was worried about the "too many villains" factor. We'd seen Electro, Rhino and Green Goblin in the marketing materials, and there were some teasers for other Sinister Six villains there for the sharp-eyed trailer viewers. After the disaster that was Spider-Man 3, I feared a mish-mash of villain stories that lost focus and ended up lacking.

Thankfully, these fears were somewhat unfounded. I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but I'll start off with a minor one here. Rhino is hardly in this movie at all. Seriously, I'm not sure why he was even included in marketing material. Total screen time for both his pre and post suited up incarnations was around seven or eight minutes. So in a way, this helped to reduce the overall villain saturation somewhat. The Goblin himself also appeared only late in the film, although with slightly more screen time and a hell of a bigger part to play than Rhino.

The film has a somewhat slower pace than the first one. A large section of the middle of the film is devoted to Peter's reconnection with Harry Osborne and his internal struggle with the vow he made to a dying Captain Stacy at the end of the last film. Peter also spends a fair whack of time investigating more about his father's work. In many ways this instalment makes the last one feel like a giant set up for the (admittedly minor) payoff of finding out what Parker Senior was up to and why he abandoned Peter.

But for all this, the film does at least pretend to be about Electro, which is odd, because he's really nothing more than a pawn in the grand scheme of things here. He starts off quite sympathetic, and they do an okay job of showing his motivation for turning evil, although it does feel like a bit of a cop out when Electro tells Spider-Man, "I just feel so angry" or something similar, as though the power itself is somehow making him act evil. This is far from the only reason given, and the rest of that scene plays out reasonably well as far as falls to evil go. Just a minor quibble.

The interplay between Peter and Gwen is the real star here though. Clearly the real-life romance between Garfield and Stone creates an amazing chemistry that is a delight to watch. You can feel why it's so hard for Peter to keep his vow to stay away from her. And Gwen is no screaming damsel in distress either. She is the mental match of Spidey and helps him out on more than one occasion. Of course, this has dire consequences. I'm sure most people have made the connection between some of what's shown in the trailers and a particular Spider-Man story. I must say I was worried they'd wuss out at the last minute, but gladly (or not) they didn't.

Overall, this movie felt too much like a middle movie. An Empire Strikes Back, if you will. It ties up some loose ends from the first movie, whilst working very hard at setting up the next one (and the other planned spinoffs). I'm not saying it's not entertaining, but it doesn't really stand up on its own, and it's far from being the story of The Rise of Electro.

Just a final word to say, unlike most recent Marvel movies (either licensed or Marvel Studios produced), there was no post-credit sequence. There was a mid-credits interlude showing a short scene from X-Men: Days of Future Past, but hardly worth waiting for. I'm not sure if this will change for the US release, but I was bitterly disappointed about that.