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The Amazing Spider-Man II (Film Review)
In a word: disappointing. Alas.
Not in every single regard, I'll come to that. But whereas the first reboot, while unnecessary, was a charming pop corn movie, this sequel jettisoned most of what I had liked about said film and repeated all the mistakes of the third Raimi outing to boot.
To start with a continued annoyance from the first Garfield movie, the Parker parents backstory. Or rather, the Richard Parker backstory, because as with the Nolan Batman films, "parents" equal "father" in terms of whom we see our young hero actually emotionally invested in, though as opposed to Martha Wayne and the last Spidey movie, this time Mary Parker in the flashback opening of the movie at least gets some lines, though Richard Parker is still the one doing stuff and haunting the present day. May I just rexpress, as I did when over at the Musketeers D'Artagnan was given a (un-Dumasian) father to avenge, how really, really SICK I am of every male young hero being given a dead father with fateful backstory (comes complete with non-speaking, non-counting mother)? Especially when it's so completely unnecessary as in the case of D'Artagnan and Peter Parker (who was Uncle Ben to angst about in terms of dead male relative with emotional impact)? The most that can be said about this ongoing subplot is that it leads to an emotional scene between Peter and Aunt May (who gets more to do this time around) with great adoptive parents issue subtext, as May expresses the "you're my kid, I raised you"/"am I not enough for you?" fears that must plague adoptive parents if/when their children start to obsess about the biological ones. Unfortunately, it also leads to discovery that Richard Parker and Norman Osborn fell out because, gasp, Norman wanted to sell their biological research to "a foreign power". Oh, please. (The contrast with this year's Captain America II: The Winter Soldier couldn't be greater.)
Actually the backstory stuff was just a minor reason why I was disappointed by this sequel, though. One of the great virtues The Amazing Spider-Man had was that it jettisoned the hero-keeps-his-secret-identity-from-love-interest-tragic-misunderstandings-ensue/hero-must-choose-between-heroics-and-love plots from the Raimi trilogy in favour of letting Gwen Stacy find out about Peter being Spider-man early on. So instead of the two of them angsting about each other, we got actual communication, them supporting each other (in fighting crime and otherwise), and thus a very endearing romance. Right until the end, when Gwen's dying father made Peter promise to keep away from Gwen in order not to endanger her further. This lead to two more scenes, one of Gwen confronting Peter with her deducing such a thing must have happened to explain his behaviour and a hopeful final scene in which in class he says some promises need to be broken. These three scenes - the dying dead demanding the promise, Gwen confronting Peter, the scene in class - apparantly became a template for the writing team for the sequel, because Peter and Gwen keep having the same conversation OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Break-up, angst, can't stay away, reconciliation, breakup, angst, oh for God's sake. The chemistry between Garfield and Emma Stone is still delightful (though both of them by now look far, far, too old to even remotely pass as graduating high school students), and Gwen is still a great character, but their relationship has become a romantic angst recycling train, thus giving up the one thing I thought the previous movie really had done better than the Raimi trilogy. And this is before the movie does what I feared it would eventually do, given that Gwen Stacy's fate in the comics is second only to Uncle Ben's death in terms of canonized source of Peter Parker angst.
So what made the first reboot delightful is (mostly) gone. What are we left with? An overabundance of villains, none of them really fleshed out. Dane de Haan's Harry Osborne comes closest. But whereas the Raimi movies introduced Harry in the first movie and showcased his friendship with Peter in movies I and II before letting him go (temporary) supervillain in movie III, Amazing Spider-Man II informs us that Peter and Harry used to be childhood friends (though Harry got never mentioned before), gives them two scenes to indicate said closeness (during which both Garfield and de Haan do their valiant best, and yes, you can slash them if you want), and then lets Harry go supervillain. For which he has better motivation than the other two villains of the film, since he's dying of a Norman inherited genetic illness and thinks Spider-Man's blood could save him. And you know, you could have done a convincing trajectory into villaindom based on that, with the understandable desire to live superceding more and more of Harry's other emotions and making him more and more ruthless. But the film has no time for that, so instead we go seamlessly from a Harry who is horrified to find out the Oscorp he's just inherited is experimenting on humans to a Harry who kills people with a quip and cares nothing about potentially thousands of New Yorkers dying. One minute, he gets thrown out of the cooperation he's inherited by one of the film's other villains, the next, he's masterminding the next supervillain assembly from prison, because, well, now he's evil. And he's STILL better drawn than the guy from the film's subtitle, Electro, who goes from stereotypical nebbish nerd and Spidey fan to Revenge-of-the-Nerd supervillain and excuse for special effects. And let's not even mention Rhino.
In conclusion: I've been told that the sole reason for the reboot is so Sony doesn't have to return the rights to Spidey to Marvel. This may be so, but in the first movie, it didn't show. This time, it does.
Not in every single regard, I'll come to that. But whereas the first reboot, while unnecessary, was a charming pop corn movie, this sequel jettisoned most of what I had liked about said film and repeated all the mistakes of the third Raimi outing to boot.
