The Amazing Spider-Man 2

By: Robert Murphy

As far as the cartoons and comic books go, I much preferred the Spider-man portrayed in The Amazing Spider-Man do to the fractured genius angle and teenaged rebellious side of Peter Parker that is shown. It is a much more relatable kind of character and Andrew Garfield returns to this role once more portraying the young Peter Parker searching for answers to his past especially the secrets left by his father. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 puts more pressure and more heartache than Peter has known before and we find out if he is able to survive the truth he uncovers all the while dealing with his girlfriend, school and a couple super powered bad guys looking to squish him like a bug.

I was very eager to get wrapped up in another web crawling movie after the conclusion of the first Amazing Spider-Man movie and seeing Andrew Garfield bring a whole new take on the character we’ve seen in the last Spiderman movies. He once again does not disappoint me with many of the movies strongest moments being when he interacts with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) who returns alongside Garfield in this film as his high school dream girl turned girlfriend. Garfield has a much more playful demeanor this time around as he’s settle into the role of friendly neighborhood Spider-Man after his last movie and it definitely shows. And as I said before the Spider-Man role of The Amazing Spider-Man is much more enjoyable for me to watch because he isn’t the nerdy, whiney and meeker Spider-Man that Tobey Maguire played in the last trilogy.

Outside of Garfield though the movie takes a swan dive into jumbled themes and repeated conflict resolution and drama that works once but not two, three or four times in a film. Multiple times throughout the film Peter and Gwen suffer from a will they won’t they scenario and while this is forgivable once, it doesn’t work over and over again, it’s not cute or romantic, its shabby writing. From the point of Peter it does make sense that he'd be worried about Gwen's safety and he thinks of the last words imparted to him by Gwen's late police officer father played by Denis Leary but don't fall back on it repeatedly, make up your mind man. Then there is Peter searching for answers to his father and why he had to run away and leave him with his aunt and uncle, this would have been interesting if it wasn’t made into a CIA/James Bond style mystery and you’ll see what I mean when Peter finally tracks down leads to his dad. There were just too many themes being juggled that were trying to be done with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 outside of the action that weren’t well done enough and felt very slapped together like a last minute book report.

As for the action, I heard a lot of grief being given to the film and concern for the number of villains that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has going into it but the number wasn't the issue for me, it was how poorly they were used. Electro (Jamie Foxx) was an insanely well done character from the first time I saw him appear on screen and he even gets a humbling back story to show how he becomes the way he does in the film. But as the movie progresses he becomes very under used and under powered, this is a man who can draw power from electricity and drain entire blocks of their power who becomes no more menacing than The Emperor in the sixth Star Wars movie. Then there is the Green Goblin who joins the list of enemies and who is actually the only solid villain that Peter faces in the film because of the alluring back story of Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) and his friendship with Peter that makes the first deeply emotional enemy for him. Lastly we get one more enemy who is casually thrown in for Peter to face, Rhino (Paul Giamatti) who receives a very interesting robotic suit to terrorize the city but there's not much else to him, he's thrown in so last minute and really is the only enemy that doesn't make any sense for me to be there except maybe they need him in the next films cast list.   

What I have to say in conclusion to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is that it just wanted too much, it definitely reached for the stars and but it tried to do way more than one movie can handle and I'm not sure why. It occurs to me that maybe the writers were trying to set up the next film by laying a lot of ground work here but it is just ruined by it all. What honestly saves the film is the stellar acting by Garfield, Stone and others like Jamie Foxx who made the film worth watching, Andrew Garfield plays a phenomenal Spider-Man and the web crawler has never been better. One moment in particular when the wise cracking character tries to hide his secret from his aunt almost leads him to get caught was very enjoyable and I wish I could of watched over again. I'm concerned with the rickety footing that's left for the next Amazing Spider-Man movie and I hope that maybe the ground work laid here can be salvaged and not ruin the new series all together.  

Good:

- Garfield's Spider-Man is simply fantastic 

- Many of the actors and actresses such as Emma Stone save what can be salvaged in the film

Bad:

- Poor and sporadic story telling where themes were all over the place

- Iconic enemies like Rhino and Electro are wasted 

- The will they won't they drama between Gwen and Peter is enough to drive you insane

Scully Rating: 5.0 out of 10