The Amazing Spider-Man 2 feels like it’s caught in a Webb.
Indie-darling director Marc Webb made his blockbuster debut with 2012’s uneven-yet-entertaining The Amazing Spider-Man, and 2014’s sequel delivers largely the same results. Fortunately, a strong set of performances from the entire cast and some genuine seat-edging action prevent Spidey from getting snared by Webb’s sometimes-misplaced priorities and an inelegant script.
The sequel picks up in much the same state that the 2012 reboot left things. Spider-Man is an established player in New York City’s crimefighting community. He’s got his share of detractors, including a referenced but never seen Daily Bugle boss J. Jonah Jameson, but most of the public is content to let him do his superhero thing. Spidey’s got no trouble picking apart two-bit thugs and random street gangs, but he meets a new threat on par with the previous film’s Lizard when Electro (Jamie Foxx), another familiar face from the comics, starts wreaking havoc.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 feels like it’s caught in a Webb.
But Webb’s knack for melodrama just doesn’t feel like a good fit for this superhero story. The most cringe-worthy schmaltz spills out across the film’s easy-to-spoil third act, but eyes roll all throughout the 2+ hour running time. Try to contain your exasperation when a delighted Peter Parker literally clicks his heels to cap off a scene. Or when a slow-mo close-up of Spidey’s slinging web takes on the appearance of a hand as it reaches out to save the day.
That’s not the only offense. Too often, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 feels saddled with the questionable need to pad out the future of this franchise. We already know that Sony Pictures has another sequel and a pair of spin-offs in the works, and this story feels crowded with those dangling threads. Payoffs may wait in the future, but all the forward looks don’t do the present-day story any favors.
Character development ends up being crowded out by the seeds of future movies, especially with regard to the newcomers. Electro’s baffling leap from Spider-Man admirer Max Dillon to creepy stalker to vengeance-seeking sparkplug screams for more attention. Same goes for Harry Osborn’s (Dane DeHaan) arc, that concludes – as marketing so pointlessly spoiled – with his Green Goblin transformation. Webb sells Osborn’s friendship with Peter in their too-brief handful of scenes together – again, relationships are his thing – but the human side of the future Green Goblin feels underdeveloped.
While this central character can’t seem to find enough screen time, Webb somehow finds room for lengthy chunks of backstory that needlessly explore what happened to Peter’s parents. For instance, the movie opens with – and stumbles around – a flashback that isn’t at all necessary to the later payoff it informs. The senior Parker’s story is plays an important role in the larger universe, but it’s hard to justify building a long-dead character when so many of the living ones feel flimsy and one-dimensional.
Webb’s knack for melodrama just doesn’t feel like a good fit for this superhero story.
Outside these web-slinging set pieces, we get to see a lighter side of Peter Parker’s personality than we saw in the previous film. The man behind Spider-Man has his tortured moments, but he’s always been a sly, fast-talking goofball who excels at the art of the one-liner. Garfield inhabits Peter even more effectively than he did before, and his natural comic timing sells everything that fans love about the character.
In some ways, this is an exciting start, a first step into a film universe that feels richer and more grounded than anything Sam Raimi ever concocted. That’s a good thing, since we’re going to be living with these characters for the stretch of years to come. But the execution is inelegant. Like so many broken strands in a spider’s web, uneven plotting and a thick layer of cheese smothering everything diminish the sharp action and convincingly drawn relationships in Webb’s tangled tale.
(Media © Sony Pictures Digital Inc.)
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.