Potentially Pointless But Likable Blockbuster

Rating: 7/10 (14 December 2014)

I've absolutely no idea why Hollywood feels the need to do reboots . Well maybe it might be down to money and director's vision ? Regardless of why there the narrative dead end of having to set up the characters once again . Anyone going to see a Spiderman film will know who Peter Parker is . A geek boy who leads a double life as Spiderman , a web slinging , roof top bounding crime fighter with special powers who takes on villains who use their own special powers as a force of evil . Because of my own familiarity of the backstory and premise I didn't bother wasting my time watching THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN from a couple of years ago since I'd already seen the trilogy by Sam Raimi a few years earlier so didn't want to watch a film whose runtime is going to be going over old ground and only watched this sequel because of a chance to watch a recent blockbuster for free
There's not a lot here that can be called groundbreaking or original but for what it is - a big budget Summer blockbuster - it functions very well . I do consider Sam Raimi as being one of the most underrated directors in the last couple of decades and while Marc Webb might be an inferior director at least Webb knows how to make a marketable Summer film . I definitely found Andrew Garfield a more impressionable Peter Parker/ Spiderman than Toby MaGuire . Garfield job is made easier by having his Spiderman make wisecracks which never becomes as silly as it could have been . Garfield's smouldering good looks and his character interaction with Emma Stone's Gwen Stacey is obviously produced to rope in the TWILIGHT demographic but I thought this aspect worked fairly well . It was also nice to see Peter Parker/Spiderman have Harry Osborn / The Green Goblin as an equal of sorts . The downside is that Jamie Foxx Electro seems shoehorned in as a subsidiary villain , and at the end of the day THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2 is nothing more than a big budget superhero blockbuster though it's a superior and likable one