[Locke]

WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ IS MY REVIEW OF AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 IT IS FULL OF SPOILERS AND YOU HAVE BEEN CLEARLY WARNED.

For the the majority of the movie, this is less a Spider-Man movie and more a Peter Parker movie. That may sound underwhelming, but Andrew Garfield is wonderful. Devilishly handsome, utterly charming and perfectly cast. He is just a brilliant presence. He blows Maguire out of the water. Similarly is Emma Stone, her "America's Sweetheart" hype train naturally rubs a contrary sod like me the wrong way but her Gwen Stacy is undeniably fantastic. Most fantastic about her though is her relationship with Peter, I know someone is bound to take some unnecessary feminist stance but I certainly think she makes it out better than Dunst ever did in the original trilogy.

Parker's relationship with Gwen is realised so perfectly I feel like I need to make some kind joke about chemistry here - especially considering they're both science whiz kids - oh look, I already made it. Ha, ha... I liked the blend of indie romance and high-concept blockbuster smashed into one another so much I would have honestly been perfectly happy if that was just the whole movie.

This movie is fucking gorgeous. The 3D sadly makes a lot of it feel and look kinda artificial but there is just so much energy in every set piece. From the insane swoops through New York as we follow Spider-Man between the buildings, to the insane flashes of colour and dubstep bass drops as Electro "lights his candles" (oh man that line was brilliant) this movie is bound to satisfy the adrenaline junkies and ten year old's in the audience even if the number of set pieces are considerably trimmed down. Webb is mostly known for his work on '(500) Days of Summer' which clearly was a huge influence on the focus on the relationship between Stacy and Parker but when you see the effort, the scale, and just the beautiful sense of style that he captures his action sequences with. Just damn.

It makes perfect sense for a sequel, and especially a sequel in the looming shadow of the world of the Avengers and the respective franchises, to move the focus to more of what is going on around Peter... but it also really doesn't work all that well.

Spider-Man as a character has so much going for him, he doesn't need to be a part of some cross-franchise behemoth. I found the majority of this film so refreshing as it focused on its most important narrative and emotional parts and not just which parts could go ahead and become their own franchise and make them even more piles of money. But then, just when it starts to come together, it actually all starts to unravel a bit.

Electro dies (?) before he even really gets a character to play, which is an utter waste of Foxx, and it isn't even like we can enjoy his final battle as he's immediately upstaged by Green Goblin whose very presence in the film seems to be to make us question why Electro is even in this movie in the first place. And then just as Green Goblin takes centre stage, events transpire which make us question why Green Goblin is even here as well. But just as that happens the whole movie disappears into a giant ad for the Sinister Six film.

The ending result is a very messy wrap up that seems to exist solely for the CG crash bang wallop despite so much of the rest of the film focusing on the emotional crash bang wallop, not the physical one. It's a story focused sequel which turns its own narrative focus into padding through unnecessary twists and turns that seem poorly thoughtout.

Perhaps to contradict my point slightly though, the fact that we come away from this with thoughts like "Electro and Gwen both deserved better than their most important moments being juggled around each other" is as much a testament of quality than it is a straight criticism. Before a negative there must exist a positive, you can't be disappointed by something you don't care about in the first place. "Too many villains" is much bigger than a nitpick but I can almost completely ignore this criticism because of how much I loved all of the other parts.

Ultimately though, what cannot be argued, is Amazing Spider-Man 2 makes one of the most important, daring and progressive moves in the entire history of the superhero boom. It kills someone. That someone stays dead. And that someone matters to us. The climax of this film is a complete and utter clusterfuck but in a very rare moment, the end more than justifies the means.