The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

This is the first time I re-watched this since the theaters.  It makes me sad that Sony scrapped the franchise just when it was really starting to show progress.  The Sinister Six idea is apparently still in the works, but without Spider-Man.  There's also a Venom movie starting production soon, I think.  Tom Hardy is attached to it.  We'll see if that pans out.  Otherwise, this is just a once-promising experiment gone to seed.  Much like Spider-Man himself.  Originally posted 04 May 2014.    Rob and I saw this on Friday but I wanted to give it a couple of days before I decided if I liked it or not. 

I totally did.  I may even like it more than the first one.  There's a lot more in the way of character development for Peter Parker this time and I liked seeing how he handles the guilt of breaking his promise to Capt Stacy (Denis Leary) and the strain that puts on his relationship with Gwen.  Sure, I felt like the movie was rushed in places, but I don't think it suffered overmuch.  Also, they did some cool audio effects within Electro's score that I really appreciated.  I don't usually notice such things but that was very nice.

Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) loves being Spider-Man but hates the danger that puts the people he loves in, like his Aunt May (Sally Field) and his girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone).  Finally tiring of his namby-pamby bullshit, Gwen dumps him.  Now he's left with just 99 problems, one of which is Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx).  Max was just a lowly electrical engineer at Oscorp with a Spider-Man fetish until an industrial accident turned him into a living battery, which is apparently not covered by Oscorp's workman's comp.  He is locked up in Ravenscroft, an insane asylum, to be experimented on by Dr. Kafka (Marton Csokas).  Meanwhile, Harry Osbourne (Dane DeHaan), Peter's childhood friend, returns home for the death of his father (Chris Cooper) and to try and find a cure for his genetic disorder.  He believes Spider-Man's blood is the key.

This movie does do a lot to set up the Sinister Six project that's supposed to be coming out next year or so but I didn't feel it was at the expense of the story.  Sony seems to be taking a page from the Marvel playbook by seeding references to future characters throughout the film.  It does lend itself to world-building without seeming too heavy-handed, a lesson DC films could use.