To start with a continued annoyance from the first Garfield movie, the Parker parents backstory. Or rather, the Richard Parker backstory, because as with the Nolan Batman films, "parents" equal "father" in terms of whom we see our young hero actually emotionally invested in, though as opposed to Martha Wayne and the last Spidey movie, this time Mary Parker in the flashback opening of the movie at least gets some lines, though Richard Parker is still the one doing stuff and haunting the present day. May I just rexpress, as I did when over at the Musketeers D'Artagnan was given a (un-Dumasian) father to avenge, how really, really SICK I am of every male young hero being given a dead father with fateful backstory (comes complete with non-speaking, non-counting mother)? Especially when it's so completely unnecessary as in the case of D'Artagnan and Peter Parker (who was Uncle Ben to angst about in terms of dead male relative with emotional impact)? The most that can be said about this ongoing subplot is that it leads to an emotional scene between Peter and Aunt May (who gets more to do this time around) with great adoptive parents issue subtext, as May expresses the "you're my kid, I raised you"/"am I not enough for you?" fears that must plague adoptive parents if/when their children start to obsess about the biological ones. Unfortunately, it also leads to discovery that Richard Parker and Norman Osborn fell out because, gasp, Norman wanted to sell their biological research to "a foreign power". Oh, please. (The contrast with this year's Captain America II: The Winter Soldier couldn't be greater.)
Actually the backstory stuff was just a minor reason why I was disappointed by this sequel, though. One of the great virtues The Amazing Spider-Man had was that it jettisoned the hero-keeps-his-secret-identity-from-love-interest-tragic-misunderstandings-ensue/hero-must-choose-between-heroics-and-love plots from the Raimi trilogy in favour of letting Gwen Stacy find out about Peter being Spider-man early on. So instead of the two of them angsting about each other, we got actual communication, them supporting each other (in fighting crime and otherwise), and thus a very endearing romance. Right until the end, when Gwen's dying father made Peter promise to keep away from Gwen in order not to endanger her further. This lead to two more scenes, one of Gwen confronting Peter with her deducing such a thing must have happened to explain his behaviour and a hopeful final scene in which in class he says some promises need to be broken. These three scenes - the dying dead demanding the promise, Gwen confronting Peter, the scene in class - apparantly became a template for the writing team for the sequel, because Peter and Gwen keep having the same conversation OVER AND OVER AGAIN. Break-up, angst, can't stay away, reconciliation, breakup, angst, oh for God's sake. The chemistry between Garfield and Emma Stone is still delightful (though both of them by now look far, far, too old to even remotely pass as graduating high school students), and Gwen is still a great character, but their relationship has become a romantic angst recycling train, thus giving up the one thing I thought the previous movie really had done better than the Raimi trilogy. And this is before the movie does what I feared it would eventually do, given that Gwen Stacy's fate in the comics is second only to Uncle Ben's death in terms of canonized source of Peter Parker angst.
So what made the first reboot delightful is (mostly) gone. What are we left with? An overabundance of villains, none of them really fleshed out. Dane de Haan's Harry Osborne comes closest. But whereas the Raimi movies introduced Harry in the first movie and showcased his friendship with Peter in movies I and II before letting him go (temporary) supervillain in movie III, Amazing Spider-Man II informs us that Peter and Harry used to be childhood friends (though Harry got never mentioned before), gives them two scenes to indicate said closeness (during which both Garfield and de Haan do their valiant best, and yes, you can slash them if you want), and then lets Harry go supervillain. For which he has better motivation than the other two villains of the film, since he's dying of a Norman inherited genetic illness and thinks Spider-Man's blood could save him. And you know, you could have done a convincing trajectory into villaindom based on that, with the understandable desire to live superceding more and more of Harry's other emotions and making him more and more ruthless. But the film has no time for that, so instead we go seamlessly from a Harry who is horrified to find out the Oscorp he's just inherited is experimenting on humans to a Harry who kills people with a quip and cares nothing about potentially thousands of New Yorkers dying. One minute, he gets thrown out of the cooperation he's inherited by one of the film's other villains, the next, he's masterminding the next supervillain assembly from prison, because, well, now he's evil. And he's STILL better drawn than the guy from the film's subtitle, Electro, who goes from stereotypical nebbish nerd and Spidey fan to Revenge-of-the-Nerd supervillain and excuse for special effects. And let's not even mention Rhino.
In conclusion: I've been told that the sole reason for the reboot is so Sony doesn't have to return the rights to Spidey to Marvel. This may be so, but in the first movie, it didn't show. This time, it does.
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Does this mean that Gwen dies in this movie? I had been vainly hoping they would go the Ultimate Spider-Man route and keep her around.
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And they even cut MJ's part from this movie, right? so we don't even get Peter/MJ friendship.
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deciding to go with her and fight crime in Britain
THIS was the single best idea in the entire movie, which really made me think "oh, that would be awesome! why aren't we doing that instead of having this tired old plot with Green Goblins and endangered girlfriends?"
Not that it could ever seriously happen, outside of a funny montage, but the one thing you don't want to do in a movie is suggest a really cool / interesting twist and then not do it. (Unless of course you replace it with an even cooler / more interesting direction.)
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