Movie Review: The Amazing Spider Man 2 (2014)

the-amazing-spiderman-2-marvel-poster-hdGreat leads, great effects and a simple, clean storyline

Star Ratings

Thank god someone had the foresight and intelligence to finally make a movie about the little known super hero Spiderman. I hope you read that last sentence with a heavily sarcastic slant, as that was how it was intended. Spiderman gets remade about every 11 minutes. Hell, somewhere right now, I bet Seth Rogan is squeezing in to the strangely homoerotic blue and red body suit.

Before I start my review, I really want to put out a plea to Hollywood. Please stop making Spiderman movies. Enough with Batman, Superman and pretty much any other hero with ‘man’ in his name. We’ve seriously had enough. If you guys need an idea, might I suggest Spider Jerusalem? His weapon of choice is the bowel disruptor; a multi-setting gadget that causes victims to lose control of their bowels, potentially to death.

Hand to god, I did not make that character up. Spider Jerusalem is very real.

Anyway, on to the movie. In yet another sequel to yet another rendition of Spiderman everything is going well, per usual. Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) has embraced his life as a hero and has gotten the girl, Gwen (Emma Stone). Then, along comes bad guy Electro (Jamie Foxx) and it’s up to Peter to save the city from mass destruction…again.

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You figure people would just move by now. No joke, the second some guy dressed up in a costume unleashes a giant robot or blows up half of Orlando, I’m moving.

I have to give it to casting on this one. Alexander and Stone actually have great chemistry in this rendition of Spiderman. In the one with Toby McGuire and Kirsten Dunst, I didn’t see any chemistry at all. Watching two lipless people kiss has never really done it for me.

Maybe it’s because Stone is so likeable, or Alexander is actually attractive, but I liked these two the best as love interests in all the Spiderman’s I’ve seen.

Trust me, I’ve seen them all.

But this one does impress. Excellent special effects are to be expected, and the movie doesn’t disappoint. But in this one, I felt like the story line was a little bit cleaner than the last. When writing a superhero movie, directors shouldn’t be afraid to work with clichés. That’s to be expected. So I really like that they stuck to a classic pulp fiction style. Spiderman fights a bad guy, only to learn that the bad guy is connected to an evil corporation.

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Classic style, with a nice potshot at big corporations as well. It was a storyline that Stan Lee or Steve Ditko would have done in the Amazing Spiderman’s days of comic book glory.

Great leads, great effects and a simple, clean storyline that’s easy to follow make this rendition of the franchise a success. If it was the first one, I imagine everyone would be saying great things about it. But it’s not. It’s like the 11th and many are saying the franchise is running out of juice. Just like we were all Supermanned out in the 80s and Batmanned out in the 90s, we have been all Spidermanned out in the 2000s.

Bring on Spider Jerusalem.  Below is the official trailer:

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