A 2 1/2 Hour Commercial for the Next Spin-off Franchise

Rating: 5/10 (24 January 2015)

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 wins the title of the most aggravating movie from 2014. It's one of those movies I really, really want to like and sometimes, if I haven't watched it in a while, I can delude myself into believing it was better than I remember. But then I watch it again and it all comes rushing back to me; this movie is unforgivably lame. I wasn't a massive fan of the first AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, where Sony rebooted the series with director Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield stepping into the title role. It was entertaining enough not to discourage me from continued interest in the franchise but failed to recapture the awesome of Sam Raimi's first two films. Leading into the release of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2, I was excited. Now that we'd gotten the origin story out of the way (again) we could dive into a meatier Spider-Man adventure without the repetitive exposition. Plus they'd scored Jamie Foxx as the main villain and it was apparent they would be bringing the Rhino (one of my favorite Spider-Man lower-level baddies) into the mix with (no joke) Paul Giamatti in the role. The level of excitement was high as May 2nd approached, and then the reviews began to trickle out. The movie was being torn to shreds, but it was all right. I didn't always agree with the critics and summer blockbusters are always polarizing, especially comic films. There was still a chance it could be a fun time. Then I watched it.
There's just so much wrong here, I don't know where to begin. Well, for starters, if you want to get an audience excited to settle in for a nearly two and a half hour long comic film, start with an exciting action sequence featuring your hero. You know, Spider- Man. Not his father. The movie opens with an almost ten minute long action sequence with Peter Parker's father on a plane where the movie reopens a plot thread from the first movie that I never got around to caring about: what happened to Peter Parker's parents. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 is, amongst many other things, a continuation of this plot thread. Maybe if the movie focused solely on this thread, it would've kept my interest but the movie drops it immediately after this scene and doesn't return until sometime later in the second act when we've already stopped caring and want to see more of the Electro plot. Oh, rightthe Electro plot. We've got Jamie Foxx as our main(-ish) villain! How could this go wrong? Oh right, the writing. I'm not even sure how to best describe how underwritten Electro is in this film. His primary motivation for becoming a super-villain after acquiring his electricity-based superpowers (following an admittedly cool re-awakening scene in the morgue) is that Spider-Man is more popular than him. Prior to his accident, Max Dillon was a non-entity who went through life as a stepping stone in the path of others. A chance meeting with Spider- Man in the midst of a car chase in the beginning of the film spurs a psychopathic obsession with the web-crawler where Dillon is fully convinced that Spider-Man is his new best friend. Then he gains superpowers and decides he wants to kill Spider-Man because he couldn't remember Max's name. Oh, and he's more popular. Seriously, that's it. Electro's motivation in the movie is to kill Spider-Man because he's jealous.
Oh, and Paul Giamatti as the Rhino? Man, they really pumped up his character in the trailers and TV ads. At least we've got Rhino, a character who's got to be fun because the concept of a man in Rhino armor is too crazy not to work. Well, Giamatti's role in the movie amounts to little more than a cameo. All that time spent pumping the Spider-Man/Rhino battle in the advertisements and we never actually get to see it. It's the opposite issue with the Green Goblin. First, I think it's a little too soon to be returning to the Harry Osborn/Green Goblin well. We got three movies worth of Harry Osborn in Raimi's series and Willem Dafoe was a fantastic Goblin in the first SPIDER- MAN. So I've already got a little bit of Goblin fatigue. Then we shoehorn Harry's reappearance into the new series with absolutely no foundation and we're expected to accept these two are life-long friends when we've never heard Peter so much as mention Harry before. Yes, people who are familiar with the franchise will know of their history and all that, but as a film it's just lazy to cram this new (supposedly deep- rooted) friendship in and expect people to buy into it. The problem is that the filmmakers were more interested in mimicking Marvel Studios' universe-building than putting out a good movie. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 isn't interested in telling a good story or entertaining youthey want to set themselves up for spinoffs and sequels and spinoffs of sequels. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 is nearly two and a half hours long and it can be summed up in one scene. There's a moment near the end where Harry Osborn discusses establishing a team. A small team (hmmsix members, I'm guessing) to do, I don't know, bad guy things. A sinister team. Yes.
SINSTER SIXcurrently scheduled for release in 2016.
I wouldn't mind so much if the studio had crafted a fun, exciting movie to make us actually want a new spin-off. I'm not exaggerating when I saw that nothing of interest happens in the first hour of this movie. Nothing. You could jump into this movie at the 60 minute mark and you wouldn't have missed anything important. Jamie Foxx and Paul Giamatti were inspired casting, and the effects (especially the Electro effects) were actually pretty good. But THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 never had a chance when the filmmaker/studio went in with the wrong priorities and lazy attitude.