The Netflix Superhero Epic That Killed A Franchise

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 should, by all standard metrics, have been a massive success when it first premiered. The film was led by an A-list cast including Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx, Paul Giamatti, and Dane DeHaan, and was directed by a filmmaker with a Spider-Man pun right in his name, Marc Webb.

The film also picks up right where the well-received Amazing Spider-Man left off, with Peter Parker protecting the city from some of his most recognizable enemies.

Unfortunately studio meddling, franchise building, and the ever-shifting landscape of superhero films led to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 spending more time setting up for a sequel which would ultimately never materialize than focusing on its own plot.

Perhaps if the planned third and fourth installments in this Amazing Spider-Man franchise had ever made it to market, some issues with the second film would be negligible, though many production and direction choices make the film laughably poor.

For starters, scenes such as Electro’s transformation into a villain have become the subject of a number of jokes and memes online, especially the moment where he is stung by electric eels, which somehow causes a massive gap in his teeth to straighten out.

Other scenes in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 feature an odd and out-of-place EDM musical number, which was later revealed to have been forced into the movie at the hands of Sony execs who firmly believed EDM would be the defining genre of the millennial generation.

Leaked Sony emails regarding The Amazing Spider-Man 2 surfaced online in 2015, highlighting a number of bizarre studio notes, including a demand for Spider-Man to have a premium Snapchat account in the film.

Obviously, the decision-makers at the studio were ill-equipped to bring the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler to life faithfully, causing many fans to lose faith in the studio entirely.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2‘s failure is largely credited for the 2015 deal which saw Sony sharing their ownership of the Spider-Man character with Disney’s Marvel Studios, resulting in the Tom Holland iteration of the character.

The Amazing Spider-Man films were even referenced and lambasted in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home when all three of the big-screen Spider-Man actors of the 21st century united in a major crossover event.

While The Amazing Spider-Man 2 still leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many comic book fans, modern well-received iterations of the character could never have been made possible without it.

Today the film serves as a nostalgic footnote for fans who lived through the rise of the MCU wishing against odds that Peter Parker could eventually show up. For those looking to give the film another chance, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is available to stream on Netflix today.