That’s the case with The Amazing Spider-Man series as it became one of the key cautionary tales in the bumbling race to repeat the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After the massive success of The Avengers, every major Hollywood studio scrambled to create their own shared cinematic universes, but many of them unfortunately failed to produce films as well-made as The Avengers to anchor them. The Avengers redefined the superhero film genre by both presenting a colourful, faithful, excellently made work of popular culture, and by fulfilling the promise of a shared cinematic universe of Marvel Comics characters. These new directions were largely dictated by the other significant film of Summer 2012: The Avengers (Whedon, 2012). It was still a decent film, however, and with the origin out of the way, the filmmakers behind The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had the opportunity to take the series in completely new directions moving forward. Despite attempting to explore different narrative avenues, such as the ill-advised subplot regarding the mysterious research and disappearance of Peter’s father, the film seemed like a redundant retelling of Spider-Man’s origin. It distanced itself from the previous Sam Raimi-directed trilogy through a grittier, more-grounded depiction of the character, and influences drawn more from Ultimate Spider-Man comics than from the ’60s-era Amazing Spider-Man comics.
The first, obviously, was The Amazing Spider-Man (Webb, 2012), which was approached as a fresh start for the Spider-Man films.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Webb, 2014) was defined by two films in the summer of 2012.