Expectations of Marc Webb’s sequel to Sony’s successful 2012 Spider-Man reboot was perhaps insurmountable. For some, the first film that was released only five years
after Sam Raimi’s generation defining trilogy, satisfied what people wanted to
see with the continuation of this superhero staple. For others (including this
reviewer) despite having a terrific cast, the film lacked a unique point of view and
the obvious rush to re-launch the series made for a somewhat competent but
mostly tepid rehash of over-cooked Spidey-lore.
You might think that now
that the pesky origin story has been tediously reestablished, this anticipated sequel would be allowed the narrative freedom to further explore Webb's new
interpretation of this timeless character and the cinematic universe he inhabits. But what we end up getting with this installment is a manic tangle of
incongruent plot threads fighting for screen-time in an overlong,
over-stylized disaster of a movie that's been marred by invasive studio-notes.
This
movie has about six different movies going on at any one time, but most
prominently we follow Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) as he's reeling
from guilt by ignoring the dying wishes of his girlfriend’s father, and continuing to put Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) in harm’s way simply by dating
her. This then leads him to break things
off with her to further his personal investigation surrounding his father’s mysterious death. The unfinished genetic research that surrounded this mystery is now being exploited by Oscorp’s new CEO,
Peter’s childhood friend Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan). Harry plans to use the
radiated spider venom to treat his body against the same genetic disease
that killed Norman. Unbenounced to
Harry or Peter, or Gwen who still works for the secretive lab, the company has an insidious strategy behind this new science.
You
might think that’s enough story for one movie, but wait, there’s more! An
awkwardly pitched Jamie Foxx plays a geeky disgruntled lab-tech with an
unhealthy obsession towards Spider-Man. After an unfortunate accident at Plotcorp--I mean Oscorp—which apparently has an alarming track record of unsettling
accidents involving staff, visitors and its proprietors, Foxx is then transformed
into a translucent energy being called Electro. Can Spider-Man defeat him,
while keeping Gwen from moving to London? Will she give up her dreams of becoming a
super-scholar at Oxford and continue to put herself in danger in New York? In only five minutes can Peter convince the
audience that he and Harry have a believable, preexisting best-friend
relationship? Can director Marc Webb figure out a way to make anyone still care about anything
dealing with Peter's stupid dead father? Can Spider-Man save
danger-addicted children from Paul Giamatti as he marches the streets in giant,
Rhino-shaped mech-suit? Wait, the Rhino’s in this movie too!? *Sigh*
Despite
a half-way decent love story between the real-life couple of Garfield and
Stone, the rest of the movie is an over-crowded step latter where scenes seem
to only exist to set up other scenes--half of which can’t even be resolved
until the next sequel. Tonally, the movie oscillates between post-Twilight
angst, superhero action movie spectacle, and campy Saturday morning silliness
that clangs against the film’s more somber moments of sincerity.
“The
Amazing Spider-Man 2” is without a doubt an undisciplined, compromised affair,
and the story suffers greatly from Sony’s desperation to catch up with the
long-form world-building of Disney’s Marvel-Universe epics, but when Webb is able to
slow the action down enough to let his characters actually breath, they momentarily
expose a beating heart underneath all of the movie’s overbearing aesthetics and
the screenplay’s stifling mechanics.
Originally published by Idaho State Journal/May-2014
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