Does whatever a Spider…
You know the rest…
Okay so I went into this expecting the worst. I was not a huge fan of the first one. It wasn’t terrible, just mediocre and the reviews of the sequel have been mixed at best but dang it, I really liked this.
Spider-Man had the right amount of sass (something the character was famous for but the original movies kind of downplayed) and angst. Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield are very natural actors and have good chemistry. The streak of confidence that Garfield gave Peter Parker was a bit annoying in the first one (because he doesn’t even have his powers for half the movie) but feels right here since he is growing a a person and a hero. Foxx is a bit hammy and an engineering nerd but I liked the villains had a humanity to them. The best villains are always the ones where you can kind of see their point if not their methods.
The story also helped flesh out the “Peter’s Parents” mystery to make that feel less shoe horned in. They also helped explained one of the more troubling aspects of Spider-Man’s origin in the first movie (i.e. all those spiders, why is there only one Spider-Man).
It is a lot to swallow that every super-powered hero and villain has ties to OsCorp but I can live with some Small World Syndrome.
The spidey scenes were fun and colorful. Both the scenes where he was just swinging around NYC and battling villains. This was just an all around good movie. I suspect I may be in a minority here. What did everyone else think?
I enjoyed it, but it definitely had some problems. The movie was long as it was, which isn’t a bad thing per se, but given that it was almost 2 1/2 hours and the ending still felt rushed, I felt like they could have paced it better. It seemed like they had most of the movie written and it was solid, then when they decided to push for the Sinister Six, they kind of crammed the extra stuff in.
Definitely the best stuff in the film. Garfield and Stone had great chemistry and I really liked that Gwen wasn’t just a damsel in distress but felt like a real fleshed out character. I know that the love interest is a time-tested trope in super hero films, but it often annoys me (notably, I hated Jane Foster in the Thor films despite mostly liking them), but I really enjoyed her here. In fact, Garfield’s chemistry with most of the cast was good to great, excellent also with Sally Field and not bad with Dane DeHaan.
I really didn’t like him at first. The bumbling scientist is kind of boring. He’s smart enough to have designed the entire power grid, but even if he’s utterly socially inept, people around the office ought to at least know who he is. I did, however, really like his initial scenes after his transformation where he seemed baffled and unsure how to use his power, wanted Spider-Man’s help, and I liked their interaction. But after that, he just sort of became pretty meh again.
On other villains, Paul Giamatti, utterly wasted. Sure, I guess that’s the character, but you don’t need a good actor like him to play something so hammy. I think they could have cut him out to help streamline the movie. After all, I think having the movie end with Gwen’s speech would have been great.
On Harry, I liked his development for most of the film, but his transformation into the Goblin seemed rushed. I think they chose to do it since, if it wasn’t going to be Norman Osbourn that killed Gwen, it should at least be Harry, but it just didn’t really work. That said, I did think Gwen’s death scene was well done. Having him just barely out of reach of saving her in the clock tower. Did anyone not wince when they saw her neck snap?
I kind of liked the explanation that it was bound to the Parker DNA and why there weren’t more. Surely, with that manner Spiders, plenty of others would have been bitten. But it just sort of seemed to tie of the thread and not really leave much to go with from there. I guess they can’t leave everything unresolved, but it felt a bit out of place with so much else going on in the film. Still, a nifty idea.
I actually like this. It works fine in the comics to have a lot of varied origins, but for a movie going audience, I don’t think it works that well. In general, you end up either a bunch of villains having a convenient origin that happens to fit in, or somehow the hero himself creates the villain, which almost makes it seem like we’d be better off without the hero at all. By having a single source, it gives us some continuity and gives the hero sort of an over-arching villain to fight. In a sense, Peter was responsible for the villain in the first film, and Electro was just an accident, but now we’ll see the whole nemesis formed from the former friend and spawning multiple villains in the future to fight him. Sure, it could end up being poorly done and come off as a small world, but I think it also has the potential to help build a bigger universe and not have everything just seem so coincidental or counterintuitive.
In general, I liked most of the Spider-Man scenes. I didn’t like several of them in the first one, but I felt like they were better thought out in this film. And, like you said, I liked the cheesy wit, which while it was kind of flat at times, seemed to fit for a comic film. The only problem with that, though, was it created some inconsistent tone. At some points the film felt very serious and dramatic and then there were some comedic scenes, which is fine, even a serious drama needs some room to breathe, but it felt out of place more than not.
Either way, over all, I liked it. I think I enjoyed it about on par to the first ASM, but it’s definitely not as good as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2. I went in expecting about that, so I came out satisfied. I think with a bit more streamlining, possibly trimming out some of the unnecessary fluff, notably Rhino, it could have been a much more solid film though.
The motivation Peter/Spidey gives for not giving his blood to Harry Osborne. You’re ‘afraid’ it might kill him, or worse? Harry is dying. Make sure he’s clear on the risks. Give him a pint of blood.
Is every villain in this universe a product of Oscorp? Obv Green Goblin is, but Electrode, and Rhino, and I saw Doc Oc’s tentacles hanging there in a translucent vault for another movie. Is this franchise just Spidey against Oscorp?
Actually, that’s sort of an interesting twist in it. A world where meta-humans pop up all the time and JUST Spider-Man is weird. But if they’re all being produced by research at OsCorp (including Spidey!) it makes sense.
