Despite the reboot of the franchise, Spider-Man continued to be a hugely popular character, and The Amazing Spider-Man did very well in 2012, continuing the web-slinger’s streak of being a hit almost no matter what. Long the face of Marvel, Spidey’s popularity continued unabated, and Marc Webb was brought back to direct a sequel, with genre veterans Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci brought in as co-writers and co-executive producers to help build a new Spider-verse intended to stretch out over many movies—and which instead we wouldn’t really see after this. Kurtzman & Orci had already been involved in the financially successful reboots of Transformers, Star Trek, and Mission: Impossible, so one can understand the desire to add their Midas touch to Spidey.
Having established Norman Osborn’s existence as the unseen, dying head of OsCorp, this movie brings in both Norman (played by Chris Cooper), who dies during the course of the movie, and his son Harry (Dane DeHaan), who was apparently friends with Peter Parker when they were younger (a fact that amazingly never came up in the previous movie, two-thirds of which took place at OsCorp). We get several members of Spider-Man’s extensive rogues’ gallery in this sequel besides the Osborn family: Max Dillon, a.k.a. Electro (Jamie Foxx), and at the very end, the Rhino (Paul Giamatti), plus Michael Massee returns as the mysterious Gentleman.
Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone return as Peter and Gwen, respectively, with Denis Leary appearing as a guilt-induced hallucination of Captain Stacy because Peter keeps vacillating on his promise to stay away from Gwen. Sally Field is back as May Parker, and Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz reprise their roles as Richard and Mary Parker in flashback and video form. Colm Feore, fresh off his turn as Laufey the Frost Giant in Thor, plays Donald Menken, replacing Irrfan Khan in the role of sleazy OsCorp executive. Marton Csokas plays Dr. Ashley Kafka, a sympathetic female psychiatrist in the comics, gender- and alignment-flipped in the movie to a male mad-scientist-type, complete with comedy German accent.
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Zero Sum Game
The intent was for this to start a “Spider-Man Cinematic Universe.” With Marvel Studios having proven to be a huge hit after Avengers made, basically, all the money, Sony thought they could take Spider-Man’s very rich history and mine it for a cinematic universe of their own. The end of this movie sets up the Sinister Six, starting with the creation of the Rhino, and movies starring Venom and the Sinister Six were green-lit along with two more Amazing Spider-Man movies. One of the recurring characters was to be Gustav Fiers, a.k.a. The Gentleman, a character who actually originated in tie-in fiction, not comics. The Gentleman was created by Adam-Troy Castro for his “Sinister Six” novel trilogy (The Gathering of the Sinister Six, The Revenge of the Sinister Six, and The Secret of the Sinister Six), and his backstory tied into that of Richard and Mary Parker. (Full disclosure: your humble rewatcher was the Editorial Director of the series of Marvel novels and anthologies, which ran from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, that included the Sinister Six trilogy, and worked with Adam on developing the storyline.)
However, the lukewarm reception to this film, a clamoring for Spider-Man to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe rather than separate, the infamous Sony hack of 2014, and the fact that this film had the lowest box office of any of the five extant Spider-films of the 21st century led to Sony and Disney coming to an arrangement where Spider-Man would be part of the MCU, but only in movies featuring at least one already-established MCU character. Hence his appearance in a Captain America movie and two Avengers movies, as well as Iron Man appearing in Homecoming and Nick Fury appearing in the forthcoming Far from Home.
Sony is continuing Spider-adjacent projects, with Venom having just been released starring Tom Hardy, and with plans for films featuring Silver Sable, Black Cat, and Morbius.
“I love you, don’t hate me!”
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Written by Alex Kurtzman & Robert Orci and Jeff Pinkner and James Vanderbilt
Directed by Marc Webb
Produced by Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach
Original release date: May 2, 2014
We start again with Richard and Mary Parker leaving their son Peter with May and Ben Parker, but this time it’s from Richard and Mary’s POV. Richard records a final video explaining his actions, and then he and Mary board a private plane that will take them to safety. Except OsCorp has an assassin embedded as the copilot. The assassin kills the pilot and is about to jump out of the plane to safety with a parachute, and also with the laptop containing their research, which Richard was about to upload to a satellite. However, both Mary and Richard manage to fight off the assassin, taking away his parachute and throwing him from the plane, and also getting the data uploaded. But they both die in the crash (Mary’s also been shot by the assassin).
In the present, Spider-Man stops a hijacking of an OsCorp truck containing plutonium, led by a Russian mobster named Aleksei Sytsevich. Spider-Man stops him, and barely makes it to his high school graduation in time to get his diploma. He completely misses Gwen Stacy’s valedictorian speech. (During the rescue, he saves the life of a neurotic OsCorp electrical engineer named Max Dillon.) As he arrives at graduation and takes his diploma, an attendee who looks just like Stan Lee says, “I know that guy!”
Peter has been guilty about continuing his relationship with Gwen after Captain Stacy asked him to end it, and he shares this with Gwen while standing outside the restaurant where her family is having dim sum. Fed up with his indecision, she breaks up with him.
Harry Osborn returns to New York to visit his dying father. It’s not a pleasant reunion—Harry mentions Norman sending him a bottle of Scotch for his sixteenth birthday with a note saying, “Best regards, Norman Osborn”—but Norman reveals that Harry has the same genetic disease that’s killing Norman. He’s hoping his son can find a cure.
Norman dies, and Harry is made president of the company—which doesn’t sit well with the vice president, Donald Menken. Because of the embarrassment of Curt Connors’s rampage through New York as the Lizard, all the work with cross-species genetics, including all the animal test subjects, have been destroyed.
It turns out that Peter and Harry were best friends as little kids before Harry was sent off to boarding school. Peter goes to see him, remembering that little Harry was there for him when his parents were killed. They bond and catch up a bit.
