Marc Webb's sequel is more ambitious than its predecessor, more emotionally daring, and considerably more chaotic: a film trying to develop its central romance, introduce three villains, set up a shared universe, and deliver a blockbuster spectacle all at once. It succeeds at none of these things as well as it succeeds at the one it was not required to do: the death of Gwen Stacy is handled with a restraint and honesty that the film around it does not deserve.
At a Glance
Director: Marc Webb
Runtime: 142 minutes
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan, Paul Giamatti, Sally Field
Release: 2014
Critics Rating: ★★ (2/5 stars, a chaotic and frustrating misfire that wastes its best assets)
Audience Rating: ★★½ (2.5/5 stars, one great scene in a film that earns none of it)
Plot
Peter Parker is struggling to balance his relationship with Gwen Stacy with his responsibilities as Spider-Man, haunted by a promise he made to her dying father to keep her out of danger. When Max Dillon, a socially isolated Oscorp employee, is transformed into the electrically powered Electro after an accident, he becomes Spider-Man's most powerful adversary. At the same time, Harry Osborn returns to New York following his father's death and discovers that he is dying of the same genetic disease, leading him to seek a cure using Spider-Man's blood. The plot is the film's most fundamental problem. Three villain storylines, a romance, a mystery about Peter's parents, and the setup for a Sinister Six film are all competing for attention in a 142-minute runtime, and none of them receives the development it requires. The parents' mystery, which the first film established as a central concern, is resolved here with a speed and convenience that makes it read as an afterthought. The Sinister Six setup is so nakedly a franchise obligation that it barely pretends to be a story element.
Characters
Garfield and Stone remain the film's greatest assets, and their scenes together have a wit and complexity that the more spectacular elements cannot approach. It is a testament to both performers that their relationship holds together even when everything around it is falling apart. Jamie Foxx's Electro is the film's most glaring miscalculation, a character whose origin is so broadly drawn that he cannot function as a dramatic presence. Dane DeHaan's Harry Osborn is more interesting, bringing a brittle intensity to the character that makes his desperation credible, but the film does not give him enough room to develop before his transformation into the Green Goblin, which arrives so abruptly that it carries no impact. Paul Giamatti appears briefly as the Rhino in a prologue and epilogue that are entirely disconnected from the film's central concerns, a cameo that exists solely to set up a sequel that was never made.
Meaning / Themes
The film's most interesting concern is the impossibility of keeping the people you love safe when your life is defined by danger, and this theme is handled with care in the scenes between Peter and Gwen. The Gwen Stacy sequence is the film's most honest moment, a consequence the story has been building toward and that the film does not flinch from. It is a brave narrative choice in a genre that rarely allows its heroes to fail in ways that cannot be undone, and it gives the film a weight its more conventional elements do not earn.
Direction
Webb is clearly most comfortable in the scenes between Peter and Gwen, and these sequences have a warmth and specificity that the more spectacular elements fail to match. The Electro sequences, by contrast, are visually garish and dramatically hollow, with a Times Square confrontation that prioritises spectacle over coherence. Hans Zimmer and the Magnificent Six's score is one of the most distinctive in the genre, with Electro's dubstep-inflected theme a genuinely unusual creative choice that underscores the character's alienation even when the script does not. The film oscillates between these registers without finding a way to make them coexist, and the result is something that feels like two or three different productions assembled into a single release.
Webb's direction is strongest in the quieter scenes and most uncertain in the action sequences, which are visually busy but spatially scrambled. The Electro sequences in particular suffer from a visual style that prioritises scale over clarity, and the Times Square confrontation is one of the most muddled set-pieces in the franchise's history. The film's climax, however, is handled with a restraint and precision that is at odds with everything preceding it, and that contrast only sharpens the sense of what the film could have been throughout.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 received poor reviews on its release and underperformed commercially relative to its predecessor. Critics were near-unanimous in identifying the bloated plot, the weak villain, and the tonal inconsistency as the film's primary failures, while acknowledging Garfield and Stone's performances and the Gwen Stacy sequence as real achievements. The film's commercial disappointment led Sony to abandon the planned Sinister Six spin-off and the broader Amazing Spider-Man universe, and the subsequent deal with Marvel Studios to incorporate Spider-Man into the MCU is widely regarded as a direct consequence of this film's failure. It stands as one of the genre's most instructive cautionary tales about franchise ambition outpacing storytelling craft.
Final Verdict: A film that promised more than it delivered, built around one genuinely powerful scene it did not earn. Garfield and Stone are exceptional, the Gwen Stacy sequence is one of the most affecting moments in superhero cinema, and DeHaan brings real intensity to an underwritten role. But Electro is a deeply unconvincing villain, the plot is crammed with setup for sequels that were never made, and the tonal lurching prevents the film from cohering into something worthy of its central performances. The best scene in the weakest film of the Garfield era.