The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) Review: Garfield's Best

Introduction

This review is part of our Sony Marvel Universe Hub - every Sony Spider-Man, Venom and Marvel film ranked and explained.

The discourse around The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has always focused on what went wrong. Too many villains. Too much setup for a Sinister Six film that never got made. Too cluttered, too studio-driven, too eager to build a cinematic universe at the expense of telling one story well. All of that criticism has a basis in fact. The film is overstuffed. The franchise architecture is visible and intrusive. The Rhino is essentially a cameo.

And yet: this is my favourite of the two Webb films, and I will defend it against the prevailing verdict without apology.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 commits to something that no other Spider-Man film before or since has been willing to do. It lets the hero lose. Not a setback, not a close call resolved at the last second - a real, irreversible loss, drawn from the most emotionally charged pages in the comics canon, staged with the kind of conviction that most franchise films actively avoid because it scares the marketing department. That choice, and the performances it demands from Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, elevates this film above its structural problems and earns it an 8/10 from me without hesitation.

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What the Critics Got Right - and Where They Stopped Looking

It is worth being honest about the film’s genuine problems before defending its genuine strengths, because the criticism is not entirely wrong - it is just incomplete.

The Sinister Six setup is the most obvious issue. Several scenes that should be about Peter and Gwen are visibly redirected toward establishing future franchise elements: the mysterious briefcase, the Oscorp data files, the shadowy figure watching Peter from a distance. These scenes serve a sequel that never materialised, which means they function as dead weight in this film’s narrative. You can feel the studio’s hand in them. They break rhythm.

Harry Osborn’s arc is rushed. Dane DeHaan is a genuinely interesting actor and his version of Harry - entitled, paranoid, increasingly desperate - has real potential, but the speed of his deterioration from conflicted friend to fully villainous Green Goblin compresses what should be a multi-film arc into about forty minutes. The result is a character who pivots faster than the story earns.

The Rhino, played by Paul Giamatti, barely exists. He opens the film and closes it and contributes nothing to the plot in between. He is there because the studio wanted him there, and the film would be tighter without him.

All of this is true. And none of it changes what the film does right.

Electro: The Villain Who Actually Works

Jamie Foxx’s Electro is a better villain than the critical consensus allows. Max Dillon is introduced as an invisible man - a Oscorp engineer who is ignored by his bosses, forgotten on his birthday, genuinely unseen in his own life. His fanatical attachment to Spider-Man after a brief encounter on a city bridge is the kind of obsessive parasocial dynamic that reads as more recognisable in 2026 than it probably did in 2014. When that attachment curdles into hatred because Spider-Man fails to publicly acknowledge him, the emotional logic is coherent even as the circumstances tip toward the cartoonish.

What makes Electro work in practice is the visual design and the sound. The character’s powers are rendered as crackling blue electricity with a musical signature - his internal voice appears as electronic noise, power line hum, crowd static. The Times Square sequence, where Peter and Electro face off while the crowd films everything on their phones, is the film’s most visually accomplished set piece and one of the better action sequences in the entire Sony Spider-Man catalogue. Hans Zimmer’s score in this scene - built around Foxx’s electronically processed vocals - is genuinely unusual for a superhero film and commits fully to the character’s disturbed interiority.

The criticism of Electro as a villain typically lands on the motivation question: does it make sense that a man Spider-Man briefly helped would turn into a city-threatening supervillain? Probably not by strict logic. But superhero films have always trafficked in escalation, and Foxx plays the transition with enough psychological texture that the emotional through-line holds even when the plot logic does not.

Garfield’s Peak Performance

Andrew Garfield was better in this film than in the first, and that is a strong statement given how good he was in the first. The extra film’s worth of investment in Peter Parker pays dividends throughout. He has settled into the wit without losing the vulnerability. The scenes where Peter is wrestling with the promise he made to Captain Stacy - to stay away from Gwen to keep her safe - are some of the best dramatic work in the franchise: a man trying to do the right thing by someone he loves while being constitutionally incapable of staying away from her.

