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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Fails To Electrify [Advance Review]

By | April 22nd, 2014
Posted in Movies, Reviews | 6 Comments

Note: This is an advance review of a film that has not yet been released to North American cinemas.  And this is a spoiler alert because some of the things discussed here may ruin your enjoyment of the movie. You have been warned.

Okay, let me address this right off the bat: I didn’t like The Amazing Spider-Man.

Now, I tried, I really did, to stow my personal connection to Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (they were, after all, my intro to reading comics) and take the film at face value. Yet even then, what I got at face value was a poorly written script that had no idea what to do with it’s main character, that dropped 90% of it’s story threads halfway through the film and had the tangible feeling of having most of it’s content edited out by overly involved executives. Despite some good moments, like the performance from Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, the film as a whole was messy and sloppily put together with the barest sense of who Peter Parker, never mind Spider-Man, actually was.

Still, there was the barest sliver of hope in me as the marketing for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 began. The suit looked much improved and the shift away from scenes set at night seemed to alleviate the feeling I got from the first movie that someone had seen Batman Begins and decided to remake that with Spider-Man.

Unfortunately, just as with the first movie, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is messy, sloppily put together and with even less of an understanding of its own main character.

For a film as badly put together as The Amazing Spider-Man was, I genuinely assumed it was down to a lack in experience from director Marc Webb, whose only other feature film was (500) Days Of Summer (there’s a comparison article to be made between Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character in that movie and Peter Parker in this one) which relied on a completely different set of directorial talents. Yet, here the same problems seem to crop up. Sure, the swinging scenes have improved stylistically not only because you can actually see what’s going on unlike the night swinging in the previous films and because Webb dropped all attempts at first-person swinging (although the GoPro-style replacement does make for an interesting shot), but that’s really the only time the film seems interested in Spider-Man. The rest of the time, Webb only seems to care about this ‘Will They? Won’t They?’ play on the Peter and Gwen relationship which is about as interesting as it sounds when you’re spending at least an hour of a Spider-Man movie waiting for at least one of the three villains marketed to show up just for something to happen.

The structure of the film as a whole is just a mess with no real story flow throughout the film. From the opening scene, the film tries to cram a whole half of the movie’s worth of content into the first twenty minutes of the film in an unconnected set of vignette-like scenes that that seem to either skip from one badly put together joke to the next or they stop halfway through for mood swings so strong they’re likely to induce whiplash. Yet, from there the movie slows down to halt in order to follow the twee romance almost break-up between Peter and Gwen or the overdrawn origins of Harry Osborn that amount to literally one scene of importance later in the film before dumping him entirely.

Yeah, I'd be mad too if I wore all of that for one scene in the entire movie.

One of the most frustrating parts of The Amazing Spider-Man for me was the focus on the disappearance of Peter’s parents. This is largely because I felt like it changed Peter as a character into the dark, edgy and mysterious loner character that was only ever cool for like a month in 2008 and rendered the impact of Aunt May and Uncle Ben’s presence in his life inert. This point is exacerbated in the sequel to dizzying degrees as not only do we not get a conclusion as to whether or not Peter caught the guy that shot Uncle Ben, but Peter doesn’t mention him at all in the film. Ben is mentioned twice in the movie, both times by Aunt May, and one time it’s to actively call out Peter on the fact that his obsession with his father (and only his father, mind you, because daddy issues don’t leave any room for mentioning his mother) has blinded him to the fact that he’s Spider-Man because of Uncle Ben’s death not his father’s disappearance.

Continued below

This is perhaps the most egregious example of the film not understanding who Peter Parker is and who he should be. In order to seemingly distance themselves from Raimi’s films, the filmmakers have merged Edward Cullen with Bruce Wayne to try and make Peter “cool” and “hip”, but has resulted in a character who acts like a selfish asshole for the majority of the film and not only causes the origins of literally all of the villains who show up in the film, but pushes all of the characters close to him away over the course of the film. Andrew Garfield was by no means a bad choice to play Peter and actually puts in a rather good performance here, juggling the whiplash like mood swings the writing places on the character with a surprising grace), yet the problem comes from the fact that I don’t know what character was meant to be written for him, but I know it’s not Peter Parker.

The other biggest problem facing this movie is the villains. It was surprising to me after going through the debacle that was Spider-Man 3, a film that killed the franchise for five years before this reboot could even happen, that the filmmakers would be so quick to jump back onto the three villain bandwagon. Yet, when I saw the movie I realised something strange. There’s only one villain to this film: Spider-Man himself. Now, let me explain: despite the trailers, only one of the villains marketed for the film shows up for more than one scene and that’s Jamie Foxx’s Electro. Yet, maybe this is just me, but Electro felt more like the good guy for most of the film. He’s a shy, unassuming guy who’s put upon by everyone and specifically bullied by one person and who, after a freak accident, is given extraordinary powers and goes on to becom– wait a minute. I just described Spider-Man.

Yes, for a film that has no idea who Peter Parker actually is, they sure do a damn good job of having Max Dillon feel more like Peter Parker than they guy playing him. But wait, you might be asking, isn’t Max Dillon villainised and vilified for being what you might think of as a stereotypical nerd in a movie that’s too afraid to show it’s own main character as such? Yes. Yes, he is. Not to mention that being played Jamie Foxx also plays into the erasure and dehumanisation of black nerds makes the writing of the character doubly gross (because nerds in the 21st century have to be white, hipster-y, selfish douchebags in order to be heroic and anyone else has to be the villain). Also? Becoming Electro fixes Max Dillon’s gap tooth. I’m just going to let that one sit with you for a while.

That’s not to mention the villainisation of the effeminate, make-up wearing Dr. Kafka who feels like every ‘evil gay’ stereotype in the book (did I mention he has a bad German accent too?) rolled into one character just to personally offend me.

The point is this: I’m that kid who saw Spider-Man and connected to him as a character because I too was bullied for being the nerdy outcast as a kid. Yet seeing this movie, I saw Peter as that kind of nerd who was bullied and then grew up to resent the world and throw out spite and resentment at anyone and everyone. The kind of nerd we just talked about. There are many more problems in this film, from the structure through to the whiplash inducing changes in tone half way through pretty much every scene, but a Spider-Man film that puts Spider-Man as it’s villain is one I think is disrespectful to anyone who loves the character.

Normally I’d try to end this with a fair and balanced kind of “If you like this, you’d want to go see this film” thing. But please: save yourself the money and don’t go see this movie. Or, hell, if you must go catch it at matinee.


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Alice W. Castle

Sworn to protect a world that hates and fears her, Alice W. Castle is a trans femme writing about comics. All things considered, it’s going surprisingly well. Ask her about the unproduced Superman films of 1990 - 2006. She can be found on various corners of the internet, but most frequently on Twitter: @alicewcastle

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