'The Amazing Spider-Man 2' wasn't very good, was it? Well, here's why.
However we try and dress it up, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 wasn't very good. It had Jamie Foxx as Electro. It had Paul Giamatti as Rhino. It was a big-budget superhero sequel. It should have been awesome. It was not awesome. And now Andrew Garfield has explained why.
Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man 2
"When you have something that works as a whole, and then you start removing portions of it...saying, 'No, that doesn't work,' then the thread is broken, and it's hard to go with the flow of the story," Garfield said during an interview with The Daily Beast, suggesting that Sony removed sections of the movie, rendering it incomplete, patchy and poorly formed.
More: With 55%, 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2' is the worst Spidey movie yet
Garfield says he "genuinely loved" the original script by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci which featured "deep scenes" not usually found in comic-book movies.
"Certain people at the studio had problems with certain parts of [the movie]," he explained, "and ultimately the studio is the final say in those movies, because they're the tentpoles, so you have to answer to those people." What was cut out? Garfield didn't go into detail, but did say, "I got to work in deep scenes that you don't usually see in comic book movies, and I got to explore this orphan boy - a lot of which was taken out, and which we'd explored more."
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a critical flop
The critics famously hated the sequel. Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal said: "How bad is this one ...? Amazingly so. Villainy abounds, but the villains are strident contrivances. Spider-Man flies, but does so dutifully, without joy."
More: read our review of 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2'
Garfield said he was proud of "a lot" of the movie though is still trying to come to terms with the criticism.
"What's underneath the complaint, and how can we learn from that?" he mused. "We have to ask ourselves, 'What do we believe to be true?' Is it that this is the fifth Spider-Man movie in however many years, and there's a bit of fatigue? Is it that there was too much in there? Is it that it didn't link? If it linked seamlessly, would that be too much? Were there tonal issues? What is it?"
So, it's 'must do better' for The Amazing Spider-Man 3, set for release in 2018.
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