All the while Peter Parker/Spider-Man, of all characters, gets completely lost in the shuffle. The film is overstuffed and unfocused, with four competing plots that never coalesce into a unified narrative. The studio was so focused on making an expanded universe out of the Amazing Spider-Man films, that they forgot to actually make The Amazing Spider-Man 2 a good move. That’s because Sony Pictures put the cart before the horse. Octopus on film why Sony released Venom (Fleischer, 2018) last year, but it had nothing to do with The Amazing Spider-Man. Sony Pictures was planning the long game with their Spider-Man series, and were building a large, complex world.Īt this point, some of you may be wondering why you have never heard of The Amazing Spider-Man 3 or 4, or the Sinister Six why you have never seen the Black Cat or the Spider-Slayers or a new Dr. Octopus, Vulture, Spider-Slayers, and Black Cat. The screenwriter took a cue from Ultimate Spider-Man comics and planned for most villains to originate from the nefarious Oscorp Industries, including subtle references to Dr. Shailene Woodley filmed scenes as Mary Jane Watson that were ultimately cut, but she was expected to take a larger role in the series moving forward. Paul Giamatti appears in two scenes as The Rhino, but signed on for future films. Within The Amazing Spider-Man 2, more groundwork was being laid. Sony also made vague allusions to other spin-offs featuring female characters (possibly the Black Cat and Silver Sable) from the Spider-Man universe. Later that summer, Sony hired writers to begin work on spin-off films featuring the Sinister Six (a group of six Spider-Man villains) and popular Spider-Man frenemy Venom. In June 2013, nearly a year before the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Sony announced the release dates for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 4 in 20, respectively. As the release of the first film approached, director Marc Webb was already publicly discussing the potential to expand the world of the films into new story possibilities. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was officially announced in August 2011, almost a year before the release of The Amazing Spider-Man. Even without having access to the rest of Marvel Comics, Sony Pictures, the studio with the film rights to Spider-Man, had more than enough material and characters for an endless series of films based in the world of Spider-Man.Īnd so, they set to work. These titles have typically attracted the greatest writers and artists in the industry, and generated the greatest villains and heroic allies of any comic book character other than, perhaps, Batman. Marvel has continuously published Spider-Man related titles, sometimes dozens in a single month. Since his debut in 1962, he has been the flagship character of Marvel Comics. That said, Spider-Man was an excellent choice to be the central character of an expansive cinematic universe. That’s the case with The Amazing Spider-Man series as it became one of the key cautionary tales in the bumbling race to repeat the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After the massive success of The Avengers, every major Hollywood studio scrambled to create their own shared cinematic universes, but many of them unfortunately failed to produce films as well-made as The Avengers to anchor them. The Avengers redefined the superhero film genre by both presenting a colourful, faithful, excellently made work of popular culture, and by fulfilling the promise of a shared cinematic universe of Marvel Comics characters. These new directions were largely dictated by the other significant film of Summer 2012: The Avengers (Whedon, 2012). It was still a decent film, however, and with the origin out of the way, the filmmakers behind The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had the opportunity to take the series in completely new directions moving forward. Despite attempting to explore different narrative avenues, such as the ill-advised subplot regarding the mysterious research and disappearance of Peter’s father, the film seemed like a redundant retelling of Spider-Man’s origin. It distanced itself from the previous Sam Raimi-directed trilogy through a grittier, more-grounded depiction of the character, and influences drawn more from Ultimate Spider-Man comics than from the ’60s-era Amazing Spider-Man comics. The first, obviously, was The Amazing Spider-Man (Webb, 2012), which was approached as a fresh start for the Spider-Man films. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Webb, 2014) was defined by two films in the summer of 2012.
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