10 Movies That Should Have Started 5 Minutes Later

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is yet another painfully bloated superhero film, as is made thoroughly clear from its very first scene, a flashback to the night Peter Parker's (Andrew Garfield) parents died, where their plane was hijacked and eventually crashed amid the scuffle with the hijackers.

The scene is intended to make audiences consider exactly what Peter's parents were up to that put their lives - and Peter's - in danger. But the sequence is so generically over-the-top, so lacking in any interesting drama or palpable stakes that it ends up falling completely flat.

It doesn't help of course that the parental subplot snaking through the film is a complete damp squib, leading to the yawn-worthy reveal that Peter's father Richard (Campbell Scott) was in danger after refusing to help Norman Osborn (Chris Cooper) create biological weapons.

Originally, the film was going to climax with the reveal that Richard was actually still alive, though this scene was ultimately cut.

Nevertheless, by skipping the grandiose opening entirely - which, to be completely fair, is actually seven minutes long - we open instead on Spider-Man swinging around New York and getting into it with Rhino (Paul Giamatti), which is infinitely more enjoyable.