Karen: OK, the Amazing Spider-Man 2 has been out in the States for over a week now. It's time for a wide-open discussion of the movie -anything you want to talk about! We'll get things rolling with some of our thoughts on the latest Spidey flick:
Overall, I was disappointed. The film felt like it was trying to pack too much into one movie. The Electro character was a one-note, stereotypical dork turned villain that had the most idiotic of origins (electric eels? really?). Jamie Foxx seemed to be channeling Jerry Lewis for some reason, and it was awful. I'm still not sold on the mysterious back story with Peter's parents -and that subway car headquarters of his dad -oh please! The heavy-handed foreshadowing of Gwen's death by having Capt. Stacy show up every five minutes made me feel like attention spans must really be short nowadays. Gwen's demise itself felt like it was tacked onto the end and didn't get the attention it truly deserved. To be honest, I hate to see Emma Stone go, because her chemistry with Andrew Garfield is one of the things I have actually really liked about the new Spider-Man films. I have little to say about Harry/the Goblin -he was pretty wretched all the way around.
Now there were some things I liked. I still enjoy Andrew Garfield as both Peter and Spidey. He's a great wise-cracking Spidey, which I missed in the Raimi films. As I mentioned above, Gwen and Pete have a wonderful chemistry together. The action sequences in the film were pretty good -except I can't stand the weird, random freeze-frame. Why is this necessary? The web-slinging looks fantastic though, and much of Electro's effects were great.
I have to say the soundtrack really took me out of the movie at times though. It seemed oddly generic at points and at other times just oddly dissonant and annoying (especially when Electro was on screen). It's rare that a soundtrack bothers me, but this one did.
I liked this less than the Amazing Spider-Man, and I'd have to say neither of this films comes close to any of the Marvel Studios films (well, I might watch either of them over Iron Man 3, but I really dislike Iron Man 3....)
So have at it!