Guilty about his promise to her father, Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) is trying to salvage his relationship with Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone), repair his friendship with Harry Osborne (Dane DeHaan), uncover his parents' secrets, fight Electro (Jamie Foxx) and Paul Giamatti practicing his Russian accent.
Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a bad movie. Original, I know.
However, it is not bad in a way that I find particularly interesting. It is basically cut from the same cloth as its prequel. The key difference with its predecessor is cosmetic - the budget here just means that all the structural and character problems from The Amazing Spider-Man are more obvious.
Most of the movie just feels bloated and padded out with unnecessary scenes. Just take the opening chunk of the movie:
The extended flashback/fight scene on the plane (more money for Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz!)
The Rhino set piece involving 1000 police cars (more money for stunts!)
The graduation sequence in which Peter grabs Gwen and kisses her in front of the entire school (more money for extras!)
The key takeaway from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is that it is very expensive. Everything in this movie is a testament to how expensive this movie is.
Even though the previous movie had experienced a dip compared to Spider-Man 3, there is an over-confidence to this movie that feels completely unwarranted.
What really bothered me was the gulf between the excess of the acting, and the lack of stakes in the storytelling.
Most of it is based around the acting between Garfield and Stone - their interactions have the feeling of improv, with a lot of repetition and riffing off of whatever the other actor is saying. The pair were in a relationship at the time, and these scenes feel like a showcase for their chemistry.
It becomes tiresome because there is nothing settled about the arc of their relationship - they are just on and off throughout the movie. The movie wants to be about Peter’s guilt from the promise Captain Stacey wanted from him, but this thread is so inconsistently followed that I lost track of what was going on.
It means that the pivotal scene in this movie - Peter failing to save Gwen - is pointless. It is one of the best-directed scenes in the movie but the lack of development in the script means it is completely lifeless. It feels like clearing the decks to make way for Mary Jane Watson in a future movie.
The film’s other key thread - Peter’s obsession with his parents - is constantly foregrounded, but I do not get the sense that he learns anything that fundamentally affects him. All of Peter’s key emotional reveals are via videos of people giving speeches which end up relevant to however he is feeling.
This movie is so big and bloated - there are so many different plotlines but unlike Spider-Man 3, it feels like pieces of each plot-line are missing. Ironically, part of what makes Spider-Man 3 aggravating is its focus on covering every single plot thread in detail. There is so much going on in Amazing Spider-Man 2, but it feels like we only get snippets - it feels like a highlight reel of scenes from a season of a TV show. One wishes the filmmakers here had a similar intent to the Raimi crew - but then again, it would have meant a four hour movie.
I have not even mentioned the villains. Jamie Foxx’s Electro feels simplistic, like he is meant for a kid’s movie or a TV show. Meanwhile, Dane DeHaan feels like he is a drama about a rich kid dealing with his father’s rejection. I was shocked at how little screentime each of them had.
Even after they start working together, the Electro and Harry Osborne plotlines might as well be in separate movies. This movie is so stuffed with plot and characters that it has two climaxes and an extended coda. And none of it means anything.
Andrew Garfield is a great actor. But this movie proves that great casting alone cannot save a movie.
I did not hate this one - I did not mind Dane DeHaan’s performance as Harry - but aside from a few sequences I was checked out.
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