The Awful Spider-Man 2

Rating: 4/10 (4 May 2014)

This review of the Amazing spider-Man 2 will in fact contain heavy spoilers. So if you do not want to be spoiled, do not read anymore of this review.
Two years ago Marc Webb rebooted Spider-Man with his Amazing Spider-Man film. While I thought the film was just barely over average, for many reasons, I thought for sure it would lay groundwork for this sequel to be better. The trailers for this film have been average to good from the start. So I wasn't expecting much going into the theater. Having low expectations going in I thought for sure I would like it more than the first film. Nope, turns out this was was even worse than the first film.
The story is downright bad. The movie starts out explaining a little bit of what happened to Peter's parents. As in the first movie we are told they die in a plane crash, which is true, and the film starts out by showing us what in fact happened on that flight. Well the awful story starts there. That scene on the plane is a giant cliché. It is your typical action scene on a plane. Nothing at all exciting about it. I thought the character development, much like the first film, was actually pretty good. Although the development of Harry Osborn/Green Goblin was very weak, even weaker for Goblin. Speaking of weak character development, you cannot talk about that unless you mention Aleksei Sytsevich, aka Rhino, played by Paul Giamatti. Not even the great Giamatti could save this loosely written character. He gets very little screen time, not developed at all, and worst of all, his battle with Spider-Man we see in the trailers where Spider-Man is throwing around that man hole cover, well that battle scene ends the film in the exact same way we see it in the trailers. Yep, you read that correctly. The ending is literally in the trailers. Very very sloppy. Not to overshadow those glaring potholes in the film, we then can turn our attention to the Gwen and Peter 80s romantic comedy storyline, which takes up a large portion of the film. I have no problem expanding of their relationship, but when you force scenes with them two, that is just being sloppy. So finally in closing for the writing and story, in my opinion you will not find much of a worse story than in this film right here.
Back for a second round, director Marc Webb delivers us some good actions scenes here and there as he does like to shoot some action scenes without CG. However the CG scenes are downright silly. It truly looks like a video game. For example the final battle scene with Electro and Spider-Man was impossible to take seriously. I understand CG was needed in a battle scene like this, but with a massive production budget of nearly 250 million dollars, you would think the CG would be top notch. The acting overall for the most part was actually fairly good. I think the actors connected pretty good together. I just think the characters were written so badly that the acting was in this box, and it couldn't exceed that level.
Composed by the legendary Hans Zimmer, with help from Pharrell Williams. Now I thought the score for the first film was average to bad at times. This score at times was intense. I thought Williams and Zimmer connected well with some of the scenes they scored. Especially the Times Square scene with Electro. Then at other times I thought it was terrible, and they just kept pushing in trendy music from today. Much like the music Williams usually writes and produces. So much like the first film, the score is nothing special.
Overall this was truly one of the worst superhero films I have ever seen. I have probably seen all the superhero films since the big resurgence in the early 2000s when the first Spider-Man was released, and this sequel to the rebooted Spider-Man film takes the cake for one of the worst films in the genre. Frankly I cannot recommended anyone actually go out and pay to see this film. Though I also recognize the hardcore superhero fans will still see the movie no matter what.
2/10