Amazing Spider-Man 2 (3½ Stars)

I'd better write this review fast. After leaving the cinema today I gave it four and a quarter stars in my head. When I sat down to think about it I dropped it to a round four. And as I began to write I struck off another half point.

So what's good about the film? The web-swinging scenes are breath-taking, even better than in Sam Raimi's films. Spider-Man makes death defying leaps before firing his web to swing back up. The action scenes with Electro are good, although it's not the real Electro that we know from the comics. And that's where the problems start. The film includes three of Spider-Man's old villains from the 1960's, and none of them look vaguely like their comic book equivalents. Why doesn't Electro wear his shocking green and yellow spandex? (Sorry, I couldn't resist that pun). Why does the Rhino look like a robot? And why does the Green Goblin's hair stand up on end? Click on the pictures below to see the contrast between the real villains and the cinematic fakes.

The structure of the film is bad. I have serious doubts that Marc Webb knows what he is doing. Everything was fine when the film started and as long as Spider-Man was battling Electro. But the Green Goblin sequence was like a last minute addition, just slapped on for the sake of getting Gwen Stacy killed. That's not a spoiler to comic book fans, because we all know that Gwen Stacy was killed by the Green Goblin, leading Spider-Man to kill the Green Goblin in revenge. But apart from that, it was the wrong Goblin. It was the first Green Goblin, Norman Osborn, not his son Harry, who killed Gwen Stacy.

And then the Rhino is tagged on at the end for no reason at all. Maybe it was intended as an introduction to the Sinister Six, but this could have been done without the idiotic fight scene. The death of Gwen Stacy was highly emotional, even in the way that the film mis-portrayed it, so it could have been left to finish there. Please, can someone fire Marc Webb before he makes things any worse? Better still, bring back Sam Raimi. He's a director with skill and vision.