Why I Saw It: I haven't seen Emma Stone in a movie since Gangster Squad and that is too long..
Cast: Andrew Garfield is my favorite British Spider-Man, without a doubt. All joking aside, I like him and think he could play a good Spider-Man, but this take on the character is still too cool for my taste. Emma Stone's great, but that's redundant. They don't give Gwen much to do until the very end when they do successfully demonstrate her value. Jamie Foxx as Electro is, well, some super hero movies have a villain because there's a story to tell with him and others have a villain because they need someone for the hero to fight. This is the latter. I'm not familiar with Dane DeHaan. The direction they went with for his Harry Osborne is "big". Mileage may vary. Sally Field does a fine job playing Aunt May. Paul Giamatti isn't in much of this. He feels more like a "setting up the dominoes" casting. Oh, and Felicity Jones has a "blink and she's gone" role but I like seeing her so I thought I'd mention it.
Plot: You know the Spider-Man story by now. Harry Osborne is back, so they are setting up some Green Goblin. Gwen Stacy is still around, so no Mary Jane Watson. Electro is around to fight and his story is like a less engaging version of The Riddler's from Batman Forever. The whole thing is more setup than a chapter this story needed to tell. My biggest issue is that the entire movie is "right place, right time" occurrences. For the story to function at all, a dozen different things have to happen exactly right. People have to both be in the same place at the same time or learn something from one character right before someone else learns something else. It's all so highly improbable that I found it impossible to be engaged by any of it. Thanks to both the scope of the Disney Marvel Universe and the events of this movie, I'm finding the world of Spider-Man in this series suffocatingly small. Just track Gwen's activities at Oscorp is you need proof.
Elephant in the Room: You came in with a vendetta though. Yes, it's true. I didn't like the first movie. That's doesn't mean I was looking to hate this. My expectations are too low to hate it. After two movies, I am certain of one thing: this particular reimagining of Spider-Man does not work for me at all. Despite an appealing cast, the version of the characters are almost universally unappealing, the story too fast and loose with details and structure, and the action staged ridiculously.
Movie Theater LVP: The 10 year old kids sitting a couple rows behind me who started by talking about how they should sit in the front row because then they could curse all they wanted. Next time, follow that instinct, please. (Side-note- Movie Theater MVP: The mom with the kids who mostly kept them under control).
To Sum Things Up:
Spider-Man is one of my favorite Marvel heroes and even the little of his story that I know is rich with stories that I'd love to see. The direction they decided on with the current iteration is not one that interests me, so I have to accept that.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment