The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Pros and Cons

The cast for ASM was hit and miss for me, mostly due to script. Why cast Sally Fields if her character barely has anything to do?

I deny the alleged "impressive, strong ensemble" the first movie had.

My biggest issue?

The relationship between Peter and Gwen got in the way of Spider-Man action.

TASM had the weakest action sequences of any superhero film this past year. I even liked Ghost Rider's two action scenes more than any of the fights in TASM.

Now, we've got Stacy, Parker, Watson, and Osborn? You've got to establish two new, pivotal characters, and as we've seen from the first Spidey and (500) Days, Webb loves to establish character.

I personally like Electro as the villain, but the fact that he's not a major Spidey villain seems to hint at the fact that this film is going to be 70% Peter- 30% Spider-Man again. And if that's the case, I won't be coming back for part three.

I loved Amazing Spider-Man, it was my favourite CBM this year (although I haven't seen Dredd yet, and didn't bother with Ghost Rider since the first one blew chunks). I really liked the action sequences (the school fight and the final battle atop Oscorp tower especially), and I thought Webb hit the perfect balance between action and character, since I've always felt that, with Spider-Man, the action should always be second to the character stories. It was nice, and very refreshing, to see such an understated superhero movie, because this one was all about the relationships between the characters, and the hero vs villain stuff was more of a sub plot. It was a different approach to making a superhero movie, and I really enjoyed it.

It was a bit too open ended, but I think they must have realized during post production that they wanted to go in another direction with the sequel, and some of the stuff in the movie may have contradicted their new plans, so they re-edited the film (e.g. deleting Dr Ratha's sewer death scene means he can return in the sequel, and they may have plans for Uncle Ben's killer in a future movie... I also think Peter's parents were only supposed to be a way of getting Peter to Oscorp to be bitten by the spider, and during filming decided they wanted to make the characters more important to sequels).

It seems to me that close to the end of filming, they changed their mind on the idea for the sequel, and sloppily edited the film to make their new sequel work better. I do think the editing in the film is probably the worst part of it. It's just poor sequel baiting. Having said that, I loved the film for what it was, and found it easy to look past the sloppy editing since the characters were so engaging to me (especially Andrew Garfield as Peter and Emma Stone as Gwen... Martin Sheen was also a stand out for me as Ben, and I really enjoyed his chemistry with Andrew and Sally Field).

@LEVITIKUZ that's one persons opinion, and the action was good. Watch the movie before judging it which you clearly are. Oh by the way, why did you write an article defending shailene woodleys casting if you think this looks like shit? That's like me defending a game mode that was put on call of duty even though I think it looks terrible.

While fight choreography is better in TASM, Ghost Rider's action sequences were fun and insane, as they should have been. They weren't hyper violent like the source material provided for, but they were high-octane, nuts, borderline eccentrically stupid.

TASM's were yawn-inducing.

I will say in defense of TASM2 that their new additions to the cast are very strong additions. I love Woodley and I like her for MJ, and I'm a Foxx fan when he plays it low-key.

But TASM beat me over the head with its themes, asked me to reconcile shifty character development, provided poor action sequences, suffered from horrific editing, and ultimately left me leaving the theater like I'd just sort of wasted my time. Nothing about the film was striking.

Now, I'm a Sidney Lumet fan, so don't let me get started on performances. TASM's saving graces were Garfield and Leary, but it's not enough to carry the film. Sheen wasn't bad, but he became a detractor at points. But in cases like Lumet movies like Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Network, 12 Angry Men, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, etc etc...he provides a story for those performances to really carry the weight of the film. Watch this:



That actor is Ned Beatty. That's practically his only scene in the movie Network. He grabbed an Academy Award nomination for that. That one speech written by Paddy Chayefsky, who took home the Oscar that year for this screenplay. Lumet directs this scene by setting it up and letting it fly. The camera barely moves. He just lets Beatty live and breathe this role. The movie is full of fantastic moments like this. But my point?

This is a movie that really stands on the acting and writing. That's where it holds up. Lumet did not make attempts to break new ground, become a technical wizard, or try anything explosive. As he says in his book Making Movies, he notes the strengths of the film and runs with it.

The Amazing Spider-Man is a film that can't stand on its merit because of what it is. It's an action-adventure film, so it has to provide a complete story, fresh action, and justify its own existence. The performances are good, but they can't carry the film. That's why TASM, to me, was a failure for a Spider-Man movie. It relied too much on chemistry for emotional connection to the audience, and it turned out to be very hit or miss, as reviews have shown.

As a movie, I found it poor. As a Spider-Man film, I found it poor. As a superhero flick, I found it enjoyable to an extent. But for those who say that it had more emotional weight than Raimi's film, I think they should take a look at this.

http://whatculture.com/film/10-most-overlooked-moments-of-the-original-spider-man-trilogy.php

i'm sorry, but how is electro a dull villain?
Electro is freaking badass, just watch Spider-Man: New animated series, or better yet Spectacular Spider-Man, Electro is awesome.

and about the writers, Transformers 2, was not their fault. Michael wanted to do things different from their script. Michael went ahead and changed most of the script.

