Spidey deserves better

Rating: 3/10 (6 January 2015)

I've been a Spidey fan since I first watched the 2002 film, read the comics in the years that followed, played the games, etc. I was pretty disappointed when the reboot was announced, but I decided to give it a shot. While I did like it at first, as time has gone by and having watched it a few more times I wasn't really impressed like a lot of people were. Despite that, I was willing to give the sequel a chance. However the stuff they showed in the trailers, and news updates about the plot (or lack thereof I should say), I was worried that it was looking too much like Spider-Man 3 all over again. And the movie doesn't deserve a pass for Emo Peter not being in here. Not to mention that Sony really went overboard on the marketing campaign, and spoiled the entire movie in the previews. My fears turned out to be true: this is SM3 all over again!
I've never been a fan of Andrew Garfield's portrayal of the character, and I think his performance is massively overrated by a lot of people. So many people practically worship his performance to point where I'm incredibly sick of it at this point. He's not bad in the role, but I fail to see how he gets A+ reviews from people just because of his resemblance to Ultimate Spidey, some stupid web shooters, and that he cracks a few jokes in costume. Plus his behavior in this film feels more like the complete opposite of Peter Parker. He wouldn't high five the principle and kiss Gwen in front of the whole school like he's the popular kid. And he wouldn't flaunt around the fact that he's a superhero by doing an acrobatic climb over a ledge in a public park when you're not in costume and use his own theme song as his ring tone. It feels like Garfield is just playing himself in and out of the Spider- Man suit. And yes I'm gonna say it, I'll take Tobey Maguire over Andrew Garfield ANY day of the week.
As for the romance? All I hear people say is, "Garfield and Stone have wonderful chemistry". Another example of stupid worship these movies keep getting. Garfield and Stone are good together, but they don't have great chemistry in terms of believable characters. I know that there's couples out there that do this, but do any of us really want to watch something like this in movie form? I don't. The relationship is so obnoxious because Peter and Gwen keep going back and forth with each other and the movie rushes through the whole thing by a certain point that at the end, that I didn't feel like he learned anything from it. At the end, he just carries on as normal like it never happened. Especially since it was Gwen's own fault that the Goblin killed her, and not Peter's which is how it's supposed to be. Her death being in this movie comes off as emotionally manipulative and it feels like the filmmakers and Sony only put in here to make the comic book fans happy. Same with Spidey joking every 3 microseconds, and the webshooters. I get that its meant to teach Peter about responsibility, but Uncle Ben's death is supposed to teach him that. Why should it take this many people dying for him to get the message?
And I find it insulting that these movies just threw Uncle Ben's death under the bus, and they practically just rushed the ending after Gwen's death with Peter coming off as he just shrugged off her death like it never happened.
Jamie Foxx is a great actor, but his performance as Max Dillon was just embarrassing to watch because he comes off as a psycho and I didn't find him that interesting as Electro either. And his reasons for hating Spider-Man is so ridiculous: seriously, you hate him because he forgot your name? Dane Dehaan's Harry Osborn is underwritten and not that interesting to watch because his character is literally shoehorned into the film to kill Gwen Stacy. And don't get me started on the Rhino... Not to mention how these characters mess with the movie's tone, coming off as more campy than the Raimi trilogy was and I felt like I was watching something similar to Joel Schumacher's Batman films.
The storytelling is so terribly executed: it's clogged up with so many plot points that go nowhere and the fan service in this film is only done just to make the comic book fans applaud as it appears. It even comes off as a giant commercial for not just the Sinister Six, but for Sony products. This film is a complete insult to the character, that it still astounds me when I see people praise this.
In light of recent movie news though, I'm relieved that some people are starting to wake up and realize why this current franchise is being made, and are championing for Marvel to get the rights back. I do hope Marvel is able to get Spidey back, because he deserves to be in good movies again like he was in 2002 and 2004.