Review of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) by Dylan D — 22 Jun 2015

This movie gets a level of hate that is downright shocking, and wildly unwarranted. Is it perfect? Oh hell no, but it's still a good time.

First, the bad: it's extremely rushed. There's enough material here to cover a whole trilogy of movies, and it's desperately crammed into a single film. Harry Osbourne becomes the Green Goblin (spoiler, but not really) before we have any time to be invested in his friendship with Peter (say what you will about Spider-Man 3, at least in that one Harry had two movies of build-up making his transformation all the more tragic), and Electro goes from Spider-Man fanboy to Spider-Man hater in less than a minute. There's more for sure, don't even get me started on what they did to Rhino, but those are the most detrimental. Then there's the pointless back-and-forth will-they-won't-they of Gwen and Peter, and the now pointless set up for a "universe". The movie desperately wants to set up for something bigger, not allowing it to be something on its.

But here's the thing, despite all that, I still had a really fun time with it. The performances are all great, especially Garfield and Stone who are charming as hell, and director Mark Webb has definitely hit his stride with how to do Spider-Man. The action scenes in this movie are spectacular, and just stellar to watch. I also liked Electro as a villain. His story is rushed to be sure, but there's still enough to it that left me invested. In the end I must admit watching the film is a bit of a shallow experience. It is great fun at the surface, but look a little deeper and it starts to fall apart. So no, it's not going to go down as one of the great superhero flicks, but I can't deny that I was entertained. I had fun watching it, and I can't fault it for that.