SPOILERS ARE PRESENT!
I have to admit, these new Spider-man movies don't really appeal to me. It might seem strange, given that they've finally made Spider-man funny and Peter Parker is the Marvel hipster right now, but they just don't do it for me. They've managed to mix one of my favorite Spidey stories (that of the early days with Gwen Stacey) with one of my most hated Spidey stories (that of his parents and this "everything is connected" conspiracy). The first Amazing Spider-man was ok, but I didn't really feel the need to rush out and see that. Same was true here.
Going into it, the previews made it appears as though it would suffer the same fate as Spider-man 3 in that they would try to cram so much stuff into a two hour movie that it would chop up the flow of the story to the point where the story becomes incredibly weak. The trailer includes footage of Electro and Rhino and implies Harry Osborn would take up the glider - either in this film or in the next one. Word then started streaming in that Rhino was only in the movie for about five minutes. So then it seemed like it would be ok: Rhino would just be an intro villain to re-establish Spider-man. Electro would be the main villain. And in the background, they would likely build Harry as the main antagonist of the next film.
Well, the good news is that they didn't try to cram so much stuff into a two hour movie. The bad news is, they did try to cram too much stuff into a two and a half hour movie. It drags in almost every way imaginable. The Amazing Spider-man 2 is a great example of how the building of an arc comes at the detriment of the individual films. Here, the basic story of Electro vs. Spider-man and Peter Parker's creepy stalking of Gwen often gets chopped up by flashbacks of Peter's parents and back story that literally has no bearing on this particular film. Then we also get these stories broken up by the sudden inclusion of Harry Osborn and his sick not-Green Goblin father (who looks like a green goblin, but isn't the Green Goblin). It's not to say that the Osborn drama isn't interesting, but it's completely unnecessary to the basic overall plot. As such, it feels crammed in there. Even worse, it's not enough that the Harry/Norman and Harry/Peter story is jammed in there; they also have to then connect the Norman Osborn thing in with Peter's parents. So once again, this film's plot gets broken up by an overarching plot that has no bearing to this film.
One of the improvements of the Amazing Spider-man series from the Sam Raimi films is that Spider-man behaves a lot more like the character from the comics. We get to see Spider-man making quips and being funny. Amazing Spider-man 2 does an even better job than the first one at making him legitimately funny. There are several moments that feel straight up from a comic - the best being Spider-man putting Electro out with a fire hose while wearing a firefighter helmet. At the same time though, they made Peter Parker less Peter Parker-like. (It's almost like directors and writers have no idea how to do Peter and Spider-man!) Apart from being the resident hipster of the Marvel movies, this Peter Parker is confident and cocky. He's self-assured, despite all of the guilt he harbors toward the death of Captain Stacey and subsequently the danger he puts everyone he loves in.
In Raimi's films, Peter overdoes it with the guilt and is often far too serious. As a result, Spider-man isn't funny. Instead, he spends most of the film screaming as he desperately tries to save Mary-Jane. In Marc Webb does the opposite. Spider-man is extremely confident and funny, but that's because Peter is confident and funny. It's almost as if they've never bothered to actually read Spider-man comics. It makes sense that there would be crossover personality between Spider-man and Peter Parker, but what makes Spider-man more interesting than your Iron Man and Captain America fare is that the character isn't the same in the suit as he is out of it. When he's Peter Parker, he's supposed to be this nerdy, kind of shy person. He's representative of the "little guy." But when he puts on the Spider-man suit, he's suddenly confident and heroic. It's a great representation of what everyone has inside of themselves, even the wallflowers! In many ways, Webb's Spider-man films serve to undermine the interesting element of Spider-man as a character. In this way, the very first Spider-man actually gets closest to the character of the comics.
