If there is one person I feel bad for, it's Marc Webb. His first movie 500 Days of Summer was an excellent modern romantic comedy and when I heard he was taking a stab at the Spidey franchise, I was actually O.K. with this idea because I believed he would do my favorite comic hero justice. When The Amazing Spider-Man was released I tried to distance it from the Raimi movies because I didn't want to compare the two because in my mind nothing will ever reach the the level of Raimi's Spidey Trilogy. My thoughts on The Amazing Spider-Man in one sentence; I loved the High school drama, the Peter and Gwen stuff and the character development and I hated the Lizard, the forced jokes and the sense of Sony corruption. "What is Sony corruption?" It's the act of Sony editing Marc Webb's movie down to a movie that seems like a calculated way that they can make the most money possible. I had hoped The Amazing Spider-Man 2 would finally allow me to see Marc vision of Spidey and it hurts me to say it didn't, and it was much worse than the first.
I have now seen The Amazing Spider-Man 2 twice and this is what I have to say. The things I liked; The Peter and Gwen stuff, and (new for this movie) the character of Spider-Man. No longer was he an arrogant jerk but now he was generally caring and humorous. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone have wonderful chemistry, and Dane DeHaan is wonderful as Harry Osborn.
The things I did not like. The movie was full of "Sony corruption" it felt like it was edited down to almost nothing,it felt more like a music video or a series rather than a strong film. There was constant montage after montage and the movie never stopped, it never took the time to allow you to get emotionally invested in the characters. There was almost no character development other than Peter and Gwen. I mean common people, Max Dillon went from a goofy, nervous, shy and bumbling character into a cold hearted killer. Now you can argue that he was crazy. but I don't buy it. Seems like lack of character development to me, and the problem is, I know that development was originally there. Marc Webb has said in many interviews that Max's wife left him, people are always putting him down and that his own mom forgot his own birthday in the film. I did not see or hear a mention of any of this, maybe with this in the film Electro's turn to the dark side would make more sense, but I am reviewing the movie that I saw, not the movie that we should've seen. Another major problem with the film is the uneven tone and writing. Lets look back at the first Amazing Spider-Man, they went for a dark, Nolan-Esq tone, and that tone remained throughout most of the movie. In this movie, you go from having a emotionally heavy seen between Peter and Gwen, to goofy German Dr. Kafka experimenting with Electro. An example of the uneven writing is the fact that you have scenes like the one with Peter asking Aunt May for the truth about his parents. This scene brought some to tears. Then you have lines like "It's my birthday, time to light my candles." coming from an already over the top Electro. It just doesn't work in the slightest.
There is plenty of things to enjoy about the movie and it may seem like I hated it, but there are some truly good moments in this film. I would say if you can handle the lack of character development from Electro and the completely uneven tone and writing, to go see the movie. It is enjoyable as a popcorn superhero flick, but as a film, its just barely passable.
6/10