Lazy Film Critic reviews...
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the latest in the new spider man series. This film stars Andrew Garfield as the title character, as well as a few others actors such as Jamie Foxx, Emma Stone, Dane Dehaan, & Sally Fields. The film is directed again by Mark Webb, which if you ask me is the best possible last name to have when directing a spider man film.
Okay, 2014 has been on kind of a hot streak recently, especially with April just being week after week of great movies. So, going into this film, I had very high hopes. I had hoped none of the issues from the first Amazing Spider Man would be here, I had hoped this wouldn't be a bad movie. And, while this isn't a terrible film, it's certainly a huge combo breaker for 2014.
I'm getting ahead of myself. What's good in the movie? Well, for starters, I like Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker. I don't know if he's accurate to the comic book character, but I know I liked him as the lead of the film. He's likable, he's very sarcastic. I feel like he's definitely got the spider man wittiness down, and also some dramatic emotional stuff when the film calls for it. I also think Dane Dehaan was fantastic in the film, as Harry Osborn. Really, ever since Chronicle, I've known Dane Dehaan has some of the most potential in an actor these days. And while his performance wasn't as strong as it was in Chronicle, I still think he did a pretty good job.
I also liked the action in the film, the scenes with him slinging around on his webs seemed very acrobatic, almost like parkour with spider webs. The way it transfers into the action was fairly well done, making for some decent action moments.
However, as I said earlier, this film is far from perfect. Namely, it's biggest problem is the story structure of the film. It feels like a lot of this film has been taken out, which has been proven by the fact that they had filmed entire scenes with Shaliene Woodley as Mary Jane Watson, which have been totally stripped from the film. And a huge chunk of the plot points that were set up by the trailers are not at all present in the film.
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| This and many, many other scenes that seemed to be just shot for the trailer. |
Another gripe I had is the music in the film. Not the score, I felt the music Hans Zimmer did was way better than in the first Amazing Spider Man. No, I'm talking about the choices of music. I felt as if it didn't at all fit into some of the scenes at certain points, I felt that a lot of the time the scene was supposed to be menacing, but instead came off as comical due to the choices of music. To give you an idea of how off the music is, there's one scene where Peter is trying to uncover some secrets with newspaper articles and such, and they decide the conspiracy scene is best suited for... a random pop song. I know this is less critical analysis and more nitpicking, but it did bug me in the film.
My biggest problem with the film is the villains, for different reasons. Mainly, they just weren't that good. The set-up for the villains was fantastic, it built up what I thought was going to be an awesome finale. But instead it's just one okay action sequence, and that's it. Nearly two and a half hours of build up, and one action scene to tie it up, only four action scenes in the film, and most of that action is early on.
Final Rating
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has both good and bad things going for it. The actors in it are pretty good, and it's got some really good dramatic moments as well as funny comedic moments, but it's also poorly paced, and has some seriously weak villains. If you're a hardcore Marvel fan, then I'd say you could see this in theatres, but then again Captain America is totally still in theatres, so I'd just say watch that.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2: 3/5
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