Dillon goes into work on his birthday, which nobody acknowledges. Spider-Man saving his life has prompted him to formulate an entire fantasy life where Spidey is his best friend. Dillon has designed a power grid that OsCorp has sold to the city of New York to provide power. Maintenance needs to be done on it, and Dillon is forced to stay after closing to do the work—but the person responsible for shutting off the power so he can work there is also gone for the day, so Dillon fixes it while it’s active—only to be electrocuted and fall into a vat filled with electric eels (the existence of which is never explained by the script). Dillon’s electrocuted body is brought to a morgue beneath OsCorp and Menken orders a cover up.
However, Dillon isn’t dead. He comes back to life and is now able to control electricity. He sucks power out of anywhere he can get it, finding himself eventually in Times Square. Spider-Man confronts him, and he even remembers saving his life (though he doesn’t remember his name). Between forgetting his name, and Spider-Man’s insistence on stopping him from endangering innocent lives (he’s already hurt many people and almost killed a few), Dillon’s love for Spider-Man becomes hate. Spidey manages to stop him by dousing him with a fire hose, thought not before Dillon is able to fry his web shooters. Dillon is sent to the Ravencroft Institute—publicly, a psychiatric hospital, in reality an OsCorp front. Dr. Ashley Kafka runs experiments on Dillon while he’s there.
Harry discovers that the research Richard Parker was doing with spiders might have led to a cure for what is killing him. He asks Peter—who has been selling pictures of Spider-Man to the Daily Bugle—to ask Spider-Man for a blood sample. Peter returns as Spider-Man to refuse, saying it’s too dangerous. Harry is livid.
Peter digs into his father’s research and tries to figure out what he was doing with spiders, especially given how he got his powers. May admits that after Richard and Mary died, she and Ben were visited by government agents who said that Peter’s parents were traitors.
Eventually, Peter figures out that his parents kept a secret lab in an abandoned subway station that was used by President Franklin Roosevelt to get him in and out of New York in such a way as to hide his polio from the general public. (In the real world, this is Track 61, which still gets occasional use as a presidential bolthole today, though it is under the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, not on the D line.) Peter sees a recording his father made the day Peter found Richard’s office trashed—OsCorp is using his research for biological weapons, not just to cure disease, and Richard refused to be a part of that, so he ran away, even though he knew it would mean abandoning his son, rather than take him with them to live the life of a fugitive.
Gwen informs Peter that she’s been offered a scholarship to Oxford University. Peter is devastated, and doesn’t want her to go, but she thinks it’s best rather than continue their insane on-again-off-again relationship.
Harry is pissed because the spiders that Menken destroyed might have had the key to curing his disease, but his assistant Felicia informs him that they did save some of the venom. However, before he can go obtain it, he’s escorted from the building. Menken framed him for the cover-up of Dillon’s death.
Now without his cushy-tushy position as president of the company, Harry needs access to OsCorp. He goes to Ravencroft and bluffs his way inside and makes Dillon a deal: Harry will free the self-styled “Electro” in exchange for his help getting into OsCorp, and they’ll both get their revenge on Spider-Man. Dillon agrees.
They break into OsCorp, Dillon now having access to the entire power core, while Harry forces Menken to inject him with the spider serum. It starts to transform Harry, but he gets into an experimental exoskeleton that happens to be nearby. Said exoskeleton identifies his genetic disease and cures it, apparently. Why this hasn’t been put into mass production is never explained.
Peter webs the words “I love you” onto the Brooklyn Bridge and then kidnaps Gwen from her cab to the airport and takes her to one of the bridge’s spires. He says he loves her and doesn’t care what her father said or anything else, he’s staying with her forever, even if it means flying to England. (He allows as how they have crime there too, though the only example he can come up with is that they haven’t caught Jack the Ripper yet.)
Dillon goes to the power grid itself and absorbs it, blacking out the entire city. Gwen suggests using magnetics to keep Spidey’s web shooters from being fried like they were the last time, and also suggests overloading Electro so he burns out. She knows the specs of the power grid, so she can work it while he overloads Electro. Spider-Man refuses to bring her along at first, webbing her to a police car before he goes off.
He and Electro fight. Eventually, Gwen shows up in the very police car she was webbed to (it’s good to be the daughter of a respected captain), and she works the grid while he fights Electro.
Once they succeed in overloading Electro, Harry shows up on the glider that comes with the exoskeleton. (Why he waited until Spider-Man was done with Electro is left as an exercise for the viewer.) When he sees Gwen—whom he knows is dating Peter—working with Spidey, Harry realizes that Peter and Spider-Man are one and the same. He kidnaps Gwen and flies off with her. Spider-Man tracks them to a big clock tower where they have a lengthy battle involving clockworks and such. At one point, Spider-Man has subdued Harry, but then Gwen falls down the length of the tower. Spider-Man shoots out a web line to grab her, but the impact snaps her neck. (The impact with the floor would have been far worse, of course.)
Peter attends the funeral and then spends the next five months moping. Spider-Man seems to have disappeared, and from prison, Harry—with the aid of the Gentleman who visited Connors at the end of the last movie—orchestrates the creation of a team of bad guys who will thrive in a world without Spider-Man. They start by freeing Sytsevich from prison and giving him another OsCorp exoskeleton that’s just lying around (seriously, how do they make money if they don’t actually market this stuff?). Since the exoskeleton is vaguely rhinoceros shaped, Sytsevich is now calling himself “the Rhino” and starts shooting up Park Avenue. A little kid in a Spider-Man suit runs out to confront him, but then the genuine article shows up for the first time in five months to confront him.
“A god named Sparkles?”
This movie has the opposite problem of its predecessor. In that movie, the pacing was slower than molasses in January, with everything taking way longer than it should have. This movie doesn’t have time for that, because there’s so much happening here, and the vast majority of it just isn’t that interesting.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 reminds me very much of Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Spider-Man 3. This is not a good thing. Too many villains, too many things going on, plot points that just happen because the script calls for it, and—as with the last two in particular—character deaths that occur because they happened in the original comics being adapted, but have nowhere near the resonance.
