"Amazing Spider-man 2" discussion

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS - SPOILERS INCOMING - SPOILER SPOILERS SPOILERS!

The first film was so vanilla as to be completely unremarkable. Like, before seeing the second one yesterday I had to stop and think for about 3 minutes before I remembered who the villain was in the first film. It's just forgettable.

By that margin, the second movie is better simply by the fact It may me think "hmm, this is vaguely entertaining" because it's so littered with beyond retarded elements the vaguely OK bits stick out like a shining beacon of hope.

Spoiler: Spidey Spoilers

Things I liked:

Garfield and Stone. These two are just fantastic together.

Spidey - Garfield seems to get Spider man and nails the costumed persona perfectly.

Fight scenes with Electro.

Spidey showing up at the end, talking to the kid and fighting Rhino.

The death of Gwen Stacey.

Things I didn't like.

The amazingly blatant foreshadowing of the death of Gwen Stacey. - Seriously, they literally signpost it throughout the film. There's a shot where Gwen and Peter meet up for the first time in a while and as they're standing looking at each other, theres about 30 seconds of a shot where Gwen is stood beneath the sign for the store "Forever 21". COME ON!

Electro's dialogue. Unfortunately, it's about on par with Schwarzenegger in Batman and Robin. Electricity puns everywhere. Terrible.

Green Goblin - from the seizure inducing birth of the Goblin (Seriously, I don't have epilepsy but I had to shut my eyes because I felt them going funny. Why did they need that strobe effect?) to his ultimately 4 minute long pointless fight scene at the end. Yeah, it sets up the death of Gwen (why is there an old clock tower in a power station again?) but it's such a non-thing overall...the weight of the situation of Peter's best friend turning against him and becoming a monster is wasted in a brief exchange that amounts to "You're Peter! I hate you for not helping me!" and then FIGHT.

The sheer amount of dumb shit that happens to allow plot points to be reached. The most blatant one was the kid sneaking into the fight between Rhino and the police dressed as Spidey. Yes, it was a cute-ish moment when Spidey did finally show up and take care of business, but the chain of events leading up to that kid walking into the fight just....ugh.

Also - the mystery of Peter's father, which after devoting the cold open of the film too and a significant part of the movie just boils down to what we already knew - only Peter can be Spider man. Great! Two movies of this mystery that is ultimately just stating the initial premise all over again. That was very worthwhile - not.

All that being said...I still liked it better than the first. It engaged me enough to hate significant portions of it, and that made me like the good bits even more. Yes that's dumb, I know, but like I said the first movie just left me tepid in every way possible. This movie isn't so bad it's good, it's just good but riddled with dumb bits.

 

For me, choosing between this one and ASM1 is just a waste of effort. ASM2 is full of weird pacing, clashing tones, terrible villains (some underdeveloped, others just plain boring), vague character motivation and idiotic decision making, and the most cartoonish scientist I have seen for a loooooong time.

Worst of all, it was a Spider-Man film and barely once did I ever feel that, "Go Spidey!" moment. Boo!

Between the averageness of the film itself and the potential it had, I found it to be a major disappointment. That's zero for two for me.

Not to mention, Dillon just felt like Edward Nygma from Batman Forever. That corny old weirdo nerd scientist! Ha, audiences love those kinds of characters, right? Right?!


...And what's with the X-Men ad during the credits? That was very odd. It's like Sony and Fox are so desperate to compete with the MCU that they'll co-operate with each other and just throw in any old shit as a mid-credits scene.

 

OH MY GOD! You just reminded me of that German Dr Kafka! WHAT THE FUCK WAS UP WITH THAT GUY!?! I mean, who told Marton Csokas that accent was a good idea? It was like a 50's B-movie german scientist! That was a low point. VERY Schumacher Batman.

 

Yeah the German scientist was really bad.

 

Ja. Doktor Kafka vuz der very model of zee clichéd Deutsch scientist. I know nusink!

 

I'm trying to decide whether to spoil myself on the movie or not. Spoilers don't generally detract from my enjoyment of a film or television series, but it's been quite a while since I went into seeing a movie that I was interested in completely unspoiled.

Anybody got any thoughts on whether it would be better to go in unspoiled?

 

Here's my review if anyone is interested Amazing Spider-Man 2.

 

Even though the story is arguably "original", certain plot points are directly lifted from Spider Man comics. So if you're familiar with those, I'd say "spoiling" yourself isn't much of an issue.

 

Dac pretty much covered my thoughts on the film, both good and bad, but I have to add one thing:

Spoiler: Major spoiler

Mark Webb actually did something that Sam Raimi chickened out on twice: Killed off the love interest.

Of course, it's an iconic moment from the comics, but Raimi recreated the entire moment with Mary-Jane...and didn't kill her. If he was going to do that scene, why not feature Gwen in the first place and them introduce MJ (or both at the same time)? But to make it worse, he finally introduces Gwen in the third film and plays around with killing her...and doesn't. Again.

