'The Amazing Spider Man 2'

The Tragic Arc In Spiderman

I've been delayed in watching this thing because people have been telling me how awful this film is, and how it fails to reach the heights of the original Spiderman films directed by Sam Raimi and tarring Tobey Maguire. While I'm hardly one to dispute the rhapsodic heights reached by the original three Spiderman films, I'm reluctant to dump on the Andrew Garfield Spiderman. On some level, each film should be taken on their own merits and not relationship to how it fits into an imaginary canon of comic book movies.

Still, all I had heard was that it was underwhelming and that it didn't deliver on the big thematic promise of facing off against Electro, The Green Goblin and The Rhino. Some have said that the film just doesn't do the story line derived from the comic justice.
If it's all the same, I can report that it's a fine enough film with lots of thought-provoking moments.

Here's the usual spoiler alert.

What's Good About It

Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are a real life item. It shows up in this film as an amazing chemistry. The intimate and the subtle shifts in perception of each other gets a trough working out on screen and they really nail those scenes. Whereas in the original trilogy, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and ames Franco had a great dynamic going, it was always played on an extrinsic romantic conflict of a three way. It hung on Mary Jane's almost whimsical inability to commit to Peter, while both Peter and Harry desired MJ. In the Garfield Spiderman movies, it is not MJ but Gwen Stacey who gets the romantic attention, and we see a very convoluted attraction and pas de deux between Garfield's Peter and Emma Stone, Gwen, where the third complicating figure is Spiderman himself as separate to Peter Parker.

Andrew Garfield's Spiderman is as different to Tobey Maguire's Spiderman as any James Bond is different from Sean Connery. Just as with Bond where Connery seethe standard against all the following actors, Garfield's performance is being measured against Maguire's. It has to be said, that Garfield's Spiderman is being given more interesting personal areas to negotiate, which at once stretches our understanding of the character.

In turn, these films are about Peter and Gwen, without a hint of Mary Jane. What's truly great is that Peter and Gwen have a much better dynamic than Peter and Mary Jane from the original trilogy, most likely owing to Garfield and Stone's real life relationship. These actors probably won't stay together forever,but they will always have this film as a record of this chemistry.

What's Bad About It

There are so many special effects shots and they're all a mixed bag in quality. It's hard to imagine what a swinging Spiderman is supposed to look like but some of the shots are not as photo real as others - they look like actions from a computer game, just enough to rob you of the wilful suspension of disbelief.

Some of the action is spectacular but gratuitous. I don't know that Electro need be so strange before he becomes Electro; he comes across as OCD and more than a little Asperger's. The respective arcs of the villains in this film are so underdeveloped it is hard to get involved with their project. All of them seem monsters of science than villainous, which takes away from the drama more than it adds to it. Villains are on the whole better if they have a choice to exercise in becoming the villain. Being born that way or made that way is actually not that interesting.

What's Interesting About It

All of the Spiderman films are critiques of New York and its denizens. Superman toils in Metropolis,  Batman works in Gotham, but Spiderman is a New Yorker from Queens no less. The particular-ness of that makes the Spiderman films much more grounded in a location than the abstracted sense of location we get from Superman and Batman movies. It also means Spiderman is enmeshed in the misc en scene of New York, and New Yorkers passing by are often part of the story in some subtle way.

Missing from the mayhem are J.Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle, with the whole newspaper business storyline. This is an interesting departure as it opens up the scope of the story in other ways.

Gwen Stacey & Mary Jane

One gets the suspicion the reason why this film was not received well, has to do with Gwen Stacey and how she dies. There is no doubt about it, it's a major downer. The original comic book death of Gwen Stacey was a monumental turning point in the history of comic books so it is understandable that on screen, it has the power to shock the audience. It's just not done to kill the love interest like we see in this film. The awkwardness of a superhero movie where he fails to save the girl is the same awkwardness at the end of the Daniel Craig 'Casino Royale' where Vesper Lind dies, or the great 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' where Tracy di Vicenzo is shot to death at the end. It's startling and refreshing to see in a comic book movie.

The current storyline of The Amazing Spiderman thus seems willing to tread where angels fear to tread, to tell more daring stories.

The other notable thing about the choice to go with the Gwen Stacey story line is that Gwen is a scientist with aspirations to go to Oxford and study higher. This contrasts with the  original three movies where MJ wants to be an actress and even then isn't terribly good that, so she settles into being a trophy girlfriend for either Spiderman or the immensely rich and handsome Harry Osborne. You sense the in roads and strides feminism has made in bringing the comic book universe up to date, and this is a good development. The death is made even more tragic because it will probably lead back to the MJ story in the next instalment.

The Amazing Spiderman Is A Bildungsroman

Peter Parker finds himself in a particular moment of youth, where his first true love is in many ways his equal and mirror. Gwen Stacey is not the object of his teenage puppy love. She is a woman who is confronting him with difficult life choices. The only reason the life choices become redundant is because Gwen dies.

It's actually hard to see how this Spiderman story moves forward into introducing Mary Jane Watson. By the end of the film, Peter comes to understand that being Spiderman is not some vocation or some random calling. It is a social necessity, and that he has obligations to these dead characters - uncle Ben and Gwen- the compels him to be out there protecting the people from the likes of The Rhino.

To go back to the kind of Mary Jane story from the Tobey Maguire Spiderman movies would in fact be a retreat of sorts from the hard won emotional maturity established in this film.

New York City Skyline As Character

Spiderman took a very long time to bring to screen. The saga of who had rights and how so many people were attached at one point or another is well documented lore. Then came 9/11 which forced the original film to re-imagine its climactic battle. Integral to the imagery of Spiderman is the character swinging on his web, swinging from building to building. Because of this element Spiderman movies have demanded a great degree of architectural interest - from the Osborne residence in the first series through to various bridges that hang between Manhattan and Queens featuring in the background.

Spiderman's relationship to New York is more visceral and immediate than say Batman's relationship to Gotham. Spiderman in all the film incarnations is a denizen of the city who is an active participant in the socio-political discourse of the city. Batman is connected to the socio-political discourse of Gotham through Wayne Industries and therefore sits with the corporate elite when not donning his suit. Peter Parker is quintessentially *of* New York in such a way that the citizens are willing to step up for him and with him. There is a greater democratic impulse in Spiderman movies than there is in most comic book movies.