The Amazing Spider-Man: Five Things I Loved (And Five Things I Hated)

On balance, I thought The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was one of Sony’s better efforts.As someone who was never particularly a fan of Sam Raimi’s trilogy (even before it spiraled completely into Cloud Cuckooland with Spider-Man 3), The Amazing Spider-Man was at the time the best Spidey flick I’d ever seen, and the second movie held up for me.It’s drawn a lot of criticism, though, and it’s not hard to see why. Aside from the preconceived notions that people had going in that the movie was going to be an overcrowded mess (more on that later), the reality is, there were flaws in the film. And of course we live in a world where if it isn’t done by Marvel Studios, a superhero movie is inherently subject to a degree of scrutiny to which few commercial films are subjected.So what did I like about the movie — and where were its flaws? When I saw the film, I started to take notes on the thing, but about halfway through was swept up in the movie and they stopped being coherent enough to write a review. Luckily, another writer got one in and I was able to take some time and really digest what I’d seen. Here’s what I came up with…