The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

Top comments

1. 

   Scratch47

   Too many cooks spoil the broth. Still struggling to emerge from the shadow of the Raimi trilogy and a horde of genre titles, TASM2 makes steps towards establishing its own voice but can't quite emerge from a persistent sense of deja vu. It has quite a lot to recommend it: a good sense of humour, Dale DeHaan's sly charisma, a sharpened eye for visuals, quite impressive effects during the Times Square sequence, and Andrew Garfield's presence as a likeable guy, who gels very well indeed in his on-screen relationship with Emma Stone in a smart and sweet combination. Plus you can't fault it's ambition, hell, the thing cost 200 million and lasts 150 minutes.
   But the impression I got upon conclusion was that the film was an inconsequential and unconfident checklist. As if the mistakes of Spiderman 3 were having a second wind, the overstretched narrative darts to and fro 3 different subplots with a total of 5 different villains, trying so hard to please everyone it imagines might be watching. Though there's a lot of setup on the front end, these subplots are crudely linked together and accelerated into and through an eerily vague plot featuring many tonal shifts, and finally a pat and thoroughly downer ending which wipes clean any emotional subtleties of the last 2 hours.

   The film makers toy with Peter and Gwen's on-and-off relationship throughout and then just invoke a pretentious sense of gravitas and casually kill her without resolving anything. Cold. Through doing so - plus snuffing Electro out so inconsequentially - all the exploration of the dynamics of trust, family, and belonging are rendered pointless, a waste - the moment Spiderman dares to test his commitment he loses everything. And one of the strongest characters is dead!

   It's admitedly true to the comics, but encapsulates the whole film in a egotistical tortured-hero tragedy which doesn't play well to Spiderman's spirit of childhood innocence, and a recovery can only be staged with the generic 'chin up and move on' soliloquy that we've all heard before... Moreover, it proves the inability of its' cast of characters to learn anything - granting ample room for future franchise entries to milk the self righteous quest of our agonized Hero's Journey, as Peter constantly refuses the help of his loved ones so he can continue to bear the Atlas-sized burden of the life that's wearing him down. If this story decision sounds familiar, it's because it's a marketing decision, a card that's been played to death in the saga, and will most likely be played again. I just didn't feel the pain, rather, I felt cheated, by what looks like a narrative that's reverse engineered from a tragic ending, towards filling a whole movie with tiresome wheel spinning, without any regard for dimensionality for its hero, bar a poorly explored obsession with selfishly concealed 'colossal heroic burdens', that subtly mirror both writer Roberto Orci's hollow marketing-driven approach to movie-making, and perhaps even his broken groupthink logic around his beliefs around 9-11.
   Its' cousin in the Raimi trilogy was able to affect on a quieter, more personal level, balancing Peter's anguished commitment to his life and his city very deftly. Yet here, every time the film begins to build on its relationships and make emotional impact (say, in the final scene), it pulls the rug out from under our feet in a hurried dash for the next plot development, ending up saying nothing from being out of breath. How hard is it for writers to understand basic character interaction and resolution? Without a guiding center of character and theme, the action means nothing. Plus, Jamie Foxx woefully overplays the already unnecessary Electro, and the collaborative musical score is severely grating, featuring an acoustic ballad in the middle which made my toes curl.
   
   This is essentially what comic book fans pay to see these days - childhood mythology co-opted by blitzkrieg formula, a quiet personal pastime supplanted by juggernaut franchising and loose-ended caricature. The dogged persistence by studios in running their superhero cash cows into the ground is leaving me feeling a kind of resentful battle fatigue - Sony and Marvel's animosity only contribute to this arms race. Plus, for a film featuring a supervillain who has serious issues with not being heard, it ironically never really grabs your attention despite the spectacle. But damn, it sure as hell tried hard. And it's not completely without merit. Your enjoyment will rely upon your answer to the question, how much is too much? For me, that 'too much' was not enough. There are 2 more episodes in this saga planned - prepare for more of the same. 10 years ago
2. 

   Joker of Gotham

   This film is basically a set up for the third movie or a possible spin off.
   
   I have to be honest and admit that I liked the movie, I actually liked this movie more than the first.
   
   Garfield was better this time, I liked the comic side of the hero, and the special effects used in the end that was visually fantastic.
   Love Emma Stone, Love Gwen Stacy.
   
   The villains , I did not care about Electro , I didn´t like his character, but Dane DeHaan was a lovely surprise, he is a good actor ( Lawless / The Place Beyond the Pines ) the work that he did with his character was one of the highlights of the film .
   
   I do not like to see trailers of movies because I feel they show too much information about the film, and in this case showed several important scenes.
   
   Overall I liked the movie, of course it has its flaws, could be much better, I was waiting for a Spider-Man movie as good as the first two of the original trilogy, but this was not that, yet.
   
   3.5/5
   
   

   On the death of Gwen, it was something that is hard to see in a CB movies, it happened in The Dark Knight, but I care more about this character of Gwen, she appeared in two films so was already more familiar with her, which made ​​the scene for me incredible and breathtaking

   9 years 11 months ago
3. 

   amir147

   Much better from the first one but still its kind of joke! :/ 9 years 8 months ago

Friends