Spidey’s big, hot mess
‘Amazing Spider-Man 2’ might have some merits, but it’s really just another tangled web of loud mediocrity. Can someone please take note that villains who are articulate and human — case in point, Heath Ledger’s Joker — are just way more compelling?
There’s an odd phenomenon that takes over Philippine movie cinemas around this time of year, in which there is nothing else to watch but duplicate copies of Hollywood pre-summer movies, such as The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Cinemas are effectively taken over, covered in a gooey summer mess, swamped by superhero sequels that have nothing to offer on the brain nutrient level. That’s okay: most people like a big, loud, stupid, hot mess such as Spider-Man 2. I’m just not most people.
In fact, what the arrival of pre-summer schlockbusters aimed at a demographic somewhere between young boys and geeky mid-20s males actually means is that seasoned moviegoers (i.e., seniors) have nothing else to watch but Andrew Garfield in a rubber suit and anime-eyed Emma Stone, when in fact they’d rather watch a lame rom-com with Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson (a movie whose name escapes me, as it did the local cinemas).
I didn’t much care for The Amazing Spider-Man, also directed by Marc (500 Days of Summer) Webb, and it’s not because I’m Team Tobey Maguire or anything; it’s just been done too many times by Hollywood, and too recently, for me to care about Peter Parker’s journey yet again.
Garfield, back as Parker, is probably a better actor than Maguire, whose repertoire consists of a range of bug-eyed stares. Spider-Man comic fans will tell you that Garfield’s Peter Parker is much closer to the source, a geeky, smart kid full of wisecracks and awkward moments. Yet he’s also kind of mumbly and doesn’t hold the screen very well. Good thing he has Emma Stone to play off of.
Stone, whose eyes are so huge they must be double-D, manages to wrangle some good chemistry with Garfield and delivers some classic reaction shots. (She’s already shown her flair for comedy.) She may dress way inappropriately for an Oxford physics candidate (preppy coat, black stockings and, apparently, no skirt), but she at least brings a little needed sass to her role as Gwen Stacy (when she’s not being saved, or held back by gobs of webbing, by Spider-Man).
Perhaps the real problem with this dull, loud, pointless sequel is that the villain — nebbish Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx), who morphs into Electro — is a one-dimensional CGI effect with not enough presence, or evil, to hold our attention against a bunch of other distracting plotlines, one involving sulky Harry Osborne (Dane DeHaan) and his takeover of OsCorp, another involving Rhino (Paul Giamatti), a Russian thug who vows revenge on Spidey. Then there’s Gwen’s dad’s ghost (Dennis Leary), making with the phantom eyeballing whenever Peter gets close to Gwen. It’s a lot to juggle, even for Spider-Man, let alone a bunch of ADHD audience members.
In truth, Webb directs for the ADHD crowd, the kids who are hopped up on sugary beverages and see movies as a mere extension of video games or motion simulator rides at Universal Studios. This target audience, admittedly, are not too concerned about plot coherence or narrative flow or character development: they just want to see more diesel trucks hurled around and chunks of asphalt blown up, please, again and again. Happily for them, Hollywood is more than eager to churn out the same movie, whether it’s Iron-Man 3 or Pacific Rim (which I actually kinda liked) or any other superhero mess that involves 30 minutes of noise and loud crashes, followed by 60 minutes of dull exposition and plot stuff, followed again by 30-45 minutes of noise and loud crashes as the hero and contrabida face off, usually in a city street, or above one at night, and make with the boom-boom-boom.
This is the same movie we’ve seen, summer after summer, isn’t it? Like the new iPhone models, there are only slight incremental variations in overall design, and these often just make things worse.
(We totally bypassed the option of watching Spider-Man in 4D, which would have meant feeling even more bludgeoned — by wind and water effects — making the theme park crossover effect complete.)
I would like to say that the new cast and director inject some life into the franchise, but what it really feels like is mainlining liquid concrete. It just kind of hardens to a dull, lahar-like glaze. (It actually makes you want to run out and watch a warm, handmade film like The Grand Budapest Hotel again, just to cleanse the dulled palette.) Sam Raimi, bless his heart, at least made two decent, zippy Spider-Man entries before the franchise crapped out by the third entry. The first Amazing Spider-Man underwhelmed from the git-go, and is less compelling now. Garfield can act, but he doesn’t strike me as a leading man; he’s still Eduardo Saverin to Jessie Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg. There’s a holding back there, an immaturity which may suit the character (he’s actually 30 playing 20), but just seems dweeby.
The little pop references — like Electro’s flashing bolts of blue electricity and hoodie reminding us of Emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi, or a ludicrous German doc at the Ravencroft Institute making with the Dr. Strangelove accent, glasses and hair — in no way suggest that there is something intelligent at the helm of this summer monstrosity.
No, Amazing Spider-Man 2 might have some merits, but it’s really just another tangled web of loud mediocrity. Can someone please realize that when villains are articulate and human — case in point, Heath Ledger’s Joker — they’re just way more compelling than some brawny electricity-sucking monolith? Just once? Please? On a side note, this movie cost an appalling $250 million to make. This means it has to earn double that, just to be called profitable. Guess where those extra bucks are going to come from? The Philippines, baby. Sure, Amazing Spider-Man 2 will rack up its Asian box office earnings because, really, how can you miss when you infiltrate every single cinema at once?
