But while Garfield's version of Spidey performs many a daring feat in the 2.5-hour movie, the truly "amazing" parts of this sequel are the dazzling special effects.
The 3D movie was shot in 35mm film, giving the swooshes, crashes, and close calls a certain lushness, while the audio is enhanced by the Auro 11.1 and the Dolby Atmos Cinema Sound Technology.
The effects are nearly as dizzying as a plot that perhaps packs in a little too much. In addition to three villains, we get nearly twice as many fights, a complex love story between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy, and a resolution to the mystery of what happened to Peter's parents.
That's not to say that there aren't small moments in Spider-Man that slow down the action, though even they are enhanced by visual effects. At one point, for example, Gwen faces a perilous moment that requires a slow-motion save courtesy of Spider-Man's web.
During a recent roundtable in New York, director Marc Webb said that when he was talking to animators about how he wanted the web to form, he used his hand to show the motion – and the animator took the direction literally.
"When it came up as a rough animation, I remember it came up and it looked like a hand and I was like, ah, that's f**king great, man," he recalled. "It was not intended that way, it was just miscommunication … deep communication."
The relationship between Webb and the visual-effects team was crucial. Keeping true to the comic book, the film's backdrop is New York City. And while some scenes do feature the real Big Apple, many are a block-by-block virtual copy in order to depict some of the more ferocious showdowns, like Electro's Times Square face-off.
Electro is one of the best blends of live action and special effects. Foxx doesn't wear the green suit and lightning-bolt pentacle that his character does in the comic book. Instead, he has an eerie glow achieved through makeup, special effects, and some LED bulbs hidden in the hoodie he dons right after he's first electrified by plunging into a vat of experimental electric eels. The glow and other lighting was achieved through high-dynamic-range imagery put through the Arnold Renderer ray tracer that Sony Pictures Imageworks co-developed with Solid Angle.
To become the Green Goblin (a.k.a Harry Osborn), meanwhile, DeHaan helped create his suit with Weta Workshop, which has also worked on blockbusters like The Hobbit, Man of Steel, and The Avengers. At the time, however, Harry's fate in this movie was still a secret, so his trips to the firm – which he dubbed a "magical place" – were a "covert operation," he said.
A big part of the movie's plot revolves around Oscorp, a huge conglomerate overseen by Harry's father that has a knack for churning out super-villains. While plebes outside the walls of Oscorp make do with your average laptops and smartphones (all branded Sony for this film, of course), the gadgets inside are sleek silver machines with transparent displays.
For more, check out PCMag's review of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (for iPhone) mobile game and the video below.