Finally saw it..
The Good:
- Visually the movie is probably the best Spider-Man has looked on screen. I loved the way they handled all of the effects, fights, swinging, etc. It just looked incredible.
- Gwen and Peter were awesome whenever they were on screen. It goes without saying, but Garfield and Stone's chemistry allowed for a really memorable romantic pairing for a superhero movie.
- Overall the acting was a strong point, and despite a few cheesy lines here and there, the dialogue was solid.
- I loved Spider-man's sense of humor in the movie. Maybe a couple less quips here and there, but it brought a fun element to the action.
- Jamie Foxx was solid.. very strong as Max.. less and less interesting as Electro. I see what they tried to do, no one noticed him, Spider-Man "betrays him", he wants revenge, but it just didn't mean much.
- Dane Dehaan was good as well.
- Felicity Jones is beautiful
The "Bad":
- It dragged. I appreciate everything they tried to do, but when you're trying to keep the audience interested in all these separate stories, you're going to have some of them fall flat. Peter's parents, Peter and Gwen, Electro/Max, Harry returning and dying, Electro and Harry teaming up, and so on. Again, I get why they wanted to focus on everything.. Peter's parents abandoned him, so he's afraid of losing Gwen, which means they can't be together.. and he promised her father and back and forth and on and on.. but still
- I didn't care about Electro once he became Electro. Foxx was fine.. but between the editing and pacing or due to the focus on the parents of Peter/Gwen or all the other stories.. I didn't care. It seemed like they wanted to be able to transition from one story to another and have the audience maintain interest, but they didn't keep the momentum building. It would have been really hard to pull off when you're switching focus as often.
- Not enough Goblin.. which is likely because of time.. you can't include an epic battle with Goblin right after Electro's final fight
AND have Gwen's death without the movie going on even longer.. which means we needed to edit some of that other stuff down.
- I appreciated a couple nods to the future films, but I'd rather they focus on THIS story rather than set up the Sinister Six and new Spider-Man sequels. And that goes back to the overall editing and structure issue. Spend more time with Electro, tighten up and maybe condense one or two Peter/Gwen scenes, cut some of the parents, give us a little more Goblin, etc. And I never cared too much about "too many villains" because Rhino wasn't really a villain.. he was so minor he didn't count. Delete that entire air traffic control thing
Overall:
I liked it. I'm a fan of Webb's overall style and vision for Spider-Man and the franchise. He has a real knack for the romance angle so I'm sure adding in Mary Jane will be one of the best parts of the next movie. The visuals are top-notch. The screenplay, structure, and editing, needed another pass or two. Too much going on when you could have condensed, edited, tightened, and made the more important stories more interesting. It felt like there were too many cooks in the kitchen and the screenplay was jumbled.
When I saw the first one, I immediately thought "Ok, they got the origin out of the way, now they can move on and do
their Spider-Man". And I think they did that, but it should have been better. They still have all the elements.. a strong Peter/Spiderman, beautiful visuals, tons of compelling story to potentially tell, but I just felt like it should have been GREAT.. when it was merely good. I really liked it.. and I sound like I disliked it more than I probably did. I feel like if we could combine elements of Raimi's Spiderman 2 and this, we'd have the perfect Spider-Man movie.