It also seems only fitting that The Amazing Spider-man 2 shows up shortly before the #YesAllWomen trend on Twitter in which women everywhere explain how a lot of every-day things make them feel. You know, "no means no," and "stop gawking at me!" kind of stuff. The hashtag activism comes in the wake of tragedy in which a crazy person shot and killed several people simply because women rejected him. Well, evidently, superhero films are chalk full of creepy stalker superheroes. We saw Superman creepily spy on his ex-girlfriend and her new family using his x-ray vision in Superman Returns. We saw Tony Stark basically act like women were inherently his for the taking - and that Pepper was always his to begin with - in Iron Man. We even saw Spider-man creepily stalk MJ in the dark alleyways in the first Spider-man! There, it was a good thing he was stalking her because it saved her life! And, of course, that heroic deed was rewarded with a kiss... Here, we see more super hero stalking as Peter uses his powers to "keep an eye" on her. And, of course, Gwen finds that appealing. #YesAllWomen, indeed...
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| Oh. You're a geeky loner who is mentally unstable? Couldn't tell.. |
Another problem with The Amazing Spider-man 2 is in its oversimplified villains. Where Raimi actually did much to get us to sympathize to some extent with the villains, Webb gives us a simple, "I'll get you and your little dog to!" type villain. Jamie Foxx and Dane DeHaan do what they can with their one dimensional characters (DeHaan is actually surprisingly good in his role, even though it comes out of nowhere and only serves to force the shocking moment at the end of the film), but their motivation for going after Spider-man is razor thin, if not outright nonsensical.
Foxx plays cartoonishly nerdy scientist Max Dillon (who works at Oscorps because, you know, everything is connected now). Max is unrealistically and stereotypically dorky, almost something you'd expect to see on some teen-oriented sitcom in the '90s. His first appearance has him rushing around New York City carrying too many blueprints. His hair is parted in an awkward way and he has a giant gap in his front teeth. He also wears enough pens in his pocket to supply an entire bank. When Spider-man saves him, he reads his name tag to which Max freaks out thinking they're now friends because Spider-man knows his name! The frustrating thing here is that with enough time to focus on Max, we could have had an interesting and vaguely realistic or relatable development occur. There might be some message here about how we should not "pick on nerds" (or that you should be wary of nerds, because they're crazy!) However, it's hard to take it seriously when the movie doesn't. Through and through, they try far too hard to make Max unreasonably geeky. It's even complete with a scene in which BJ Novak shows up and makes fun of him for no real reason.
After his accident, there is another missed opportunity to develop the character in an interesting way. He stumbles through New York, full blown Electro at this point. He's confused and scared. When he accidentally destroys some stuff, NYPD shows up (in record time) and they all aim at him. Frightened even more, Max pleads for mercy. "It's not my fault!" he says. It's not entirely true, of course, but we understand that he isn't trying to hurt anyone. He has no idea what's going on either! It might still be his fault, but his intentions are not malicious at this point. When he looks up at all of the television monitors, he sees footage of him from all the television cameras. Max then has a moment where he's suddenly excited that people now see him and notice him. (This might have been a powerful moment if he had any vaguely realistic characterization in the first place.)
Enter Spider-man who forgot Max's name. This, of course, enrages him. Things go from bad to worse when the news cameras stop focusing on Max and instead focus on Spidey. And that's all Max needs to go from cartoonish crazy to full blown villain crazy. After he's captured and interrogated, he threatens his captors by saying he will show them what it's like to live in his world. It's a world without power. It's a world without being seen. These are powerful sentiments! But he doesn't stop there. "A world without Spider-man," he says. Max has every reason to hate the world, but the thing he latches onto the most is Spider-man? One of two people to show him any kindness in the entire film? What? It's such a forced moment that one almost expects him to follow that up by saying, "I'll get you, my pretty!"
