Thursday, November 13, 2014

2014 - THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2, is commercial filmmaking at its most cynical


The first reboot of the Spiderman series was no classic, the 2nd film unimaginatively called The Amazing Spiderman 2 manages to be even less successful as a commercial entertainment.  I lasted about 45 minutes to an hour on this turkey, skimming ahead to watch the final fight between Electric guy or whatever the villain's name is and the Green Goblin who shows up towards the end because you can't have enough action stuff going on unless you completely overwhelm the audience with noise and chaos.

The main leads in the film Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are supposedly to be playing teenagers graduating from school.  They are starting to look a little long in the tooth.  Garfield is 31 years old and Stone is 26 and the cuteness thing she had in the first film is looking a little rough around the edges.  The rest of the cast is clearly slumming in the great "where's my paycheck" school of acting tradition.  Particularly pathetic is Paul Giamatti who is supposed to play the villain "Rhino."  Giamatti shows up at the beginning of the film and the end of the film blathering in some ridiculous Russian accent.


The action scenes are the usual overdose of computer imaging Spiderman flying around New York looks like a cartoon character who would be at home in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  Spiderman is never in real danger because Sony Pictures had announced that there would be another film is this series with Spiderman taking on the Sinister Six, whoever they are.

Unfortunately for Sony, this picture was not the big blockbuster hit they had been hoping for.  The film made money but not the millions and millions of dollars they wanted.  Apparently the studio is spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to save this series from the ennui that seems to be settling in on these superhero films.

142 minutes.

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