An Open Letter to Andrew Garfield

Let me start by saying I loved the first movie. Spider-Man 2.1 by Raimi and The Amazing Spider-Man 1 by Webb are my favorite comic book movies of all time. Let me say next that I didn't HATE the second movie. I was however very disappointed. Spider-Man is by far my favorite superhero and comic book character. As I'm sure many of you will do please add to the discussion why you were so disappointed in the comments. You never know, maybe Mr. Garfield or one of the producers will stumble upon this page. Mr. Garfield did ask for this article after all. I will however echo Mr. Garfield's request for only constructive criticism and ask people, in his words, not be dicks just for the sake of being dicks. Again, his words not mine. So let's get started.

I'll start with the things I enjoyed:

Peter and Gwen were perfecly realized. I loved the romance. I loved the dialogue and wit between the two. It didn't hurt that they are the spitting image of their comic book counter-parts either.

Peter and Aunt May felt very real and had a real warmth to their realtionship that was missing from the original three films.

I thought Andrew knocked it out of the park when it came to being Spidey. FINALLY! Some real Spidey quips.

The web swinging in the film was fantastic and by far the best we've ever had.

The costume was spot on perfect. It is the most loyal interpretation from the comics we've had yet (even though my personal favorite was from the previous film.)

I felt the death of Gwen Stacy was handled well. Even though I knew it was coming I still teared up a bit. I still went "ooooh!" when her head snapped back at the last second. It also led to the fantastic grave yard montage with Peter.

Now for the reason we are all here, the negative:

The tone was all over the place. At times (like in the holding cell with Electro and the male German version of Dr. Ashley Kofka) it felt like Batman and Robin. Bright neon lights and cheesy dialogue from wall to wall. And other times kept the real world feel from the first movie. The tone was all over the place and made it hard to get into the film and it's story.

This brings me right into my next complaint, Dr. Ashley Kofka. Ashley Kofka in the comics is a woman who has devoted her life to helping and reforming super criminals. She believes she can help them get to a better life. She is a loving, caring person. The Ashley Kofka we got on film was a man. A german-mad-scientist who loves torturing/experimenting on his patients. He is almost the complete opposite of the character from the comics. The only simularity is that they are both criminal psychologists named Ashley Kofka. That's it. What a waste of a great character.

Did Max Dillion have some kind of metal disability? I'm not trying to be funny. He talked to himself. He even talked to himself as Spider-Man. He seemed to have the emotional maturity of a six year old child. If he was suppose to have a mental disability it would actually make more sense and everything that happend to him in the film would be even more tragic. But the guy was an electrical engineer. So he couldn't be all that dense right? The character was in much need of more development.

No one's favorite villain is Electro. I'm sorry but it has to be said. People LOVE Venom, Carnage, the Green Goblin, Doc Ock, the Lizard, Kraven, and even the Rhino. But I'm telling you, no one runs around saying how much they love Electro and that he is their favorite, who for whatever reason was used as the main villain. And I can't imagine the way he was used in this movie will help him become a favorite.

There was too much cheese in this film. The first "The Amazing Spider-Man" had a great realistic feel. If Spider-Man were real, the movie captured what it would really feel like to turn on the news and see a human spider running around New York fighting crime. The second film seemed to say "screw that!" and felt like it was trying to be The Avengers, Raimi's Spider-Man, and Batman and Robin rolled into one film.
 No one wants to see that.

Bad dialogue. There is cheesy dialogue and then there is just straight up BAD dialogue, this movie had both. Harry saying "random" when Peter came to see him was bad. Harry yelling "you're a fraud Spider-Man!" is bad dialogue. Electro saying "it's my birthday, time for me to light my candles" succeeds at being both cheesy and bad. 

Lack of an after credits scene. Many a theater goer reported the entire theater booing after watching nearly 10 minutes of credits to not get the now Marvel staple of an after credits scene. BOO!

This next complaint is in my own words but is credited to the user gogeta5:
The trailers continued to show us over and over the fight scene between the Rhino and Spidey. It really was the thing I was looking forward to the most. You really ask yourself "man I wonder what happens after Spidey smacks the Rhino with that man-hole-cover?" You pay to go see the movie. I can even remember sitting there getting really excited to see this fight happen, and what do you discover? You've already seen the entire fight! They showed us the very last scene and very last shot of the film in the trailers! What kind of marketing department do you guys have Sony? It's like you couldn't have tried harder to piss off your audience.

Now for the complaint that bothered me the most. The fight scenes. They sucked. Sorry, I can be more constructive than that. Go back and watch the fight scenes from Spider-Man 2 and even the first The Amazing Spider-Man film and you'll notice something: the fight scenes are a constant fight that isn't interupted by bad editing. In the middle of Doc Ock and Spidey fighting on the clock tower or train, we don't cut away from the action to watch people on an air plane or an air traffic control agent start a stop watch. It kills the momentum of the action. Every action scene is interupted to take us some where we don't want to be. The fight with the Lizard on top of Oscorp tower was a nonstop fight between two characters. It flowed and made us feel we were right in the middle of it. Take the end Goblin/Spidey fight for example. We know Spidey and Goblin are doing some really cool stuff fighting just off screen as we continue to cut to Gwen jumping from cog to cog. LET US WATCH THEM FIGHT! It was driving me mad. Stop cutting to that damn plane and people reading magazines! Did they really think I paid good money to see an air traffic control team cheering in 3D? Not only did the fight scenes in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 have us jump from place to place in the middle of the fights, most of the time they weren't even fight scenes, they were chase scenes pretending to be fight scenes. He chased the Rhino in the opening. He chased Electro around New York and between the 
pylons at the end. He chased Harry around the pylons when he grabbed Gwen only to have a very short lived fight inside the clock tower. The fight scenes should be a major high light in a film about Spider-Man. Spider-Man 2.1 proved that. This film failed horribly on that front. The extremly disappointing fight between Spidey and Electro in time square also helps prove that point. My wife contends that it wasn't even really a fight scene. They barely fought one another before Spidey hosed Max down. 

There are a few other complaints but I feel this article is already pretty long winded. I figure you guys can take it from here. But like I said or like Mr. Andrew Garfield has said, please, don't be dicks. You never know who is reading this. And you never know, what we say may well help the next Spidey flick be, well, amazing.


Ok fine, one last thing. What kind of parent brings their kid to a bank robbery and shoot out between police and a true blue super criminal with two giant machine guns? Even if you don't have a kid I can't imagine people just chilling behind a police line to watch bullets fly when there is a real possibility you may get hit. Just sayin...