It's rare that I see a movie in the theaters. In the past year, not including this film, I've seen two films in theaters, Captain America 2 and The World's End (which I actually saw twice because of how kickass it was). What better way to capitalize on this opportunity than to share my thoughts about it with the internet? So, what did I feel about it? Well, I didn't like it.
This reviewish thing is kinda be kinda spoiler-iffic. I won't spoil the ending, but suffice to say I didn't like it.
I'll start off explaining that I really liked the original Toby MacGuire Spider-Man movies. Well, you know, except for the third one because nobody really liked that one. Granted, I haven't seen them in quite some time, but I remember enjoying them quite fondly. And along with that, I didn't see the first Amazing Spider-Man movie. Now, I don't know how much that would affect how I feel about AS2, because I don't really think it would be that big an impact. Yeah, I'd probably care about Gwen Stacy more, but I'll be honest, I actually quite liked the relationship between the two, even if some stupid things happened with it. Now, putting in perspective of the rest of the movie might shed some light on as well, but more on that later.
I'll start out with talking about Peter Parker himself. Don't know how many people are sayin this, but I miss MacQuire. I really didn't like Andrew Garfield in this movie, but I feel that it was mostly the script rather than him as an actor. He just did things that make me roll my eyes. Like, Spider-Man's thing is that he's kind of an awkward teen guy that makes snappy retorts at villains, right? At least that's what I got out of it. Peter doesn't at all seem like an awkward teen, I bet he was really popular in high school (haven't seen the first one). And Spider-Man's always kinda sounded like a dick, but rather than being endearing or likable, he's just annoying. There's the kind a dick that would be fun to hang out with, then there's the kinda dick whose mouth you want stapled shut. Garfield Spidey is in the second category.
The villains suck too. The main villain is Electro, played by Jamie Foxx. The last Foxx movie I saw was Django, where he plays a badass shootin' people and being awesome. Here, he plays Max Dillon, a nerd stereotype. Check it out, he wears loser glasses, he has a comical gap between his front two teeth, he's got no friends, he gets bullied, and he carries a lot of things in his hands and then they all fall out of his hands and its funny lets laugh at him! This is grown man working at Oscorp. This shit's happening to an adult cause everybody's still in high school. He gets saved by Spider-Man once and turns into stalker levels of creepy because "he remembered [his] name." Man, that's some Nickelodeon shit right there. pbs kids or whatever. He turns into Electro as a direct result of people picking on him. Everybody leaves, and he's sent to fix something. Instead of somebody following this extreme safety protocol to fix something, something like TURNING OFF POWER IN AN AREA, the guy doesn't do it for Dillon because he's a lazy fuck. Thus, Dillon's shocked, then falls into a tank of electric eels. Then becomes Electro because comic books.
The other villain is Harry Osborn, the character that's so incredibly annoying with almost everything he does. He never feels like a human, more like an alien doing his best human impression. I guess they're trying to build him as being this unfortunate kid who has a shit relationship with his dad and therefor underdeveloped as a person or something, but he's just this unlikable asshole. I can't even say I feel bad about the tension between his dad, they both sucked and I don't even know why he went to his death bed. Obligations or something. I felt more for the guy in Inception who had a shit relationship with his dad. Eventually he turns into Green Goblin, an ugly one at that. It's never really a tragic or difficult thing for the viewer, I don't care about this kid and I knew he was gonna end up killing himself, which, spoiler alert, the villain dies.There are a couple other baddies, the generic evil corporation guy in Oscorp who wants to cover up shit because that ALWAYS fucking works. There's a doctor doing experiments on Electro who's German because of course he is. They video tape conversations with Electro, and in whatever year this takes place in with all their super advanced technology, they still can't manage to get a video feed and recording that's more than, like, 5 frames per second.
The other main character is Gwen Stacy who, surprisingly enough, was pretty much the best thing in the film. I don't know, yeah, some things were pretty shoehorned into the movie for convenience, like when she knows how to solve a problem because high school science lawl. I guess it was the fact that she had more to do than nothing. She had to decide between this high school love relationship or attending school in another country. And, ironically, the one thing I feel would have really been amplified from seeing the first movie was still the best part of the movie, it was the one thing that didn't fall terribly flat. I guess his aunt was also pretty well acted, but she's not too prominent in the movie.What else is there to really say about the movie? The plot was, well, kinda silly, as is expected from a movie like this. Some other issues I had were that the movie liked to make a point of something, then drop it. There's a part in the beginning where Spider-Man's overworking himself and gets sick. Then it gets dropped. Then they raise the idea that public starts to see Spider-Man as a menace for damage to the city. This is a plot point I hate in superhero movies. Unless it's a game like InFamous, it's a terrible idea to have the people hating the hero. You're upset at the damages he's causing to the city? Spider-Man is the least damaging of the superheroes! What's he doing, leaving web residue? Do people honestly believe that's worse than having it controlled by a man made of electricity?
So, overall, I guess the effects were pretty cool, the main female leads were cool, but aside from that, everything fell flat and/or annoyed me. 4/10.
Oh yeah, and the ending was stupid.
