***There
will definitely be SPOILERS***
The
first time I saw The
Amazing Spider-Man
I didn’t get to see the movie in its entirety. It seems a little
crazy to think that he was only four, but I had Lil’ Troublemaker
with me and the fight scene in the sewers with the Lizard freaked him
out. I’m not a jerk, so we left.
When
the movie came out on Blu-Ray I bought it and we watched the whole
thing. I hated the Lizard and the fact that he talked. But I loved
everything else about the movie. It looked fantastic, I thought that
Andrew Garfield got Peter Parker as Spider-Man in a way that Tobey
Maguire did not, and the world building that the creative team were
attempting was clear.
Over
time I’ve come to accept what they did with the Lizard. I’ve
watched the movie quite a few more times and I get that he needed to
be that way to fit with the plot and the world they were trying to
establish. And while I still am not crazy about his too-human face, I
can’t fault the CGI work. It was just about flawless.
When
I heard that they were bringing Marc Webb back I was happy, not only
because I liked the first movie but also because I felt like he had a
distinct creative vision for the world that was being created. It
felt much more Ultimate
Spider-Man
than traditional Spider-Man
and it would have been a shame if somebody else had come on board and
tried to shoehorn the standard Marvel Universe mythos into what had
been created with the first movie.
Then
I saw the first interview with Jamie Foxx after he had been cast as
Max Dillon and I knew there was going to be at least one significant
problem with the sequel. When asked about playing a comic book
villain Foxx said that the most important thing, the thing that
audiences would be looking for, was catchphrases.
This
was such an outrageously stupid statement that I really thought he
was joking.
He
wasn’t, and that became clear as I watched The
Amazing Spider-Man 2.
But I’ll get to that.
This
was a pretty depressing way to open the movie. I guess they wanted to
go ahead and eliminate the possibility that Peter’s parents would
turn up at some point.
From
there we go to a spot high above New York City where Spider-Man is
doing that thing that skydivers do to accelerate – he’s made his
body as narrow as possible and has his arms tucked into his sides and
everything. This is important for later. At what seems like the last
possible moment he shoots out a webline and starts a series of
web-slinging acrobatics through the streets of New York.
The
aerial stuff in the movie was fantastic. The only issues I had was
that at times not only did the Spider-Man character model look a
little too computer-generated, it outright didn’t match up with the
costume Andrew Garfield wore in the live scenes. The color palette
was slightly off somehow. It was weird. But the web-slinging was a
focal point of the movie and even a plot point later on. It was
filmed beautifully and incorporated into the character of Spider-Man
quite nicely.
This
scene leads into Spidey foiling the attempted robbery of some Oscorp
plutonium by none other than the guy who will eventually be Rhino.
Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti) is played almost entirely as comic
relief in this movie, and yet is still less silly than Jamie Foxx’s
Max Dillon.
Side
Note: I’m gonna be talking a lot of shit about Jamie Foxx in this
review, so let me go ahead and get my feelings about the actor out of
the way. To me he’s kind of like Tom Cruise in that I don’t ever
have any interest in seeing the movies he’s in, but usually once I
do he ends up being really good. That one movie where he’s the cab
drive and Cruise is the hitman was hard for me to deal with because I
didn’t want to see it, both men were great in it, and I ended up
not liking the movie at all. But Cruise and Foxx were good.
I
thought Foxx was great in Django
Unchained,
but being great in a Tarantino movie and being great in regular
movies can be two entirely different things.
The
worst Spider-Man scene in the movie happens during this sequence.
Spidey ends up in the back of a truck juggling canisters of
plutonium. It looks super
fake and took me right out of the narrative. It was like watching a
cartoon character that had been inserted into a live action movie.
The CGI in this flick was top-notch, but it wasn’t quite up to the
task of making this scene look good. Thankfully once he got out of
the back of the truck everything looked great again. Lil’
Troublemaker, however, did not notice any of this. He was laughing
his head off and I think that was the point.
All
of the Spider-Man action in The
Amazing Spider-Man 2
(which I wish had a subtitle like “Osborn’s Revenge” so I could
stop typing The
Amazing Spider-Man 2)
is brilliant and sharp and comic-booky. I absolutely love the way
they characterized Spider-Man’s fighting style and there’s one
scene in particular where we see how his Spider-sense works that’s
just brilliant. It’s when Electro first shows up and there are a
bunch of people on some steps.
There are a series of cuts that show
Spidey’s perception of many things happening at once followed by
the steps he takes to prevent those things from happening. It’s
only used once in the movie and it gets across how this power works.
If it had been used too much it would have become a tiresome gimmick,
but as with a lot of the action effects in the movie restraint was
shown.
