Movie Review Repost -- Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

Here's another old review that I'm surprised that I haven't shared on Arnold's Benediction yet: Amazing Spider-Man 2. It's been a long time since I last watched this hot mess, but my thoughts on it are basically unchanged. It's a mediocre movie that could have been good but tried to bite off way more than it could chew and got way too greedy in terms of sequel-baiting possibly due to studio meddling. It took this Marc Webb spidey series two films to run into the same dead end that the original Sam Raimi series achieved in three. Does that count as progress or degradation? You decide!

  Aaaaaaaargh! They f***ed it up! Being a big fan of Spider-Man, I really wanted this movie to be good. But alas, it isn't. Let's take a look at it. I'll try to avoid spoilers as much as I can.

  After a brief sequence showing how the Parkers died, Amazing Spider-Man 2 begins with Peter and Gwen's high school graduation as the two contemplate whether their relationship should continue. Meanwhile, Harry Osborn, Gwen's boss and a childhood friend of Peter's, learns that he's inherited a few things form his now dead father, both good and bad (mostly bad). Then in subplot number sixty-one, a timid Spidey-obsessed OsCorp employee named Max Dillon suffers a terrible accident that turns him into Electro. So yeah, there's quite a few plotlines in this film, but it doesn't really feel like too much until the film's second half when scenes start jumping around really quickly. It makes the story more meandering and difficult to get into. There's also one or two conversation scenes that go on for a bit too long, particularly the romance scenes between Peter and Gwen because you already know how that's going to turn out (though the two still have good chemistry). There's also a bunch of stuff that happens for no reason: Harry's recovery towards the end, Peter suddenly becoming obsessed with his parents, Peter being OK by the film's end, and the entire Rhino story, which is brief, unexplained, nonsensical, unresolved, and extremely disappointing. The twist explaining the Parkers' deaths is extremely predictable and overdone. You might already know what it is.

  Look at the bright side, the acting is pretty good... for the most part. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone both do their roles admirably. So does Sally Field as Aunt May. And while Electro's character has the most basic of motivations, at least he's acted well thanks to Jamie Foxx. Rhino is played by Paul Giamatti, who you can tell is having fun hamming it up. But then there's Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborn. At first he channels a young Leonardo DiCaprio, but then once (*ahem) something happens he starts channeling Frankie Muniz on crack. It looks really silly.

  In spite of Spider-Man's costume looking better, there are a bunch of dumb/cheesy production choices. A lot of fights seemed too short. Stan Lee's cameo was dull; he doesn't do or say anything. And the music cues are just weird and confusing. Apparently when electrical generators light up they sound off a musical note? There's also this weird tune that plays whenever we see Electro deep in thought and I'm not sure if the faint voices (that you can't quite make out anyways) are supposed to be in his head or if they're just song lyrics.

  Don't bother sitting through the end credits; there's nothing to see except an X-Men trailer that was so absurdly unexpected and out of place that I couldn't help but burst into laughter. What betrayal is this?!

  That kind of sums up Amazing Spider-man 2 in a nutshell. The plot is cluttered and overwhelming, as if they wrote two films into one. There is fun to be had here, but all the jumbled, confusing stuff makes it a hard movie to really get into.

Rating: two and a half stars out of five.