Let’s start with this, because it’s my biggest problem with this movie: Gwen Stacy dies in the end. On the one hand, yes, she died in the comics. Hell, it’s one of the four or five most famous deaths in a comic book. In many ways the character is better known for having died than for what she was when alive, which is too bad, as she was actually a pretty damned awesome character. That’s why her death was so effective, in fact. (Thank goodness for Spider-Gwen, which mines Marvel’s copious use of alternate timelines to give us the heroic Gwen we all deserve without actually reversing yet another character death.)
The thing is, that’s not a good enough reason to kill her off in this movie. Yes, it happened in the comics. You know what else happened in the comics? Peter was bitten by a radioactive spider, not a genetically engineered one. Peter’s father and mother were secret agents, his father wasn’t a scientist who experimented with spiders. Peter entered a wrestling competition and let a thief steal the receipts, not a guy robbing a bodega, and that guy killed his uncle while robbing their house, not out on the street. Max Dillon was a janitor, not an electrical engineer. The Osborns don’t have a genetic disease, and Norman was the one who became the Green Goblin first. Dr. Kafka’s a compassionate woman not a psychotic man with a stupid accent. For that matter, Gwen died without ever knowing that Peter was Spider-Man.
They didn’t feel the need to pay attention to any of that other stuff, so why be beholden to superhero comics’ most famous fridging?
It’s frustrating especially because the parts of this Frankenstein’s monster of a movie that actually work are the scenes between Peter and Gwen. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone’s chemistry has actually improved since the previous film and they make a fantastic couple. (The conversation while hiding in the closet is my personal favorite, but it’s just one of dozens.) In particular, I love that Gwen insists on helping Spider-Man whether he wants it or not. (I would say whether he needs it or not, but he does, in fact, need it. Several times.) They make a phenomenal team, and killing her just comes across as lazy writing.
Speaking of lazy writing, we have the utterly superfluous Electro subplot, in which Jamie Foxx embarrasses himself with a storyline that has been lifted lock, stock, and lightning bolts from the Jim Carrey version of the Riddler in Batman Forever: nebbishy guy played by a former In Living Color cast member who works for the big company in town imprints on our hero and then views him as having betrayed him and gets crazy-ass powers and turns evil. It was awful in 1995, and it was just as awful in 2014. It’s also just like the Sandman subplot in Spider-Man 3, as you could remove it from the movie, and it wouldn’t change it a bit. Well, it would make it shorter, which would only be a good thing…
Garfield isn’t much better than he was the last time. He has his moments, mostly in his banter with Stone, but his Spidey dialogue is all distressingly cornball and weak. His conversations with May are stilted and not at all compelling. Without Martin Sheen to play off of, and without a script that actually knows what to do with May, poor Sally Field is again left floundering with an undercooked role.
As with the last movie, things happen because the plot says they do, but they don’t make much sense. Retconning Harry Osborn as Peter’s childhood friend makes no sense (again, this should’ve come up in the previous movie), and Harry’s turning on Spider-Man is only slightly more convincing than Electro’s. This is one case where they decide to go ahead and repeat themselves, as Dane DeHaan’s emo Harry follows the same character beats as James Franco’s, only Franco’s a better actor.
It’s never explained why OsCorp has all these high-tech toys lying around that they don’t actually seem to sell to anyone. Seriously, nothing we see at this company actually seems to have any practical applications—the genetically engineered spiders, the cross-species genetic project, the various exoskeletons that seem to be just there. Okay, yeah, OsCorp has apparently replaced Con Edison as the supplier of New York’s electrical power, but I can’t imagine that alone is keeping the company afloat…
The opening bit is fun—watching Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz kick ass before being killed is kinda nifty—and as the editor who worked with Adam-Troy Castro on his Sinister Six trilogy, and who helped develop the Gentleman, I’m disappointed that we didn’t see more of the character on film, as it’s rare to see a character that originated in derivative fiction become a major character. (Not unheard of, of course, as Harley Quinn is perhaps the most popular example…) Paul Giamatti is obviously having a grand old time hamming it up with a comedy Russian accent as the Rhino, and I will give the movie credit for the misdirect of having Peter and Gwen on the Brooklyn Bridge (where she was killed in the comics) only to have her die at a different location. (And yes, the dialogue in Amazing Spider-Man #121 says George Washington Bridge, but Gil Kane drew the Brooklyn Bridge, and the next issue had him in lower Manhattan after leaving the bridge, not upper Manhattan. It was later retconned to the Brooklyn Bridge officially, which is what it always should have been anyhow, as the GWB is too far from where all the other events around Gwen’s death were happening to make sense.)
But there was no need to kill her at all. It’s just one of many missteps made by this misbegotten reboot that didn’t really deserve to have any more films after it.
Next week, we harken back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, as we get our first (but very far from our last) look at Josh Brolin in this rewatch, this time as the title character in Jonah Hex.
Keith R.A. DeCandido has always loved Spider-Man, and his first-published short story and his first novel were both collaborative Spidey tales: the short story “An Evening in the Bronx with Venom” (written with John Gregory Betancourt) in the 1994 anthology The Ultimate Spider-Man, and the novel Venom’s Wrath (written with José R. Nieto) in 1998. He also wrote the short story “Arms and the Man” in 1997’s Untold Tales of Spider-Man and the 2005 novel Down These Mean Streets.
There was a Jonah Hex movie? Huh.
Yeah, definitely the Batman Forever of Spider-Man movies. Can’t decide from one minute to the next if it wants to be taken seriously or as camp. I have absolutely no idea what they were thinking.
And you’re more charitable than I when it comes to the scenes between Gwen and Peter. I got so tired of watching the same interminable “should we or shouldn’t we break up” scene over and over that I just wanted her to hurry up and die already.
Yeah, this one won’t be going onto the Netflix queue. (Although I’m a bit confused by the mention of the secret railcar lab — did that also come up in the previous movie?) Does Dane DeHaan display the same kind of anti-charisma and anti-screen-presence he showed in Valerian?
