The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - 2.5/5
What a frustrating movie series. Its Spider-Man *looks* great, he *moves* great – but it’s all on the surface. He’s a superhero, but he’s not a very good person. Manipulative, flaky, a promise-breaker – those things he was supposed to fix after his Uncle Ben got shot, yo. He’s a borderline-abusive boyfriend, holding back a clearly better woman. (And I think there’s been an unfortunate byproduct of the end of ‘Batman Begins’ which implies that superheroes cause more trouble than they stop – “escalation” – which may be true, but it’s a dangerous line of thinking when the ultimate end result is to continue being that hero.) I think the recent trend in blockbuster movies is to use likability as a spackle to fill in holes in the story. ‘Say a funny joke’ replaces ‘fix inherent problem with story.’ It’s smart – it creates a sheen, a surface-level cleanliness. If you’re not trained in the art of writing increasingly long movie reviews on your personal blog, you may miss it. But still – there’s enough there within that likability to make me desperately want it to be good. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are so good. They should go off and make a million movies together. Her ending has meaning not because of the story, but because the one thing worth salvaging about this franchise is now dead.
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