Just two years after the too-soon reboot, and the faults that were laid at the feet of that movie have now mostly been fixed. The mystery of Peter’s past hinted at in the first is now finally fully explored here. Where there was a copy-and-paste plot from Tobey Maguire's version of Spiderman to the first Amazing Spiderman, this is not a facsimile of Spiderman 2. However, these progressions come at a cost. Namely, the plot tries to do way too much all at once. Instead of borrowing heavily from a previous Spidey movie, it's now borrowing heavily from other comic-book movies.
Peter Parker/Spiderman (Garfield) is still haunted by the death of his girlfriend Gwen Stacey’s (Emma Stone) dad, and he is burdened by the possible weight of his superhero double life inviting danger into the lives of the people he loves. On top of that, he and Aunt May (Sally Field) are still recovering from the death of Uncle Ben, all while he attempts to juggle his private life, his freelance photography job and, y’know, saving the city. Which is where the villains come in, namely glow-in-the-dark Electro (Jamie Foxx), and rich-kid-with-daddy-issues Harry Osborne (Dane DeHaan).
It’s here that Amazing 2’s lack of originality shows its hand most, with Electro being a mix of The Riddler (creepy employee with odd fixation on the hero), Catwoman (underappreciated and invisible, until animal-based transformation) and Mr. Freeze (that fluorescent blue look will remind you of nothing else). Foxx’s villain is underwritten and he as an actor was painfully miscast, but DeHaan does slightly better with a complicated, oddly homoerotic relationship with Parker, but it all goes downhill once he starts being all supervillain-y.
Once again, the Peter/Gwen relationship is one of the highlights, with their adorable chemistry making you almost wish there were no superhero scraps getting in the way of their time together. We say almost, as returning director Webb has upped the ante with the set-pieces, bringing some seriously epic scope to the proceedings this time around. Anyone who was afraid that there was going to be a Spider-Man 3 problem of too many bad-guys spoiling the fun, your fears will be assuaged here.
There is still very much a sense of “Next Time on The Amazing Spider-Man…” throughout, with no less than FIVE other big bad-guys seen, referenced or alluded to throughout. But even with all this conscious, purposeful franchise-building, the story still zips along merrily, not hitting any particular highs or lows. That is, however, until the last 45 minutes when things get REALLY good, including one scene that may well go down in history as one of the best scenes in a comic book movie ever.
All in all, a step-up in quality from last time, but still a step behind its other Marvel siblings. Oh, and we’ll save you some time right now, there’s no post-credits sequence!