I was never against any attempt to reboot the Spider-Man movie franchise. The
character has undergone dozens of creative changes since his creation in 1962.
However, insufficient time had passed when Sony relaunched the series after Sam
Raimi's attempt at Spider-Man 4 fell
apart. The memories of Tobey Maguire in the red and blue tights were still
fresh in our memories and the reasoning reeked of a desperate bid to keep the
rights from reverting back to Marvel. The
Amazing Spider-Man was met with mixed reviews, but scored over $750 million
worldwide, more than enough to justify a sequel. Not that it mattered; the
studio had already greenlit The Amazing
Spider-Man 2. Spoilers ahead.
Spoilers Ahead.
Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) is set to graduate high
school and has settled into his role as New York City's favorite webslinger.
However, his relationship with girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) hits a bumpy
road as Peter remembers her dying father's wish…that he stay away from Gwen to
protect her from his enemies. Those enemies are coming out of the woodwork.
Meek Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) is an electrical engineer at
OsCorp whose designs were stolen for use in the company's new power plant. He
develops an obsession with Spider-Man that turns deadly when he falls into a
vat of genetically modified electric eels. He becomes Electro, a being of pure
electrical energy bent on revenge. Meanwhile, Peter's best friend Harry Osborn
(Dane DeHaan) returns to the Big Apple upon news of his father's impending
death. Harry learns that he has inherited the same rare disease that has killed
his dad and the only hope may lie in Spider-Man's blood. When he refuses to
help, Harry is driven to take an experiment serum that mutates him into the
Green Goblin.
The Amazing Spider-Man
2 has so much going for it and equally as much going against it. Many of
the action sequences are surprisingly good showing that Marc Webb has grown
into the role of a blockbuster director. The film opens in POV as we ride along
with Spidey while he swings through the bustling metropolis of Manhattan. The
IMAX 3D version feels just like a thrilling rollercoaster ride. This is
followed by a fast-paced set piece in which our wall-crawling hero Aleksei
Sytsevich aka The Rhino (Paul Giamatti), a Russian gangster who has stolen a
shipment of plutonium from OsCorp. Here, Spider-Man is at his best as he breaks
out an assortment of acrobatic moves and a steady string of quips. Despite
being video game-y, Webb employs Matrix-style
bullet time to simulate Spidey Sense as the world slows down while Spider-Man
assesses the situation. It's best employed during Electro's attack on Times
Square when he saves several citizens from being fried by electrified rails.
Yet, Webb's forte is clearly the smaller, more emotional
character moments. These are the scenes where the actors are allowed to shine
without being buried by make-up and CGI. While both films have their problems,
Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone remain beacons of brilliance. No knock on
Maguire, but Garfield more closely resembles the Peter Parker of the comics in
both body and spirit. He's got the lanky frame and the plucky, nerdy charm
necessarily to bring Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's creation to life. Stone
effortlessly plays Gwen as a strong and intelligent young woman. Garfield has
fantastic chemistry with her and it probably helps that they are also a couple
in real life. Their scenes together feel ripped out of a John Hughes movie,
especially one in which Peter crosses the street through dangerous NYC traffic
to speak with Gwen. There's also a funny bit when the two hide inside a closet,
then point out how clichéd it is to hide inside a closet. And nobody told Sally
Field she was in a comic book movie. She plays it straight as the doting Aunt
May. Field's scenes with Garfield alternate between amusing (an argument about
the laundry) and heartbreaking (discussing Peter's dead parents).
Unfortunately, these events are crushed underneath the
weight of a bloated script credited to Jeff Pinkner (Lost, Fringe), James
Vanderbilt (Zodiac), and the
omnipresent duo of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Star Trek, Transformers).
Critics complained about Batman Returns
having too many villains way back in 1992. I imagine their heads would explode
after viewing this sequel. Not only do we have Electro, the Green Goblin, and
Rhino, there's also Colm Feore as a duplicitous OsCorp exec, B.J. Novak as
Alistair Smythe the future creator of the Spider Slayers, Felicity Jones as
Felicia Hardy aka The Black Cat, and Michael Massee as the mysterious Gustav
Fiers aka The Gentleman. The filmmakers have also laid the groundwork for
future appearances by Dr. Octopus, The Vulture, Kraven the Hunter, Venom.
Studios such as Sony, Fox, and WB have fallen in love with the way Marvel has
created their shared universe. On the other hand, they lack the patience and
the skill to properly build one of their own. They are so enamored with the
idea of a Sinister Six movie that
they've forgotten about the present. The sequel suffers from the same lack of
focus as its predecessor. Subplots are left dangling and footage shown in
previous trailers isn't found anywhere in the final cut.
The most egregious example is Shailene Woodley who filmed
scenes as Mary Jane Watson only to land on the cutting room floor. Aunt May
working as a nurse to put Peter through college never goes anywhere while
Jones, Novak, and Chris Cooper in his lone scene as Norman Osborn could have
easily been chopped off. The corporate backstabbing angle has already been done
in Raimi's Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, not to mention Jamie
Foxx's transformation into Electro is painfully reminiscent of Jim Carrey's
Riddler in Batman Forever. Therein lays
another problem, characters that go from 0 to 100 with no logic or consistency.
Garfield and DeHaan are great young actors, but the script doesn't do enough to
establish them as best friends. Harry goes insane fairly quickly and that
disease seems to hit him remarkably fast. Nobody bothers to ask why Harry
doesn't utilize the same procedures his father used to extend his life. And why
does Peter Parker, a scientific genius, still need to watch instructional
YouTube videos about how batteries work?
At its heart, The
Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a comic book movie and a certain level of silliness
is inherent, but that doesn't excuse how dangerously close the picture skirted
into camp. We could have done away with Marton Csokas as the cartoonish Dr.
Kafka, Peter seeing the ghost of Captain Stacy (Denis Leary) or Electro playing
"Itsy Bitsy Spider" with Tesla coils. These goofy elements work to
undermine the genuine moments. Too bad the subplots involving Peter's parents
(Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz) had been edited out as they were in the
first Amazing Spider-Man. The sequel
opens with a poorly done plane crash depicting Richard and Mary Parker's
deaths. It all leads to Peter discovering a secret subway car deep within a
hidden underground tunnel containing evidence of OsCorp's dirty deeds. The big
revelation is Richard Parker encoded OsCorp's spiders with his own DNA. Thus,
Peter was destined to become Spider-Man, which blatantly goes against the very
core of the character as an everyman suddenly thrust into the role of a
superhero.
And was it absolutely necessary to kill Gwen Stacy? The Death of Gwen Stacy is one of the
most heralded storylines in comic book history due to several factors. It was released
at a time when killing off major characters was rare as compared to today where
publishers use death as a marketing ploy to boost sales numbers. Secondly, when
characters were killed back then, they didn't return a year later. For eight years,
Gwen was a major part of the Spider-Man mythos and her death still resonates to
this day. As wonderful as Emma Stone is, her Gwen hasn't had the opportunity to
embed in our consciousness the same way. To their credit, the filmmakers did an
excellent job in portraying her death; her body hitting the bottom of the clock
tower drew an audible gasp from my audience. However, there was really nothing
to be gained by paying lip service to the comic book audience. Why go back to
Mary Jane when Stone's Gwen was well on her way to being far more interesting?
The Amazing Spider-Man
2 repeats the exact same mistakes that torpedoed Spider-Man 3, an overstuffed script with too many subplots and too
many characters.
Rating: ** (*****)
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