I pretty much agree with you, Keith. Here’s my blog review for my fuller thoughts:
https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/thoughts-on-the-amazing-spider-man-2-spoilers/
In short, I find this a frustating movie, because it contains, for me, the best ever live-action screen portrayal of Spider-Man/Peter Parker as a character (and seeing Tom Holland subsequently has not changed my opinion on that), and the best ever version of Gwen Stacy, and a pretty darn good Aunt May, but everything else around them is a mess. It’s a bad movie overall, but it’s a near-perfect portrayal of Spidey as a character. And I regret that they abandoned this version of the character rather than keeping him and just doing a better movie around him.
“it’s rare to see a character that originated in derivative fiction become a major character. (Not unheard of, of course, as Harley Quinn is perhaps the most popular example…)”
The biggest examples are probably Jimmy Olsen and Perry White, introduced in the Adventures of Superman radio series. I guess Harley is more popular these days (along with Agent Coulson), but those two were big for decades, and are certainly the most enduring comics characters to originate in derivative media.
Christopher: I read your blog entry, and you’re kinder to this movie than I, and you also made this statement, which I violently, virulently, and vehemently disagree with:
“I mean, sure, we all revere the memory of Gwen Stacy, but the most significant thing she really did in the comics was dying. Before that happened, she was just another superhero love interest, the Betty to Mary Jane Watson’s Veronica.”
No. Not even a little bit. Gwen was a superb character, bright, charming, smart, clever — a worthy love interest to Peter, and significantly more interesting than the very one-dimensional Mary Jane — MJ wasn’t really given depth until Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz gave her a backstory in the 1980s.
Also, good catch on Jimmy and Perry coming from derivative fiction. I’d actually forgotten that……………
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad
Honest question: What do you define as fridging? There was a discussion about it on another thread and the conclusion I came to from it is that fridging is killing someone who has no fleshed out character soley to motivate the hero. From how you describe Gwen, as being a well-developed character, I don’t know that she fits. I also am not super familiar with what Peter did after she died in the comics, so I can’t speak to how her death motivated him. In that regard, Uncle Ben seems to be the one who got fridged.
whitespine: I define fridging the way it’s actually defined in pop culture, to wit, killing, maiming, depowering, and/or raping a female character in order to have an effect on a male character. It’s derived from Green Lantern #54 in 1994 when the title character found his girlfriend dead in a refrigerator. It’s an appallingly common trope in pop culture, and Uncle Ben doesn’t really qualify by virtue of his being male. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with how well developed the female character is.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Thanks for explaining!
@7 – See, your description is not how I understood it and makes it very confusing for me. Can female characters die without it being fridging? Obviously, any death will have an impact on a male character. Is it not fridging if the main character is like, “Eh, I never really cared for her anyways?” I mean, how can any character, male or female, not be affected by a death of a loved one? I certainly believe in the concept of fridging. I’m just not sure how it gets applied.
This one was kind of a mess. Garfield and Stone were great together, but other than that, there wasn’t much that went right.
My strongest memory from this film (aside from that abysmal Times Square Electro set piece) is the ending.
Right about the time Gwen’s neck snapped, I remember hearing this sudden loud, hysterical fit of crying and sobbing. It was a 16 year old girl in the audience. And she just happened to be sitting right next to me.
I couldn’t tell if that was a genuine reaction or if she was being purposefully over the top, because the movie sure hadn’t earned that level of sincere emotional response. Either way, I had to bite my cheeks in order to keep myself from collapsing into laughter.
That’s my strongest memory, by far. As for the rest of the film? Meh.
The best thing I can say about this film is that it is better one than the first. It still makes a lot of stupid mistakes, but it does capture the characters and the actors do give their best. The Peter/Gwen interactions are much improved, and there’s this sense of honesty and motivation that the previous film didn’t quite have. There’s almost a good film buried somewhere in there. If it weren’t for the excessive, fast-paced plotting, which leaves little room for dramatic moments.
It partly suffers from Batman v Superman syndrome, in which it’s so preoccupied to establish a cinematic universe that the main story gets lost in the shuffle.
Jamie Foxx puts in a lot of effort and does a decent job as Electro, even though the script does the character no favors. And this is another character I wish we could have seen portrayed in a Sam Raimi-directed sequel, same as the Lizard. If Spider 4 had tackled Lizard, Spider 5 could have been Electro’s turn. That’s how I’d use Farnsworth’s What if machine, if I ever had access to it.
I’ll admit I do appreciate that ending scene. Reinforcing a theme of clinging to hope in the midst of despair. Even though it’s not nearly dire a set of circumstances, it reminds me of the final scene in Angel: diving into a hopeless battle before cutting to credits.
In retrospect, I’m glad this was a failure, because we got Civil War, Homecoming and Infinity War as a result, with a more fresh innocent take on the character.
And it buried the notion of Dane DeHaan ever being considered for Han Solo (supposedly, he was a contender for the role). That film had issues, but Alden Ehrenreich is the better actor by far.
@8/whitespine & 9/austin: In particular, the problem with fridging is that it reduces a female character to merely a disposable extension of a male character’s storylines, or in a case like Gwen’s, a prop in a conflict between two male characters. Rather than being portrayed as having a life of her own, rather than having things happen as a consequence of her own story and her own choices, she gets killed or brutalized for reasons that are exclusively about the interaction between two men. It can be even worse when the female character is well-developed otherwise, because being reduced to a mere prop used by one man to hurt another is dismissive and demeaning to her as a character. This is why the Joker paralyzing Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke is so widely hated for its misogyny, despite the rest of that graphic novel being brilliant — because it takes someone who had been one of the most empowered and well-developed heroines in comics and reduced her to a plot device in a story that wasn’t even about her and pays only the most cursory attention to the impact the assault has on her, rather than on the men in her life.
This is why I disagree with Keith and a great many other Spider-Man fans about J. Michael Straczynski’s revisionist “Sins Past” storyline which revealed that Norman Osborn had actually killed Gwen because of an affair he’d had with her, rather than merely to hurt Spider-Man by killing his girl. Most fans hate that story because it taints their idealized memory of Gwen — and it does have some significant logic problems to it — but I feel it empowers her and gives her nuance, and improves the story of her murder by making it a consequence of her life, her actions good and bad, and her conflict with Osborn rather than Peter’s. It’s not the nicest story to tell about her, but at least it’s actually about her.
