The Amazing Spiderman 2 is 2 hours and 21 minutes, and a whole lot of this is simply not very good.  This version of this franchise has a lot of difficulties long before this came out this week.  We may be "Spidermanned" to death with the old series.  There's just simply not more to say and do. I think the goal here is to wow you with so much IMAX, 3D, and high flying Spiderman heroics that you will look past the flaws.  You more than likely won't.   Die hard fans of course loved this movie even before they saw one frame.  Let's see if we were watching the same movie.

This has been sanitized so much it has been brought down to about a 10 year old level.  And that's not a bad thing if the deeper parts of the story would match. But they don't.  To it's credit, there is no profanity, and nothing really objectionable to get upset the family viewing applecart.  But this movie tries to make a ton of social commentary that looks silly in the end and shoots over a ten years old's head. 

Spiderman is facing a villain called Electro (Jamie Foxx)  He is basically a big bunch of electricity that is terrorizing New York City.  He was an electrical engineer that designed the East Coast Power Grid. But after a terrible industrial accident he becomes this horrible "electrical terrorist" of sorts.  The accident took place in a defense contractors lab.  Or course, they are horrible people that can't be trusted. They have sold out tons of secrets to foreign countries for money.  They are also amazingly corrupt, and only out for themselves the world be damned.

Electro starts to rob the East Coast of it's electricity, and it's up to Spiderman to save us. Guess what?  He does!   But in the midst of battling Electro, Spiderman's arch nemesis, The Green Goblin is born, and now we have to deal with him in the next ill-advised episode of this franchise.  This movie also brings to light just how vulnerable we may be to power robbing terrorism, and there may be a certain truth to that. But it shows no real ramifications of it. Opportunity missed.

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This is also not casted very well.  I am a big Emma Stone fan, but her in this franchise as Spidey's love interest is simply silly. Stone is a beautiful, grown up real woman.  I am having a tough time with her playing someone just graduating high school.  She looks 25...and IS!  Plus, she is so above this, and that just glares at you.  "Why are you in this movie?  You should be in grown up roles now, you are a grown woman."  But that money is just too much.  The rest of the cast is fair, and that's being kind.

This is a movie that looks like it's trying so hard to be different from the other movies, that is ends up looking silly.  Lot's of flying around, lots of spinning webs, lots of things moving about a thousand miles per hour.   Also, there is some fun humor, and some of the feeling from the old TV cartoon, and comic book that actually is well done.  But in the end, this franchise has worn out its welcome, and the next one more than likely will be agonizing as there is really no place else to go with it.

The Amazing Spiderman 2.   In the end, enough is enough. Time to let this go.

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