It’s hard to talk about Spider-Man 2 without a ton of spoilers. Which is why I’ve waited so long to talk about it. But it’s been over a month since the movie came out, so I have to assume that everyone who cares about this film has seen it already. So I’m going to talk about why this movie surpassed my already high expectations for this movie. With a ton of spoilers. After the cut.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is about Gwen Stacy. A lot of people missed that. Maybe it’s because superhero movies are usually about heroes or villains, so people just kinda ignore love interests. (Besides, Mary Jane didn’t really do much in the original Spider-Man trilogy.) But this movie is about Gwen Stacy.
A bit of a history lesson: Most modern media portray Mary Jane as Spider-Man’s One True Love. But long before Mary Jane, there was Gwen Stacy. And most modern media avoid Gwen Stacy, because aside from being Spider-Man’s true One True Love, she’s most famous for, well, dying. The Night Gwen Stacy Died is a famous event in comic book history and marks the end of the “Silver Age of Comics”. (Note that the story arc wasn’t given its famous title until long after it was published.) Gwen Stacy’s death was one of the most high-profile deaths in comic book history, in a time when killing off main characters was unheard of, and Gwen Stacy is one of the few comic book characters that’s never been resurrected. (Purists will note that this is only half true. Gwen Stacy has been cloned once or twice.) So of course, most modern adaptations of Spider-Man avoid Gwen Stacy because of the historical baggage she carries.
Of course, this is why I was excited when they first announced that Gwen Stacy would be Spider-Man’s love interest in The Amazing Spider-Man. We all knew she was going to die. It was just a question when and how.
And when the marketing for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 started, they heavily foreshadowed her death by showing Gwen falling. And one of the later trailers even showcases Gwen’s graduation speech, about how teenagers feel like they’re immortal. So we all knew she was going to die.
This movie is about Gwen Stacy. They really played it up. Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield had amazing chemistry together as Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker. The people who loved the movie will tell you the best part is Gwen and Peter’s chemistry. Even the people who didn’t like the movie will admit that Gwen and Peter had great chemistry. Far better than anything Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire had. (Because Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man couldn’t have good chemistry with oxygen.) It was like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was secretly a romantic comedy disguised as a superhero movie, which only really works because it’s actually a superhero movie.
The movie goes out of its way to show us that Peter Parker needs Gwen Stacy. He’s really hurting when she’s not with him. When he finds out she’s leaving for England, he’s devastated and doesn’t want her to leave, then decides he needs to go to England with her. He follows her everywhere. (To the point of stalkerish creepiness, which no one points out in the movie because Spider-Man is supposed to be awesome.)
Spider-Man needs Gwen Stacy. Gwen Stacy immunizes Spidey’s webshooters against Electro, and Gwen Stacy saves the day and defeats the bad guy. Emma Stone said it best when she said, “She saves him more than he saves her.”
At the same time, Spider-Man can’t be with Gwen Stacy. Gwen Stacy’s father George Stacy warns Peter to stay away from Gwen as he dies at the end of the first movie. Throughout The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Peter has visions of George, as if warding him away from his daughter. In one critical moment of the movie, Peter tells Gwen he can’t be with her, because he’s afraid of putting her in danger, afraid of losing her. Even when he can’t stay away from her, he spends a lot of time keeping her out of trouble (like the brilliant example when he webbed her to a cop car). People unfamiliar with the comics probably assumed this was an overplayed trope. Tobey Maguire did it at the end of original Spider-Man. Even Harry Potter did it.
Sadly, Peter just couldn’t keep away from Gwen. Which makes it even more tragic when she inevitably dies.
We all knew she was going to die. Deep down inside, we all hoped beyond hope that somehow she would survive. The writers even teased us with the plot thread about Gwen moving to England to attend Oxford. Maybe she gets written out of the story. Maybe she’s gone, but still alive.
But no, you can’t save Gwen Stacy. No matter how much we hoped, we all knew she was going to die. But that didn’t make it hurt any less when she hit the ground.
Once you know that the movie is about Gwen Stacy, you start to see how well constructed the movie is. Every scene, every plot thread leads to that one moment in the clock tower. (Well, almost every scene. More on that later.) Everything the movie builds up finally culminates in the battle in the clock tower, and with Gwen’s fall.
We all knew she was going to die, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. The scene lasted just long enough for me to realize that my theater was completely silent. Maybe it’s because Seattlites know to not talk during movies (and to not talk during a critical scene like this one). But I’d like to think they were knocked speechless. I don’t know how many of them were familiar with the comics, or how many of them saw it coming with all the heavy foreshadowing. I don’t think it matters.
It wasn’t just the emotional weight of the scene. The scene also hits one of the major themes of Spider-Man. All too often, the hero saves the girl, defeats the villain, and everything is rainbows and unicorns. Even the original Spider-Man trilogy is incredibly optimistic. Kirsten Dunst has been thrown off countless bridges and buildings as Mary Jane, and Tobey Maguire saved her every time. But you can’t always save the girl. And that girl is Gwen Stacy.
And just like the comic books, the scene makes you realize that sometimes it kinda sucks to be Spider-Man. J Jonah Jameson has turned the media against Spider-Man. In other Spider-Man adaptations, the cops are after Spider-Man for one reason or another. And now, you’ve met your One True Love, and now she’s dead. Yep, sometimes it just sucks to be Spider-Man.
And of course, after that, the movie winds down in the only logical way possible. Peter Parker has his whole “what’s the point of saving the world if I can’t save the one person that matters to me” thing. (Or as TVTropes calls it, a “Heroic BSOD”.) He finally snaps out of it just in time to defend the city against the Rhino, and the movie ends in mid-combat.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 also did a lot of other things right. (Aside from apparently being about Gwen Stacy.) Dane DeHaan is chilling as Harry Osborn. Jamie Foxx is amazing as Electro. And the cameos and Easter Eggs were great. (The references to Smythe and Felicia (Black Cat) were the most obvious ones. I’ve been told there are some subtle ones.)
The movie isn’t without its flaws though. The whole plot arc about Peter Parker trying to learn about his father’s past? Entirely unnecessary. I feel like they only pigeon-holed it into the movie because they opened up that plot thread in the first movie and felt like they needed to continue it in the second. And while the action is great, it’s not as fantastical as, for example, Iron Man, nor as tightly choreographed as, say, Captain America 2.
All in all, it’s a great movie. Like I said before, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the only movie where I’ve had very high expectations, and the movie met all of those expectations. My only concern is that by killing off Gwen Stacy, they’ve (ironically) killed off the franchise. Gwen Stacy is what made The Amazing Spider-Man 2 so amazing, and Gwen Stacy was the only reason I watched the first one. (I actually started liking Emma Stone because of Gwen Stacy.) Without Gwen Stacy, The Amazing Spider-Man 3 is going to have a hard time finding its legs.
But then again, maybe that’s what made this movie so special.