The Amazing Spider-Man 2

First off, on a personal note, today I am celebrating the five year anniversary of my marriage to my wife Rachel.  In fact, we are back in the small town where we wed, right around the corner from the very hall where we exchanged our vows.  Aw, so cute.   So, while my wife is off doing… I don’t know, whatever, I will spend a bit of time to talk about the newest super hero flick in theatres, The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Re-boots and re-imaginings are a very popular occurrence in Hollywood, and have been for some time now.  It is hard to not believe that the majority of the time it has little to do with making money and repackaging something that is deemed easily sellable, but sometimes it also allows directors and script writers to have their chance to tell the story how they had it envisioned in their heads.  So, along came a Spider-Man  two years ago and it felt to be full of legitimate purpose for opening that door and taking the hero in a direction that does not lead to an emo look and dance sequences.  Andrew Garfield shone brightly in the role, and Emma Stone created chemistry with him that worked to elevate the personal side of the story.

Having my doubts against the new and invigorated franchise wiped away, I had a great deal of excitement for this latest installment, especially with the inclusion of the wonderful acting wiles of Jamie Foxx and Dane DeHaan.  My anticipation even caused me to purchase the bank-breakingly priced popcorn at the theatre so that I could fully enjoy this blockbuster that is the official kick off to the 2014 summer blockbuster season with my friend, and fellow reviewer, Chris (you will be able to check out both of our thoughts on this movie on our podcast, The Breakdown, on Monday at Chris’ blog found here… shameless plug intended).

With much regret, I must say that the film did not start out on the best note, with Spidy battling villains who look like they should have been off in the post-apocalyptic outback of Australia battling Mad Max.  The most outrageous of these baddies was a character played by the wonderful actor, Paul Giamatti.  I never thought I would not enjoy him in a role, but it looks like anything can happen in movies.  His character and the whole opening sequence reminded me of the Joel Schumacher era of Batman, an aura that would appear sporadically throughout the film.

One of the small touches that I really thought was neat in The Amazing Spider-Man was the fact that he swung off of his webbing in a way that showed that it was attached to something, and not the ridiculous way the old cartoons had it where he would go down the middle of the street leaving a six year old Scott wondering over what the heck he was even able to attach his webs to.  In the first film, there was a spot where he went right down the street, creating that old nostalgia, but they set it up by having people spin crane arms over the street to make it possible.  It’s a little thing, but I appreciated it.  That was thrown out the window in the new film, which didn’t even desire to consider such aspects and even had the web-slinger suspending baddies from webs in the middle of streets that had no overhead points of contact.  Once again, a little thing, but it saddened me because that was not the route that the franchise was heading in the first movie, attempting to be less over the top and making Spider-Man function in a world of physics and physical structures.

Okay, small disappointments aside (for the moment), the movie was a bit of a mess.  It was able to ground itself in some solid on screen relationships, but it lost out on building off of that in so many ways.  The character of Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) was another reminder for me of the Schumacher style of creating villains, a poorly written and forced character that becomes a villain with shoe-horned motivations.  In a film that had a distractingly over-reliance on CGI, it was rather funny that one of the only physical effects they had was childish and amateur.  Max Dillon had a gap in his teeth (when he becomes Electro, who for some reason tailors a cool suit for himself, complete with logo, he loses the gap) which was an obvious mark of black on one of his front teeth that was easily visible.  It did not even go from root to tip of the tooth, and you could see the white of his tooth at the gum line.  Another small detail, but it was just comical that with their budget and efforts they were so shoddy on a physical prop.

The build of Electro was very disjointed, a chaotic stew of poorly weaving his personal motivations together and an assault of music that gave it a very childish tone.  Once he took to battling Spider-Man, I found myself quickly bored for multiple reasons.  Firstly, the development of Electro was extremely flawed and I just did not really care.  There was so much potential to his abilities and the performance that Foxx could give, and seeing it wasted was unfortunate.  Secondly, the fight scenes (especially their second encounter) where shot in a way that included the camera swooping continuously through the battle and switching to slow motion and stop –time that I no longer believed I was watching a movie, but rather the cut scene from a video game.  It completely lacked the feel of having actors in it, but just digital images of them, and I don’t have any care if pixels survive or not.  I am all for using CGI to enhance, but the battles lacked the human element altogether.

There really are so many different aspects of this film that I could express my dismay over, but I will rather turn now to what the film did right.  When it hit the mark, it was spot on.  The relationship between Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) was full of inspiring emotion, and the two leads played off each other with conviction.  On top of that, the interactions between Parker and Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) were on another planet.  Both are tremendous talents with bright futures, and I absolutely loved seeing them together, giving the sense of sincere friendship.

Dane DeHaan, in fact did a performance in this film that will hopefully open the eyes of the mainstream audiences to what he is capable of doing.  He allowed the slow descent into madness and self-preservation of Harry Osborn feel like a serious threat to Spider-Man.  That is, until they had their computer game tussle and I was watching what computer animators were able to do instead of two skilled actors engaged in a personal and intimate battle.  It really comes down to director Marc Webb, and his decision on how to film the fight sequences.  He truly could have done it in a way that had the CGI, but also using the two actors to be incorporated in a struggle between two long-time friends.  Instead, he opted for long, single shots of whirling and swooping that took the personal element from the story.

My personal thoughts?  It had times of entertainment, but it was also a bore for me.  You may find it different.  You may like a diet of digital images more than me.  I do like them at times.  I won’t mind it when Godzilla is all digital, because that is the better of two roads that can be taken (the other option being a man in a rubber suit stepping on models of buildings), but in a film that is based on personal motivations of real characters it was an opportunity missed.  I shall now seek out my wife, spend some time with her, and remember the first Amazing Spider-Man film, a movie which blended cinematic techniques well to tell a human story of change, growth, and teen angst.

Rating – 1.5 out of 4 stars