Webb, on the other hand, actually followed through, albeit just with a different Osborn and a different location (although the bridge was alluded to). While it's true her death was heavily telegraphed, the emotional follow through was strong, especially with the time lapse grave scene, and the whole sequence was given significant credence because of the great rapport between Garfield and Stone. It's just a pity the moment was followed up by the rubbish Ravencroft/Rhino sequence.

 

Spoiler: ^In response

I agree. I'm glad they went through with it, it must have been tempting to want to keep her around since the chemistry is so strong and Emma Stone is such a cool actress. I'm a bit disappointed at the marketing though, on Facebook they had a hashtag thing of "GwensDay" and most of the thing they posted were about Gwen, so what they were going to do was quite telegraphed.

I did love the grave scene though. I also liked the way the death was handled, especially when he shot the web and it came out like a hand. My friend thought that was really corny but I thought it worked well.

Anyone have any thoughts on Mr. Fierce?

I was also a little disappointed that there wasn't anything about him trying to figure out who killed Uncle Ben.

 

You can't really hold the eel thing against ASM2, they used it in the Spectacular Spidey animated series too, so it's been around at least that long.

 

I can. It doesn't matter to me one iota if it was in the comics.. it's a stupid origin story for a villain. I mean stupid as in Batman and Robin stupid. Cobra Commander turning into a snake in the G.I. Joe animated film isn't nearly that stupid (actually that was kind of pulled off well).

It would be somehow less stupid and more interesting for the producers of the film to use the one-off Spidey villain Typeface rather than Electro.

 

So if ASM changes something from the previous stories it's a cool reboot, but if it sticks with something lame we have to blame the source material?

And I wasn't even worried about the eels, really. For me, the Dillon characterization was far more damaging to the film than that.

 

Haven't seen the film yet, but the eel origin seems to make sense in context, because it parallels how Spidey got his powers in the previous movie. The film universe's Oscorp is all about genetically engineered animals, and if their gene-modified arachnids could give Peter Parker the proportionate strength and agility of a spider, then it follows that their gene-modified electric eels could similarly induce powers in a human. Within the context of the film continuity, it fits better than the original "struck by lightning while working on power lines" origin, which realistically would've just given Max Dillon the power to collapse into a charred, smoking corpse.

 

And being hit by a gamma bomb would've killed Bruce Banner instead of turning him into the Hulk at night. Andif you look up Electro's origin I believe he had to make a suit to channel the electricity. Electro's new origin is in line with what Burt Conners was working, some way to save Norman Osborn's life.

 

It might make sense (barely) but it still sounds stupid. Really. We've got to detatch ourselves from these comic book films long enough to see that.

If I asked a ten-year-old boy to create a villain with the power of electricity, and that the origin had to originate in a scientific lab, this is the kind of origin I'd expect. It's absurd without being interesting, stupid without being creative, and just plain moronic. Oh, let's not forget that Electro's master plan is plunge NYC into a permanent blackout. That means his ultimate goal is less interesting still than his crappy origin story. At least if they went with Typeface (the dumbest villain in history) they'd have to embrace his origin story, they'd have to come up with motivations and dialogue that are all just left of center, things we'd never heard before, and could (maybe) work because of how strange they are.

 

Most superhero/villain origins are stupid. Electro's comics origin is far stupider than this, as I already pointed out. Being bitten by a radioactive/transgenic spider and gaining its proportional powers (without any outward change in anatomy) makes no sense at all. Getting irradiated atop a pile of sand and thereby turning into a living collection of sand is utterly preposterous. Being exposed to gamma radiation (with or without supersoldier serum) and turning into a giant green rage troll -- complete with the spontaneous creation of extra body mass out of nowhere in defiance of all physical law -- is entirely nonsensical. Even Tony Stark's origin doesn't make sense -- why didn't he get surgery to remove the shrapnel the moment he got home?

And please don't tell me what Electro's plan is. I've already told you I haven't seen the movie, and you go ahead and blurt out spoilers. Thanks ever so much.

 

i haven't seen it either. IK don't know what his plan is. That might not be his plan. I probably heard it somewhere (maybe in the ten thousand "you need to see this" trailers that Sony released.) Maybe that's not his plan.. but if the story of how he got his KEWL ELECTRICAL POWERS (TM) was written from the perspective of a nine-year-old, maybe his ultimate goal is written on the same level, and doesn't qualify as a real spoiler. It's not like Electro is in fact Ra's Al Ghul, nor was he responsible for the JFK assassination.

Sarcasm aside, I'm sorry...

If this film wasn't a Saturday morning cartoon, I might care a little more.

 

Well, then if you haven't seen it, you really have no business condemning their approach, do you? Many things sound stupid on paper but work very well when you actually see them.

 

i'd normally agree.. but we're talking about a guy that gained the power to shoot electricity by being in a vat with electric eels!

Really?