Movie Review 91: The Amazing Spider-man 2

Welcome back!

So I just walked out of Amazing Spiderman 2. And, Um, I need to review it. Not because It's what I do every time on the blog, but, damn, um, yeah, you'll see.

Spoilers abound, tons and tons of spoilers. which honestly, I couldn't care less about.

Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-man 2

Pros:
Let's make this quick. Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield have great chemistry together. Their scenes were good with the two of them improvising were great, they didn't really feel like a comic book movie and that actually helped ground it.  Amazing how the best dialogue in the movie was made up on set and not scripted by the screenwriter.

I'll also say that some of the action was very fun. There, 2 Pro's can I move on?

The fact that the movie actually killed Gwen was the sole redeeming story point. It gave weight to peter and made him actually seem human.

Cons:
I hated almost everything else about this movie. I went into it expecting a fun time, but almost everything was disappointing.

Lets start first with the Bad Guys.

First, Rhino. Played by the Great actor Paul Giamatti. He yells things like "I AM RHINO! I WEAR POWER SUIT! I CRUSH YOU! MY RHINO RUN LIKE RHINO! I RUSSIAN!" Holy Crap, how much was giamatti offered to yell broken English lines and fire a gun. I love Giamatti and I hope he got a huge paycheck for this role because otherwise there is absolutely no reason. Not to mention the effects on the rhino suit looked fake as hell. Another randomly thrown in character for basically no reason.

Let's move on to Dane Dehaan as Harry Osborn. From shot one you know he's going to be evil. at least int he other series (you know, that one with the emo Parker and dancing) Harry was likable a bit, this one just walks into frame as an ass. yet you're supposed to think he and peter are best friends all of a sudden again? I mean they haven't talked to each other for 10 years then all of a sudden best friends again?

Harry also has one of the shortest character developments ever. he goes from 'unlikable billionaire' to 'menaical psychopath over the course of a few scenes. So spiderman doesn't want to give you his blood and risk harry's life. so you go ape-Sh!t and break out a guy made out of electricity so you can inject yourself with spider venom and ultimately turn into the green goblin?

So let's talk about that. He injects himself, has an 'American Green Goblin in London' type transformation, gets into a healing suit (which he already knows has healing abilities, and would help him, yet he decides not to use it from the start) then steps on the glider and somehow gets out of that underground facility. then he flies to the power grid moments after the ex nerdy electrical engineer explodes. Just to kill Gwen and then disappear from the story? so. He did all that to drop a girl?

And how exactly did he know spiderman was bitten by a luthorcorp, err oscorp, spider? is there video? wouldn't he instantly realize thats peter? was peter being watched by oscorp, is that 'the question of the day'?

anyway, Electro. Ok, Jamie foxx was interesting as the guy in the beginning. why he had 60 rolls of blueprints in the middle of the day I have no idea. but whatever, spiderman saves him, he becomes a fan, cool. classic Cliche origin story. then he goes to do maintenance on a thing. and somehow falls and dies. Alright, I buy that, looked fake and hokey but ok. where did the electric piranha eels go? Eh, whatever. so from there he wakes up in the morgue, all alone, because they just leave corpses in the open.

He somehow stumbles from Lexcorp, err Oscorp, into times square and starts grabbing power lines for some reason. Ok, so the nerdy guy is now a Zombie, great. also fixed his teeth. Then suddenly he wants to kill spiderman because he doesn't recognize him. well, if my best friend was suddenly Dr Manhattan I wouldn't recognize him either. so some cool action and dumb Firefighter hijinks later he's taken down. Really, did he have to put on the firefighter helmet? who came up with "he leaves the area for a second as electro shocks people, yet no one dies, then comes back with a firefighter crew and blasts him with a hose" why???

Ok, so now Electro is imprisoned at Arkham, err whatever prison, getting tortured by Zola, err, Nazi guy. and he all of a sudden decides his name is Electro, and that the city, and spiderman deserve to die. seriously? Are the villains in this movie all written by emo 12 year olds?

