Without doubt, the absolute best thing about Sony’s 2012 “Spider-Man” reboot was the pitch-perfect casting of Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. As Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy, the costumed webhead and his brainbox lover, Garfield and Stone are an endlessly watchable delight, bursting with personality, flaunting a warm passion and sharing a buzzing chemistry which for electrical surges rivals Electro himself. So it was with a great deal of joy that I discovered while watching “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” that despite the marketing’s overwhelming showcases of special effects action and comic book villainy, director Marc Webb had decided to make Peter and Gwen’s relationship the focus of the film — a relief, considering my worries that the story was to be a cluttered, unfocused mess.
As you may recall, at the end of the first "Amazing Spider-Man," Peter broke a promise: he swore to the late Captain Stacy that he would leave Stacy's daughter alone and thus keep her safe from Spider-Man's enemies. Now Peter's having to deal with the consequences of breaking that promise: haunted by guilt, he's seeing Stacy everywhere, and it's put a strain on his and Gwen's relationship. This is what drives the drama of the film: Peter loves Gwen and wants to be with her, and she too wants to be with him, but at the same time he wishes to keep her from harm. Peter and Gwen's relationship is the core - or the heart, if you will - of the story around which everything else revolves, and it's what keeps the film from being that cluttered, unfocused mess I worried it would be.
To that effect, it's ultimately what keeps “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” from being another “Spider-Man 3.” Like Sam Raimi’s much-derided threequel, Webb’s second Spidey outing has the infamously worrying count of three villains, these being Jamie Foxx’s electrically charged Electro, Dane DeHaan’s cackling Green Goblin, and Paul Giamatti’s roaring Russian mobster Rhino. Many internet commenters feared that this was once again too much, that the film would be crushed under the weight of its villains; as Scotty from “Star Trek” would proclaim, “She cannae take anymore, captain!” But if anything, it proves that the problem with “Spider-Man 3” was not, as is so frequently claimed, the number of villains, it was the lack of focus. Raimi didn’t find a focus to his story and the result was a cluttered muddle; Webb does, and he finds it in the romance between Peter and Gwen, who through being in the spotlight give the drama and the story a focal point and a driving force.
Which is not to say that the story’s structure is not a little unwieldy: alongside Peter and Gwen there is an awful lot going on, with the rise of Electro and the Green Goblin both requiring lengthy set-ups and the mystery behind Peter’s parents finally being solved. And which is not to say that the balance is perfect: following his transformation and a brief scuffle with Spidey at Times Square, Electro is disappointingly missing from action until the big finale, for example. But in juggling many balls, Webb impressively drops very few; certainly less so than he did in the first “Amazing Spider-Man,” where Peter’s intriguing pursuit of the truth behind his parents’ death was glaringly forgotten in the film’s second half. Considering all the sub-plots it’s surprisingly coherent, which I’ll put down to two things: 1. Peter and Gwen being front and centre, and 2. The sub-plots all being related to the evil entity of OsCorp, which ties them all together in a neat and sinister little bow.
I suppose it also helps that the film as a whole is fantastic fun and that it zips along with a bouncy energy. The sights of Spidey gliding and web-swinging between the skyscrapers of New York are utterly spectacular, the splashy special effects are universally splendid, and the action, which now utilises bullet-time to incorporate our hero’s spidey-sense, is properly thrilling. But Garfield and Stone are so good together, and their chemistry so warm and engrossing, that the scenes they share are alone worth the price of admission — all that other stuff is just an extra treat. I’d also like to mention that I’ve loved this reboot’s treatment of Gwen, who at no point has been the shrieking, helpless, ever-endangered damsel in distress that Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane was rather embarrassingly reduced to in the previous trilogy. Smart, resourceful and bravely getting in on the action, she’s effectively Spider-Man’s sidekick, and I just love that.
Rating: 8/10
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