Although what’s been done in comics and animation since then — bringing in a live, heroic Gwen Stacy from an alternate universe and making her an ongoing part of the universe again as “Spider-Gwen”/Ghost Spider — is an even better way to empower her. And I think it was the popularity of Emma Stone’s Gwen in these movies that catalyzed that decision, given that “Spider-Gwen” debuted in comics just months after ASM2 came out in theaters. That’s probably the most positive legacy left by these two movies.
I’ve got a soft spot for the opening action/chase scene. Large chunks of it were shot on Main Street in Rochester, NY, close to my office. The shoot turned traffic upside-down for 10 days, but it was interesting getting to see even a small part of the action.
Walking through the area when they weren’t shooting was surreal. They had Daily Bugle delivery trucks parked in the area, faux NYPD squad cars *everywhere*, and even things like lost cat signs and advertisements pasted to streetlamp poles and utility boxes were done up with Marvel and/or NYC references. These were tiny details that would never have been seen on camera, but they did it anyway, and it made walking that block feel like a step into Marvel’s NYC.
I didn’t like this movie (or the previous one). Still, I don’t consider Gwen Stacy’s death as fridging. To me fridging means unnecessary death just to motivate the protagonist. And to me, the deaths of Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy actually serve a function in Spiderman’s character growth, two different purposes actually.
Uncle Ben’s death teaches Peter that not acting when he could can get people killed, including people that he loves, so he should try.
Gwen’s death teaches Peter that even when he tries to be a superhero he’s not God, he’s not omnipotent, he can fail.
Two different lessons. The movie doesn’t do Gwen’s story justice, as we don’t see Peter actually learn that lesson (it should happen in the middle or the beginning of the movie, not in the end for a story like that to work).
@krad
This the case because they were an actual couple at the time. They began dating during the filming of the first film.
@9 The answer to your first question largely depends on who you are asking. Some folks believe that no woman should ever have anything bad happen again ever. Others believe there are ways to suffer a loss without it being a “fridging.” Look at the mess around Deadpool 2. Personally, I believe it isn’t always “fridging,” and I don’t believe that men are exempt, a la the example with Uncle Ben. People are people, IMHO.
I think I’m in the minority on this one because I enjoyed it more than the original (although I’ve had no inclination to rewatch either). And it might just be a personal thing, but Electro’s whole plight resonated with me (I’m one of those people whose birthday would go completely unacknowledged at school while others in the friend group I was on the fringes of got balloons, cards, etc). But then, I also liked Riddler in Batman Forever so I guess I’m inclined to look favorably on that whole trope ;)
At first I was very much in the ‘Gwen should die because that’s how it was in the comics’ (even though I don’t even read the comics, lol) – and I can see how things like changing an occupation or the type of spider aren’t quite the same and why proponents of that mindset might still allow those to fly – but eventually, especially given how malleable continuity is within even the comics themselves – really regret that they threw away such a great character since there are ways they could have used her while still staying true to whatever the keystones are of what it means to be a Spider-Man story or what makes Spider-Man Spider-Man.
I’ve found with fridging things can be really subjective. It’s easy to recognize in the aggregate – that it’s a thing that exists and is overused – but often with individual cases people while argue back and forth, especially if there was some other subjective reason it really resonated with them and so didn’t feel gratuitous. I think it also helps to avoid fridging when you actually have multiple female characters doing things in your movie.
@14 – “And to me, the deaths of Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy actually serve a function in Spiderman’s character growth, two different purposes actually.” – not to be pedantic about it, but that’s generally what defines it as being a fridging.
(And I do personally believe men – and children, especially – can be fridged).
Now, you might even be able to make the argument that fridging (or even something like the ‘rape as trauma/backstory’ trope) isn’t inherently bad – but it’s just that it’s so overused, and predominantly woman, that it tends to be an indicator of not knowing what to do with female characters.
nebbishy guy played by a former In Living Color cast member who works for the big company in town imprints on our hero and then views him as having betrayed him and gets crazy-ass powers and turns evil.
I would love about 10 more movies like this, please.
@14/Ryamano: But you’re still saying that Gwen’s death was done to motivate Peter. Her life, her existence, her hopes and dreams and goals, all of it was ended because of his story, instead of her own. Her death was not about her. That’s what makes it fridging — the reduction of a female character to a prop in a male character’s story. It’s not a question of whether the impact on the male character is worthwhile or not — it’s a question of recognizing that it’s not exclusively about the male character, that women are people in their own right and not merely devices to drive men’s stories.
If this movie’s Gwen had died because of her own actions and choices — if, say, she’d chosen to put herself in danger to defeat one of the villains and had died in the course of saving Spidey and/or the city — then that wouldn’t have been a fridging. That would’ve been a death that was actually about her, that made her an active participant in the story of her death. Instead, she was kidnapped by the Goblin after she’d helped defeat Electro, was reduced to a mere damsel in distress, the object that the two men were competing over. I guess you could say that her choice to go there in the first place made her death a result of her own decisions, so it was less of a fridging than the comics’ version — but as Keith said, if they made that change, then why keep her death at all? It just didn’t work for this version of Gwen.
@18
Maybe there’s this dissonance because Gwen Stacy’s death was one of the first to actually remain true in comics at the time. So the trope of the time the story was written was not killing main character’s girlfriend /mom /daughter whatever. The trope of the time (1960s) was threatening some danger and then the hero saving the person in danger. The person actually dying, in comic and not as backstory (Batman’s parents, Superman’s dad in some continuities, etc) happened only with Bucky, Cap America’s sidekick, before that, as far as I remember.
30 years later lots and lots of comics make the characters relatives or love interests die to give them a motivation or something. People then have a right to complain. But Gwen’s death? Innovative for the time it was made, shocking and also helped cement some parts of Spiderman’s character.
