Film review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (8 out of 10)

It started in 2002 with the first of the trilogy starring Tobey Maguire and followed with 2 and 3 in 2004 and 2007.

It had a decent cast (Kirsten Dunst, Alfred Molina, James Franco, Willem Dafoe etc) but all this didn’t stop the franchise getting a re-boot just five years later with Andrew Garfield coming in as Spidey/Peter Parker.

Now we have the second of the second franchise, although these have the addition of ‘The Amazing...’ to make it different.

I have to confess I prefer Andrew Garfield as the main man, and the production team have picked up on some of the small problems from franchise 1.

The over the top and intensely annoying Bugle newspaper editor J Jonah Jameson is sidelined to a text message while Spider-Man’s humour has been brought out more.

In this latest movie, Peter Parker faces a conflict of being in love with girlfriend Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) and trying to follow her dying father’s wish (from the first film) to leave her alone and not put her in danger.

However, Parker is also keen to find out the truth about his parents and their relation with Oscorp, a mysterious company that harbours all manner of dark secrets.

One of these is Electro (Jamie Foxx), a former employee who gets supercharged into an electrifying villain.

There’s masses of action, some tender moments and a good dose of funny one-liners

Garfield, Stone and Foxx are all good in their roles and Dane DeHaan is very good as Parker’s old buddy Harry Osborn, fighting off the legacy of The Green Goblin from his father.

It did seem to go on and on, though, and it felt a lot more than 142 minutes.

One thing’s certain, though, this franchise is set to run and run as the next two in the series are lined up for 2016 and 2018 - that is, unless they decide to re-boot the whole thing yet again!

Film details: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (12A) 142mins

Director: Marc Webb

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Jamie Foxx, Emma Stone.

Screening courtesy of Cineworld Crawley