I agree with your point number one as well. I never really bought why Spider-Man said no. His friend was dying. They really had nothing to lose. It would have worked better if he had given him the blood and that was what turned him into a monster.
I was under the impression that that’s another reason why Peter didn’t want to give him the blood. He was worried about having another Lizard on his hands. He already felt responsible for the Lizard, and he didn’t want to be responsible for another monster.
Really quite poor. Not AWFUL but really not very good.
Positives:
Less of an emo Peter.
Negatives:
Really hate what they are doing with his Parents, but I gather that’s similar to what happened in the Ultimate universe.
Somehow manages to make Spidey less realistic looking than Raimi’s films a decade earlier.
Pacing/character progression is so off it amazed me. Harry went from not knowing about Special Projects to flying around and using Goblin weapons in approximately five seconds (and why did he even crawl towards that suit? HE HAD NO IDEA WHAT IT WAS)
They utterly gimped Gwen’s death. Spidey was in a no-win situation, he had to try as there was no way she’d have survived the fall to a concrete surface. In the comics it was less clear cut as she was heading towards water, there was always the chance of survival depending on how she hit the water: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e3/Spider-Man_Death-of-Gwen-Stacy.jpg
I haven’t see the movie yet - my kids were too busy this weekend. But I have this observation: Amazing Spider-Man 2 came out over the weekend and this thread has 8, now 9, posts. SHIELD’s latest episode was broadcast last night and already has 11 posts. Man, Marvel/Disney/ABC have this stuff figured out.
I fell asleep. Twice. In the interest of full disclosure I was working on 3 hours sleep and had no business going out on date night but I had been away for the entire weekend.
I liked it. In particular Emma Stone. But that might be because of my unrequited long term love affair with her. When I noticed the outfit I thought, “They are really going to do it.” And they did in uncompromising fashion. There was an audible gasp in the theater.
The Rhino was a bit unnecessary but was needed to set up the next movie and the proposed Sinister Six movie.
Supposedly Shailene Woodley filmed a short bit as Mary Jane. Mostly to set up a bigger role in 3. But in the interest of time and to keep the Gwen story line pure her part was cut.
I saw this movie in 3D, and that aspect of it was really very cool, IMO. I know not everyone’s a fan of 3D, but my wife and I both got a huge kick out of falling and swinging along with Pete.
As an action movie, I thought it was pretty entertaining, and definitely a cut above superhero movies of old (pre-Avengers stuff). Other posters have pointed out the weak spots, but aside from those I was impressed that there was a bit of a theme to the movie and that attention was paid to consistency as well as to the special effects. I also thought the high action/fight scenes did a great job of expressing Spidey’s unique style, better than I’ve seen in any Spiderman movie to date.
All of which had me thinking that we have a lot to thank Marvel Studios for. They’ve raised the bar on superhero movies, and even if Spiderman 2 fell short of being as awesome as The Avengers, it was a great deal better than anything I could have expected to see even ten years ago.
I saw it over the weekend. It seemed a bit long. And when Norman Osborne greeted Harry, I think he said something like, “I look at my son and see a stranger.” I laughed, because that seemed to be a winking acknowledgement that Harry Osborne was played by James Franco in one of the previous films.
I think the Marvel/Disney/ABC thing is equal parts quality and hive mentality at this point. They’ve taken control of the zeitgeist. I’ve seen more than a few people say they enjoyed the Spidey movie but they couldn’t really*** enjoy*** the Spidey movie because Marvel didn’t have the rights. There’s currently kind of a weird negativity towards superhero stuff that doesn’t come out of Marvel Studios.
Dumb question - I saw the movie but couldn’t tell - Did Gwen die like in the comics, with her neck breaking because of the sudden deceleration, or did she die because she banged her head on the floor?
I thought she banged her head, and that the spider silk was stretchy enough that that would not have killed her had the drop been one more foot. My daughter said her neck broke, like the original story, but sometimes she sees what she wants to see.
I think one thing has been proved conclusively by all of the films-There’s no good way to make the Green Goblin look menacing or cool. None. They tried masks and they tried weird elf-face in this film and nothing works.
Saw it with a friend yesterday, we both concluded it was the fourth best of the five Spider-Man movies, obviously beating out Spider-Man 3, which isn’t that hard since the last half of 3 was absolute dreck.
Both the villains in this movie came off like cariactures and were hard to take seriously. Electro was a pathetic nobody who started reminding me of that old Emperor Palpatine skit (“I solve all my problems with LIGHTNING!!”) Harry’s entire plot was rushed (Hey Peter, we were best friends! I’m back! I’m dying! I need Spider-Man’s blood! No? I’ll check my computer! I’ll use Electro! I’ll get the blood! Now I’m green and CRAZY!") and, as the Green Goblin, looked horribly laughable.
Really the only thing I liked about the movie was Emma Stone and… yeah.
I think it was a compromise. If it was just the deceleration some people would get confused by it. “Wait a minute, he got her in time, she didn’t hit! How the hell is she dead?” In the movie there was a snap and she also hit at the last second. I still think it was supposed to be a neck snap that did her in but the hit left no doubt. I wouldn’t be surprised if they shot it both ways and found this worked better visually.