@20
To me, most characters in a spiderman story are devices to drive the Spiderman character’s story. Male, female, villains, fellow heroes, mentors, family, all of them. Some of them have arcs and character development, some of them don’t. The death of Gwen Stacy was useful in the spiderman story in the same way as Uncle Ben’s or Captain Stacy’s deaths were. I mean, each one actually had a different lesson, but all of these character’s lives were interrupted because they were supporting cast to Peter Parker’s story.
@21/Ryamano: That’s a fair point when talking about the original comic. No trope is intrinsically bad; the problem is when one is overused in a way that underlines a systemic problem in the industry or the culture. But if we’re talking about the movie made over 40 years later, then it’s not innovative or daring anymore. It’s just going through the motions and copying something that wasn’t really necessary for this particular movie’s story, and something that worked better in its time than it does now when the trope has become so overused.
As I said in my blog review, I used to want to see a faithful adaptation of Gwen’s death (though I most wanted to see the part they skipped in the movie, the part where Spidey initially crows about how awesome he is for saving her before it sinks in that he didn’t save her after all — brilliant, wrenching writing from Gerry Conway). But after seeing how great Emma Stone’s Gwen was in these two movies, I didn’t want her to die. The character these movies created deserved a better fate than that, regardless of what happened to the original.
Regarding your comment in #22, it’s true that most series are about their main characters first and foremost, and that’s why fridging is a problem — because, historically, the majority of fictional series have had male main characters. Fridging isn’t really the core problem in itself — it’s the symptom of the larger problem that there are too few female leads, as opposed to supporting characters. That’s been changing somewhat in comics in recent years, and it’s certainly changed in television, but movies still have a way to go to catch up (just ask Captain Marvel and Black Widow).
For me, the problem with using Gwen as the love interest is that her role in the Spider-Man mythos is the same as Teresa di Vincenzo/Tracy Bond’s is in the James Bond books and movies. She’s “the one true love who died.” As soon as Gwen shows up on screen, it’s the deathwatch for her for even the most casual Spider-Man fan.
When some of the first marketing for this film showed Emma Stone in Gwen’s outfit from “The Night Gwen Stacy Died,” it became apparent to me that they were going to kill Gwen in the film.
I was genuinely surprised to recently reread the dog eared copies of the first few volumes of the Amazing Spider-Man phonebook style anthologies Marvel put out a few years ago to see what a complex character Gwen was. In her opening appearances she’s far more rude and genuinely unpleasant than the character she’d later become.
Not that it’ll ever happen, but I’d pay good money to see a “Spider-Gwen” movie starring Emma Stone.
The only memorable thing I found in this movie was the Star Trek reference — one of the police cars has the numbers 1701 on it. I see what you did there, Orci and Kurtzman.
Leo: FWIW, Spider-Gwen is part of the upcoming animated Spidey film Into the Spider-Verse, voiced by Hailee Steinfeld.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I wish they released the deleted scenes for this. I remember them shooting scenes of Mary Jane Watson in them.
@27/krad: And Spider-Gwen/Ghost Spider has appeared in the animated series Ultimate Spider-Man (voiced by Agents of SHIELD‘s Dove Cameron) and Marvel’s Spider-Man (voiced by Laura Bailey, though Gwen has only had a brief stint as Spider-Gwen in that show so far, during the “Spider Island” storyline). Cameron returned as Ghost Spider in the Marvel Rising: Initiation miniseries of animated web shorts, though she wasn’t in the Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors TV movie that they teased. But I think they’re doing a second series of Ghost Spider shorts.
@KRAD/5…Sorry, for the delay, haven’t had a chance (until now) to respond to the post…I recall reading somewhere that Gwen was originally intended to be Peter’s permanent love interest, with MJ more as a rival, as part of the romantic roadblock cliches. Readers aparantly reacted better to a potential Peter/MJ pairing, and writers responded in kind, this could explain why she was that undeveloped until the 1980s as you noted…As for the movie itself, I don’t recall out and out disliking it, and didn’t seem to have any real issues with Gwen’s death. Still, not quite enough to warrant any rewatch following my first viewing, and many forgotten details. Too bad, beceause after initial hesitation was looking forward to more Garfield Spiderman movies, though if they ever got around to showing Peter at the Bugle, I doubt anyone could do Jameson justice after JK Simmons masterful portrayal…
Incidentally, despite an ending hinting at follow up films, producers must’ve had little confidence in a third film being made…There was no end credit teaser, though there was one at the mid credits—For the (then) upcoming X-Men movie (DOFP, I believe), not one for any forthcoming Spidernan movie…
@30/capt_paul77: Based on his performance as a similar character in Bad Robot’s spy series Undercovers, I think Gerald McRaney would be an excellent J. Jonah Jameson.
The story I have heard is a post credits stinger was filmed but then discarded, a scene where a grieving Peter visited Gwen’s grave, only to be approached by a man… who turns out to be a still alive Richard Parker. Allegedly that was supposed to be the cliffhanger for the third movie, but I’ve never known for sure if this scene ever truly existed or not.
As it is, this iteration of the character ending that way has always left me with the vague impression, somehow, at the back of my mind, Rhino actually killed Spider-Man and that was it. Obviously not what we were ever supposed to think, but… you know… why no new material set on this continuity ever coming out anymore, it kind of feels that way…
Also, I’m baffled about this movie’s Ashley Kafka. The portrayal is so absurdly cartoony and out of touch with the times you wonder how it could get into such a recent film. He felt so much like John Glover’s Dr. Jason Woodrue from Batman & Robin, it was uncanny.
The best thing that can be said about this movie is that it sunk Sony’s ill-conceived franchise and led to Spidey finally coming home.
Comics Max Dillon wasn’t a janitor before gaining his powers, he was an electrical lineman. You may be confusing him with Samuel Sterns, who was a janitor before being transformed into the Leader.
