Why I was Disappointed with The Amazing Spider Man 2

"And only you can prevent random street muggings...and super villains."

I should start off with the obvious and say with large font: SPOILERS.  

Introduction

The Amazing Spider Man 2 had a strong premise with trailers promising a battle royale between Spider Man and his iconic adversaries: Papa Smurf, Mecha-Alpha-Rhino and First-World-Problems-Goblin, but all of that had fallen short after the first hour of the film.  Jamie Foxx's character, both the scientist and his villain alter-ego, Electro, were fantastic and very like-able.  Foxx had presented a strong character that presented a strong sympathetic remark. While the same could also be said about Harry Osborne and his role as the Green Goblin, I found that it fell short near the end of the film.  Finally the romance in the movie was awful. It awfully reeked with a familiar tinge with hallow remarks and sentiments, empty, emotionless lines and obviously catering to teenage romance novel readers.  The "Teenage Romance" motif is one of the greatest downfalls to the film.

Teenage Romance

The first notion of the failed romance between Gwen Stacy (portrayed by Emma Stones) and Peter Parker (portrayed by Andrew Garfield) was the terrible, haunting flashbacks from the first film.  In the first film Gwen's father was killed on top of the Oscorp building, but before his passed away he forced Spider Man, who he had discovered was Peter Parker, to promise that he would never see his daughter again.  This continues to exacerbate their "romance" throughout the whole film as Peter Parker/Spider Man fight off PTSD hallucinations of Gwen's father giving the 100-mile stare.  Another example of the romance failing in this film is when Gwen officially "breaks up" with Peter, her lines were literally:

"I break up with you Peter Parker.  I break up with you.  I break up with you Peter."

And after Peter was dealt such serious blows, he runs back to his home only to be followed in the next scene as Spider Man stalking Gwen Stacy throughout New York.  Later in the film Gwen Stacy has one of the worst lines I have ever heard, "I choose you Peter Parker!"  This over-the-top acting begins to detract from the action of the film as the romance eventually leads to the death of Gwen Stacy as she helps Spider Man defeat Electro and is quickly snatched by Harry Osborn, who doesn't need to hide his face...obviously because everyone knows who the Green Goblin is.  Peter attempted, with every inch of his spider-fiber, to save her from a fall, but she collides with a concrete floor and kills her on impact. 

The problem comes with the weak acting and script.  The film doesn't really portray the strong romance that Peter Parker and Gwen had, the script seemed to be bumbling around and the acting was a debacle.  If it was done right the romance would have really spurred the film to another level.  On the other hand, Gwen Stacy felt like a standard "Lois Lane" character.  She's there for minor plot development, minor story and finally a shoe-horned-hardly-dramatic-five-month-mourning-montage.  Yes, that is right.  The ending of the film, much like Spider Man staring Tobey McGuire, had the cast mourning at a funeral over a main character of the film.  The problem is, is that if it was done in a Rocky Film it would not have felt like wasted time.  The romance in the film was lackluster and while it is an integral part to Spider Man and his story, the film had made the death feel inconsequential.

Characters

The four characters I want to talk about, and how their roles succeeded or failed, are Electro, Rhino, Spider Man and finally the Green Goblin.  Jamie Foxx played one of the best, most sympathetic roles he could find with in the Spider Man universe.  Max Dilion (Jamie Foxx's overtly nerdy, socially forgotten scientist) was an employee of Oscorp and of course was forgotten completely and walked upon both on the streets and in the work environment.  This creates a social dynamic where he begins to worship Spider Man, because Spider Man had saved his life and told him that "...One day, I'll need your help..." This creates a unique psychosis within Dillon, because he believes that Spider Man is his best friend, bakes him a cake, wishes him happy birthday and practically worships Spider Man for his good nature.  Incidentally, he is working on his birthday and like a synonymous metaphor, falls into a pit of mutant electric eels that bestow him his powers.  In the core comics of Spider Man, Electro did not work for Oscorp, he worked for a power plant and worked on power lines for that company.  There was a freak accident at work and that's when he gained his powers.  Though he could not harness his powers until he stole technology from Stark Industries.

Electro from the Ultimate Marvel Universe

Rhino on the other hand was hyped through the trailers and had a total screen time of no longer than ten minutes.   Essentially a Russian criminal and altogether nefarious individual, he had gained his suit from Oscorp.  The character himself, Aleksei Sytsevich, is the overly stereotypical tattooed donned, bald-head, pierced individual that wants nothing more than to steal Uranium.  The movie had granted him his powers through an Oscrop suit, while in the comics he was given his powers through gamma radiation, hired as a mercenary to stop the Hulk, but continuously fails his objective.  So keep in mind that in the comics, the Rhino is a gamma-radiation super human trying to bash Spider Man's head in almost every panel.

Spider-Man on the other hand suffered issues throughout the film.  While Andrew Garfield makes a fantastic Spider Man, his portrayal of Peter Parker denotes him as the standard skater kid from high school during the first film.  In this film however, they show the more inventive and tinkering Peter Parker while having Spider Man throwing his puns and quick quips every moment he can.  This helps creates a more satisfying portrayal of Spider Man and Peter Parker.  The main problem comes from the conflict of Peter Parker searching for the truth about his father.  Surprise, surprise when he spends 60% of the film creating a web of documents and strings linking fact to fact in attempt to find the answer and then winds up empty handed.  When he does discover what his father's research was, big surprise that Oscorp was using that research for military grade weapons.

The Green Goblin, or Harry Osborn, was portrayed by Dane DeHaan and his role in the film is fine as a catalyst of revenge, pride, and finally rage.  DeHaan's character was introduced as coming back from a private school and discovering that his father, Norman Osborn, was dying from a terrible hereditary disease.  The disease begins to manifest, surprise- right around Harry's age, and eats the flesh of its victim.  So, through some not-so-clever plot devices Harry is ejected from Oscorp and loses access to his family's business.  He also gets the idea, after looking through a "secret projects" section in his company's files, to unleash Electro from the super-Nazi-science-mental-experimentation-hospital to help him take over Oscorp and kill Spider Man.  My major problem with this rendition of the Green Goblin, is that Harry himself was a very likable character and only became angry at Spider Man, because he discovered that "Spider Man's blood might be able to cure his terrible disease," but Parker rejects for the reason that his blood might kill Harry instead of help him.  Harry eventually discovers, over one short minute, that Peter Parker and Spider Man are the same person, leading to Gwen's death.

Conclusion

The movie in general held a very mediocre taste.  The action scenes were fantastic, but the romance was horrible.  The villains were memorable, but promise a battle against the Rhino and quickly left it as a cliff-hanger for another movie is one of the worst things you can do in any movie.  It presents a hope that this movie has done so well that obviously there should be a third movie, instead of ending the movie on a high note and making the movies independent from each other.  One thing that would drastically improve the quality of the film would be just one cliche line.  There were so many points in the movie where, just one "Damn you Spider Man!" could have made the movie more enjoyable.  The problem is, instead of venting rage through cliche monologues, we get alcoholic rages.  All-in-all, the film was mediocre compared to Captain America: The Winter Soldier and I would skip it entirely or wait for a Dollar Theater release and form your own opinion about the film.

Overall Grade: 6/10- "I BREAK UP WITH YOU PETER PARKER!"