This
Peter Parker is very much the Ultimate
Peter Parker. He’s not quite as geeky as the standard MU Peter.
He’s still awkward and a little weird, but in a different way. I
think this was the way to go because this Peter is going to be more
relatable than the uber science nerd of the traditional narrative.
But the real key to Andrew Garfield’s performance is how incredible
he is at being Spider-Man. He ramps up the New York accent. His body
language is casual and confident. And the way he delivers the
one-liners is absolutely perfect. He has the Spidey charisma that
Tobey Maguire did not. He’s charming and outrageous and you totally
get why New York loves him.
That’s
another key piece of this Spider-Man world – New York is a
character in the movies. I feel like the creative team watched
Ghostbusters
2 and
thought, “That is our New York”. The New York that supports its
heroes and does what it wants; never mind the rest of the world. It’s
a place of vitality and personality and the filmmakers take total
advantage of that. Now, I’ve never even been to New York, but
having watched tons
of New York movies I have an appreciation for the essence that comes
across in the media. These Spidey movies make use of that. New York
loves
Spider-Man and screw you if you don’t.
Early
in the movie there is a sequence of new reports from across the
country questioning the morality and legality of Spider-Man’s
vigilantism. There is also the plotline of the promise that Peter
Parker made to George Stacy before he died from Lizard-related wounds
in the first movie. At the end of that movie Peter chose to ignore
that promise and the consequences have been haunting him ever since.
He’s still involved with Gwen, but he’s having visions of Captain
Stacy.
This
was another brilliant decision. If you had told me about it
beforehand I probably would have said it sounded stupid, but it was
executed so well that it worked. Denis Leary – who I did not even
know was in the sequel – would appear to Peter at certain points.
He didn’t talk – he simply had a very subtly disapproving
presence to him. It culminates in distraction at a crucial moment
later in the movie.
These
plotlines represent essentially the same ones from Spider-Man
2, only
those were handled with the annoying and heavy-handed method of
having Peter lose his powers. This time around his doubts about being
Spider-Man were manifested in a much more human and relatable way
that, rather than interfering with the story helped to move it along.
It also folded neatly into the overarching theme of both Amazing
Spider-Man
movies – With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. Martin
Sheen’s Uncle Ben never said it, but this Peter Parker has been
living it since he was bitten by the spider.
Emma
Stone returned as Gwen Stacy and was wonderful. There were times
where she looked like a panel taken directly from the old comics. She
plays the character smart and strong and despite the effect she’s
having on Peter she never feels like a drag. There are so many times
where the love interest in a superhero movie feels like a distraction
from the narrative, but here Gwen feels integral to the plot. Which
is a good thing considering what happens later on.
Spoiler
– she dies in one of the best death scenes I have ever watched.
The
death scene is amazing. I was on the edge of my seat from the time
Green Goblin snatched Gwen until the “CRACK”. The sequence is a
callback to the earlier web-slinging and acrobatics and diving
acceleration and you
just know
that Peter’s going to save her. We’ve spent the entire movie
watching him being amazing. I knew
for a fact
that Gwen Stacy was going to die in this movie and I still
wasn’t sure until the scene was over. That is some fantastic
motherfucking filmmaking. We as the audience feel every second of
Peter’s realization that the love of his life is dead.
Dane
DeHaan was outstanding as Harry Osborn. I liked his character
immediately. Even when he started to get pretty evil I liked him
because I could totally understand his point of view. His story
unfolds quickly and efficiently, as everything he has is being taken
away from him. It’s a different and interesting take on Harry and I
liked it. The Green Goblin transformation wasn’t as extreme as I
would have liked, but as with the Lizard’s appearance in the first
movie it turns out there is a reason for this. Harry’s going to be
sticking around for a while and is going to need a human face.
Felicia
Hardy was introduced as Harry’s assistant. She didn’t do much
other than help him out when he was getting screwed over, though it
did show that she has no problems with breaking the rules.
We
also see B.J. Novak as Alistair Smythe. This was a pleasant surprise
for me and made me glad that I don’t follow movie production too
closely on the internet. Smythe is the head of R&D at Oscorp and
is immediately established as a douchebag. Younger readers might
remember Smythe from the 90s Spider-Man
cartoon as the guy with the gross things growing out of his
shoulders and a kickass mullet growing out of his head:
He
was also the one that invented the Spider Slayer robots. I’m very
curious to see what the Amazing
Spider-Man
universe does with him. B.J. Novak is a heck of a talented guy and
I’m excited to see him in a potentially major villain role.
