I will be the first to admit that it’s hard to get excited
for these reboot Spider-Man movies. No, I’m not some Tobey Maguire nut-hugger
or Sam Raimi fanatic who feels betrayed that Sony overhauled the series too
fast. My beef with the Amazing Spider-Man
movies is that I feel that there is nothing they can show me that I haven’t
seen i.e. Peter Parker gets bitten, Uncle Ben dies, Aunt May stresses, Oscorp
being shady… With Great Power Comes Blah
Blah Blah! I was over that. However, there was one thing that as a fan of
film that I really loved about the first Amazing
Spider-Man and that was Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy and the chemistry that was exploding
between her and Andrew Garfield. Unlike Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunts sleepwalking
through the Mary-Jane/Peter Parker love story, this actually felt real. That
reason mixed with knowing the history of these characters in the comics made me
curious about The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
Non-spoiler plot rundown: Peter Parker is established
as Spider-Man and NYC has gotten so used to him that the debate is “hero” or “menace”
a staple of the comic book series. We find Peter at a crossroads as the death
Captain Stacy literally haunts him and the abandonment of his parents begins
to surface. Emo Peter is on the fence, and it’s not long before Gwen has to put
her foot down and say, “enough of this p**y footing, I break up with you!” In short,
Peter Parker has a lot of stress. The big villain, of course, is Jamie Foxx’s
Electro, one of the legendary b-list Marvel characters finally getting the big
screen treatment. Foxx’s Electro is a geeky electrical engineer, outcast and
abused at work, with nothing to live for until Spider-Man saves his life,
creating an obsessive connection that turns psychotic and deadly after Electro’s
accident (which is eerily similar to The Joker’s transformation in 1989’s
Batman). If an electrically charged Stan wasn’t enough, Peter finds out that
his best friend Harry Osborne has returned to take over Oscorp after the death
of his father Norman Osborne.
Norman Osborne is dead? Norman Osborne never becomes the
Green Goblin? Whaaaaaaa! Before you get your panties in a bunch, this is one of
the things I actually enjoyed. How many F**king times do we need to see Norman
Vs Peter? The Raimi trilogy gave us enough Green Goblin, and let’s be honest; the
Green Goblin doesn’t translate well to the big screen, which is why Dr. Octopus
in Spider-Man 2 remains the only good Spidey villain translation.
Harry has the same disease his father did, and believes his
only cure is Spider-Man’s blood. Of course, Peter can’t allow his best friend
to OD on his Radioactive blood, so like Electro, Harry becomes a man scorned by
the web slinger. What follows on the villain front isn’t that important. We all
know that Electro and Spider-Man are going to engage in an all-out war in the
city, and that Harry does indeed transform into the Green Goblin, but again, it’s
nothing new. We don't really care about Electro the weird, socially awkward nerd or Harry the weird pouting rich brat. The heart of this movie is Gwen & Peter.
Spider-man is a silly character. His jokes are juvenile and
his way of fighting is wild and loose. He’s a walking cartoon, as opposed to
Captain America, who’s much more stoic and disciplined. That’s not a knock
against the writers of the film; it’s the nature of the character. I’ve never
been a fan of most Spidey incarnations because it’s not my kind of super-hero.
My bias aside, the movie falls apart when the costumed CGI Spider-Man is on
screen, and shines when it’s just Peter interacting with May, Harry, or Gwen.
The tone of this movie is inconsistent, and sitting in the movie theater, I
felt a sense of boredom during every fight scene with the exception of the last
tragic battle.
The only solution would have been to only give Spider-man
ten minutes of screen time and put Peter Parker in plain clothes during these
dangerous situations. Then we would have Iron
Man 3, a movie bashed for the lack of Iron Man suit. In the end Electro is
over the top, Harry Osborne’s Green Goblin is over the top, and the entire
subplot about Peter’s Parent’s feels like an afterthought. While it’s never
goofy like Spider-Man 3’s Venom, the Paul Giamatti’s Rhino does come close to
full out camp.
With all of that said, I still liked it. This wasn’t The Amazing Spider-Man; it was the Spectacular
Gwen Stacy. Emma Stone was the glue that held this movie together and saved it
from being remembered as “The one where
Jamie Foxx had a bad wig and Trayvon Martin Hoody.” We got to see all the
things that made the character great in the comics and then some. She’s not Mary
Jane’s damsel in distress, she’s the genius that makes Peter Parker smarter,
the fearless woman that saves the day, and the love interest that breaks all of
our hearts.
The Amazing Spider-Man
2 was a tale of two movies: One a goofy cartoon with generic villains and gimmicky
fight scenes. The second a poignant love story between two people who shouldn’t
be together but need to be together despite the obvious dangers. In the end, we
are left with the tease of the Sinister Six and a hopefulness that Spider-Man
will go into this next chapter more focused than ever but unlike Bruce Wayne
or Logan, his tragedies haven’t darkened his soul. There will undoubtedly be
three or four more of these Amazing Spider-Man films, but as the credits rolled
and I heard several grown men sitting around me sobbing or holding back tears, I
got an eerie feeling that this one will stand the test of time as the best of
the bunch because of one powerful character…
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