A new clip from Marc Webb's THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 has swung in, featuring a little Times Square action. Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) squares off with the newly-powered Electro (Jamie Foxx) who sends both electricity and a police car at our favorite web-head and innocent bystanders, prompting a slo-mo "bullet time" reaction. We've kind of grown accustomed to seeing this style of filmmaking since THE MATRIX and it's become fairly standard within the genre, so it's not surprising that they use it here. In fact, it works quite well, as things can get a little hard to discern when superheroes are involved, so it's nice to be able to see what the hell is going on.
Take a look:
When used sparingly or, at a minimum, effectively, the "bullet time" technique can be pretty great and it looks like it's used well here. Based on the trailers for the film it appears we'll see a good bit of this and the use of slow motion, which is totally cool with me. I'm kind of missing the old John Woo style slo-mo of late and wouldn't mind seeing it used a little more, as well, but Spidey going "Matrix" is fine, too. In the end, it's all just a bag of tricks to tell a story. Some work, some don't. Thus far, I'm liking what I see for the stylistic choices in THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (and that's coming from someone who pretty much hated the last one).
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 hits theaters on May 2, 2014.