Krad and others have pretty much summed up my feelings on the subject of Gwen’s death. It happens solely because the only thing that people with a passing interest in Spider-Man know about Gwen is that she dies, so that’s what’s going to happen, right? Never mind that there was nearly nine years of build-up to it in the comic, or whether or not anyone has a clue as to what the death actually means. Never mind that introducing a new version of Gwen just so that you can kill her has long become an object of derision and a sign of a lack of imagination. She’s not Uncle Ben, who really did just exist to be killed in his first appearance, she’s a character in the story who just happened to die in the source material. The movie doesn’t have a clue what it’s saying here, really. We get all those guilt-induced hallucinations which seem to be suggesting that Peter was wrong to allow Gwen in his life because that would inevitably lead to this, but that’s not only denying Gwen the right to choose but also ignoring the fact that Spider-Man couldn’t have defeated Electro without her. And then, just to really contradict themselves, they were apparently setting up Mary Jane to appear in the next move as if they’d gone “Right, done Gwen, Mary Jane next.” (From this perspective, cutting Mary Jane’s scenes from the movie did at least manage to make it less crass.)
(And yes, I believe there was an alternate version filmed where Peter not only finds Richard in the graveyard alive but has a conversation with him. Apparently the makers dropped it because they really couldn’t come up with a defensible reason why a loving father would leave his son alone for so long.)
Even leaving aside wasting Gwen, the plot’s a mess. They’re so confident that they’re going to get another movie that they’ve forgotten they need to make this one complete in itself, which it isn’t. The plotline of Peter’s parents, which just about managed not to annoy in the first movie by being distant back story, gets foregrounded way too much with too little resolution. Menken, set up as the most contemptible character in the film, just disappears once Harry becomes the Goblin without getting any resolution or comeuppance. (Again, there seems to have been a deleted or unfinished scene of him being killed, which really should have been left in.) Electro almost works but is just one element in a crowded film. There isn’t even any real resolution with Harry: Apparently, the whole scene of him being visited in the asylum was a last minute re-shoot after test audience were confused at the clock tower fight just fizzling out and wondered what had happened to him. The film’s so certain of a sequel that they don’t even bother to finish it. I guess the ending was meant to show Spider-Man moving on to his next case, that the story goes on, but it still leaves you going “Huh?”
The lesson to be learned here is that it’s no use planning a series of movies if you’re then going to make the set-up movie a dud. Shame no-one told the makers of Fantastic 4.
Ever since Winter Soldier I thought it would be a great way to later introduce Peter Parker – as someone who lost his parents during the Hydra uprising. Unbeknownst to him, Shield personnel or researchers of some kind.
I liked the 1st Amazing Spider-Man well enough (I also saw it when I was just barely getting into comic books or comic book movies & haven’t rewatched it in years, so who knows?) but this one I never rewatched after seeing it in theatres, it completely killed my enthusiasm for the series. But one thing, which I completely forgot about until reading this, that I have to give it props for is the bait-and-switch over Gwen’s death (although I do agree with a lot of the other commenters saying the death itself was unnecessary). I remember going into the movie positive that Gwen was going to die, because of the comics outfit and all that, and then they go to the bridge… When they actually killed her in the clock tower it managed to come as a surprise even though I had started the movie expecting it to happen. So, clever on that, everything else was a mess.
When it comes to Gwen’s death, it doesn’t help that there was a more fundamental issue: Emma Stone simply has much more charisma than Garfield. In a *Spider-Man* film, that’s a problem. Maguire can be weird and off-putting, but that’s not the same as being uncharismatic. He just “feels” like the natural center of attention in his movies. That’s true of Holland so far, too, except for scenes with RDJ, when it can’t help but turn into an Iron Man film for a few minutes. In the ASM films, it just feels like Stone should be the protagonist, and Garfield the love interest, because she’s more interesting to watch.
(One thing I only just realized about Maguire: as Peter, he really does remind me of guys I’ve known who were raised by *old* people).
Giving credit where credit is due, that opening chase scene is easily the best action sequence in any Spider-Man film, if you ask me. On the other hand, the last battle between Spidey and Electro is as fake and badly staged a moment as I’ve seen in any modern superhero film. I’ve seen video game cut scenes (hell, I’ve seen gameplay captures) that look more realistic.
To me, Electro’s plotline in this film had only two redeeming qualities: the first was Jamie Foxx’s performance, though largely as the nebbish Dillon rather than Electro. I thought the confrontation between him and Spidey in Times Square was very well done, with Dillon starting off confused and unsure of himself and his powers, before “snapping” and changing to the rather less effective Electro. (In particular, the script saddles him with some of the worst one-liners I’ve ever heard; “It’s my birthday, time to light my candles!” is a stinker on par with “What happens to a toad when it’s struck by lightning?”)
The second is the interesting use of the movie’s own soundtrack, especially as the Times Square sequence progresses and it becomes clear that the incessant whispered chanting that can be heard in the background is in fact representing the conflict inside Dillon’s head, his neuroses and trauma practically ganging up on him until they explode into a cacophonous dubstep nightmare. In technical terms not sure whether I’d call this diegetic or non-diegetic; it certainly starts as part of the soundtrack, back when Dillon and his primary woodwind theme is first introduced, but as the movie progresses we start to hear faint whispers, growing louder and louder as Dillon is placed under more and more stress, and it’s unclear as to whether these are just soundtrack flourishes or if he’s actually hearing voices.
@41/CNash: I agree about the music for Electro, and I commented on it in my blog review. The musical style Zimmer used for Dillon/Electro isn’t my cup of tea, but I was able to appreciate how innovative and creative Zimmer’s scoring was.
The problem with so many Hollywood movies these days is that they’re really, really well-made in every respect except the writing and plotting, so they’re beautiful structures with rotten foundations and end up collapsing. I can’t understand why studio, directors, and producers put so much thought and care into doing everything else well but treat the script, the most fundamental part of making a movie work, as the most incidental and unimportant part. ASM2 has fantastic casting and acting, impressive music and action, and solid production design and VFX, but aside from the Peter/Gwen character stuff, its story is awful. And so very many other movies have the equivalent problem. Why can’t the feature industry learn to care about getting the story right first?
