Ah, today’s CGI’s effects.
To see Spidey soaring through the New
York skyline with his time-honed web-slinging skills
is indeed a spectacle to behold. I
missed some of the practical effects from the first Amazing Spider-Man, but the
CGI animation in this film is so good that only once in a while do you
remember that his swinging is just a really well done cartoon. They haven’t mastered the running figure yet—one
scene where he was running on a ledge didn’t look quite right.
Hans Zimmer composed a new and catchy fanfare for Spider-Man
that sticks in your head after you’ve heard it a hundred times by trumpet,
strings and piano in different tempos and various scenes. Having said that I kinda wish Zimmer would
tone down some of the percussiveness in his recent scores which, after a while,
grate on the brain and can overcome some of the movie. I think Hans needs to go back a little bit in
time to some of his more subdued, blend-into-the-scene audio artwork--like on the
Lion King. I feel like his music is
yelling at me lately.
Marc Webb is a good director and knows emotion well and directs
Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone in their great roles as Peter and Gwen. Sally Field is a great Aunt May. The script is good, Spidey’s quips and
classic humor are well written. Gwen
Stacey’s speech is inspiring. The story
is a good one as well, although I think they could have just stuck to a Goblin story-line
with Harry and not jam packed it as much as they did. Having said that, Electro is cool and his
story is a good lesson on how it is dangerous to ignore invisible people and
how it can result in deep anger that, when is has simmered long enough, will
explode. They are quite obviously
setting up the third installment and introduced Gobby as the head of the sinister
six. There is a great David and Goliath
scene that sticks in your heart. I felt
the tension in my gut as the suspense of the climactic battle scene unfolded, echoing the tragic comic, The Amazing Spider-Man
#121. It was all very well done. Stan Lee
was brilliant when he invented such a fallible, non-perfect, not-able-to-fix-it-all
human hero.
All in all I really enjoyed Spidey 2. I’d give it 7.5 outta 10.
