In E3, 2013, Batman: Arkham Origins debuted. It looked fantastic. It looked amazing. The new costume design was shown off, and every Batman fan was gushing with excitement. After the success of Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Asylum, everyone had high hopes for Batman: Arkham Origins. Everyone thought it was going to be the best Batman game yet.
Come Oct. 25, 2013, Batman: Arkham Origins finally dropped. And every Batman player collectively went "Is this it...?" We all felt disappointment that day. Batman: Arkham Origins was riddled with bugs, had a clunky combat system when compared to the previous two Batman games, and had a tacked on multiplayer mode no one cared about. It had its merits, but if you compare it to its predecessors, it just really fell short. People crapped on Batman: Arkham Origins for a while and everybody hated it, BUT people forget that it isn't a horrible game. It just wasn't as good as people were hoping it to be.
And this is how I feel about The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is my Batman: Arkham Origins.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a movie I want to like so badly. And maybe it was because of this desire that I was able to find some elements of it that had merit.
THE COOL STUFF
The Spider-Man Suit
The original suit from The Amazing Spider-Man was a cool departure from the Raimi movie costumes, and an interesting take on the iconic Spider-Man costume. It was alright.
However, the Amazing Spider-Man 2 costume was a home run! It was just brilliant. It's a good mix of realism and the fantasy of a Spider-Man costume. It looks just like Spidey's comic book suit, despite the Tobey Maguire-esque look with the slightly raised webbing design. The eyes are huge and white, and the material looks like it would be something Spidey would actually wear. It looks so good, the action figure version of it would make any collector proud to have it in his roster.
Spidey-ness of Movement and Action
Naturally, the most entertaining parts of a Spider-Man movie are when Spidey is on screen. Thanks to Andrew Garfield's superb portrayal of Spidey, we get treated to a fidgety webslinger, kind of the way I would expect a teenager Spider-Man would act. He was able to tone it down a lot since the first flick, so it felt much more like Spidey.
And thanks to the amazing special effects team, Marc Webb, Daniel Mindel, and the stunt team, we saw Spider-Man jump around and fight the way a Spider-Man really should. The Electro/ Spidey fight was pretty dang epic.
Spider-Man VS Spider-Man
Lemme ask you - who do you think the main antagonist of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was? Was it Jamie Foxx's? Electro? Was it Dane DeHaan's Green Goblin? No, dear reader. May I propose to you that the real antagonist for this movie was Peter Parker, or rather Peter Parker trying to live Peter Parker's life. Peter needed closure, and actively sought it out, while keeping a city safe and trying to keep the love of his life. Those are the real tension points, not the fact that there was a dude in a hoodie with electricity flowing through his veins. It's the classic story of Man VS Self. Electro and Green Goblin are merely plot devices, minor monkey wrenches to be dealt with as Spidey tries to live his life.
With Spider-Man stories in any medium, the main focus has always involved Peter Parker. It's about him. It isn't about Spider-Man. This is what sets him apart from the other heroes, and I think The Amazing Spider-Man 2 succeeded in showing that. Also, I think this is why the treatment of the villains felt so lacking. It because the movie isn't about them. This isn't Thor, where Loki is a major character whose involvement in the film is as vital as the main protagonist's. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is Peter's story.
Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker
One of the biggest complaints I've been reading is that Gwen and Peter's romance feels contrived, forced. I beg to disagree. That is what a relationship looks like. Sure, it's exaggerated because of Garfield's character's special problems, but to me, that is really as natural as it gets. And this is only made better by Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield's chemistry, which translated very well on screen.
In the comics, I've always liked Gwen better than Mary Jane, too.
Garfield, Stone, DeHaan, Foxx
Another comment I've been reading is that the acting was horrible. I may just be a really bad judge of acting skills, because I thought Emma Stone pulled off a believable Gwen Stacy, DeHaan portrayed a perfect Harry Osborn with a tortured soul, Foxx showed us what an obsessed person with violent tendencies would be like as Electro, and Garfield is still the best Spider-Man we've had to date.
Music
I don't know about you but I thought the music in this movie was just plain good. The music during Electro's reveal was just BAD ASS and the score during the last few scenes (also known as the most spoiled scenes in the history of movies) just tugged at your heart guts. It was all nicely put together.
THE NOT SO COOL STUFF
Science!
I know complaining about sciencey stuff in a movie is stupid, especially for a movie that involves a guy who can crawl up walls fighting a guy made of electricity but there were just some weird things that need addressing. This may get a little spoilery so I'm putting them behind a spoiler tag.
[spoiler]Spider-Man's web shooters don't work against Electro because his batteries give out when a large electrical current flows through them. Okay, I get that. But why are Spider-Man's webs conductive in the first place? But I guess, since it is made from a fictional material, the miracle exception may be applied to it, but we get no explanation as to why they would conduct electricity even in the context of the fiction. They just do for convenient narrative reasons.
And then we're shown Peter testing larger batteries to handle the capacity problem; it was a funny scene and we were made to understand that the problem is that his batteries overload and explode when such a high voltage is run through them. So, clearly, it's an electrical load problem. So, how in the hell would magnetizing his web shooters overcome that problem? I am seriously curious. If you have an answer for me, please, please leave them in the comments section.[/spoiler]
Oh, and here's another thing -
[spoiler]Why is it that when Electro teleports through electrical wires, he brings his rubber boxers with him? He should be buck ass nude after passing through wires.[/spoiler]
Like Two Movies at Once
While I think the movie tried to tie all the plot threads together at the end of the movie, it just felt very muddled and choppy. Something would happen here and it would cut somewhere else totally unrelated and you get into that story, then it cuts back and you have to invest yourself in that plot thread instead. This normally isn't an issue, but in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, it happens way too much.
Trailer Scenes
Okay, one of the biggest mysteries I wanted the movie to solve is the one in the trailer where Harry tells Peter that he was under surveillance, and when Peter asks why, Harry goes "Isn't that the question of the day?" YES, Harry. Yes, it is. Now, I want the goddamn answer! I've been hanging on to that since the trailer came out and I get NOTHING! How dare you, Sony...
How dare you.
Product Placement
SONY! SONY EVERYWHERE!
Now I admit to being Sony's whipping boy. If I could afford their phones, I'd plop down some money and buy an Xperia right away. I'm saving up for a Playstation 4, and I stand by my opinion that the Viao is the sexiest laptop that isn't a Razer or an Alienware. But wow, you could literally turn The Amazing Spider-Man 2 into a drinking game by downing a shot every time you see the Sony logo. And you would all get smashed.
VERDICT (TL;DR)
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a very entertaining movie. It isn't as cool as Captain America: The Winter Soldier or have as much heart as Thor: The Dark World, nor does it have the complexity of The Dark Knight Rises, or even the scale of The Avengers, but it does bring something to the table. It is definitely way more human than any other movie based off a Marvel character.
It has its flaws, but it isn't as horrible as people say it is. I think people are just bitter about being spoiled.