The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - Grading & Discussion

I really like Garfield's Peter, and the chemistry with him and Emma Stone is just great....... But man what a stupid movie. Just cheesy stupid nonsense. Jamie Foxx was basically Edward Nigma from Batman Forever. What a waste of a great actor.

It's kind of starting to irritate me that these superhero movies aren't even trying to be great anymore. I remember that period where we got X-Men 2, Spider-Man 2, Batman Begins, all the way through the summer of Dark Knight and Iron Man. You really got the sense that these movies were actually trying to reach up and shatter the stereotype of "comic superhero" movies even if they weren't perfect.

 

The Dark Knight transcended super-hero movies on many levels, reaching critical acclaim, an Academy Award nomination for acting resulting in a (posthumous) win.

And Iron Man came out in.. 2007? Superhero movies have achieved quit a bit since then.

See: Every Marvel superhero movie that came out after Iron Man.

 

We're on the same page.

Though, oddly enough, I had a different planned response. I skipped the previous one, figuring I didn't need to see an origin film again, and would jump on with the second (on the theory that the second film in a superhero series often surpasses the first).

At this point, however, I'm not sure I want to even bother with this one either.

Maybe I'll catch it on disc

 

I find most of them to be fun yet forgettable. I have a hard time calling most of them great movies individually. Though I did get the sense that Captain America 2 was actually trying.

Anyways, thinking about it, this movie really reminds me of Spider-Man 3. Not in a good way.

 

I think Sony is going to put out at least one more Spidey movie. They need this franchise badly. If TASM3 underperforms, too, then that might be the end of Sony's Spider-Man franchise.

 

And we *certainly* don't want that.

 

The audience is already feeling a been there and done that vibe with this reboot.

SM3 already had Gwen, Venom and Harry as Goblin set up. A way could've been found to resurrect Harry off camera. You had Connors set up for Lizard. They had Malkovich signed for Vulture. So many elements were in place for just a continuation and still maintain success. The reboot that made Peter a cocky tool with Garfield vs the geekier outcast of McGuire that was straight out of Stan Lee's books. Granted by a S4 Peter had grown into a young 20ish man more secure but that's not HS Peter that the Garfield portrayal is.

TASM3 is going to add Mary Jane, JJJ, more Harry as goblin, Doc Ock and/or Sandman----how is it not going to feel "more of the same" and "uninspired" to an audience already showing a losing interest via a downward box office?

I don't see TASM4 a Sinister Six or Venom film ever happening at this point---and that's a good thing imo.

 

Saw it yesterday with my wife and seven-year old son. Though it was decent enough (graded it as a "B") but have no real desire to see it again. Much like the first one (or the Raimi films for that matter).

Nice Star Trek nod though, the police car sitting at the power station during the final battle with Electro was marked "1701".

 

It could be that. Personally, I think it is somewhat funny that with the whole Sony/Marvel studios rights thing that it is not Avengers that suffers for lack of Spider-Man - it's the Spider-Man franchise that's suffering in the post-Avengers world.

At some point they're going to have only Spider-Man up against the Sinister Six on his own - not mentioning that if they continue this particular franchise they have to build-out 4 more villains in 1-2 films to even get to Six. (unless they make Goblin one of the Six)

3 villains in this film was already 2 too many...if you even count Rhino.

 

I saw it today and rated it A. Adaptations are hard to do but I think this film captured the complexity of Peter's life. Melodrama is apart of every Marvel characters story. The "will they wont they" of Peter and Gwen's story didn't bother me because that's how it was in the comics. Electro was cool. Harry Osborn/Green Goblin was rushed but that doesn't spoil the film for me.

Reading reviews and what other people on this board have said about it. It seems ASM2 is this year's Man of Steel. Dividing critics and fans alike.

 

The multiple villains thing isn't the problem. The Nolan Batman movies usually had 2-3 villains each time and no one minded. It worked because the villains there usually were patsies working for one central villain who dominated the piece.

Spider-Man 3's problem was that there was next to nothing connecting the villains, and here it worked out semi-ok because Electro, Harry and Rhino were all connected by OsCorp.

 

...Clumsily. Rhino clearly wasn't even an Oscorp-based villain until late in editing.

 

I just thought it felt a bit disjointed and that with the gravity of the Gwen storyline they might have been better served focusing on the one villain. That's not to say no film has ever done multiple villains successfully.

 

Probably the expediency they executed by getting Harry in to the goblin armor. It could've waited until the ASM3, but they wanted to get it out there. The Rami trilogy set Harry up better than this.

 

<< Rhino clearly wasn't even an Oscorp-based villain until late in editing. >>

How so?

 

Aleksei was supposed to be a criminal taken down by Spidey who then turns up again at the end, better equipped to take on a superhero. And that was that.

The vault at Oscorp was seen (in trailers/featurettes) to contain the Goblin glider, Vulture's wings, Doc Ock's tentacles, and the Venom symbiote.

In the final cut of the film the symbiote was replaced with the Rhino suit, implying it was made by them even though it is clearly a more "home-made" design and covered in Russian symbols and Cyrillic writing. I'm pretty sure they even had to cheat the size of the Rhino suit to make it fit in the vault, because it's seemingly much bigger in the final scene.

 

Just because Norman lived to 60 or so doesn't mean Harry would; diseases don't affect everyone the same way. Though I agree that if the filmmakers meant to suggest Harry had a worse case of it, they certainly didn't make that at all clear.


... There was a lot to like and even love in the movie, but it was so frantic that when it was over I felt a bit worn down. I didn't have a raging headache and grumpy mood like I did after Man of Steel, but I certainly didn't have that post-X: DOFP elation, either. I find it odd that the slowest pace movie of the franchise, ASM1, should be followed by this, the fastest and most hectic. Maybe they were stung by the criticism of the reboot retreading too much ground from the Raimi movies, but were unable to leap straight into a universe-building story without first introducing Harry and offing Gwen, so they just crammed all that into this as fast as they could. I do hope that the third movie has a more deliberate, less frantic tone. And do we really need another MJ in the next movie already? Why not a Black Cat, someone tough enough to fight alongside him and take her share of super-punches?


ASM1: A-
ASM 2: B

 

I caught that too!

Though I felt they kinda ruined it by having the 1701 in frame far too long.

As for the movie... meh. Very underwhelming. I was not impressed with any of the villains, especially Jamie Foxx as McDweeby Nerdington who turns evil because Spider-Man didn't remember his name. How many times are they going to recycle this motivation for a comic villain?

As for killing off Gwen, I felt that should have been held off until the third film, at the very least. This film felt crammed full enough without adding a pointless death in the last 10 minutes. Not to mention one so telegraphed her graduation speech could have been in Morse code.

 

This movie is financial train wreck for SONY even factoring in worldwide returns.
It's going to struggle to match Thor Dark World's total of $206m at this point and I'm not convinced it can do that. It'll be hemorraging more theaters this week. It lost 1K last weekend and with a Tom Cruise movie and Fault in our Stars opening TASM2 could lose another 1K theaters this weekend. There really is no reason theaters should hold onto it. FioStars is a love story that seems to have a big following and the love story was about the only thing TASM2 had going in it's favor.

It's at $192m Domestic now and just under $700m WW. It's going to do less than TASM on both fronts. The downward slide continues for the franchise. Sony may have to pull a WB and Superman Returns this film to $200m+