Much Better Without A Dunst

Rating: 9/10 (28 September 2014)

Plot
Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) is a brilliant little worker at Oscorp, but he is routinely mistreated and given no credit for his work which his company has made a fortune on. One day Max inadvertently stumbles into oncoming traffic and then is saved by Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield). From that time on Max is obsessed with all things Spider-Man. Then one night Max is forced to work late on his birthday and while doing so accidentally falls victim to his own extreme awkwardness and ends up getting himself electrocuted and consequently becoming a super-powered entity known as the Electro. Needless to say Electro goes on a path of destruction and when Spiderman-Man tries to stop him and we soon see that Electro's hero worship of Spider-Man has become that overwhelming hatred. Meanwhile Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) shows up in town and takes over Oscorp after his father's passing. Harry is an old friend of Peter Parker and when Peter comes to visit Harry, Harry confides in him that he is dying and the only thing that can save him is Spider-Man's blood. Since it is public knowledge that Peter Parker takes photos of Spider- man Harry believes that his friend Peter can get word to him. Now Peter is face with letting his friend die or dealing with the ramifications of giving someone his highly advance blood.
Character Development
Playing a superhero can carry an emotional toll on someone's sense of well-being. Spider-Man is one of those superheroes where that toll is very taxing and in this film he is faced with turmoil outside of the battlefield which makes this story very compelling to a large degree. We soon learn from the beginning of the film that Peter Parker is be tugged down with the guilt of not keeping the promise he made with his girlfriend's father and these thoughts plague him throughout the film. Unlike a character like Superman, Spider-man is not bulletproof and his life in this film is held in consist jeopardy, yet he remains venerable just as much when he is just Peter Parker.
Acting
I have heard some blow-back with Andrew Garfield playing the lead role of Spider-Man, but I find him serviceable to his predecessor who I did find was slightly annoying at times so I didn't really see the rub. In this film Jamie Foxx plays one of the villains and he did remind me of Tobey Maguire playing Peter Parker in Spider-Man (2002) and if you can compare those two performances you can see what direction the others films took and see how these films differ. This Spider-Man is more confident and self-assured and I think that is a good thing. The only real flaw I can find is with Dane DeHaan, not this acting per se, but with the time he was allowed to do it. His time on screen was very light for that of a villain and didn't have much weight because of it, which in my mind came off as somewhat an afterthought as it did a means to an end in telling a story.
Overview
When I compare Spider-Man (2002) with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) I have faced with some ground-breaking achievement, some brilliant improvements and I am not writing about the special effects that are much more enhanced. I am talking about the casting of Peter Parker's love interest Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), who is many levels the superior performer of Kirsten Dunst who played Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man and the rest of earlier series of films by Sam Raimi, it would have seem that the director wasn't in charge of the casting at all or lost a bet or something. Every minute Dunst was on the screen I would cringe, one moment she was saccharin sweet and the next she was unbelievable distant. She played the role with no range, no nuance. I do not know how I could fault the director when Dunst was the only indelible black mark on the picture which is ironic because she does look appealing on a movie poster after it has been touched up. If it wasn't so detrimental to the film it would be comical that Dunst plays an actress as part of her role. Why is it that those actors that play actors cannot act? I think it was true for Joey on Friends and that guy in Taxi who played a struggling actor. Maybe it is because they can play an actor slightly worst, but they know they cannot play an actor no better. Frankly I am surprised that Kirsten Dunst doesn't get more mockery from her name. Doesn't "Dunst" sound like "dunce"? She does play to the stereotype of a dumb blonde after all. Somehow I am not one who finds that endearing and am glad to see that was improved on.