Ok, fine now he ends up at a giant conveniently placed power plant. thank god that was shown earlier. guess it's time for spiderman to take hm out. boom, no issue. millions of volts going though spiderman but somehow spidey wins and kills the practically Omnipotent Electro.

How do you kill a guy that can dematerialize himself? and why does he all of a sudden have a black supersuit? and how is that battery counter on his head still working after he grabs the main powerlines to gain energy. sure woulda overloaded them. and how does sending all the energy at him make him explode where just a few minutes before he was doing the exact same thing to himself?

Ok, fine fine. I'll move on. how does Gwen, an 18 year old high school graduate, know how to reroute the power to an electrical power plant? She should never have any knowledge of that. also, they padlocked the reroute button? seriously?

The other issue with that scene is why do they need to turn the power back on? we had a big black out for a day a few years ago. nothing happened. no planes crashed, nobody died. it was a nonevent, everything important has generators that kick on. why was it so important they got the power back on? If you say it's because those 2 planes would crash, you're wrong. Those pilots can see each other. one would contact the other and move. The planes were only added to the script to give a reason to turn the power on. It's also not because Spidey needed to zap electro, simply because they were so worried about the power even before he came up with that plan. There was no rush to turn on the power. take out the threat, Electro, then deal with the power later. I can guarantee you the city would send guys to turn it back on after the fights over.

When did Oscorp make the pumpkin bombs?

Ok, next up is the Parent Parker story. I actually rolled my eyes every time this storyline came up. The storyline is boring and has absolutely no weight on the movie. He's so obsessed with finding his dad. Yet we know he's dead because oft he boring intro plane scene. Peter spends way to much time trying to find out what happened. Aunt May then says 'oh he was bad' which makes peter depressed and whiny about it, until he throws a calculator that's filled with either Canadian 2 dollar coins, or 10 year old MTA coins. great place to hide them. no explanation about why he'd hide them there.

How did peter know to look up Rosebud, err Roosevelt? just for the hell of it?

He ends up at an abandoned Terminal and just decides to randomly put a coin in a random turn stile. his coincidence sense is working overdrive. and that pops out a train with a 10 year old lab, that ultimately just has a recording of Daddy saying he's innocent.

Great! So all this sulking was for nothing and you have a magical Subway train full of old outdated equipment! hallelujah! Why did we waste half an hour on this storyline?

Ok, ok i'm being harsh, lets move on to what's to come. the movie insisted on throwing the concept of the Sinister Six at us. I geeked a bit but most people have no idea what that is. we got 3 crammed in villains in this and you're actually expecting us to keep up with 6 in the future? seriously? I don't know how many more gimmicky Sony ads I can take.

Finally, my last gripe. There's a 30 second Xmen Ad in the credits. I'm not saying "X-Men Days of Future Past is tying in!' No, I'm saying halfway through the credits we are subjected to a blatant ad for X-men. I'd be fine with it being at the very end like a little teaser trailer, but to throw in a 30 second clip of Mystique and some mutants just because is insulting. I came here to watch Spider-man. not to see a commercial for a completely unrelated movie, just because you have the space inside your movie to waste.

Marvel studio movies always have a teaser for the next movie in the series, whether it's the Collector appearing in Thor 2 or Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch in Captain America 2. But the sheer fact that Sony basically whored out it's mid credit scene to Xmen felt like a huge slap in the face. Then didn't even bother to give any Post credit scene, shame on you Sony, Shame on you.

This movie had a 200 Million dollar price tag, and a 250 Million dollar advertising price tag. This movie is no longer a movie and just a giant Ad for sony. It needs about 700 million to start earning money and I hope it Fails.

FINAL VERDICT: 15
Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield are the only thing worthwhile in this.



Wow, that was brutal. now to stay awake all night and drive a friend to school in a few hours.



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