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The relationship dynamic in this film is more complicated than in the first. Peter and Gwen are not the will-they-won’t-they of the 2012 film. They are two people who love each other, who both know the relationship is dangerous, and who keep making the choice to stay in it anyway. Webb shoots this with the same unforced intimacy as the first film - the graduation scene, the library sequence, the rooftop conversation about Oxford - and Garfield and Stone remain as convincing as ever despite the franchise machinery building up around them.

Gwen Stacy has more agency in this film than in any other superhero romance of this era. She is not waiting for Peter’s decisions to determine her fate. She applies for a scholarship at Oxford, she gets it, she makes her own choice about whether to leave - and she makes her own choice about coming back to help at the end. Stone plays all of this with a precision that makes the final act hurt considerably more than it would if Gwen had been written as a passive character. You believe she would make the choices she makes. That is why the ending costs what it costs.

The Third Act: Spider-Man’s Most Courageous Moment

I am going to discuss the ending of this film, because it is impossible to write honestly about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 without confronting it directly. If you have not seen the film and want to go in without preparation, stop here.

The death of Gwen Stacy is the defining moment of the Marc Webb era and one of the most emotionally honest decisions any Spider-Man film has made. In the comics, it is the moment that ends Peter Parker’s youth - the loss that he cannot solve, that his powers cannot prevent, that defines the cost of being Spider-Man for every story that follows. Webb and the screenwriters commit to it fully. Peter catches Gwen, but not in time. The web snaps taut. The impact is lethal.

The film does not look away from this. It does not reverse it or qualify it or give Peter an out. It sits with the grief, first in a desaturated, time-jumping sequence of Peter sitting at Gwen’s grave through the changing seasons, then in the eventual, hard-won return to the suit. No quick recovery, no convenient reset. The hero fails, and the film records the failure honestly.

This is what elevates the Webb duology above the discourse around it. Neither No Way Home’s emotion nor Garfield’s redemption moment in that film makes sense without this. When he catches MJ at the end of No Way Home - the same position, the same last-chance web - the payoff is built entirely on what happens in this film. Webb earned it here. The MCU spent it there.

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Is The Amazing Spider-Man 2 worth watching?

Absolutely. Despite being overstuffed with studio universe-building, it is the most emotionally powerful Sony Spider-Man film ever made. Garfield delivers his best performance, the Gwen Stacy story reaches its devastating conclusion, and the ending is one of the franchise’s defining moments. An 8/10, and the single most underrated Spider-Man film in the canon.

Is The Amazing Spider-Man 2 the best Andrew Garfield Spider-Man film?

Yes. The first film establishes the relationship and the character. The second film pays it off with emotional consequences that no other Spider-Man film has been willing to go near. Garfield is better here than in the first, and Stone’s performance in the final act is genuinely heartbreaking. This is the film that gives his No Way Home return its full weight.

Does The Amazing Spider-Man 2 have too many villains?

Partly, yes. Electro is properly developed and works well. The Green Goblin serves a specific, brutal narrative function. The Rhino is barely in the film and contributes nothing - he is there because the studio wanted the character present, and the film would be tighter without him. The Sinister Six setup is the bigger problem: it clutters several scenes that should belong to Peter and Gwen.

Is The Amazing Spider-Man 2 suitable for kids?

Rated PG-13, but the ending is emotionally heavy in a way that goes beyond standard superhero film content. Fine for kids 12 and up. Younger children who have become attached to the characters through the first film may find the third act genuinely upsetting. A conversation beforehand about what the film is going to do is worth having.

How does The Amazing Spider-Man 2 connect to No Way Home?

Andrew Garfield reprises his role from both Webb films in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). His emotional arc in that film - particularly the moment where he catches MJ in the position where he could not catch Gwen - is a direct, explicit response to the ending of this film. The payoff only lands at full weight if you have watched The Amazing Spider-Man 2 first. Watch the duology, then go straight into No Way Home.