Review of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) by Samblaize — 08 May 2014

This is one of the worst films I have ever seen. I honestly feel a 3 is generous here. First, the positives: the Spider-Man suit here is really, really good. The effects look nice (though the way Electro's electricity is visualised is pretty stupid), and are certainly better than the previous film. Gwen and Peter work together, kind of, but that's only on the basis of the actor's abilities and has nothing to do with the writing or direction.

The plot is a set of threads that don't coherently link together in any way. The only reason any of them ever connect is because they need to. For example, Gwen pops up near the end of the Electro fight because she needs to be there for the Goblin scene. How do we get her there? Oh, I guess she steals a police car. The writing is just so ridiculously lazy, I swear they came up with the major actions scenes and then decided how to link them later.

There are so many parts of this film that are just laughably poor. Anything to do with Aunt May, Harry and Norman's scene, the fake "buddy-buddy" relationship of Harry and Peter (who haven't even seen each other for a decade and are suddenly best friends again, reminiscing about old times), the ghost of Gwen's dad, some of the music choices (particularly when Peter is moping about Gwen/looking up info about his father), the "web-hand" near the end, the Goblin's appearance, the way Electro is beaten, the final shot/scene. I mean really, the end of this film, really? That's how you end a film? And for a film where so little happens, it's so damn long. I wanted it to end about 90 minutes in, and there's still so much to go.

Make no mistake, this is an objectively bad film.