The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the Villainy of the Uninspired

by Christopher Barr

…with great powers come great responsibilities??

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is an occasionally entertaining movie but only wishes to be an appetizer or sample platter for a number of sequels and sin-offs of an all new Sony Entertainment Spider-man universe.  Poor Peter Parker starts out having a blast as Spider-man but is conflicted with his promise he made Captain Stacy at the end of the last movie.  Which was to leave his daughter Gwen out of it, Captain Stacy rightfully understood that Spider-man would create enemies and they may want to kill those closest to him.

A lot of the movie deals with the Sinister Six movie coming up, where a chamber room underneath Oscorp allows us to see Doc. Ock’s metal tentacles, the Vulture’s metal wings and the Rhino’s metal suit are being secretly kept, behind glass display cases.  All of this is quite cool to see and also the built up to the Spidey Universe is appealing, but I think what we all really wanted, was a good Spider-man movie that stood on its own.  Captain America: The Winter Soldier achieved this in spades.  It was a great film, a wonderful story and with real world global issues, in spite of the fact that he is an Avenger attached to an infinite amount of future films. 

The Winter Soldier stands on its own, and I get that all the studios are desperately scrambling to create their own Avenger-esque universes for obvious reasons; lots of money, but it would be nice if they could pay attention a little more to the one film they are working on at the moment.

All in all The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was enjoyable to watch, save the ridiculous Rhino moments at the end.  The many scenes with Spidey swinging around New York, playfully spinning his webbing toward buildings as he cirque de soleil’s himself up Broadway Avenue, were quite mesmerizing and thrilling to behold.   The P.O.V shots were better than the first movie and were also thrilling.

Then we got to the big bad, Electro.  A stereotypical one dimensional nerd, that is obsessed with Spider-man and the notion of stardom, employee of Oscorp falls into a pool of genetically, engineered electric eels and is furiously bitten by a number of them.  He survives this ordeal as one does and retains the ability to harness electricity and use it as a weapon.   The more electricity he harnesses the more powerful be becomes.  For the most part his look is pretty cool, and I’m quite sure the fan boys wouldn’t begrudge the filmmakers for changing his look from the early comic book and the early morning 80’s cartoon.  His suit looked pretty awesome other than the silly lightning patches on his upper arms.  The CGI on his face, body and the electricity he fired from his hands all looked top notch. 

Electro starts to get a hate on for Spider-man after the WebCrawler steals his ‘thunder’ during a bout with him that literally demolishes Time Square.   (This seems to be a growing trend in American blockbusters with last year’s Man of Steel’s final battle resulting in the almost, complete destruction of an entire city.  Whether this is upping the CGI explosive ante or it’s symbolic of the destruction of our way of life, one thing is for sure; blowing up stuff has gotten a whole lot bigger.)  The public that all seem to stick around when things start exploding at their feet, as they all praise Spider-man for his heroism and laugh and mock Electro, thus fueling his hatred toward his once idol.

The most interesting villain of the three in this movie is the Goblin (Note: did these filmmakers not see Sam Raimi’s atrocious Spider-man 3?)  Probably because he actually had an impact on our main character where the other two for the most part, were just lunatics.  Harry Osborn, son of the late Norman Osborn (who's likely not even dead but frozen or something) had a reason, albeit a selfish one, to hunt down Spider-man especially after finding out he is his old time friend Peter Parker.  The movie left out any real pathos between the characters and then did something that I think is becoming commonplace with all these superhero reboots, reimaging spin-offs, and that is; the movie forced its audience to draw from the previous Raimi films for our backstory. Clearly the new Spidey universe has big plans for Harry Osborn in future films, but I still think they had a great opportunity here, with two good young actors, to make something wonderful and they blew it.

The Sam Raimi Trilogy was not without its faults as in the above mention of the disastrous Spider-man 3, that being said, Spider-man 2 remains one of the best superhero movies ever made.  I think the reason why that is; is the story isn’t a convoluted mess like Part 3 and Amazing 2.  Part 2 stuck to its roots and its main character rarely ever strayed from the source material, it’s also had a wonderful setup from the first Spider-man.  It did what The Empire Strikes Back, The Godfather Part 2 and in some cases The Dark Knight did, it never tried to repeat itself and instead of just adding more explosions like most sequels, it elevated its narrative and explored the psychology of its hero further.  The Amazing Spider-man 2 did not take the opportunity to explore Peter further than in the first movie.

The wonderful feature of this movie doesn’t come with a costume at all but with the emotional, dynamic chemistry between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy.  These two are what gives the story the heart that any good story needs.  We need to be invested and we need to care to do this.  Other than some minor moments with Harry, Peter and Gwen’s on again off again relationship is what we care about.  Electro wants fame and recognition which comes off too petty to take him seriously, Rhino, well there really isn’t anything there to say other than, they used one of the greatest actors of his generation to appear even less than one dimensional.  One assumes that Rhino will appear in future movies with at least a scene or two without him roaring at the top of his exaggerated lungs. 

The Dark Knight Trilogy succeeded in giving us something new and flesh and rightfully distanced itself from the last Batman movie, the insulting and horrible Batman and Robin.  I keep thinking every time I watch Batman Begins I’m not distracted by previous Batman movies. This new Spider-man series has thus far given us very little freshness but has cheaply ripped off its predecessor and pretty well has been giving us reruns.  X-Men: The Last Stand was garbage so the reboot had to do better and they did.  X-Men: First Class was far superior and fresh and well done, so it’s hard not to leave the theatre after seeing The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and not think ‘money grab’, or think ‘we’ve seen it done right before, why didn’t they put in the same effort?’  So in the end we at least have to go back to the human element of the two main characters and leave all the CGI and excessive explosions on the theatre room floor.

Peter and Gwen have a real dynamic here and one worth the price of admission.  Often the conflicting reason as to why we can’t be with someone is relatable here.  Minus the awesome Spidey suit and super villains, their connection is solid and we as an audience member become invested in their well-being and we want them to get back together again.  We want them to work it out in spite of Peter’s promise to Captain Stacy.  So the tragic outcome of this movie as in life is; we don’t always get what we want.