The good news is that Garfield and Stone give this superficial complexity every ounce of energy they’ve got. But they can’t out-act bad writing, and screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Transformers, Star Trek) give them nothing but soapy angst to explore. Still, that’s more dimensionality than the supporting characters get, who as a whole resemble the sort of over-the-top cartoonish villains the genre has spent decades trying to live down.

The problem with Electro isn’t that he looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze, but that he was conceived like Jim Carrey’s Riddler: a "brilliant," socially awkward doormat who perceives every compliment or slight as if it’s a life-changing event. Dane DeHaan throws himself into playing Harry Osborn with abandon, regurgitating exposition with sincerity and transforming Harry’s parental neglect into an almost believable sense of rage. But if James Franco’s portrayal in the first Spider-Man movies lacked enough internal torment, DeHaan exudes too much, never once seeming like the young man he’s supposed to be — even one coming to terms with the responsibility of a billion-dollar company and a potentially terminal disease.

That said, the over-the-top characters do complement the enormous technical ambition of the action scenes. The film’s centerpiece takes place in Times Square, cleverly using its 360-degree video screens as the eyes of the world that Electro so desperately wants to impress, and the eventual showdown is genuinely impressive. Notwithstanding the fact that his powers make him feel like a junior version of Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan, Electro gives Spider-Man a challenge that is genuinely exciting and even dangerous.