I have the unique perspective of going into The Amazing Spider-Man 2 fairly blind. The only actor that I knew was in it was Andrew Garfield. In general, I’m a Marvel girl, except for the Spider-Man franchise. I am just about as arachnophobic as it gets, so a story about a boy getting bitten by a radioactive spider is not a fun comic movie for me. It’s a horror film! Pushing that aside, I agreed to watch this one under the pretense of “He’s already Spider-man so there probably won’t be any spiders.” I have two criteria that make a good movie: 1. No spiders and 2. No subtitles. This summer blockbuster met one of those.
All jokes aside, let’s dive into this, shall we?
As I said, I went into this blindly. I had not seen the first Amazing Spider-Man, and did not know anything about the rebooted version of the franchise. As a reference point, I have seen Spider-Man 1 and 2 (the Toby Maguire versions). I had been told this rendition was something different and for the most part, it is something different. I have never read the comics but have, since viewing the movie, spoken with some who have. The film opens with some back story, which for me was helpful. But when I first saw Spider-Man flying across the city, I immediately thought it was too computerized. I get that you can’t actually film someone flying around, swinging on webs they shoot out of their arms, but I just wasn’t feeling it. This stuck with me through the entire film. There were some great parts of the movie that were beyond unbelievable that I didn’t even “notice” the CGI, but they were always interrupted by a Spidey flying through the air sequence. My other complaint, aside from the spiders, is that in general, I do not like movies that have a villain defeated and another one pops up to be “defeated” in five seconds. I don’t know why that bothers me but it does.
With the negatives out of the way, here is what I did like:
The acting – They couldn’t have cast a better actor for the main villain. Jamie Foxx was stellar! I was not crazy with how cheesy Spider-Man seemed but I was informed that was very true to comic book characterization so I feel Garfield did it well. Of course, Sally Fields was amazing. I am now a pretty big fan of Dane DeHaan. For some reason, he reminded me of a much younger DiCaprio. I look forward to seeing him in the future. I’m not a huge fan of Emma Stone’s voice and I hated Gwen’s hair, but overall I thought the part was well acted. I definitely give the acting five stars!
The story line – You can pretty well tell what is going to happen, but that doesn’t make it any less thrilling when it does.
The feels – I have to say, I almost cried on one occasion. I’m a girl, cut me some slack! Even if you are a guy, you will have to admit that this movie was full of emotion-grabbing moments. It made me angry when I was supposed to be angry, sympathetic when I was supposed to be sympathetic, sad when I was supposed to be sad, and I had a sense of pride when I was supposed to. The movie definitely pulls on the heart strings. I like that to be nicely blended with my action movies and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 did it well.
So, overall, I didn’t dislike the movie. I can’t say it’s on my list of all-time favorites, but I was pretty pleasantly surprised. If you are a diehard Spider-Man fan, I don’t know how you will react but if you are a first-timer like me, a casual viewer with no expectations, I think you will enjoy it. It should definitely be on your list of movies to see in theaters this summer.
