Picking up where 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man, this story sees Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacey (Emma Stone) facing off against Electro (Jamie Foxx) as Peter also tries to get behind the mysterious Oscorp and how it might link to his late father Richard (Campbell Scott.)
I was greatly looking forward to this sequel since I saw the big 3 poster banner in my cinema earlier this year and also, I really enjoyed the first Amazing Spider-Man film despite its story problems.
But alas my time to see it had to wait a couple of weeks but the time had finally come where I held my ticket in my hand and I got to take my seat and see the movie, could it swing a web of satisfaction or simply fall of a large building to its death?
Sadly, it is much more a case of the latter as this film is a very very very sad disappointment, nowhere near as sad as the bitter disappointment that was Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit but still a rather sad one afterwards.
But before I delve into the key reasons why I want to talk about what I did like about this film and that is the duo of Garfield and Stone primarily, both of them have a wonderful chemistry and their scenes together give you so much in terms of on screen value and it really makes you care about them when they get into jeopardy.
However almost everything around them in terms of the storyline and script is a near complete mess, the film was primarily written by Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman the two primary writers behind the first two live action Transformers films and the JJ Abrams Star Trek series and they pretty much treat everything in the film as cannon fodder simply waiting to be blown or smashed to kingdom come in an action sequence which by the way are poorly made as its the close up quick cutting that goes by so quickly that you don't know who is who or what is happening.
The script also has two other major sins going against it:
- The first of these is not actually taking advantage of the chemistry between Garfield and Stone as every 2nd scene for the most part is wanting them to split up when it should've been the beating heart behind this story instead like most things Kurtzman and Orci write it's just there to be thrown away as an inconvenience without a 2nd thought, they showed it in their work on Star Trek and Transformers and they show it yet again here.
- But probably the biggest sin of all and its one I come to time and time again with these Superhero films and it is the Villains, all three of them here are just awful, Foxx as Electro comes across as a blend of Mr. Freeze from Batman and Robin and the Gatekeeper from Nightmare: The Game Hosted by a Video and has no real impact on the story, Dane DeHaan a brilliant young actor is criminally wasted and Paul Giamatti is pretty much blink and you'll miss him.
And that's it, this film gives us 3 Villains and doesn't even bother to make any of them central to the story but to yet again be thrown away as an inconvenience if it's required.
What this film should have been is the mystery of Oscorp with Peter digging into their past and how it linked to his father's work and one villain becoming his big bad at Oscorp's behest to get him out of the way before their secrets are released and THEN you could with that make the relationship with Gwen matter and become some sort of driving motivation for him in the film but no that would be too easy to do as we have a franchise to build first and foremost.
Well sorry guys but when compared with Joss Whedon's work at Marvel and Bryan Singer's work with the X-Men series this is just not fucking good enough and Spidey as a character who has a good rogues gallery to work with deserves as such and not the heartless, cynical and disposable treatment he's been given here.
With all of that out of the way, I cannot in any good conscience recommend Rise of Electro as much as I would love to but I just cannot, Garfield and Stone are wonderful as a screen pair but this is not a script they deserved and neither did their fans, 1 out of 5.
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