I'm glad this film told an original story, and didn't just rehash one of the Tobey Maguire movies. I was sad to see Gwen Stacy's character die. Hopefully she returns in subsequent movies. I think Andrew Garfield was good in this movie, and I enjoyed the backstory about Peter's parents. Overall, I enjoyed this movie as much, if not more than, the first Amazing Spider-Man. I want to spend most of this post discussing the villains, however.
I really liked the short back story on Max Dillon. He's a smart, quiet, under-appreciated man who just wants to be noticed and have friends. When the stereotypical comic accident occurs and he is electrocuted and turns into Electro, he doesn't want to be a bad guy. But he turns insanely jealous when Spider-Man steals his spotlight, and gets coerced by Harry Osborn to be a villain. I found his psychologically unstable character to be interesting, and Jamie Foxx plays him well. Despite this, once Max turns into Electro, I found his character to be a bit hard to digest. Especially his voice. I appreciate that his character had motivation to hate Spider-Man, and the psychological aspect was intriguing, but he was a bit much for me. I hope to see his character again, slightly altered, because I think he was a more interesting villain than Sandman and some of the others that have been seen in the Spider-Man movies.
We need to talk about Harry Osborn now. I am completely partial to the Willem Dafoe/James Franco versions of Norman and Harry. Willem's version of the Green Goblin is one of my all time favorite movie villains. I think 2002's Spider-Man did a good job of building the relationship between Peter and Norman & Harry. That relationship is really what makes them being enemies powerful. None of the other Spider-Man movies develop that relationship, despite using the Osborns (typically Harry) as a character that despises Spider-Man. This movie falls into that trap. We know that Peter and Harry are supposed to be friends, but the relationship isn't developed, and thus Harry's hatred towards Spider-Man feels shallow. Even when Harry figures out that Peter is Spider-Man, who really cares because their relationship was never really developed in the movie. I liked James Franco's Harry and felt bad for him that his father died. In this movie, we get a very unlikeable version of Harry who kills Gwen Stacy. I don't care if I ever see this version of Harry again.
The movie had an interesting ending, with Harry introducing the Rhino character and appearing to form a gang of villains, maybe the Sinister Six? While researching the movie for this post, I learned that Sony had planned to release a series of spin-offs based on this movie, starting with Venom. This makes sense, considering the number of characters that were introduced and jam-packed into this film. Three of the 6 Sinister Six have been introduced in the movies, and I believe a series or movie is upcoming that includes Kraven the Hunter, one of the Sinister Six. More to come on this, though Marvel has went a different direction with the Spider-Man character since this movie, with Tom Holland's version.
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