This review contains spoilers, read on at your own risk.
Gwen Stacy’s arc in The Amazing Spiderman 2 is that she breaks up with Peter Parker/Spiderman because he is troubled by his inability to live up to the promise of the first film. Its Ironic that Gwen’s growing disenchantment with stuttering Parker mirrors that of the viewer. Lets not deny that this film features some of the best live action Spiderman sequences, the initial scenes of Peter swinging through New York are heart stopping, thrilling to the extreme one could believe that the only way they were created was by asking the real Spiderman to strap on a movie Camera and help out the filmmakers. Ultimately that the film delivers such wonder only adds to the overall disappointment, it cruelly pokes you with what might have been.
The problem with this film is squarely with the writing team of Orci and Kurtzman who deliver a schizophrenic script and meaningless story, with Star Trek Into Darkness and Transformers 2 on their CV it’s a wonder they get hired to write Menus never mind multi million dollar movies. Each scene in this movie works, it is just that very few of the scenes work when taken into the context of the scenes that come before and after. Characters, back stories, emotions, relationships and motivations change with no warning or rationale. This film is undoubtedly a stitching together of Webb’s originally planned parts two and three, and it suffers as a result.
Firstly, we have the film’s villain Electro, his origin? Well he was an electronics technician, whose work was stolen by Oscorp, except he works at Oscorp, so wasn’t he just doing his job? Why does he still work there if he feels so aggrieved? He is also dangerously obsessed with Spiderman, having been rescued by him early in the film, this obsession turns to hatred when, during a conversation with Spiderman, he is shot at by police. It seems odd that he’d turn so suddenly on the object of his affections given that days before he was thanking Spiderman for a cake he had bought for himself? His next origin is that he feels invisible, he is moved when people even remember his name, funny because in his interactions with Smythe, Spiderman and Gwen, they all remember his name? We don’t actually see anybody who forgets his name? A brief possibility of him becoming obsessed with Gwen Stacy is abandoned as soon as it is conceived, but it was clearly there in an earlier draft, and kept in part so Gwen can look for him later in the film. As for his physical transformation a pre existing ability to control electricity is teased but it seems being attacked by electric eels is what did it. His patchwork origin gives us an equally patchwork plan, to kill Spiderman for… something and to kill the power in the city because he designed the power grid. OK then. With a main villain this weak there are two options, rewrite and make him better, or just stick in another villain and hope for the best...
Next up Harry Osborn, who Peter visits at 20 years old because he saw on the News that Norman Osborn had died and because Harry helped him through it when his parents died. Seems plausible, except of course that Peter’s parents died when he was 6 years old. I am not sure just how much emotional support Harry was able to offer Peter at 6? Harry was then shipped off to boarding school at 11 and even assuming he and Peter were still friends then, he and Peter didn’t communicate for the next ten years. Given that Peter explains he knows Harry’s movements from the press it seems they weren’t Skyping or even on facebook terms. Again this is fine, except of course after one afternoon on the beach Harry is saying things like “you were my best friend and you betrayed me” about Spiderman’s refusal to hand over his blood. He also says “With Peter its always complicated” when he meets Gwen in the lift. I’m not sure if Harry is referring to his 14 year old recollections of Peter’s emotional state when, as a six year old his parents died, or if he is talking about that afternoon they spent skimming stones, but either way it seems an unfair and unjustifiable judgement on Harry’s part? Harry’s motivation in this film? He has an incurable disease that his dad lived with until he was 63, a disease he didn’t even know he had until his dad told him so. So with 43 years to work on a cure Harry becomes obsessed with developing something immediately, and suddenly developing lesions on his face just so we all know how ill he is. Harry’s father Norman, whose goblinesque features suggest he tried the spider venom himself, gives Harry a cryptic USB where a simple “use/don’t use the spider venom” conversation would have sufficed. Having been kicked off the Oscorp board Harry decides to use the spider venom so he can get revenge on Spiderman, for not agreeing to a blood donation – although having used the venom removed the need for the donation... Harry murders Gwen, I am not sure why, I guess its because she died in the comics. We only see the Goblin for a few minutes so I'd be lying if I said I had a good look at him nevermind understand what he was doing in this movie.
Gwen wants to head off to merry old Blighty because Peter doesn’t say he loves her, even though he does say that several times in the film, lesson for all of us guys say it with webs it means more. She has expanded her work in genetics to the citywide power supply having seen the “specs of the new power system”. It didn’t really matter that she did because when Spidey needed her it was actually a very well labelled big red button saying ‘system reset’ or ‘Acme push me plot device' or something. Gwen’s romantic final kiss with Peter is immediately after he cracks a joke about Jack the Ripper, nothing gets a girl going like flippancy juxtaposed with the image of eviscerated Victorian prostitutes does it? Emma Stone will not be worried that this was her final appearance in the series. One other thought, given Gwen’s brutal death one does also wonder where exactly there was room for Mary Jane in this script?
Garfield’s Spiderman continues to impress despite his surroundings, everything from the costume and wisecracks, when not about brutal serial killers, are on the mark. His story arc is that he should break his promise to Captain Stacy and learn to let Gwen make her own choices, so she can forego a promising career in genetics and a place at Oxford University and instead get her neck snapped having pushed a button – yay equality. Fingers crossed she wasn’t destined to cure any nasty diseases then. I am not sure what the moral of the story is here? Despite the weak arc, which also included something or another about his dad leaving a message to wrap up the aborted parents arc. Despite all this, this interpretation of Spiderman somehow remains the one consistent beacon of hope for the future of the franchise.
The film has done away with two green goblins, their business empire and complex relationships with Peter Parker/Spiderman in favour of a blink and you’ll miss it origin and equally brief nonesensical action scene, what a waste. Had Harry seen Gwen as the researcher to help cure his ills, and she had died at Electro’s hand he would have had a perfect motivation for blaming Spiderman and his desperation and descent in film 3 which would have countered Peter’s own emotional recovery. Heaven forbid we have a theme, or a believable complex motivation, much better we have overworked nonsense masquerading as content.
This Spiderman film shows a young woman brutally die in slow motion by having her neck broken, mere minutes later the Rhino interrupts his rampage to wait patiently whilst a young child dressed as Spiderman is removed from the crime scene. This film includes scenes of nurse trainee Aunt May looking for a defibrillator when a scene with Harry and Peter hanging out saying “I’m so glad we’ve been best mates for the last 6 months” would have made Harry and Peter's relationship more believable. This Spiderman includes a generic German scientist torturing Electro with electric shocks… it also includes Electro being subdued by and held safely in water… a brilliant conductor of electricity. It also includes Spidey taking time out of a battle to learn firemen names and stick on a spare helmet. Dane Dehaan is wasted, Chris Cooper is wasted, Jamie Foxx’s Electro is a motiveless directionless villain. That Spiderman’s Times Square spider-sense fuelled coach/stairway rescue is one of the best superhero rescues ever put on screen is lost amidst a story and script that feels like a cut and paste exercise between two drafts where none of the inconsistencies were thought about or worked out. It meanders from ad libbed slacker movie to slick superhero film by way of sequences and performances that would be the lowpoint in an episode of Power Rangers (Rhino’s pre-suit appearance). It represents the best and also worst of the genre and tantalises with glimpses what could have been. A poor effort but I have to admit I enjoyed elements of it 5/10.