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| Image via Collider |
Rhino created by Stan Lee and John Romita Sr.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a bloated sequel that harks back to the superhero films of the nineteen nineties, mainly because watching it caused me to make unfortunate comparisons with the Avengers-centric Marvel cinematic universe. Every entry of that series has pulled-off the feat of building off the momentum of the previous outing. Take the recent Captain America: The Winter Soldier which manages to draw together narrative threads that began way back in Iron Man, it comes across as a crucial middle chapter of a much grander tale as it does a Captain America story. But when Spider-Man confronts the villain tag team made up of Electro and the Green Goblin, I was uncomfortably reminded of the random villain pairings from Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. Then, and now, they didn't make much sense as partnerships other than coincidentally sharing a common foe.
It doesn’t help that this film’s villains are so flat. Heath Ledger's memorable turn at bat as the Joker and Tom Hiddleston's fan-favorite portrayal as Loki helped enliven their respective hero-villain conflict. But Max Dillon/Electro (as played by Jamie Foxx) is your standard loser/obsessed fanboy who simply gets caught up in the whirlwind of events. He also looks like a poor man’s Dr. Manhattan. And while Dane DeHaan struggles mightily to impart some pathos into the sickly Harry Osborne/Green Goblin, he’s hampered by a script that that has his character grow increasingly loopy. Throw in Paul Giamatti’s overacting in his bit part as the Rhino/Aleksei Sytsevich, and the whole thing begins to feel very cluttered. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone might be a charming couple playing star-crossed lovers Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy. Unfortunately this isn’t an indie romantic-comedy, but a big, noisy action blockbuster with way too many subplots to keep track of. Even the central mystery of the disappearance of Peter’s parents, clumsily introduced in the first movie, never quite succeeds in inspiring the desired emotional catharsis, and kinda gets lost in the film’s massive fight scenes.
As for the fight scenes themselves. They’re spectacular and colorful, and make for pretty desktop wallpapers. There's something to be said for using New York as the stage for all those superhero battles. And it's fun to see Spidey interact with the locals (even if Stan Lee's requisite cameo is more pointless than usual). But they still can't totally eliminate that annoying weightlessness to Spider-Man whenever he swings through the city streets, a side effect of heavily depending on CGI to animate the action.
All this material is being crammed into ASM2 because of Sony’s hasty attempts to catch up to Marvel. They’ve already announced their intention to ramp up their Spider-Man film output. ASM2 in particular is burdened with conveying the message that OsCorp is the big bad behind most, if not all of, Spider-Man’s rogues gallery. The tactic might work out for them in the long run, but for now the audience has to contend with this hot mess.
