Invincible creator Robert Kirkman is not a fan of The Amazing Spider-Man 2... and has some harsh words for the polarizing Spidey adaptation.
"No, terrible, terrible. I don’t like to publicly talk about my opinions on movies. Still, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is dogshit," Kirkman, who also wrote the Invincible comic where Mark Grayson teams up with Spider-Man, said on an episode of The Escape Pod Podcast while discussing live-action Spidey movies. "As much as I love Jamie Foxx, I love Andrew, Andrew Garfield is a great Spider-Man. There are aspects to both of those movies that are spectacular, but that movie is a mess."
To Kirkman's credit, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the lowest-rated live-action Spider-Man movie on Rotten Tomatoes (not counting the Sony Universe movies, i.e., Morbius and the Venom trilogy) and somehow ranks lower than Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3. The 2014 film did a beautiful job with introducing Jaime Foxx's Electro and gave us that comic-accurate Gwen Stacy death scene, but failed to turn Dane DeHaan's Harry Osborn into a believable Hobgoblin (and why was he all furry like that?), among other things.
The general assumption seems to be that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 cancelled the Garfield Spidey movies, due to mixed reviews and lower-than-expected box office performance. It's a bit more complicated than that: The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and 4, with the latter starring a resurrection of Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy, were indeed in the works with directors and writers attached. It was the 2014 Sony Pictures Hack that put the kibosh on The Amazing Spider-Man franchise, effectively cancelling Project Hail Mary director Drew Goddard's previously announced Sinister Six movie as well.
The final nail in the coffin, of course, was the 2015 deal Sony reached with Marvel that allowed Spider-Man to enter the MCU. Garfield would reprise the role of Too-Good-Looking-To-Be-Peter-Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home... which features a scene involving a falling MJ that is a direct parallel to Gwen's death in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, allowing Peter to get a little bit of closure in knowing he did all he could do to save Gwen's life. And yeah, I cried. I cried a whole bunch, okay?
Next up for Spidey is Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which arrives in theaters on July 31. In the meantime, get up to speed on the rest of Marvel Phase 6 with our guide to the other upcoming Marvel movies and shows.
