When Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) promised NYPD captain George Stacy (Denis Leary) to stay away from his daughter Gwen (Emma Stone) in order to protect her from the enemies of Parker’s superhero alter-ego, at the end of 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man, it was only a few minutes of runtime before the sincerity of that promise was questioned in order to end the story with at least the prospect of a happy couple.
In director Marc Webb’s follow-up, the trajectory is reversed, with the pair’s relationship established but repeatedly threatening to disintegrate due to Peter’s guilt over his broken promise – he is haunted by visions of an accusatory-looking Capt. Stacy – and his vacillation over whether to give up and avoid the girl he loves or to endanger her by mere proximity.
| The Amazing Spider-Man 2  
Directed by Marc Webb. Starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan, Sally Field, Colm Feore, Paul Giamatti. |
A large cast of antagonists provides endangerment aplenty, but their sheer number demonstrates that screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci failed to learn the lessons of Sam Raimi’s overstuffed Spider-Man 3, which turns seven this year.
As Peter investigates the murder of his parents, he discovers links to his father’s work at OsCorp Industries, which is set to revolutionize the power grid with a form of bio-electricity. In a freak accident, this new process – involving tanks full of eels – transforms OsCorp engineer Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) into an energy-based organism.
Meanwhile, after the death of Norman Osborne (Chris Cooper), ownership of OsCorp transfers to Harry Osborne (Dane DeHaan), an old friend of Peter’s who inherited a dire genetic legacy from his own father along with the family company and a secret stockpile of experimental weapons, some of which end up augmenting the criminal activity of Aleksei Sytsevich, a.k.a. Rhino (Paul Giamatti, in a role promoted out of all proportion with its cameo size, likely in service to the announced Sinister Six spin-off film).
There is also a ruthlessly greedy OsCorp board member in the person of Donald Menken (Colm Feore), and – since every antagonist must be the epitome of greed and evil without room for moral ambiguity – a Nazi scientist caricature (Marton Csokas) whose ministrations assist in Max Dillon’s flimsy transition from obsessive-compulsive Spider-Man fan to what it is tempting to call “Evil Dr. Manhattan.”
To the same extent that Gwen provides the centre of Peter’s orbit, their on-again, off-again love story gives the film a nucleus of humanity around which the fireworks and bullets fly, and although they spend some of their scenes mumbling at one another as if the script offered no point of purchase and left them winging it, their chemistry is undeniable.
Garfield is moving-picture-perfect as the plucky, wise-cracking teen hero, and Stone likewise as his tender but independent-minded leading lady.
Consequently, the film is perhaps at its best when dealing with the mundane matters of life and loss and the tangle they make of meaning and planning: Peter and Gwen deliver ultimatums for one another to agonize over, Aunt May (Sally Field) soldiers on as the only remaining adult figure to a fairly difficult teenager, and parallels emerge between good and bad, past and present, that make a certain poetry of the proceedings even when the script and direction get messy.
Scenes of Spidey web-slinging his way through New York are fully believable even when they are fully rendered, and in 3D – with a boost from point-of-view shots – it is easy to feel like part of the action.
And the action, from the opening heist of an armoured truck to Electro’s blitzkrieg-redefining lightning powers, is engrossing thanks to excellent special effects.
At 142 minutes, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is long, but it never bores, if only because the evidentiary mural-making and branded internet searches that lead characters to transformation or revelation, here like everywhere else, are mercifully brief in duration. Instead, it expands the solid foundation for a likeable hero whose rebooting just two years ago was a matter of no small controversy.