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 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.