The best Marvel superhero movie may not be The Avengers or the new Captain America movie as some have recently said, it might just be The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
The original Amazing Spider-Man was originally slated before it had even been released in 2011 due to there already being a Spider-Man movie trilogy starring Toby Maguire and many felt like a reboot wasn’t even necessary.
Leaving aside the reasons for the franchise reboot, it’s a good thing Sony did as the Amazing Spider-Man was great and this sequel raises the bar even higher.
Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) has become something of a celebrity since the first movie, or rather his alter-ego Spider-Man has, while he remains unknown and makes a small living off of taking photos of Spider-Man.
This high-profile comes at a cost when he happens to save his biggest fan’s life, an Oscorp worker named Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx). Max thinks Spider-Man is genuinely a friend of his after that, and talks to himself thinking he’s talking to Spider-Man.
Foxx plays the geeky, weird character very well and it adds a lot of humour that is until Max has an accident inside Oscorp, turning him into Electro, an unwilling villain who gets his strength from electricity and just wants people to notice him.
Parker also has to deal with the return of his childhood friend, Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) whose father Norman Osborn (Chris Cooper) has just died, leaving Harry in charge of the billion-dollar Oscorp.
The movie is cast perfectly from the believable ‘geeky’ aspect to the perfect comedic timing; Andrew Garfield simply makes a better Spider-Man than Toby Maguire ever did.
The chemistry between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) is great and considering that Garfield and Stone are a couple in real life, you genuinely believe their relationship on-screen and root for them to work things out.
Peter is haunted by Gwen’s late father Captain Stacy (Denis Leary) who died in the previous Amazing Spider-Man movie and Peter’s promise to him that he’d leave Gwen alone so long as he continued to be Spider-Man – this naturally tears Peter between Gwen and his feeling of responsibility to help the people of New York City.
Electro is a great and worthy villain for Spider-Man but Marvel wasn’t content with just one villain, so expect so see the Green Goblin and Rhino appear to take on Spider-Man too. The less said about them and how they come to be the better, for fear of spoilers.
Hans Zimmer provides the soundtrack for the movie and he hits the nail on the head as usual, most notably is the dubstep-esque theme whenever Electro is on screen and especially when he’s causing mayhem, not to mention the great collaboration with Pharrell Williams for another Electro theme.
I’m usually not a fan of 3D in anything but I can’t recommend the 3D version of the Amazing Spider-Man 2 enough, it’s done so well that it serves only to add to the movie and never gets in the way for the sake of it. During one of Electro and Spider-Man’s fights, a fire hydrant flying towards the screen caused a kid beside me to almost leap out his chair and I jumped a bit myself –the 3D is that good.
There’s nothing to fault the Amazing Spider-Man 2 on, the action, acting, visuals and humour are great with a ton of jokes thrown in for the adults and not to mention a few emotional moments, it’s easy to recommend.
If you like superhero movies, you need to see The Amazing Spider-Man 2, it might just be the best one you see this year.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is in cinemas today (almost three weeks before the US!).
