The Amazing Spiderman 2

Andrew Garfield dons the symbol of the spider to continue his exploits in the great city of New York. He swings, runs, jumps and quips his way around vanquishing foes left, right and bloody centre. Jamie Foxx sees all this and is Andrews biggest fan. He works for Dane DeHaan as an electrician and noone really likes him at work, that is until he falls into a big tub of water full of electric eels. This turns him into Electro and suddenly people start to like and/or fear him, same dif right? For some reason he becomes angry with Andrew and decides to electrocute him and a variety of other New Yorkians. Emma Stone is still around and occasionally gets herself into a bit of bother, just enough to give Andrew more things to do. Can he swing and save the day or will he get squashed like a.....*wink wink*.......spider.

The first Amazing Spiderman was deemed to be a little bit pointless when it hit our screens a couple of years back as the Tobey Maguire trilogy was still reasonably fresh. I for one thought that they managed to do a pretty good job. Garfield is arguably a better Peter Parker than Maguire (not hard as Tobey struggles with the acting bless him) and the story was much more in tune with the original comics. Because number one did such a solid job at resetting the Spiderman universe, number 2 was given the freedom to go for it a little and have a little fun expanding the universe. Thankfully they manage to do this and make a fantastic film in the process. The main bad guy Electro was never one of my favourites as a geeky kid but is played brilliantly by Jamie Foxx who brings real heart to a very well rounded villain. When it was announced that Harry Osborn would also be in this film there was a big worry that it would feel too busy, much as Spiderman 3 did. The film makers here did not, thank god, fall into this trap instead choosing to focus primarily on Jamies story and use the other potential bad guys as set ups for more films to come. As ever Garfield is great and so is Emma as the love interest with a real palpable chemistry between the two, which is probably because they are canoodling in real life but there you go. As a Spiderman fan I feel very precious about the character and must say these two films are as close to the original character as you can get and the tone of the story also echoes this. For all his powers and abilities Peter has a very miserable life and the director does not shy away from this fact. All that is left to say is I loved this and it is very close to, and to be honest probably just about takes, the title of best marvel film ever made. Brilliant.

Verdict: 5/5