The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Five Things We Want to See

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is an odd animal; it's coming fairly soon, and fans have been inundated [...]

By Russ Burlingame - January 11, 2014 02:55 pm EST

is an odd animal; it's coming fairly soon, and fans have been inundated with promotion for the film--but it's been a weird kind of promotion, mostly via the Daily Bugle viral site, that is easy enough to ignore because they're teasing SO MUCH that it would nearly impossible for all of it to make its way into the film. They're world-building, which makes since given the fact that they've decided to take on a pair of spinoff films and possibly more down the line. Sony is hoping that the Spider-Man universe can expand and give them a number of guaranteed tentpoles like Marvel's or DC's cinematic universes do, rather than just the one, which is relatively limited by the time available to the cast. All that said, what do we want to see?

Focus on Characters. The first Amazing Spider-Man film worked for me better than the Raimi films did because I found Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker to be likable and believable in a way that Tobey Maguire's never was. Likewise, Uncle Ben and Aunt May may have been less traditional and more Ultimate-ized than the Raimi versions, but they seemed like more real, fleshed-out people that you care about for reasons other than "Peter does, so what the heck." And of course, Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy versus Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson is a no-brainer. Stone is gorgeous, talented and compelling in the role, which felt written just for her without straying too far from Gwen's comic book roots. The concern I have? There seems to be an awful lot of focus on CG action in the trailers and not a ton of focus on, you know, plot. Please, please, please don't take the best part of waht you did in the first one and toss it out the window just because Spidey isnt' doing Avengers-style money at the box office!

About that CG Action... The trailers haven't looked as sharp and believable as, say, the Marvel Studios films. The fact that this movie relies so heavily on Electro, whose powers are almost exclusively CG, and The Rhino, whose suit is non-practical, means the audience is counting on the CG to sell the action sequences. So far, the trailers have looked a bit...cartoony. That feels like it would be a problem made worse, not better, by 3D. At a time when The Avengers, Man of Steel and The Dark Knight Trilogy all drew acclaim for handling their action sequences with as many practical shots as they could, Spidey seems to be headed the other way. It's frustrating, because Spider-Man doesn't actually fly, for instance, so there's actually a bit more flexibility in making your effects less than perfect, as long as they're practical. Introducing digital, though, means you've got to nail it or the fact that he's just a guy with a green screen behind him is going to make things a little awkward.

Build the World. They're doing it--so embrace it. The fact that the Daily Bugle has introduced a dozen or so names familiar to Spider-fans, none of whom have been cast yet to the best of our knowledge, suggests that all or most of them will be a mention at best. But MENTION them. As a teenager, the only thing I remember about seeing Batman Forever in theaters, besides the fact that I wanted my money back, was Val Kilmer's mention of Metropolis. I geeked out. Note: Originally, I made this George Clooney in Batman & Robin, but Lan Pitts corrected me. Both movies are truly awful. They do the same thing on Arrow, and to a lesser extent (usually far more buried) in the Marvel Studios movies. So if you're trying to construct a universe, there's no good reason NOT to make sure to name-drop Jean DeWolff or The Shocker.

The Man In The Hat I want to know who this dude is. Don't put it off until the third movie. You teased this guy at the end of The Amazing Spider-Man and now he'll be appearing, unobscured, on camera in at least one scene. Please don't try and make his identity a mystery even afer we've seen him and started to get some insight as to his motivations.

The Night Gwen Stacy Died I love Emma Stone. I love her Gwen Stacy, as mentioned above. I don't particularly want to lose the character. But if we are--and Stone herself has hinted that we are, saying in at least one interview that it's where the character has to go, is destined to go--I'd rather see it sooner than later, to give Peter time to process and cope with the loss. I want to lose her with enough time that a prospective third movie could give Garfield (who says Amazing Spider-Man 4 is "nothing to do with" him) a chance to mourn that loss, deal with that loss and figure out how to move forward. I probably wouldn't even feel passionate about it, except that the costume, the imagery they've used...there are a fair number of teases already out there that she's going to die, and I've started to build up in my head what that means.

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