The Amazing Spider-Man 2
It’s been a few weeks since I watched “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” and I still find myself troubled with indifference over what Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield have given us with this reboot of the franchise. It’s not necessarily their fault– Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire set the bar high with the best moments of their trilogy between 2002-2007, and honestly, Garfield has been crushing it in the role of Peter Parker, the ordinary science student who gets bitten by a radioactive super spider, and is transformed into a hero. Yes, part of my issues with the first “Amazing Spider-Man” is that it treated Parker’s transformation as NOT a random happening, but they didn’t really give it lip service here, so I can look at that as unimportant to the overall arc of their new start. But as big as Sony, Webb, and Marvel Entertainment have been planning with this new series of films, there’s one miscalculation on a narrative level that is shrinking this universe down, but I’ll get to that.
One of the things I was pleasantly surprised by in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is how Webb and his writers (including the pairing of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) managed to cover a lot of the same thematic material Raimi did in his own “Spider-Man 2” ten years ago, making it work within the framework of their own telling without making it feel like a rehash. In this film, Peter Parker is completely immersed into his role as crimefighter, helping the police foil badguys with a wicked wit and great skills. But his romantic relationship with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone, whose on-screen chemistry with Garfield is ridiculously good) is stalled; Peter promised Gwen’s father he wouldn’t get involved with her, because it would only lead to pain, and put her, unnecessarily, in harm’s way, and he does what he can to respect that dying wish.
Unfortunately, whereas the turmoil was personal for Maguire’s Parker, and reflected in his villain(s) throughout the Raimi films, Webb is less interested in really digging deep, and more in massive action sequences that test Parker physically more than emotionally. I don’t know whether I’d blame Webb, though, since he’s fully capable of delivering sharp emotional drama (as his 2009 film, “(500) Days of Summer,” showed), but Sony, who seems to be calling the shots, and dead set on building a Spidey universe that will last for years, and rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while preventing the web crawler from ever joining forces with the MCU team. Don’t get me wrong– Webb delivers some pretty great action scenes, and the visual effects for the character’s web-slinging have gotten damn good, but the novelty of sharp effects work only goes so far when you have a void in the narrative. The actors are hardly to blame: as Max Dillon, who will turn into Electro, Jamie Foxx is a formidable antagonist for Peter, although he starts out as a nerdy, Spidey-obsessed fan before fate steps in.
It’s not really fate, though, is it? All of the villains in this film (including the vicious criminal played by Paul Giamatti, who is Rhino for a brief moment at the end), as well as it’s predecessor, all have one thing in common: a connection to Oscorp, the industrial science and research corporation run by Norman Osborne (played by Chris Cooper). Norman dies early in the film from the side effects of an experiment he was working on with Richard Parker (Campbell Scott), Peter’s father, who discovered a terrible secret at Oscorp, which is why Peter is raised by Uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and Aunt May (Sally Field). This is the big idea Webb and co. are using to drive the narrative in these new films– that Oscorp is responsible for not only for Peter’s enhanced powers, but also the entire Rogue’s Gallery he has to face, not only in these first two films, but a proposed “Sinister Six” film we might be seeing in the next couple of years. Add into the picture Harry Osborne (played by “Chronicle’s” Dane DeHaan) coming back to run Oscorp (and quickly turning into Green Goblin), and it’s hard to imagine there being nearly as much time for character moments as this film has. This is an interesting approach to the franchise, but it shrinks the universe Sony is trying to create with these films rather than expands it. Maybe we’ll see differently in later movies in the franchise, but it hampers the success of the film we’re watching. And that is a damn shame, because there’s a palpable sense of danger by the end, when Peter’s world is changed forever in a way that brings a profound sense of gravity to the final minutes that Garfield plays perfectly, and makes the muddled narrative of the previous two hours feel worthwhile, and we see a Spider-Man I really want to see have better days, both in terms of the character itself, and the franchise in general.
