It seems that Spider Man is doomed to receive mediocre to abysmal implementations on the big screen. Well, at least in my opinion. The Amazing Spider Man 2 currently have a rating of 7.1 which quite surprises me. This was not the worst Spider Man movie. The 2nd instalment, Spider-Man 2, in the first series with Tobey Maquire still holds that title firmly.
There are some nice special effect fireworks going on and there are some funny parts when Peter Parker puts on the mask and goes to action but apart from that I found the movie uninspired, with a mediocre plot and sometimes downright boring. The plot is perhaps suitable for a comics magazine with its standard set of unlikely events, backstabbing big-corporate employees and disgruntled scientists becoming super villains but on the big-screen one would expect a wee bit more effort going into the plot.
The main villain, Electro, was … well not really giving much of an impression. He never lifted above the pretty silly scientist letting everyone walk all over him and doing really, really stupid things like trying to put two high voltage cables together without turning off the power. Sure he tried to give a menacing appearance towards the end but to me he never really managed to elevate himself to a real super-villain. I almost got the impression that the director actually realized that Electra was not good enough and so decided to come up with some convoluted scheme to throw in The Green Goblin at the end. None of these villains are really bad, just mediocre.
Then of course there is the obligatory Peter Parker wallowing in self-pity that every director seems to just have to put in these movies. It is not funny and downright boring. And for the ending cliffhanger they throw in the Rhino…as some jerk in a monster mechanical suit :-( . What the f…? The Rhino is supposed to have a polymer bonded to his skin and augmented strength and speed. Not be running around in some silly mechanical Rhino toy!
The entertainment factor of this movie comes almost entirely from the SFX action and a few select scenes. Otherwise the movie was fairly (yawn) mediocre as far as I am concerned. Having said that, being the sci-fi and super-hero fan that I am, I will probably buy the next instalment anyway if one comes out.