While this film has its flaws, the vast majority of this list is picking on tropes common to movies, especially superhero movies where realism is not to expected. Some of the developments you didn't like, but they were bad.
- Electros motivation: Cops are shooting at me, Spiderman is trying to help and tries to get to know me (all I ever wanted).... oh no his head is on the screens now AAARRGHH let's kill him (and not the cops who are activliy trying to snipe me in the head). He adores Spiderman, worships him at every turn but suddenly he turns against him just cause his face was on the screen and another guy tried to shoot him.
Electro's motivations were crystal clear, and I felt that particular scene was easily the strongest and well done scene of the entire movie.
First of all, you have discounted everything that has happened to Max prior to Spider-Man's arrival. Despite being surrounded by the cops and not completely certain what has happened to him, Max saw himself on the screen. On the worst day of his life he has been acknowledged as existing. I actually thought it was a refreshing change of pace that Max, upon seeing his changed face displayed, was delighted instead of repulsed. The poor guy was so starved for human connection that even seeing his new face calmed him.
Then the police come and shoot at him and he's trying to explain, but they are so focused on trying to contain the threat that his ramblings mean nothing to them. When Spider-Man comes to the scene, the first thing Spider-Man does is playfully call Max "Sparkles." Spider-Man clearly does not know him and publicly challenges the delusion that Max has built up in his head, that Spider-Man is his friend. Spider-Man then tries to feign friendship to defuse the situation. Max picks up on this manipulation (he asks, "How could you forget me?"), but he convinces himself that Spider-Man is still his friend in spite of the evidence. He tells Spider-Man he doesn't want the cops to shoot at him, and Max's beginning to take a more active role in this delusion, and Spider-Man complies. Max is in control, for once, and Spider-Man is his friend on his terms.
Then someone shoots at Max. Max shoots back at him (an important change from his behavior before, where he
redirected the truck that was about to hit him...each intentional act of Max gets more violent). Spider-Man tries to stop him and Max throws him aside. Spider-Man's actions mean more than his words. It's not just Spider-Man's image being put on the screen which breaks Electro. It's the jeering of the crowd; they see him as a villain. And given that they are cheering on Spider-Man, it's pretty clear that they don't see Spider-Man as his friend, and Spider-Man isn't acting like his friend.
So Max takes this information and the wheels of mania spin in the other direction. Spider-Man is his enemy and he set this whole scenario up, including him being shot. To think, Max had invited Spider-Man to his party and on Max's birthday, Spider-Man makes it all about him.
- How the cops react to electro: Spidey is obviously calming him down so the best course of action is to shoot him in the head even though it has allready been established that bullets don't work.
Even though Spider-Man is calming him down, the electricity arcs as soon as Max steps on the grate. The cops, naturally, think that Spider-Man has lost control over the situation and that Electro is possibly about to attack.
Also, it's been established that bullets don't work if Electro is concentrating/aware, but if he's caught off guard, they think they have a chance. Besides, you know cops can be "shoot now, ask questions later" and this imagery is very overt in this scene.
-Harrys motivation: "Give me blood" "no" "you evil", he takes the venom, it doesn't work .... soooo kill spiderman since he was right all along? What?
In part...yeah. Some people don't want to accept when they are wrong and become supervillains along the way.
In Harry's mind, Spider-Man, by refusing to give the blood, put Harry down the road of using the spider-venom. It might have been different if the actual blood was used, or it might have been the same result.
Second...it's pretty clear Harry doesn't want to kill Spider-Man. He wants to make Spider-Man
suffer.
- The way they killed electro. THey pretty much shout their plan to eachother but electro still can't figure it out? And all the electricity of the city flows through peter but he just shakes it off while a man made of electricity dies????
This, I do agree with you in that this was the weakest moment of the entire movie...although it's not clear if Electro is dead or just in another form. Some of this can be attributed to comic book movie
-harry is a git from the get go so we (or I) never sympathize with him or his sickness. It obviously wasn't going to kill him right then and there.
It wasn't? While it was contrived, there's a lot of cinematic evidence which shows that that Harry's illness was developing at a fairly accelerated rate compared to his father. I don't think Harry was overly paranoid; he probably did only have months, maybe a few years to live if the pace of symptom development was correlated to his lifespan.
-Peter defeats electro the first time and suddenly gets the urge to solve dad mystery...why? was it just time for that to happen in the movie?
Although it probably wasn't intentional, it worked nonetheless.
Had Peter actually did some investigating and focused more on why Max became Electro instead of relying on his not-girlfriend to do half his legwork for him, then maybe he would have discovered a lot of the goings on at Oscorp and prevented the villains from teaming up.
Because Peter was so absorbed with his own personal mess and dragged Gwen into it, disaster happened. Although it probably wasn't intended, ASM2 is the story of how being a jerk instead of being a hero ends up hurting the ones you love.
- why was Harry in such a hurry with the venom? he literally has the best researchers of the world at his fingertips to just make one or two simple scans. he wasn't gonna die in the next five minutes.
Again, it was hinted fairly strongly that he wasn't going to have as long as his father. Plus, notice that he doesn't have the best researchers at the company. Oscorp locked him out of access, framed him, and tried to make him responsible for their crimes.
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catmydogs
9 years ago
Destina...your whole rebuttal to another rather lengthy entry reminds me of a saying a friend of mine used to quote a lot:
"It's like straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic while it sinks."
For what it's worth, I didn't think TASM2 was utterly horrible. Overall, it seemed like a typical hero flick. Lousy villain, though. There are certainly far worse films out there (FF4, Ghost Riders, The Spirit, Johan Hex, etc...).
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