When plans were announced for a reboot of the enormously successful Sam Raimi Spider-Man films only 5 years after the critically-panned trilogy closer, there were concerns that it was coming simply way too soon. Aside from the almost inevitable effects of franchise fatigue, there was also the fear that the latest Spider-Man films, now starring young and upcoming British actor Andrew Garfield in the title role and helmed by the untested Marc Webb, would just be retreads of the older films with nothing new to bring to the table besides some spiffed up special effects.
With those concerns in mind, marketing for the first Amazing Spider-Man promised fresh storylines and unexplored territory and promptly failed to deliver, and yet, it was still a resounding hit. Although it didn’t reach the dizzying heights of the Raimi movies, The Amazing Spider-Man proved that audiences were still willing to pay to see an inferior product; only minor rejigging was necessary. The lessons consequently learned were the following: bring in hip and current young A-list stars, scrounge the source material for a new villain or two, have a big explosive action set-piece to build the movie around, rehash the rest, and money will undoubtedly follow.
And The Amazing Spider-Man 2 almost perfectly follows that blueprint to a T, if it wasn’t for the fact that villain Harry Osborn aka The Green Goblin now joins the fray as yet another recycled character. The movie kicks off a couple of years after the end of the first installment with Peter Parker (Garfield) still maintaining a fragile relationship with girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Stone), a relationship complicated by his guilt about his role in Gwen’s father’s death. With Peter still searching for answers about his parents’ disappearance, more complications unsurprisingly and arbitrarily set in when Peter’s childhood friend Harry Osborn returns to his life with an agenda of his own. And lest we forget, in case Peter’s life wasn’t difficult enough, timid, socially awkward, and Spider-Man obsessed Oscorp employee Max Dillon suffers an accident that instantaneously turns him into a super-villain à la Sandman from Spider-Man 3. With the villains wreaking havoc left and right, this all builds to a showdown that is as uninspired and disappointing as the set up.
Why so uninspired and disappointing? For a few simple reasons, all of which become this film’s fatal flaws. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has nothing new to say, nowhere new to go, and feels like a hollow and shallow attempt at piecing together a film. Sure, the characters are there and sure, things do happen to them in proper chronological order, but something feels so joylessly labored in its construction. If placed under close examination, it is actually shocking how flimsily put together the plot of this movie is and how loosely everything is tied into place. Simply put, not much rings true about the characters or their relationships with each other. Both Harry Osborn and Electro (formerly Max Dillon) end up despising Spider-Man with a blinding hatred for various reasons, but their motivation for doing so is poorly developed to say the least. Things happen to Electro and Harry Osborn but their reactions to these events and their decisions to seek revenge on Spider-Man feel forced and mechanical. The film spends very little time in building those conflicts: those characters have to be villains because that is what they are designed to be and we have to just accept it.
The reason for the weak characterization of the villains is pretty straightforward: they’re not that important in this movie. The core of The Amazing Spider-Man films is the relationship between Peter and Gwen: Peter fears losing her and is tormented by his broken promise to Gwen’s father to stay away and keep her safe. For her part, Gwen insists that she makes her own choices and is willing to risk her life to be with him. This brings up one annoyingly unspoken solution to their dilemma: Peter’s choice of being Spider-Man and all the dangers that come with that life is presented as an unchangeable given (perhaps because there’s still one more movie to make), but his reasons for maintaining the Spider-Man guise are never really covered or discussed. During various ingratiating emotional scenes between the couple, you begin to wonder why Peter doesn’t give up this life and just do the cliche of living happily ever after with Gwen. Much as is the case with the villains, it becomes a problem of motivation.
Peter has an obsessive desire to discover what happened to his parents but this doesn’t explain why he must be Spider-Man; it’s just taken for granted. This is not to say that there’s no reason for him to hang around, what with all the villains with amazing supernatural abilities and arbitrarily evil natures that conveniently arrive just to muddy the works with plans to destroy the world or turn everyone into lizards. Sticking around is thus very understandable, but the film spends so much time dwelling on Gwen and the fact that being Spider-Man requires losing her that Peter's choice to keep that life doesn’t ring true or feel honest to the character. It all just amounts to a time-filling plot line designed to set the stage for the third time waster of an unimaginative franchise.
And finally, just a brief mention of an issue that also plagued the first Amazing Spider-Man: while purists might argue that Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man is a more accurate representation of the comic book character, his witty comebacks and jovial jokiness come off as wildly inappropriate in many scenes. Much like the first movie, the silliness and outlandishness of certain scenes or moments come into conflict with the relative seriousness of the film’s overall tone. We watch as Electro destroys countless buildings and undoubtedly kills numerous people, and then are supposed to laugh as Spider-Man dons fireman hats while crowds cheer and applaud nearby instead of fleeing for their lives. It’s a strange thing to watch and sums up one of the movie’s various problems. Caught between trying to be a more serious and adult film in the vein of The Dark Knight and yet still pandering to the comic book’s traditionally more overtly juvenile tendencies and characteristics, the film makes for an odd experience, an experience that this reviewer would not recommend.
Verdict: Failing to build much on the first installment, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has plenty of impressive visuals and action but fails everywhere else. Weak characters, plot contrivances, and bland one-note villains tarnish this surprisingly unengaging film and ultimately condemn it to become the latest in a long line of forgettable big summer sequels.
C
Movie info:
Runtime: 122 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan
Director: Marc Webb
Screenplay: Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Jeff Pinkner
Cinematography: Daniel Mindel
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