Movie Review: Amazing Spider-man 2 (2014)

Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) directed by Marc Webb

Peter Parker still has the same old problems. Money is tight, his girlfriend Gwen Stacy is in danger if he dates her so he doesn't want to date her (plus he promised her dad he wouldn't), his pal Harry Osborn is dying of some weird family disease, and Spider-Man isn't popular with the press or the cops. On the plus side, he is popular with the run-of-the-mill New Yorkers, Harry thinks Spider-Man's blood can cure him, and Peter can't resist dating Gwen.

Spider-Man saves run-of-the-miller Max Dillon, an electrical engineer at Oscorp (Harry's family company), who becomes an obsessed fan and later on the electricity-wielding villain Electro, so that doesn't work out for Peter. Spider-Man refuses to share his blood with Harry, who tries another path and later on becomes the pumpkin-bomb-weilding villain Green Goblin, so that doesn't work out either. Anybody want to take a bet on how things will work out with Gwen?

The storyline with Gwen is the most interesting, well-written, and well-acted of the plot threads. The other stories have interesting elements but aren't well-developed enough to be satisfying. Harry Osborn's story could easily have been its own film. The Green Goblin shows up at the end to make the story turn out a certain way though that could have been easily accomplished just with Electro. Then another villain, Rhino, shows up for the last minute of the film, again only to make the story move one final step forward. The various stories don't hold together well, leaving me disappointed in the film as a whole.