The Amazing Spider-man 2, the sequel of The Amazing Spider-man, is about Peter Parker coping with his daily problems of dating, friends, keeping a promise he made with someone who is dead (spoilers, go find out who it is) and being Spider-man. Sounds more or less like the plot of Sam Raimi's Spiderman 2, doesn't it?
Regardless of whether you love or hate The Amazing Spider-man 1, the reboot, you must agree that Marc Webb is a master of creating love stories that you actually care and enjoy to watch. I still haven't see (500) Days of Summer, but I think it is safe to say that writign good love stories with good chemistry is Marc Webb's strength, as shown in The Amazing Spider-man 1 and The Amazing Spider-man 2. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are a cute couple, whether it is on screen or off screen; coupled with the fact that the two, along with the rest of the cast, are all good actors, help sell the love between the two as well as their individual story arcs, and make me care about their stories.
That being said, the rest of the materials in the movie can definitely be brushed up on. The action sequences in this movie has the same problem the first movie has: it is not memorable. To be fair, I can give it a few slack, seeing that I was dying for a pee in the theatre; but still, I must say the fight scenes are not memorable and they are too short. It is as if the creative team cannot think of great set pieces, so they just do something that is by the books and not inspired. There are a few action sequences in the movie, but the sad fact is that apart from a few unique tidbits that is associated with the villains, the action sequences are just not memorbale. I have repeated that enough, let's go on.
This movei has the run time of 142 minutes, which, according to IMDb, is the longest Spider-man movie yet, and it feels that way. While I said it, and I would say it again that I care about Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy in the movie, sometimes it really feels like nothing is happening in the movie, just scenes of the two main protagonists intereacting with other characters on screen, and that is not a good sign. I read news stories that they shot a lot of scenes during production, including some scenes with Mary Jane Watson that was played by Shailene Woodley (she was not in the movie), but a lot of scenes was cut for various reasons, and it shows. Sometimes it feels like they knew certain scenes must be present in order for the story to make sense, so the editors put in scene after scene of character interactions, which can make the film feel boring and really really long. It is by no means Superman Returns bad, but audience members who bought their tickets for the action scenes would be disappointed.
Overall, I enjoyed the movie, I think it is a very modern and mature take on the Spider-man mythos, I like the characters, but I don't think a lot of people would love it, becasue of the complaints listed above.