Much like Spider-Man swinging through NYC, this movie has a ton of peaks and valleys. The great moments are often followed by an odd scene of awkwardness, dullness, confusion and a sense that something is missing despite a long 2 hour and 20 minute run time.

I’ll start with what I like. Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy are nearly perfect. They have a real on screen chemistry and they both look and act their parts true to their comic book characters. Much of the visual work is really, really well done. I like Marc Webb’s direction and there are some beautiful shots from start to finish. I liked the overall tone of the movie that mixes hope, despair, fun and fear in equal measure. The plight of a hero and the darkness of the world that often surrounds him.  There’s some great character beats with Spider-Man (i.e. the small scenes with the kid) and the fight with Hobgoblin in the clock tower leads to arguably the biggest and heaviest moment of the movie franchise. That climax had some real weight to it and was done really well. A lot of people moaned about Rhino’s placement, but I like how it bookends the movie. He’s a goofy C level villain anyway so I think it’s rather fitting that he’s shown as more or less a speed bump.

Now the bits that weigh it down. Some really weird soundtrack choices. The chanting bit for Electro is bizarre and sounds really out of place. The villains suffer from Iron Man 2 syndrome, which mostly wasted potential. Their M.O.s are paper thin. Poorly thought out reasoning and all too brief usage. There’s not enough substance to them to make you care about them. They are far too simple and their turn to villainy is far too fast. It’s like a flick of a switch and “Here’s you antagonist!” While the movie looks great, some terrible CG work on Rhino at the end is real eyesore. The acting sometimes spins out of control (namely between Peter and Harry Osborn). I think the biggest problem is how disjointed the movie feels, like a lot was cut out and moved around. It seems like when everything was shot, a lot of heavy editing went down to wrangle all the plot points into a cohesive story. You have a few villains, a tumultuous relationship and family issues (of those living and dead) all being juggled around. All the pieces doesn’t fit together quite right. It also feels like this story is a linking piece, that something bigger and more important is going to happen next. It’s as if they want you to sit tight and hang on until they get to real point they want to make in the next movie.

Spider-Man 2 (2004) is still the best movie, this one feels like it got too wiggly to hold for the filmmakers at times. It does a lot right, but the faults are too many and great to ignore. Thankfully Amazing 2 is far better than the disaster that is Spider-Man 3. Hopefully no one (comic book or otherwise) will plunge to that depth ever again.