The Success of The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Yesterday, Twitter decided yet again talk about Spider-Man, as it does. Discussions ranged from topics like if Far From Home’s Mysterio twist didn’t work (it did), or who the best version of the wallcrawler is (Shameik Moore overall, Tom Holland if we keep it live action), and eventually turned to ranking the movies. Much like how everyone more or less agrees that Spider-Verse takes first place, it’s also generally accepted that the worst is 2014’s Amazing Spider-Man 2. After all, it became infamous for its planned series of sequels and spinoffs getting scrapped almost immediately once it underperformed at the box office and combined with the Sony email leak the following year, led to the current shared custody deal that is Tom Holland.

Since I, like everyone else don’t have anything to do, I said “screw it” and decided to do a rewatch, not having seen it in at least five years. (I also live tweeted some jokes, because why not.) I enjoyed it well enough in theaters but over time, my opinion has fully formed to where I now think it’s overall mediocre to tolerable, scuttling the goodwill I thought it earned by the end of the first film by bathing in its own excess all because someone at Sony got dollar signs for eyes. In some ways, slotting this version of the character into the Marvel Cinematic Universe would’ve made a lot of sense, because it feels like a Phase One or very early Phase Two film. But as much fun as it’s become to spend the last 6–8 years dunking on the Amazing duology and the second entry in particular, in watching it again I found it’s also weirdly the most influential Spider-Man thing of the last 20 years, for good and for ill.

Hear me out. Yes, the movie has problems. Its worldbuilding is as disruptive as its numerous product placements, it has two fascinating villains that ultimately don’t do anything of note, and a third bad guy who feels like he doesn’t even belong in this movie period. The climactic battle has a side plot involving planes for…some reason, and the teen romance veers between earnestly sweet and contrived CW nonsense. (Peter stalking Gwen is not cool and they shouldn’t kiss when she learns this!) But as messy as this movie is, there are interesting things within it that have now come to fruition. And in a way, that means that…Amazing Spider-Man 2 ultimately kinda won.

If you need an example of this, look no further than with the webswinging and action scenes, which see Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker move about New York with such fluidity and grace. You can easily imagine the game version of Spidey pulling off these moves via a controller, and that goes double for the action scenes. (I mean, the game’s version of Peter Parker even looks mostly like Andrew Garfield.) In the same way the game clearly influenced the action of last year’s Far From Home, I have to imagine that the game was partially inspired by this movie. The film’s first set piece wherein Spidey chases down a group of criminals led by Paul Giamatti’s eventual Rhino could easily have been something done with player input, from how he dispatches the Rhino’s goons to its escalating chaos with the plutonium they’re attempting to steal. Likewise, if that game had decided to let Spider-Man face off against Electro completely on his own, you could see the two fights against him playing out as they do here. Heck, for the first one in Times Square, the sequence practically has its own quick time event when he has to act fast to protect New Yorkers from being electrocuted.

And hey, speaking of the villains. Much as they somehow matter to the story and yet also feel barely connected to anything, Dane DeHaan and Jamie Foxx’s respective turns as Harry Osborn and Electro are weirdly compelling in their own ways. Go back and listen to Electro’s musical theme — not only is it underrated, it’s actually working overtime to give the villain some depth that he doesn’t really have in the film. While he goes from sad unrecognized engineer to villain at the drop of a hat, his theme has lyrics that allow him to actually have an emotional journey from fear to confusion to straight up anger. Harry is…well, kind of a mess; DeHaan is an interesting casting choice given how he more or less played this same character in Chronicle, and he brings some interesting vulnerability here, but there’s no reason for him to really be the Green Goblin other than to do the thing the Goblin is best known for. These stories had the potential to be personal in a way for both sides of Peter’s life, as people who he tried to save, but ultimately couldn’t. If the circumstances around MCU Spider-Man weren’t wrapped up in the baggage of Tony Stark, these two could be a good double act, since they’re both misfits who’ve been wronged by Peter.

That’s the other thing about this movie, it often brings up the idea of Spider-Man bringing hope to the people of New York. We see some of this not just with Max before he goes full Electro, but also with Spidey making friends with a kid named Jorge who dresses up as him and faces down the new and improved Rhino at the film’s end. It’s ironic that leading up to this movie, Sony decided that Peter could only be Spider-Man, because Jorge kinda represents what would eventually become Into the Spider-Verse four years later. In ASM 2, the idea of Spider-Man being an inspiration to NY is handled kinda clumsily, because beyond Max and Jorge, New York doesn’t seem like it has any thoughts on Spider-Man other than his general existence. It doesn’t feel like a world that’s been affected by this hero, something we would eventually come to see in Spider-Verse.

Here’s a fun fact related to this movie: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 came out in May 2014, and Marvel Comics released Edge of Spider-Verse #2 in September of that same year. It’s the issue that gave as Spider-Gwen, an alternate reality version of Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man’s girlfriend who died and the film’s marketing made no qualms about advertising. When Spider-Gwen took off, it didn’t take long for people to fan cast Emma Stone in the role since hey, she had literally just played the character and died on screen for the whole world to see. While Spider-Gwen was likely not a direct response to this movie — I don’t know how long the Spider-Verse comic event was planned or when she was considered for it — the way she kicked off with fans certainly was. If it weren’t for ASM 2, it’s likely that she could’ve just came and gone like several of the other alt-reality Spiders in that same event, but now Spider-Gwen is everywhere. She’s headlined several of her own solo titles, been introduced in various games and shows, and she’s getting her own solo movie after she was a breakout character in the Spider-Verse movie. So thanks, Amazing Spider-Man 2, for helping elevate one of the most interesting and fun Marvel heroes in recent years.

Some of what’s come post-ASM 2 are a direct response to that movie, and others a retooling of what it wanted to do. This is illustrated best by its closing credits sequence, giving us high tech schematics promising not just the return of Goblin and Rhino, but the debuts of Vulture, Doc Ock, Kraven the Hunter, and Mysterio (or Chameleon?) as the classic villain team known as the Sinister Six for a sequel or solo movie. It’s hilarious in retrospect just what that movie was setting up, but consider that it’s all more or less coming true, just maybe not in the way that Sony wanted. Their plans for a Spider-adjacent universe are slowly but surely happening; Venom came out and has a sequel on the way this fall (*at the time that I write this) that will allegedly acknowledge it’s tied to the MCU with Spidey, and Morbius is releasing next year with the same potential promise. They’ve got multiple solo films for in the works characters like Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, and Madame Web and while not all of them are gonna happen, I’d be willing to bet that those first two will. Even the Sinister Six is something of a foregone conclusion when considering the mid-credits sting of both Homecoming and Far From Home — heck, 1/3 of the lineup has already shown up.

Amazing Spider-Man 2 has a weird legacy around it; it’s viewed as the worst Spider-Man film, but also it has the biggest impact on the overall brand. Andrew Garfield is the most divisive Spider-Man actor, but he also would be welcome if he showed up as his Peter Parker in Spider-Verse 2. Usually when we talk about failed cinematic universes like this or the pre-2018 DCEU, it’s about how they’re cautionary tales and what not to do. But in the case of ASM 2, it’s endured as what you can do, just with some extra polish and less blatant marketing.