Harry Osborn fares a little better, but not by much. His sudden appearance in the film creates a new plot thread in a movie already well stocked on plot threads. We see Harry and Peter reconnect (even though we never really saw them be super buddies in the first place, really), but this only serves to set up the melodramatic conflict between them not more than fifteen minutes later! DeHaan is a much better villain than James "No Face" Franco, but it doesn't change the fact that the character and that story is packed in there. He too takes an immediate grudge against Spider-man, although his makes a tad more sense than Electro's, given that he believes he needs Spidey-blood to save himself from the genetic disease turning him into a goblin. (And, ya know, in his defense, Spider-man could have maybe done a li'l more to actually explain why it was dangerous. Maybe he could have promised to run some tests and keep him posted? Harry would have still been pissed, but maybe if he saw that Spider-man was going to actively try to help him in some capacity?) There's also the theme introduced that Spider-man gives people hope, of which Harry rightfully calls bull on. I mean, Spider-man didn't even try to help him. It was all just this vague, "I'm trying to protect you" argument that the hero kept making without any more detail or explanation. Spider-man essentially just makes a "trust me" argument, and that never goes down well with anyone!
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| Three villains? Yeah! That's worked well before in the past! Fortunately, Rhino just bookend the film. |
Of course, the entire function of this bogged down, drawn out film is to kill off Gwen Stacey and introduce some more tragedy in Peter's life. The death of Gwen was a critical moment in the life of Peter Parker, but it also happens so early on. Here, we've seen a good amount of Spider-man action that it kind of doesn't make sense that he wouldn't have thought about the whiplash from yanking the web. He had enough experience and had shown enough intelligence that it feels forced - like everything else in the film.
The Spider-man suit looks a lot more traditional. Visually, it's the closest to the comics we've seen on screen. It's nice, and it probably appeals to most fans, but I actually kind of liked the redesigned suit in the first film. Electro looks like a character from Star Wars at first, then like an X-Men cast off. The Amazing Spider-man series falls into the same situation as Raimi's films in which the human elements were kind of bland, but they make up for it with awesome Spider-man action. Here is no different. Him zipping through the city looks awesome. The only missteps are the overabundance of Matrix-inspired shots that are unnecessary (and help drag out the film). In many ways, the action looks like a high end video game. One might expect to see a triangle or a circle show up on screen because it appears as if you were watching a quick time event in a video game.
Overall, the film serves as little more than a precursor to both The Amazing Spider-man 3 and its spin-off The Sinister Six. At this point, it just feels like we are sacrificing decent stories and films for the sake of "building to the next one." It works for comic books to an extent, but that's because those come out relatively quickly, and they're short to begin with. It works a bit less effectively for film. At this point, there won't be much of a point to ever really re-watch these first couple of Amazing Spider-man movies once they finish the story. You can't just watch these individually. More and more, they're building these films like long television shows. The least they could do is have it be no more than two hours.
To say that there were no good things about the film would be slightly inaccurate though. It's easy to be negative about this film - it isn't very good - but one of the coolest aspects of it was the score. Hans Zimmer and the Magnificent Six (which features Pharrell Williams and The Smith/Modest Mouse man Johnny Marr) conduct an intriguing score comprised of traditional film score elements, heavy electronica, and even some dubstep. Some of the tracks have lyrics that drop into the scene extremely well. As Electro is first facing off against Spider-man and quickly devolving into an even deeper madness, the score gets to a point where the lyrics include things like, "They laugh at me. They lie to me. They betray me. They ignore me." The lyrics reflect what Electro had been feeling. There was a moment where I couldn't tell if that was internal monologue! It works surprisingly well.
If there's one good thing I can say about The Amazing Spider-man 2, it would definitely be that the score is really interesting and is utilized in a really unique fashion.
But then really, that's pretty much the height of things it does well. That, and Spider-man is funny. Otherwise, the film plays out exactly how you think it will. It's an extremely predictable film - a fate that most of these films suffer, actually. The only "shocking" and "surprising" moment might be the end with Gwen Stacey's death, but if you're familiar with the comics, then even that is extremely predictable.
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| Let's be honest. This film is really just a commercial for the Sinister Six. |
