The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Review

Earlier this week, I reviewed the first Amazing Spider-Man movie. The Marc Webb directed reboot of the Wall-Crawler’s film franchise. I liked it, but was hoping for something better. Now the Amazing Spider-Man 2 is here, and I’m going to give you the verdict. We’ve already started action movie season off with an epic Captain America flick. We’ll see if Spidey can keep up.

 

Our Hero

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s depiction of Spider-Man and Peter Parker is the best we’ve seen so far. Here, he’s everything the character is supposed to be. He’s smart. We see this as he’s trying to upgrade his web shooter or trying to figure out how he can defeat Electro. He’s Quippy. We see him taunting thugs and talking on the phone to Gwen as he takes them down. He’s Experienced. ASM2 finally get a Spider-Man who knows what he’s doing for a full movie. He isn’t learning his powers for half the film, he isn’t unsure whether or not he wants to be Spider-Man, he isn’t going through his goth phase. That leaves more time for better story elements.

Also in this movie the chemistry between Gwen and Peter is the heart of the story. Peter’s dealing with some guilt due to being with Gwen even though it was her father’s dieing wish that he stay away. Aunt May has some great motherly scenes with Peter. And we do finally find out what really happened to Peter’s parents. I guess it fits in nicely with the story.

 

The Villains

The Osborn family is first set of repeat villains we get here. I think Dane Dehaan’s Harry Osborn easily tops the one from the first trilogy. He was great as a snotty rich kid and Peter’s best friend. His transformation into the Goblin was cooler to watch than Norman’s in Spider-Man 1. His overall Goblin look was much less cheesy and more menacing looking. He gives Spidey the fight of his life and makes his mark on this film almost immediately. Every superhero film needs a good villain. He was the standout in this one. It’s a shame that we saw so little of him as the Goblin. Hopefully there’s more to come in part 3.

Electro on the other hand, I’m not so enthused about. There was just too much campyness going on with this character. He was funny and interesting before he changes and up to his first appearance as electro, but after that, he was just a goon, and he pretty much just there to create a big action set piece. I also felt that his motivation for hating Spider-Man wasn’t good enough. I can’t complain about any of the action involving the character, It was all exciting. I just don’t think the character deserved so much screen-time and back story. An actor of Jamie Foxx’s calibre also deserved a better character for his first crack at this genre.

 

Recap

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was overall a fun, funny and enjoyable flick. It has its dark moments, but in general it’s much more light-hearted than the first entry in the saga. We get a lot more time to enjoy Spider-Man doing his thing. I guess my only real problem with it is Electro. That being said, even he provided a lot of great action sequences. At first, I was going to let that character force me to give the film a slightly lower rating, but upon reflection, this movie got a lot more right than wrong. I think this is a strong entry in the franchise.

Rating

Epic

8