Going
into this movie it seemed like there was a good chance we were
getting a repeat of the overly-crowded and genuinely awful Spider-Man
3. It
looked like there were too many villains and too much going on. But
Aleksei is introduced early on and only returns at the very end as a
plot device to introduce the Sinister Six concept (and Spider-Man’s
return after Gwen’s death). Harry Osborn’s story unfolds over the
course of the movie and while it does feel a bit rushed, that
momentum is what leads to the inevitable climax. And Electro isn’t
even really the main plot point. The movie doesn’t feel like
“Spider-Man versus Electro” as much as it does “Several months
in the life of your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man”. It’s a
subtle difference that is crucial to the narrative.
Finally
I need to talk about Electro. The way that the character was
portrayed was pretty awesome. It was – like Peter Parker – the
Ultimate
version of Electro and it worked very well due to the varying levels
of the character’s powers. His story played out well. When he first
appeared he was confused and disoriented. The NYPD was ready to take
him down, as his powers were out of control and he was causing
damage. Then Spidey showed up and we got another critical Peter
Parker character moment where rather than just attacking Max he tried
to talk him down. This was one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
Spidey was perfect, the New Yorkers watching the confrontation were
perfect, and the thing was shot beautifully. Foxx’s scenery chewing
was the only detriment.
Here’s
what I came up with – Jamie Foxx was in The
Amazing Spider-Man 2
acting like he was in one of the Schumacher Batman movies. He was
delivering corny lines like, “It’s my birthday, so I’m going to
light the candles,” and just generally being goofy. His early
scenes as Max Dillon were straight-up Jim Carrey as Edward Nigma. I
don’t blame all of this on Jamie Foxx. It was Marc Webb’s
responsibility to reign all of that in and get Foxx under control.
And some of it was just bad scripting, like Electro using the pylons
at the power plant to play “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” during his
climactic fight with Spider-Man. That was dumb. No other character
had such drivel to deliver and deal with. I don’t know if these
were Foxx’s suggestions or if maybe the creative team ended up not
liking Foxx and just made him do a bunch of stupid shit as a result.
I’m
kidding. Obviously nobody would sabotage their own franchise just to
get back at a bad actor.
But
anyway, visually Electro was awesome. The effect of the light under
his skin looked great and all of the different ways he used his
powers – from using bolts of electricity to disincorporation –
were very cool. I still don’t quite understand how his rubber suit
went with him when he traveled through electrical lines, but I also
don’t care. He looked awesome and was used well enough that Foxx’s
hamminess was a mere distraction instead of ruining the movie. Also
he got blown up and it was the first time I have ever
been glad for a villain’s apparent death in a comic book movie.
Granted, he could easily come back (I don’t know if Foxx is signed
for the Sinister Six movie), but I’d be happy if we never saw him
as Electro again.
Oh
– I need to address the origin of Max Dillon’s power. He falls
into a vat of mutant electric eels, gets bitten, and wakes up in the
morgue with electric powers. I think I could’ve accepted it without
the eel bites. The idea is that it’s the same sort of Oscorp
experimentation that gave Peter Parker powers. The eels have been
bred to supply organic, renewable power. But I think he could have
just fallen into the vat and I would have accepted it.
It
does make what they did with Rhino a little more palatable in
comparison. I’m not crazy about him being just a big mech, but at
least he didn’t get bitten by a mutant Rhino.
My
only other issue with the movie was the lack of resolution
surrounding the facts of Gwen Stacy’s death. We jump from her dead
body being cradled by an unmasked Spider-Man to her funeral, which is
obviously being attended by a ton of cops. First her father dies
while hanging out with Spider-Man and now she does. Some of those
cops must
have questions. I find it hard to believe that Spider-Man just
delivered her corpse to the cops and was like, “Hey, this chick
just died while I was fighting a mutated rich guy,” and the cops
were like, “Oh - thanks, Spidey.”
Did
he leave a note at the scene? And how was Harry apprehended? After
Gwen died the last we saw of the Green Goblin was him laying at the
top of the clock tower where the battle took place. It wasn’t even
clear that he was incapacitated. I was totally expecting the fight to
continue. It wasn’t until the scene faded into Gwen’s funeral
that I knew it was over. There were definitely a lot of big questions
left unanswered there.
Overall
The
Amazing Spider-Man 2
was a rewarding experience. I’m still on board with Andrew
Garfield’s portrayal and I can’t wait to see more of Harry
Osborn. I can’t imagine how they’re going to pull off a Sinister
Six
movie, but I want to see it. Most of all, though, I want to see The
Amazing Spider-Man 2
again. I thoroughly enjoyed it and so did Lil’ Troublemaker.
4
out of 5
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