Electro on his own isn't a villain that makes for a movie. he just doesn't bring much.

he's best used as either muscle for someone else or as a generic threat while other things are happening that Peter has to deal with.

and that's what i think we're gonna get. Peter's always been a big focus of the comic books, that's one of the things that set the character apart from most other superheroes at the time. and Webb seems drawn to that about the franchise.

so, ideally, from what we know right now, i would imagine the most we can hope for is a sequel that focuses mostly on heightening tension leading up to events in the future. either Gwen's death in movie 3 or 4. or something else crazy entirely.

but something else will be building up big in the background, not just little clues thrown around but actively in the works, a feeling of dread moving to a climax.

and for Electro, i think we will see him possibly being used as muscle, but also i could see him having nothing to do with this larger thing Webb is hopefully working towards.

but with the choice of Jamie Foxx, i think we'll definitely see some kind of reimagination of Electro's character. like not just electricity shoots out of me, but also Electro like his personality is gonna be over the top, manic, sort of flamboyant maybe even in some way. i keep picturing him as being almost like a showman or an entertainer or something. not literally, but just the way he carries himself or acts. i don't know tho, that whole thing seems a little hard to pull off, but they must have something up their sleeve with how they plan to rework the character with Jamie Foxx.

so just that choice of villain doesn't say much about the movie. there's other things about TASM that leave me overall unhopeful about this movie tho.

good article, i don't agree with it all, but i liked it. biggest thing is now i really wanna see Ghost Rider 2 becuz of BattlinMurdock's description of the fight scenes. borderline eccentrically stupid works so perfectly with NIcholas Cage. ii gotta see it tonite. haha.

@SotoJuiceMan - a little off topic, but u know what the ultimate big formula that i wish they would just stop doing (except for Venom, when Marvel reboots Spider-Man)??

when the villain is a twisted mirror image version of the hero.
like practically half the Iron Man villains are other guys in armor suits.
Venom, Bizarro, Abomination, Red Hulk, bad other colored Lanterns...
i know that some of these examples actually have worked really well and bring to light new aspects of the hero. and even create a worthwhile character on it's own. like Venom and Bizarro, in my eyes. they are both rad.

but i mean, the kind of thing where it's just let's take the hero and make them a different color or give them horns or something. i don't know why that's always so popular. especially with Iron Man. why does anyone wanna see Iron Man fight another guy in armor??

and then the one other thing that i realized now i wish didn't exist even more,
is when everybody is somebody else's dad. like your dad killed my dad and now i going to kill you. or it turns out that somebody is always somebody else's dad.
jeezuz criest, there's so much cheap melodrama in comic books about what happened to your dad. they should have more characters have sex with their enemies mothers. that's what we really need instead of all that dad killing stuff.

@LEVITIKUZ I agree that woodleys casting could be great, I haven't seen her in anything but i consider myself an optimist so I think she'll be great. But honestly dude you need to go into this movie with an open mind. And you need to calm down man, your comments come off as really aggressive and sometimes offensive, I'm not insulting you I'm just saying you should chill out.

@Lizard1 - let's wait and see which way they might go with Electro, and more importantly, what the actual focus of the movie is going to be. maybe they picked a villain like Electro becuz there was too much going on elsewhere in the movie for a villain that required a lot of depth.
so maybe they went with one who seemed different from what we've seen already in the last few movies and who wouldn't take too much backstory or fleshing out. it might be a smart choice, cuz who knows how much they have planned to happen around it.
i mean, you'd rather have Electro be the main villain than Shocker or Vulture or Rhino, right?
like i said before, i'm actually not too hopeful about the next movie, but i think we gotta wait a long time before we can really tell if Electro was a bad choice or not.

fangz: Actually, I'd rather see Shocker (which sounds hypocritical, I know) or Vulture over Electro. Next to Rhino and a couple of other Spider-Man villains, Electro is among the worst in my opinion.

thinking about it now, and i really wish they'd done Kingpin in the first one. had Shocker and maybe a couple other low level thug types makeup something like the Enforcers.

besides the reasons just stated above, it would've been great becuz you'd have Gwen's dad trying to bust this crime ring and then keep running into this Spider-Man guy. pretty much what they did in the actual movie, but i think it would've worked better with something more everyday like the Kingpin or Hammerhead or something. then he'd get killed off in the second one same way as Webb did it.

i guess i'm saying they should've made it two movies, basically.

I'm excited for the new movie. But one thing I will say is that it is getting tiresome hearing all the complaints because of X,Y,z. I got news for ya: THE DAMN MOVIE HASN'T COME OUT YET! No one even knows the story other than Electro is gonna be the villain. Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield have said that its a good script and I don't know about you people but I trust that they know their material. Seriously