The Shabby Spider-Man 2

Rating: 7/10 (28 April 2014)

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is more of the same from director Marc Webb. It's a good thing that I didn't pay to see it. Because of the film's marketing campaign and the trailers I was, for some time, looking forward to seeing this sequel. But what I saw was almost as bland and unengaging as The Amazing Spider-Man (2012). As was the case with the first film, the trailers for the sequel made it seem much better than it actually is. It's a cheat in a way. One of the three supervillains in the trailers isn't even an important character in the film. All the action scenes in the film were featured in the trailers. Yes, there's a shortage of action. The actions scenes are few and far between. There's also nothing particularly impressive about them. Director Sam Raimi did the same thing a decade earlier and he did it much better. In addition he made the action scenes lengthy, something that Webb still isn't capable of doing. But Webb's inexperience (or is it a lack of talent?) is evident not only in the action. It's evident in the way he directs actors. We've heard enough about Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone being a couple. But does this make a difference in the film? It makes little difference really. The featured romance is typical for a superhero film. It makes you feel little for the couple, something that becomes much too obvious during an important scene. The screenplay by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jeff Pinkner doesn't impress. At times it's poorly written. It doesn't help the romance or the proceedings. It doesn't make the characters interesting. It's formulaic. It contains unnecessary parts. These parts are a burden on the film's running time, which is 2 hours and 22 minutes. Yet we still get two underdeveloped and unmemorable supervillains. We get to know their motivations but we don't really get to know anything else about them. This is a fault of the screenplay. Jamie Foxx (Electro) and Dane DeHaan (Green Goblin) don't provide good performances with Webb's direction. In fact, the performances and even the film itself seem cartoonish at times. Also, for a film with such a large budget ($255 million), the CGI looks surprisingly underdeveloped in some scenes. There's just a lack of style in these Spider-Man movies by Marc Webb. If it wasn't for Andrew Garfield playing Peter Parker it would have been a chore to sit through this film. It's not all bad though. Sometimes the actors manage to brighten up a scene. There are some genuinely funny audience-friendly bits. A good electronic score by Hans Zimmer & The Magnificent Six is a bit of an improvement over James Horner's orchestral score for the first film. But at a time when Marvel and Disney are releasing one solid superhero film after another this aimless Spider-Man reboot by Columbia seems primitive. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is only a minor improvement over the first film. Take my advice and don't see it in a movie theater. Don't get duped for a second time.