Peter Parker runs the gauntlet as the mysterious company Oscorp sends up a slew of supervillains against him, impacting on his life.
The last time Spider-Man swung into sight, it was to fight a lizard man in a lab coat and cozy up to a living doll. The lizard landed in the clink, but the doll, Gwen Stacy, is back for the good of Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) and the franchise. As played by Emma Stone, who has the zing of a screwball heroine and the depthless eyes of an anime character, Gwen brightens “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” a sequel that, until a late, lamentably foolish turn, balances blockbuster bombast with human-scale drama, child-friendly comedy and gushers of tears.
This may be the wettest superhero since Aquaman splashed through the HBO show “Entourage.” Then again, Spider-Man a.k.a. Peter Parker, created at Marvel by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962, has always been an emotional guy, having entered comic-book legend as a bespectacled high school bookworm who was orphaned, shunned and generally misunderstood: He wasn’t an extraterrestrial, just an above-average alienated adolescent. When, in an early issue, Peter tries to persuade some kids to visit a science exhibit with him (they laugh and leave), the text spells out his problem and his appeal: “for some, being a teenager has many heartbreaking moments!” And while a radioactive spider bite scrambled his genetic makeup, his juvenile sensitivities remained.