My favorite scene of this whole movie is the first Electro/Spidey showdown…the musical score for that scene is awesome, as it slowly transforms from sort of upbeat to dark and disturbing as Electro’s mental state changes from worshiping hating Spiderman during their interaction.
I still love how the movie has Norman Osborn die of Mystery Genetic Disease in his late 60s, and teenage Harry with the same disease promptly freaks out like he’s got months to live.
Dude, from all the available evidence, you have nearly 50 years to fix this! What’s the rush?
@44/CapnAndy: As I recall, there were signs that Harry was already starting to develop symptoms of the disease much earlier than his father had.
Why can’t the feature industry learn to care about getting the story right first?
@42/Christopher: The way I see it, studios tend to book release dates before even committing to a basic story conference. By doing so, they’re essentially establishing unchanging deadlines. If there’s a problem in story development, they simply can’t afford to stop the filmmaking process because they already have a budget set and a looming release date. Plus, there’s already a ton of other pre-production commitments underway, especially casting, early VFX development, building sets and production design. The machine is already in motion and can’t stop. The best they can do is try and rush the writing process, regardless of the end result.
Not that I agree with that approach to storytelling at all (not to mention there are those who can write great material under this kind of pressure). But that’s what we get when movies cost this much to make. Accounting and marketing usually take precedence over the creative process.
@46/Eduardo: “Accounting and marketing usually take precedence over the creative process.”
But that doesn’t explain what I’m talking about. If that were all it is, then presumably every aspect of the creative process would be similarly rushed and similarly undermined. But I’m talking about movies where there was clearly enormous thought and care and hard work and creativity and effort put into making the casting, acting, direction, editing, production design, costumes, sets, visual effects, music, etc. impressively high-quality… yet the story it’s all in service of is lame or incoherent or stupid. Movies where every aspect of the creative process is a success except the script. That’s what’s so frustrating — seeing so many movies where so much talent and care and effort are put into filming a story that isn’t worth it.
Besides, a television season is made on a much tighter schedule than a feature film, yet TV turns out terrific writing far more consistently than the feature industry does. The problem is that the writing process in features isn’t managed well, that it’s too cluttered and inefficient and has too many cooks, and that there’s no respect for the integrity of the written word, so what starts out as a brilliant script can be mostly thrown out the window by a director who’s more interested in cool visuals and set pieces. TV is a writer’s medium, movies are a director’s medium. And too many feature directors today came up from music videos or commercials, learning to make striking moments and set pieces rather than full-length narratives, or went to film schools that focused on visual storytelling and gave short shrift to writing.
“or went to film schools that focused on visual storytelling and gave short shrift to writing.”
I’ve seen films from film schools (hell, I’ve gone to one) And they have much better story than this movie, It must be Hollywood’s problem
Maybe it depends on the school. I remember reading something years back saying that the current generation of Hollywood directors had mostly come from a specific school that prioritized visuals and acting over writing, or something like that, so they didn’t really learn to respect writing or master story structure. It would be great if that were not typical of film schools and if the next generation of filmmakers had a more complete grounding in the writing side.
But that doesn’t explain what I’m talking about.
The problem is that the writing process in features isn’t managed well, that it’s too cluttered and inefficient and has too many cooks, and that there’s no respect for the integrity of the written word, so what starts out as a brilliant script can be mostly thrown out the window by a director who’s more interested in cool visuals and set pieces. TV is a writer’s medium, movies are a director’s medium.
@47/Christopher: I think you just explained it pretty well. It’s the fact that writers aren’t as relevant on the feature totem pole as they are on television. Add studio executives with a tendency for micromanagement and focus testings into the mix and you get a sedate blockbuster designed to please both everyone and no one.
Regarding the creativity, care and effort put into the non-writing aspects of pre-production, it seems to me that studios can in fact rush those aspects of the process by throwing extra money at them (extra artists, technicians, and so forth), which is another reason blockbuster movies cost an arm and a leg. But the minute they choose to include extra writers, it throws the process off, since whatever original vision there was is ultimately lost.
The action was good, and Peter was less of a jerk, but the plot is a mess and the villains sucked. Their motivations were spectacularly flimsy, and Harry becoming the Goblin before/instead of his father is incredibly stupid. I did, however, resent this one less than the first one because Peter is less of a jerk.
@13 – grenadier: Cool story!
@20 – Chris: Can we consider Grace’s death in the new DW season starter as not fridging? Because even if it felt a bit gratuituous to have a female (and POC) character die, seemingly to give her husband and grandson character developments, she still died because of her own agency, trying to save people. I’m not sure, I’d probably call it borderline fridging…
@49/MaGnUs: As I said, the problem with fridging is not about any single case, it’s about the aggregate tendency of fiction to reduce female characters to disposable props in stories about male heroes and villains. No trope is impossible to do in a good or justified way; the problematical tropes are the ones that get overused or serve to perpetuate a harmful belief or idea. If there were a comparable number of male and female heroes, then it wouldn’t be a problem for the occasional female character to get sacrificed to motivate the hero, because there’d still be plenty of other female characters that got to be the heroes themselves.
So the fact that Doctor Who now has a female lead makes Grace’s death less fridgey than it might otherwise have been. And you’re right — the fact that it was an outgrowth of her own choices and actions helps too.
Yeah, having a female lead and also Yas helps a lot.
Good blog
Came back to this article from the “Far From Home” review.
If Gwen Stacy is “one of the four or five most famous deaths in a comic book” – who were the others?
Thomas and Martha Wayne?
Jean Gray?
Uncle Ben?
Just curious.
lisriba: the ones you list qualify, as does the entire planet Krypton, and the Barry Allen Flash in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Jason Todd? Bucky Barnes? I know the saying used to go “No one in comics stays dead except Jason Todd, Bucky Barnes, and Uncle Ben.”
The thing that bugs me most about this movie is how stalkerish and self-adsorbed Spiderman is with Gwen. Take the interview as an example: he knows *exactly* where she is, but doesn’t question what she’s doing there, just immediately launches into regaling her with his problems. His whole attitude to her is just creepy.