Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Movie Review: Amazing Spiderman 2

I wasn't a big fan of the Spiderman reboot. I guess I'd like more it if it came before the Tobey Maguire version, but I really do think it's the lesser series. With that said, I did like Amazing Spiderman 2 more than Amazing Spiderman 1. This Spiderman is quicker with the wisecracks and is better at dealing with the public. And the story is good, if a bit over packed. That's my issue with this series. They have a whole lot of plot to jam in a very small space. They need to take it a bit slower. Even the Harry Potter movies didn't seem this rushed and they had massive novels to cram in there. It's kinda like many of the Matt Smith Doctor Who episodes. At the end you're wondering what the fuck just happened.

This movie ties in the disappearance of Peter Parker's parents to Norman Osborne and to the eventual development of Spiderman.
It also has the creation of the villain Electro and tries to make him a sympathetic character gone bad. Much like how the original movies did with Doc Octopus and some DC stories do with Mr Freeze. It almost works. The original person is downtrodden and lonely, but you never quite feel the level of sympathy that a more sedately paced movie could have provided. So when he goes bad you might feel he's justified, but more that an unstable character just cracked.
His story is there to provide a villain while the main villain develops. One of the big complaints about The Fantastic Four was that they had no villain until Doctor Doom finally shows his face near the end of the movie. At about the same point that The Green Goblin appears in this movie. So Electro keeps things rolling for the bulk of the movie.
And then the Rhino shows up. He's not a very deep character. He doesn't plot or scheme. He's a henchman. A really strong one. But there's not enough to him to center a movie around him. So he shows up at the end for Spidey to make a triumphant comeback and beat the fuck out of him.

So, 3 villains, two or three major story lines (depending on how you count), and all the usual Peter Parker relationship issues. There's a lot in this movie.

A couple of things I want to point out. While Disney does own Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios, the movie rights to X-Men is in the hands of Fox and the movie rights to Spiderman is in the hands of Sony. So every computer in this movie was a Sony VAIO. The great thing about being such a large company is that you get to use your own stuff in product placements.
The other thing happens in the end credits. There's a clip of the upcoming X-Men movie. I'm assuming this is a response to Disney putting teasers in their end credits that lead into the next movie in the series. This wasn't a teaser. This was a clip. And not even a clip from another Sony movie. Sony showed a clip for a Fox movie. It's WEIRD, man. I thought it was great when Sony and Disney tried to work together and get Stark Tower and the Oscorp Building in the same skyline for an earlier movie. But this was just weird.

Anyway, I liked the movie. Not sure I'll get it on DVD, but I'm glad that I saw it.

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