Amazing Spider-Man: Part 2, The

This second run for Garfield is very awkward in its original form, largely because of Electro's terrible character direction and dialog and Spider-Man's badly out of character callous disregard for human life, and this is a very ambitious attempt to fix that, succeeding more with the latter than the former: there's just not enough of Electro's lines left for most of his scenes to flow in a way that makes sense anymore. The thing that saves Webb's movies from mediocrity, Garfield and Stone's chemistry, is wisely pulled to the front here, but the muddling incoherence going on with the other plotlines, combined with some pretty rocky audio editing in places, is distracting. More GG was a great choice as well, even though some of those scenes are also just unavoidably muddy too.

Rescoring choices: very mysterious. I did not feel that the score was a weak point of this movie in the first place, and the rescore somehow smacks of Bay's 2007 Transformers? Adding the scene with Peter's dad is a good choice, but using a track from a movie as enduring and popular as Return of the King for it is, again, extremely distracting, especially with the whiplash (ouch, sorry, not intentional) of having *just* seen Gwen's death and then a pop-country scored funeral.

If this edit ended similarly to Part 1, with nothing but environment, I think it would *fucking slap*. No score at all from the moment Gwen dies until the credits roll.

Part 1 ends with rain.

Part 2 ends with snow.

The Amazing Spider-Man Part 2 theatrical release was much weaker than part 1. We have much more “filler” content and bloat. That left a lot more room for improvement. I really do believe lantern51 elevated this movie to a good enough quality that I fully intend to rewatch in the future when I go through a Spider-Man marathon.

First and foremost, making Max/Electro a secondary villain was the correct choice in favor of elevating Harry and the Green Goblin. Unfortunately, it does weaken Max’s character development, but this was a necessary sacrifice to elevate the overall quality of the movie. Use of some deleted/extended material to develop Harry’s character were also well done even if at times the footage was of lower quality. I believe a stronger narrative should outweigh perfect visual quality. In addition, I like the fleshing out of the Peter/Harry relationship as it provides connective tissue to the tragic relationship in the Raimi trilogy.

I think the strongest improvement to this movie was the alternative ending where we see Peter’s dad. This was a much better way to close off the Amazing Spider-Man movie series. The theatrical was underwhelming. This was a superior close that even gives us the iconic “With great power comes great responsibility line.” How could you possibly leave that out?

I know some other reviews are critical of changing the music/soundtrack. I cannot comment on that as I simply do not remember because I watched this movie only once before with no intention of watching it again as I did not believe the theatrical was of good enough quality. With that said, I do believe the soundtrack included in the edit is solid. It should not be a dealbreaker here.

Overall, lantern51 elevated Part 2 much more than Part 1 of the edits, and that is largely because Part 2 really needed the improvements to what were a lot of disjointed narratives. On top of that, it really made me like the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man much more, particularly with that alternative ending - much more powerful!

I, again, want to thank lantern51 for sharing these edits. I enjoyed them and recommend others do so as well.

This was a great edit that streamlined it significantly. The villains were much more compelling and the ending was perfect since the series ended there.
One minor criticism is that some of the new music didn’t work for me and I preferred the original score more.

The biggest thing keeping me back from replacing the original cut with this one is the rescoring. Hans Zimmer's score for this movie was fantastic, and I really don't see why a lot of it was removed here. It leaves scenes sounding awkward, and a lot of the songs that are used to replace don't really fit and feel generic. This is the biggest piece of feedback I can give this edit.

Narratively, Electro being a more secondary villain works in a way, but it leaves his motivation empty and his ultimate contribution to the plot non-existent.

Other than those things though, this is a great edit! The intro sequence with New York, New York is really great and putting Rhino there feels really cool and makes a lot of sense. Removing the Peter and Gwen re-break up plot was only a good thing, because it felt pointless and superfluous in the original cut. The ending is also pretty good (and look, I love The Lord of the Rings, but that soundtrack does not fit in Spider-Man). It gives good closure to the parents storyline, and having the movie end with Peter not being Spider-Man is good, because the original cut devalues Gwen's death waaaaaaay to quickly.

If Lantern is still looking to fix this edit up, those are the things I would recommend changing. Going back to the original score from most of the re-scores, and giving Electro back more motivation. If those things were changed, it would greatly increase my motivation to replace the original TASM2 with this edit.

I am glad to have had the opportunity to watch this! There were some things I enjoyed, but others I could not get past.
I enjoyed the cutting of Peter and Gwen breaking up again, as it felt repetitive to have them break up in the first one, get back together, and then break up again. It does help the first part of the movie breath a bit, and gives more time to focus on the new additions of Max and Harry.
Max's intro is much better, making him not a complete cringe fest this time around. Giving Harry more time in the beginning is also helpful.

The trimming and shortening of cringe was done as well as it could be, but the main thing that took me away from all of this was the rescoring. I admire the author's ability to rescore, as it is quite an undertaking. Many of the songs just did not fit, and the result were missing sounds from the movie from cutting the soundtrack. The Times Square sequence just sounded flat.

I like the direction the Editor was going for. Moving scenes around helped a bit, and adding deleted scenes as well. Maybe there just is not much more that could be done to improve the movie. I just wish there was more to work with to streamline the whole thing.