It almost seems as if every new set photo that comes out from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 get criticized to the bone. Why is there so much criticism for a movie that hasn’t even been released yet? The Amazing Spider-Man was pretty successful at the box office, and it received generally favorable reviews holding a 73% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and got a lot of praise for Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone’s performances, so why isn’t there much excitement for the sequel?
Let’s start by acknowledging why people complained about the first film. A lot of fans said that The Amazing Spider-Man was released too early, only 10 years after Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and only 5 years after Spider-Man 3. However, The Amazing Spider-Man was a necessary film because of the fact that there were way too many errors in Spider-Man 3, and a fourth film would be extremely difficult to please an audience. Ask yourself this; are you glad that Batman Begins was released or would you rather have seen a sequel to Batman and Robin? I think the former would be on most people’s minds. Also, The Amazing Spider-Man got the concept and mythology of Spider-Man in more detail than the first film. We see more reasons why Peter Parker actually becomes a superhero (he stops hunting down Uncle Ben’s killer after Captain Stacey talks about Spider-Man not helping out the city because he only finds criminals that are similar, and begins to fight crime regularly because he feels that he has an obligation to do so) and the story starts off with Gwen Stacey rather than introducing her randomly two films later. Although Sam Raimi’s first two Spider-Man films are incredible, ASM was the right way to go after Spider-Man 3 for fans that still wanted to see Spider-Man in the cinema.
So far with Amazing Spider-Man 2, we have only seen set photos and concept art of the new suit. The set photos are being totally bashed by fans, but I think they really shouldn’t be. Recently, Jamie Foxx’s appearance as Electro has been getting a lot of negative reactions. Personally, I believe that the film is going in the right direction by making him look more like the character from the Ultimates. People couldn’t really have been expecting the filmmakers to go with the traditional yellow and green suit were they? There are some things that work in comics that do not work at all in film. The traditional suit would have looked silly, and just a standard black suit, like I know many people were actually expecting to see, would look plain. The images that we’ve seen so far give me the idea that once the effects in the film are established, Electro will look like a really menacing character that poses a threat to the whole city (isn’t that the point of Spider-Man villains?). A guy that looks like he’s made up of 90% high voltage electricity seems more like someone Spider-Man can only take down, where as a guy in a ridiculous green and yellow suit shooting a couple lighting bolts from his hands looks more like someone that a group of electricians could take down with ease.
Lastly, just as the film before it, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has a great cast, and Jamie Foxx is definitely going to make a really convincing Electro. There really doesn’t need to be any criticism, at least not yet, and the movie seems like it’s going to be a lot better than its predecessor.
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