Sony’s “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” unashamedly takes inspiration from its comic book source material, adapting at least one famous storyline to the big screen while hewing closer to comic book personalities and backgrounds than Sam Rami’s trilogy did.
This is easily the best thing about the film, especially its portrayal of Spidey. While Toby Maguire was great as the eternally down-on-his-luck Peter Parker, his rather serious performance as Spider-Man left many fans asking what happened to the hero’s trademark quips. Andrew Garfield, on the other hand, manages to portray both Parker and Spidey with equal aplomb; he nicely displays Parker’s inner conflicts alongside Spider-Man’s wit and humor as he trades blows with main baddie Electro, played by Jamie Foxx.
Unfortunately, the film’s devotion to the comic book formula is also the worst thing about the film. Many problems that plague a long-running comic series can be found here – long stories that aren’t new-reader friendly, multiple storylines being juggled at once with no clear focus and single stories that feel incomplete by themselves because they exist only to set up the next one. The movie really suffers from the last item, with an ending that quite clearly exists only to set up the next film in the franchise, making for a rather underwhelming conclusion.
The relationship between Garfield and Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy remains a highlight of the movie, as Parker’s love for Stacy conflicts with his desire to protect her; the promise he made to her father not to involve Stacy resounding in his mind. Stone, for her part, remains a smart, plucky woman whose natural chemistry with Garfield makes their scenes together almost more interesting than the high-flying super heroics. Not that the heroics aren’t entertaining as well – the well-staged, super-powered fights are fun to watch, with several slow motion scenes that actually work very well.
Unfortunately, the big villains of the piece are nowhere near as engaging as our two main leads are. While Dane DeHaan’s Harry Osborn has a strong start as an old friend of Parker whose quickly ailing health leads him to make some very desperate decisions, his transformation into the gibbering Green Goblin left something to be desired. Electro has the same problem, perhaps in part because the scenes that could have fleshed him out instead went to Osborn. The Rhino, despite what his prominence on the posters would have you believe, barely appears at all.
These are very talented actors in a very ho-hum script. Garfield’s Spider-Man is the most entertaining the character’s ever been on the big screen, but the movie suffers from trying to do too much at once. It has its moments, but never meshes together into a complete whole. If this Spider-Man could have had a script as good as the previous “Spider-Man 2,” we might very well have the perfect Spider-Man movie, perhaps even the perfect superhero movie. As it is, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is a jumbled mess, but thanks to its main leads, it’s at least an entertaining one.
