Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) continues to fight crime while dating Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone). Haunted by his broken promise to her murdered father, Peter struggles to balance how beloved he is as Spider-Man and how much he struggles as himself.

When he saves Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) from a plutonium transport being stolen by Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti), Peter starts a chain of events that lead to Max becoming the electrically charged supervillain and the breakdown of his relationship with Gwen. Then, childhood friend Harry Osborn (Dane Dehaan) returns and events start to turn towards tragedy.

This is a weird one. The original plan was at least two sequels would follow this with a set of spin-offs as well. If that sound familiar, then yes, this is the start of Sony’s long descent into Spider hell. With no sequels, this is an overtly tragic capstone to the Garfield era. One that, oddly, somehow, ends up being oddly thematically appropriate.

The weak spots first. Dehaan is very poorly served here, having been handed the same basic concept as Franco in the Maguire movies just in an entirely different, equally bad way. DeFranco had too much screen time. Dehaan gets maybe half what he needs. His Harry is genuinely fun, and he has complementary nerdy energy to Garfield. Seeing him go from that to the honestly dismal version of Goblin we get here in under two hours is enormously disappointing.

Then there’s the villain problem and again, it’s a weird one. We get not enough, and yet too much, Goblin but Electro is honestly great. After a mystifying opening scene where Jamie Foxx is costumed like a 1960s science nerd, he turns into a surprisingly fun and often very unsettling villain. His emotional arc isn’t great but works intermittently but the makeup and vocal effects work really well. He feels weird, and upsetting and sad. It’s a great performance and the cheeky music cues around him, mixing classical music with drum and bass work well too.

The Rhino is bizarre. The effects on the final scene do it no favours and Giamatti is as broad as possible. He’s also a glorified set up for the Sinister Six movie that would never happen. Speaking of never happening, Felicity Jones has three lines as Felicia, who may or may not be Black Cat and Shailene Woodley’s entire plot as Mary Jane Watson never made it to the final cut. This one got away from them, and the fact it’s as coherent as it is is impressive.

Outside the overstuffed and under used villain roster, everyone else does really good work. Garfield runs headlong at Spidey as a smartass and gets some jokes here that would make Deadpool nod appreciatively. He’s also written, and played, bravely enough to not be perfect. He tries, he fails, he’s arrogant and awkward and emotionally present in the way Maguire never was. The final action scene works entirely because of him and subtly shifts the relationship between Peter and Spider-Man into something both cathartic and ultimately toxic. It would have been interesting to see that play out, but as we’ll see, he at least gets catharsis in No Way Home.

The MVP here is Emma Stone though. Stone and Garfield have incredible chemistry, and Stone’s Gwen is the definitive onscreen version. Smart, principled, no one’s fool and courageous she’s a partner not a damsel and that’s an enormous improvement on every female lead in the series to date. She deserves better than she gets. The fact it bows to continuity only makes that all the more poignant and, honestly, infuriating. Adaptations need to adapt, and that particular beat feels like a cover version of the most basic sort.

Verdict: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 wasn’t meant to be an ending, but it works as one. It closes with a bereaved Peter back in the saddle, a New York that’s about to need him more than ever and a sense of renewed purpose. It’s sad, but heroic. Hard-pressed but never giving up. It may be the weakest of this duology but thematically, it may be one of the strongest in the franchise. 7/10

Alasdair Stuart