The Amazing Spiderman 2
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Dane Dehaan, Jamie Foxx
Directed By: Marc Webb
Reviewed by Danielle Muir
[rating: 2.5/5]
Once again, spidey is slinging his way back onto the silver screen in the rebooted Amazing Spiderman franchise – number two was green lit before the first was released so Sony obviously have faith that they’ll get their return on investment. This franchise includes all the necessaries for predictable box office success – a superhero, a love story, a super-villain, large-scale carnage and psychotic visual effects – which unfortunately leaves no room for depth.
We enter with the amazing Spiderman on top of his game – he’s kicking crime’s butt, he’s kissing the girl, he’s adored by the public. This of course goes downhill – mostly because of teen drama with Gwen but a little bit to do with a chap called Max (Jaime Foxx) – a ‘nobody’ working at Oscorp. Unfortunately he finds himself becoming electric eel food, which inexplicably turns him into a supercharged blue man named Electro (who’s best power by far is that inexplicable dub step music follows him everywhere).
Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy do carry the movie with their charisma, as a young couple in the phase of breaking up and getting back together and so on…all whilst Parker keeps seeing visions of Stacy’s deceased dad everywhere (a little disturbing, and ordinarily would lead to a psych ward but hey – it’s the movies). Props to the script for including human struggles and dilemmas – the old ‘do I let her go because I love her’ chestnut, whether to help dying friend Harry Osborne, but all these are cheapened by the fact that the film just looks and feels like a gigantic music video. Everyone seems a bit too textbook evil, textbook moody, textbook angsty – especially Dehaan as young Osborne whose descent into the Green Goblin seems more like a bungee jump then a believable unravelling. This is also reflected in Electro – I mean really, one minute he’s a bumbling, shy office drone and the next he’s attempting to kill civilians in times square? Seems a bit unlikely but look – huge explosions! Dubstep!
The Amazing Spiderman 2 is entertaining on a surface level – some of the shots that follow Spiderman slinging through the buildings are absolutely breath-taking, and what they’ve done with visual effects are incredible. It’s funny when it needs to be, and there’s good chemistry between the leads. But it doesn’t make you feel much of anything really; it’s more concerned with commercial success than critical acclaim. The whole franchise still seems like a business deal.
