The Spider-Man retrospective continues as I go back and take a lot at the rebooted Spider-Man duology titled The Amazing Spider-Man. This was my first time seeing both films so here are my final thoughts on The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2:
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2012)
Instead of Spider-Man 4, Sony had the bright idea of wiping the slate clean for our favorite web slinger and bring us a reboot. Andrew Garfield was cast as the lead role and Marc Webb of (500) Days of Summer was set to direct. Friends of mine claimed this to be better than Spider-Man 3 and heck even all the Tobey Maguire films and I must say that I couldn't disagree with them more. I kind of hated watching The Amazing Spider-Man for many reasons one of them being the Peter Parker character himself. I did not like this incarnation of the character because it seemed like the film kept mixing up what kind of person he was. First he's a skater punk, maybe an artsy kid into photography, and also a science nerd? It's like the film couldn't make up its mind on what they wanted Peter Parker to be.
Also, when he becomes Spider-Man and chases down Uncle Ben's killer it's like he's treating the Spidey deal like it's some game. It's like I was watching an arrogant teenager doing a half baked, PG rated impression of Deadpool. It was dreadful. I also didn't get behind him testing out his powers and how he's unknowingly knocking out people on the subway. I loved how in Raimi's first Spider-Man film that it took time for Peter to test out his powers and there was that exhilarating scene when he's climbing on the building and testing out his web slinging powers. The execution of that moment in this new film was absurdly idiotic, which leads into my biggest issue with the movie.
The direction for this movie and how the story played out was inexcusably awful with quickly rushed pacing, which called for terribly fast paced editing. The style that Webb went for just didn't work for a Spider-Man movie. Not to mention how one dimensional all the characters were in this movie and that there was not a time that I could slide back and think to myself, "You know that was a great well realized character moment." None of the character motivations made sense and how in that regard the way certain events occurred just didn't have any meaning. It's cool to see Spider-Man swinging around and fighting the Lizard. There were some great visual effects done in this film and well choreographed action sequences, but if you can't have characters to actually feel for with a story arranged in the most bizarre way, then it fails as a Spider-Man film.
Verdict: D
I mention an over the top performance by Paul Giamitti and the same can definitely be said for Jamie Foxx's performance as Electro, who you just can't take seriously in any of his scenes before or after his transformation. Dane DeHaan as Harry was atrocious doing this whole monotone sinister voice, who I also couldn't take seriously. I also can't get into Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man. I can't even put into words Garfield's performance as Peter because it's so bizarre, he just can't stand still, and talks really fast. I mean did someone on set just tell these actors do whatever you want, people don't care it's a Spider-Man movie!? This is another instance of studio interference where they just want to sell a product and have people coming back for more and more and more!
It just doesn't feel like a movie in that sense and it really pisses me off that such mindsets to make films like this exist! Give me some effort!! I'll come back if the movie's good and there's a world and characters I can enjoy and can't wait to see more of! This movie felt forced and this along with the first movie just didn't need to exist and thank god they rebooted it once again because Marvel Studios actually has talented people there. Yes, the film looks pretty, but there is not one good thing I can say about this movie other than that it didn't perform financially as intended and it caused Sony to have a joint partnership with Marvel.
It did Spider-Man a favor because this film is just depressing and I hated every minute of it. The execution was dull, no character depth, and the story wasn't cohesive and didn't make sense. It looked cool I guess, but it was also loud and obnoxious with an awful score to go along with dreadful sound mixing. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is everything a blockbuster does wrong because it doesn't even feel like a movie, but it's a scam to sell you more movies.
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (2014)
Folks, I am just blown away by this film. Truly and deeply blown away because what I just witnessed was a scam by Sony to cheat viewers. All this movie did was that it had to look pretty and have fancy action, so that viewers will stick around to watch this movie and then leave at a place where viewers just have to come pay to see the next film. This is the definition of a set-up movie, where the last priority is to tell a great, complete story and just keep teasing viewers and leaving questions behind throughout the runtime.
It's obvious the film loses focus having multiple villains in Electro, New Goblin, and Rhino. Rhino played in an over the top manner by Paul Giamitti was only in the film for probably 5-6 minutes just to set up new films in the Sony Universe they had planned at the time. Really no reason for that villain to be there and Electro seems like he'll be the main villain until Harry enters the scene. Harry probably could've been the main villain since he had motivations that kind of made sense and Electro on the other hand has no motivations at all! He has an accident with the eels and then all of a sudden he's mad at Spider-Man because he can.
It's obvious the film loses focus having multiple villains in Electro, New Goblin, and Rhino. Rhino played in an over the top manner by Paul Giamitti was only in the film for probably 5-6 minutes just to set up new films in the Sony Universe they had planned at the time. Really no reason for that villain to be there and Electro seems like he'll be the main villain until Harry enters the scene. Harry probably could've been the main villain since he had motivations that kind of made sense and Electro on the other hand has no motivations at all! He has an accident with the eels and then all of a sudden he's mad at Spider-Man because he can.
I mention an over the top performance by Paul Giamitti and the same can definitely be said for Jamie Foxx's performance as Electro, who you just can't take seriously in any of his scenes before or after his transformation. Dane DeHaan as Harry was atrocious doing this whole monotone sinister voice, who I also couldn't take seriously. I also can't get into Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man. I can't even put into words Garfield's performance as Peter because it's so bizarre, he just can't stand still, and talks really fast. I mean did someone on set just tell these actors do whatever you want, people don't care it's a Spider-Man movie!? This is another instance of studio interference where they just want to sell a product and have people coming back for more and more and more!
It just doesn't feel like a movie in that sense and it really pisses me off that such mindsets to make films like this exist! Give me some effort!! I'll come back if the movie's good and there's a world and characters I can enjoy and can't wait to see more of! This movie felt forced and this along with the first movie just didn't need to exist and thank god they rebooted it once again because Marvel Studios actually has talented people there. Yes, the film looks pretty, but there is not one good thing I can say about this movie other than that it didn't perform financially as intended and it caused Sony to have a joint partnership with Marvel.
It did Spider-Man a favor because this film is just depressing and I hated every minute of it. The execution was dull, no character depth, and the story wasn't cohesive and didn't make sense. It looked cool I guess, but it was also loud and obnoxious with an awful score to go along with dreadful sound mixing. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is everything a blockbuster does wrong because it doesn't even feel like a movie, but it's a scam to sell you more movies.
Verdict: F
So glad to have finally got those two out of the way and that Sony didn't continue this SpiderVerse because things did not look like they were heading in the right direction. Can't wait to see where this next incarnation of Spider-Man is taken in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I loved how he was presented in Civil War and excited to see his story continue in Spider-Man Homecoming, which I will have a review for next weekend, so stay tuned for that sweet action. For more updates be sure to follow me in the social media links below as well as a link to Part 1 of my Spidey Retrospective discussing the Sam Raimi directed trilogy:
Twitter and Instagram: @alexjcorey
Thanks as always for taking the time to read this post on my blog! I look forward to bringing you more groovy content, so as always see some movies and all that good stuff.
Take care. :-)
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