The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

Director: Marc Webb

Cast:  Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx

Synopsis: When New York is put under siege by Oscorp, it is up to Spider-Man to save the city he swore to protect as well as his loved ones.

Marc Webb’s sequel to his own 2012 movie The Amazing Spider-Man sees Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) coping with the aftermath of the events from the first movie. In that one he made a promise to Gwen Stacy’s dying father that he would stay away from her in order to protect her from the villains that were sure to play an important part in his life as a superhero. It’s a promise he struggles to keep, and when she announces she’s hoping to move to England to study at Oxford he realises that it’s a promise he’s going to have to break.

This one features two villains, a nerdy engineer who must be cinema’s only black guy to sport a comb-over hairdo (Jamie Foxx – Django Unchained) who becomes Electro after one of those accidents that only ever happen in Superhero movies, and the Green Goblin (Dane DeHaan – Chronicle) aka Harry Osborn, the son of Oscorp’s ailing owner. Not only is Harry in line to inherit Dad’s fortune, he’s also harbouring the same fatal disease. He believes Spiderman’s blood can help cure him, and when Spidey refuses to part with any of it Harry reinvents himself as the aforementioned Goblin and swears revenge.

It’s fair to say that this sequel doesn’t quite measure up to the first. Although the movie fills us in on just what prompted Parker’s parents to abandon him as a child, it does little else to fill out his character other than to give him a major case of the guilts for still fancying the dead Mr Stacy’s daughter. The mantle of superhero – and therefore saviour to the masses – must be quite a heavy burden to bear, but all Parker’s angst is reserved for when he’s out of uniform and it’s difficult to equate one persona with the other. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is entertaining enough, and features more of those eye-catching POV shots of our hero swinging through the city streets, but it’s more cartoon than human in its treatment.

(Reviewed 14th December 2014)