The Amazing Spider-Man 2

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Though his greatest battle lay within...

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a 2014 superhero film directed by Marc Webb. The sequel to 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man, that movie's lead stars Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone return as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy, and they are joined for this second go-round by Jamie Foxx as Electro, Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborn, Chris Cooper as Norman Osborn and Paul Giamatti as the Rhino.

Set two years after the events of the first film, this one picks up just as Peter and Gwen are graduating high school, and life couldn't be any sweeter for the couple, even with Peter's crime-fighting career as Spider-Man still in play as ever. Meanwhile, Max Dillon -- a nerdy, overlooked, put-upon employee at Oscorp -- gets into a freak electrical accident at the lab, and emerges as the electricity-powered Electro, who soon becomes a bigger threat to the webhead than he could ever have imagined. At the same time, Peter's childhood friend, Harry Osborn, has just lost his father -- Oscorp founder Norman Osborn -- to a genetic illness that threatens to take Harry's own life, and Harry shows up on Peter's doorstep believing his childhood buddy may be able to help him with a solution. On top of all this, mysteries surrounding Peter's parents and the circumstances of their deaths begin to unravel for him as new details come to light...

Released on May 2, 2014, the film was supposed to set up a myriad of Spider-Man-related movies that would've been the backbone of a Shared Universe competing against Marvel Studios' own, featuring spin-off movies for characters such as Venom, Mysterio, and even a Sinister Six movie, in addition to two follow-up films in the Amazing series itself. All told, a total of 13 movies were all set for release before the year 2020. However, this movie ended up earning quite a polarizing reception among both critics and fans, mainly for its mixed bag of plots and overabundance of characters, as well as its very nature as a set-up piece for a number of projects making the film feel somewhat incomplete. In the end, the proposed "Spider-Man Cinematic Universe" never happened (at least, not in that way), the Amazing series was cancelled, and Sony struck a deal with Marvel Studios to integrate the Spider-Man character into the MCU in 2015, with his first appearance -- Captain America: Civil War being released a year later, Spidey now being played by Tom Holland.

A video game tie-in was released shortly before the movie's premiere.

Tropes used in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 include: