Tuesday, May 27, 2014

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Just Made Me Feel Old


I fear I'm no longer the target audience for the Amazing Spider-Man franchise. The nicest thing I can say about the latest film is that it didn't put me to sleep. While the action sequences were okay, the majority of the movie consisted of the on again, off again relationship between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy. This continues the teen angst trend started in the first movie. With Marc Webb, directing, I guess that should be no surprise considering his previous film, 500 Days of Summer, told the story of a young man reminiscing about a failed relationship. While that movie was well received, I simply have no interest in seeing teenagers or young adults dealing with relationship woes.

And that's exactly what Amazing Spider-Man 2 focused on. I understand that Peter Parker is supposed to have problems. He's juggling a girlfriend with fighting crime. Being a broke college student doesn't help and having a low paying photography job helps even less. But a lot of those elements are ignored for unneeded conspiracy theories of Peter's father's involvement at OsCorp, an especially hammy performance by Jamie Foxx as Electro, and the relationship drama I mentioned before.

When I see a superhero movie, I want to see the extraordinary. I want to see them do super things. I'm not above seeing just how much they're like normal people with normal problems, but when it's presented the way it was in ASM2, I felt like I got tricked into seeing a Twilight movie. With Webb signed on for the third installment due in 2016, you young people might enjoy it, but I'll probably be the grumpy old man talking about the gold ole days of Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi.

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