When you see as many films as I do, you start marking film time by trailer moments. “Ah, there’s the part when he jumps off a building”…”there’s where he shoots a web at a guy’s crotch.” I’ve seen The Amazing Spider-Man 2 trailer at least a dozen times, maybe more like twenty or more. I’ve never seen an actual film differ more from the trailer; it’s quite apparent that not only did some scenes end up on the cutting floor, an entire plotline (Oscorp v. Peter Parker) got lost between production and release stages. I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this at the present time and I didn’t like this film enough to want to see a director’s cut.
When are the Feds gonna investigate Oscorp? In the Spider-Man, sorry, that’s the Amazing Spider-Man world, Oscorp is responsible for 100% of the national counts of monsterism, including 100% of the multiple counts of evil-destroying-the-city monsterism. Eventually somebody’s gotta notice, doncha think?
In this one, Spider-Man actually meets his nemesis in pre-op form. Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) is presented as an introverted schizophrenic genius social leper. Don’t bother studying this portrait; it exists nowhere in life. Spidey rescues the man and collects his blueprints in one fell swoop and then doles out some unsolicited personal affirmation stuff. What are you a self-help guru, now? “Today on the show, we have Amazz ‘Speeder-Mann’ with his new book: Releasing Your Inner Hero…” Let me tell ya, pal, you tread a fine silk thread presenting positive aphorisms to random Manhattan-ites, even ones whose life you’ve saved. And, naturally, it does come back to haunt the -Man of Spider when Max falls into a vat of eels and becomes Electro, a pissed-off human super conductor.
I’m not exactly up on my physics, but I’m pretty sure this is bullshit even by comic book standards. I found both Electro and Jamie Foxx a bit of a lost cause in this one; the motivations, attitudes and abilities seemed a bit sketchy from the start.
Fortunately, that’s all pretty irrelevant. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 works much better as a romance than an action film. I would favor Tobey Maguire’s take on the not-so-world-
wide-webmaster, but there’s no denying that Amazing’s Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are far better than not-so-Amazing’s Tobey and Kirsten Dunst. Hard to know exactly what to conclude when you get a bigger reaction from Gwen (Stone) saying, “I’m going to England” than Spidey (Garfield) catching a police car mid-air to save a local from being crushed. I love that Spider-Man saves Times Square with time (square) stop heroics, but at the end of the scene, left alone with just Gwen and an empty barricade, he says, “England?” You can almost see the mingled confusion and disappointment through the mask.
Dane DeHaan replaces James Franco as Harry Osborn. Dane has a loooooong career of villainy ahead of him. Perhaps when he hits puberty and stops looking like a cross between Paul Dano and Alfred E. Neuman, he might get the occasional hero and/or romantic role. Barring that slim chance, I’d expect to see him as a villain for decades to come. Speaking of which, this is my biggest qualm with Amazing 2: at the end of the day, the people making all the major life/death decisions in NYC are kids. Now, I’m sure this plays well to the summer blockbuster crowds, but, let’s face it, no matter how talented Gwen Stacy is as a scientist, there’s no way Oscorp would give the teenage intern anything more important than fetching coffee for “real” scientists.
♪Spider-Man
Spider-Man
Loves just like a human can
Can he cry at a slight?
Check it, pal
He just might
Look out!
I broke-up with Spider-Man♫
Rated PG-13, 142 Minutes
D: Marc Webb, still the most appropriately named director in the biz
W: Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci &Jeff Pinkner
Genre: Arachnophobia
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Blockbuster fans
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The Downton crowd
♪ Parody inspired by “Spiderman Theme”
