Review: ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’

It is ridiculous that it has taken so long for me to put together this write up for “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” but the truth is that my feelings for this film are a little more complicated than they should be. We’re talking about a movie about a man with spider-like super powers fighting crime in New York City while wearing spandex, after all. Why should this be difficult? It’s a pass-fail kind of thing, is it not? Was I not entertained? Isn’t that enough?

And for some good chunks of time, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is indeed quite entertaining, with the occasional action scenes that actually reach the heights of thrilling. Throw in the mix some solid acting from likable, reliable actors, as well as some downright gorgeous cinematography and a handful of most excellent compositions (obviously going for the “still panel or comic book cover come to life” look and just NAILING it) and you have the ingredients for what should be a good, nay, GREAT movie. And yet, despite all these things, there is something off about this movie, some things were done in a way that just robs it of emotional weight, and without that, we end up with something great looking, yes, but also a little rotten on the inside. Like a supermodel.

(I apologize to any supermodels reading this [who am I kidding, what fucking supermodel is trolling the interwebs for reviews of Spider-Man movies?)

So this obviously follows “The Amazing Spider-Man,” which was Spider-Man origin story number two, and here we are building on the final scenes of that movie, in which Spider-Man aka Peter Parker (played by Andrew Garfield, whom I like in just about everything I’ve seen him in so far, these movies included) made a promise to his girlfriend’s dying father that he would keep her out of his life in order to protect her from danger. And at the end of that movie, he completely reneged on that promise and decided to stay with his girlfriend Gwen Stacy (the always delightful Emma Stone), which then brings us to the beginning of THIS movie, which starts with Peter Parker flipping yet again and telling Gwen Stacy that they could not be together.

And this sets off a whole string of scenes throughout this film in which Peter stalks Gwen while in Spider-Man mode (creeeeeeepy) and then they get together again but only to talk about how they are not sure if they can be together and then Gwen gets some chance to go to Oxford and move to England and this becomes a wedge between them but then it’s not and really it’s just a bunch of wheel spinning because the relationship between Peter and Gwen in the opening of the movie is the same as it was by the end of the movie, so despite all of the back and forth and hemming and hawing and breaking up and getting back together, their relationship is unchanged and they learned nothing (spoiler? Is it a spoiler to say that nothing happened to a character in a film? I don’t think so).

The problem with this is that the whole story is supposed to be based on this emotional core between these two characters and yet their relationship doesn’t change or evolve, so then why are we watching them for a two hour and twenty minute movie? They just spin their wheels and go nowhere and that’s pretty frustrating. Throw on top of that the fact that the Peter Parker’s culpability when it comes to Gwen Stacy’s safety is taken right out of his hands and put into her own by her insistence on inserting herself into dangerous situations against Peter’s wishes, and we now have a film protagonist who isn’t even making any decisions to hold him accountable by, and again, what’s the point of watching a movie in which our hero doesn’t have to make a single decision, as they are all made for him by other characters?

This also unfortunately extends to Spider-Man’s relationship to the story’s villains. Electro (Jamie Foxx) almost arbitrarily decided that Spider-Man was his foe after hero-worshipping him for so long from afar; in their first confrontation, Spider-Man is actually doing his best to diffuse the situation and to calm Electro down and he’s actually doing a good job of it before a bumbling, fumbling, nervous, sweaty, anxious, and most importantly of all, clichéd police officer takes a shot at Electro, enraging him and causing him to freak out and try to kill everyone around. And while Spider-Man then had to stop this rampage, it is still no reason to want to hate Spider-Man so much. And on top of that, because it was some cop who made the mistake, Spider-Man is again free of culpability. 

And while I did like Jamie Foxx as Electro, the man is a fine actor after all, it came across as very silly when he suddenly announced that as his new name, and with no explanation for the name whatsoever. Maybe he was really into UK dance music before he became a rage filled electricity monster. Who looks like Dr. Manhattan from “Watchmen.”

Then there is Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan), who is dying from a horrible genetic disease and who decides for some reason that he needs Spider-Man’s blood to be healed and not die a gross, grisly death. Spider-Man refuses to give him what he wants, deciding that it is too dangerous to do so. So what does Harry do? He finds a way around this and gets what he is looking for another way, without Spider-Man. And again, when something horrible happens, Spider-Man has no connection to the results, he again has no responsibility to what’s happening in this story to the characters around him.

And this all ends up robbing Spider-Man of having the ability to effect his own story; he’s just bouncing from scene to scene, while characters around him do stuff, and then he just reacts to all of that, as opposed to making his own decisions and creating his own story. And what kind of hero is that?

Also, yet again, we have a movie that decides to not actually have an ending, instead using the final minutes of the film to set up the NEXT movie in the franchise, because who cares about a satisfying story arc anyway, right? We just want to tease future villains for future movies featuring the web-slinger. Essentially “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is a commercial for “The Amazing Spider-Man 3.”

So while this is a fun movie at times, and features quite a bit of enjoyable moments and a couple of good ideas, it still feels pretty sloppy in the basic storytelling department, which is a damn shame. Its like this big beautiful mansion was built on a foundation of wet clay – it is all threatening to sink and collapse under the weight of too much scrutiny.