Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-man 2

The Amazing Spider-man 2

With the release of The Amazing Spider-man 2 parent company Columbia Pictures hopes to widen its influence in the superhero-cinema universe with the second instalment of its rebooted Spider-man franchise. What seems to be lacking is a basic understanding that the movie is not going to be amazing simply because it has the word in its title; it actually has to be amazing. In my review of The Amazing Spider-man I expressed a sense of hope that the reboot would bring new life into the franchise and its characters moving forward, but the sequel makes little if any progress at all.

What director Mark Webb gives us is the same movie he gave us in 2012, just with different scenery. All the necessary superficial, exterior changes were made around the characters to justify the movie being a sequel, but very little changed about the characters. Pete Parker (Andrew Garfield) is still the good hero Spider-man who has trouble expressing himself coherently for more than a few syllables at a time, possesses an impressive IQ yet no knowledge of high school-level physics concepts, and ponders why staring at his father’s briefcase in the closet is not bringing him any closer to finding out the truth about his father. Sure, he’s tormented by his betrayal of his promise to Captain Stacy (the Shakespearean apparition of Dennis Leary) to leave Gwen (Emma Stone) alone, but only for the first and last eighth of the movie; the other three-quarters are spent watching him mope from building to building after Gwen, or rub his face in despair over Gwen not being in his life and throw himself in bed.

During the movie I found myself wondering if the reason why I’ve never really liked or even enjoyed Spider-man is because no actor has truly embodied him, no movie has truly defined him in his universe. At least, not the in way Robert Downey Jr. has embodied the character or Tony Stark, or Chris Nolan defined and breathed life into Gotham and its heroes and villains. Spider-man only feels like Spider-man because he needs to be so the movie can get off the ground. Like many heroes he is born through tragedy and genetic alteration, but in neither the first or second Amazing Spider-man have I once empathized with the weight of that responsibility. I’ve never experienced what it is like to be the Amazing Spider-man.

The Amazing Spider-man franchise has so far been two one-note movies: here’s Spider-man, here’s Oscorp and its bad guys, they fight, things get broken, stuff happens, good wins and evil loses, see you in two years for the next instalment. The movie’s slogan is “His greatest battle begins”, but his battle was no different from his first showdown with an Oscorp creature. Peter Parker, Spider-man, neither of them have changed nor grown much. To be fair, The Amazing Spider-man 2 is an incredibly fun superhero flick. But aside from the visual effects, don’t walk into the theater expecting anything too amazing.

Overall Rating: 7.0 out of 10