It’s fitting that Marc Webb’s first movie was the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer. Not relevant experience for directing any other superhero movie perhaps (certainly not a Nolan-style Batman pic or the frustratingly sexless Captain America), but for this Spider-Man reboot that experience surely does help. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is fundamentally a prologue picture. This is still the vital background work of fleshing out the legend of how Peter Parker became Spider-Man (there’s still no Mary Jane). But as he did with the first Spider-Man, Webb and his actors bring a sexual energy that’s all too rare. The best moments essentially all revolve around Parker and Gwen Stacy’s on-and-off again dynamic. Their finest scenes together are ones that any film would be proud to have. Even when the movie trips – and trip it sometimes does – its real human dimension and genuine emotional core manage to hold it together surprisingly well and make the missteps forgivable.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 picks up fairly quickly from where the first movie left off. Peter Parker’s about to graduate high school. His girlfriend Gwen Stacy (played again by Emma Stone) is class valedictorian and potentially headed off to her pick of any of the world’s great universities. His costumed crime-fighting alter-ego Spider-Man is not yet quite the friendly neighborhood institution. The presence of this vigilante is hotly debated. Parker is far more haunted though by the promise he made to Stacy’s dying father to stay away as he will inevitably put her in grave danger. At least a couple times time during the movie we see the image of her dad’s ghost (played again by Denis Leary) looking wearily and disapprovingly at Parker’s ongoing betrayal.
If that gets a little heavy-handed then at least Andrew Garfield’s performance never does. Casting the actor – who was so good in The Social Network – was a near brilliant decision. He makes vastly more sense in the role than the often puzzling and boringly earnest Tobey Maguire ever did. His Spider-Man is endowed with a cocky East Coast cool. It doesn’t hurt none that he and real-life girlfriend Emma Stone (another fantastic stroke of casting) have some of the best chemistry I think I’ve ever seen. Webb deftly handles the scenes between them. In the best one they are seeing each other for the first time since calling it quits. They try to set ground rules for how they can be friends (he can’t tell her she looks amazing; she can’t laugh). It quickly becomes clear just how much their mutual attraction will make that impossible. A wonderfully written and acted scene that rings very true.
It’s in the handling of the villains that the movie (with a screenplay by Alex Kurtzman, Robert Orci and Jeff Pinkner) errs. The primary bad guy is Electro (an oddly sympathetic Jamie Foxx). Early in the movie he’s just a lonely electrical engineer at Oscorp who becomes obsessed with Spider-Man after he saves him from getting hit on the street (“I’m a nobody,” he says in amazement that anyone even took the time). The movie lays on his unhealthy fixation thick (he even makes his home into a Spider-Man shrine) yet finds only the thinnest, most tenuous reasons for him to suddenly turn on his former hero. When his boss forces him to stay late on his birthday, he slips down several floors into a tank full of modified electrical eels who gnaw at his flesh as he fries. He emerges a whole new horrifying creature dependent on electricity to survive and a deeply tragic villain (nearly) justified in his misanthropic fury.
Paul Giamatti has a tacked on part as Rhino, strangely thrown in late during the movie (let it never be said that the immensely talented actor ever makes a predictable move). Dane DeHaan plays Harry, the son of Oscorp’s CEO who was shipped off as a child to a boarding school and has returned to his dying father’s estate an angry, aggrieved young man. When his father (played by Chris Cooper) does pass away, he’s left in charge of the company. Around the same time he also reunites with Peter, another fatherless teen (the movie’s prologue is of how and why Parker’s parents disappeared). Knowing that he’s taken photos of Spider-Man he begs Peter to persuade him to donate blood as he’s near death from a terrible illness that might only be cured by that transfusion. When Peter refuses, he’s let down yet another person and in his violent rage, Harry teams up with Electro. It’s there that the movie gets the most operatic, and frankly, strained. DeHaan, who looks at all times like he’s about to become a vampire and is hardly the best actor in the ensemble, at least does a fine job of projecting pretty-boy rich kid entitlement.
Despite too much going on, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 manages to remain an engaging and exciting entertainment. With the relationship between Parker and Stacy front and center, it never sheds its sexiness or charm. The ending has a surprising level of emotional gravity. It’s not just crises used simply as cheap plot points to keep the story rushing along. The verdict on the movie seems to find comic book fans and general audience members on opposing sides. That’s fine. There’s a lot more imagination and heart on display than in the Captain America sequel. Webb has made a big budget pic that could have been tighter and more focused, sure. Easy fix: next time drop at least one of the three screenwriters, pick a villain, and rein in some of the excess. That will make the upcoming third installment even worthier of its title.
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