Spider-Man 2 Spoiler Thread

[filkertom]

Okay. This is the official TSO jeeeebus-Spider-Man 2-was-frickin-amazing thread. Rant your webs off. If you don't want any spoilers, don't read any further.

(Short form: Jeeeebus, Spider-Man 2 was frickin amazing.)

Comments

Spider-Man 2 Review (WARNING: SPOILERS EVERYWHERE)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I've started this review three different times now. It's not that I don't know what to say... it's that words seem so inadequate. And I have to immediately amend that to explain that, yes, I realize Spider-Man 2 is "merely" summer movie fare. It's not a world-changing social commentary; it's not a Great Romance; it's not... anything, except a superhero flick.

Except that it is.

It's an exhilarating action-adventure. With some of the best fight scenes you can imagine -- not that you've ever seen, that you can imagine. The biggie, the one which has been mentioned in reviews and seen briefly in tasty little clips, is between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus on an elevated train. And it is brilliant.

They land on top of this moving train, see, and both roll for what must be half the length of it before stopping themselves and immediately starting to bash the hell out of each other. Doc Ock grabs a couple of passengers, waves them around scarily, and then flings them off the top of the train. Spidey grabs them before they pancake, webs up some hammocks, leaves them safe, and then bolts after Ock again.

Ock snarls because that didn't work, so now he'll try something new. He rips out the brakes, grins nastily at Spidey, says "You've got a train to catch," and gets away, leaving Spider-Man to literally stop a runaway frickin' train -- and his spider-sense goes off, whipping into possibly the best single shot in the movie, a sensational surge down the train tracks ahead to the end of the line, only a few blocks away, leading right towards the harbor....

There were some cool bits in the first movie, and obviously with the cable-car rescue Spidey proved he had super-strength and all that; and the X-Men movies had all of your faves using their powers to the fullest. But by sticking us right up front with Peter, looking death in the face, the train scene in Spider-Man 2 shows us real superheroics, using awesome power to save dozens of lives, for the first time in any film.

Other great moments include catching the car in the web; holding up the side of a building; the fight on the clock tower; and pretty much every time that Doc Ock grabs somebody by the shirt front with a tentacle and slams them into a wall. That's a common moment in any comic with Ock -- but seeing, and hearing, the velocity and ferocity with which he does it transforms the move completely. It just never occurred to us before this how frickin' nasty that is.

(Spidey takes a lot of bumps in this movie, and that's a great deal of what makes it work. He sells them all very well, so that the, ahem, impact of any given blow is undimished by the illusion that it's in a film.)

It's a Dark Night of the Soul. Peter Parker may be Spider-Man, but the rest of his life is in the toilet. He's fired from two jobs, he's failing college, he's behind on rent, he can't figure out how to deal with his love for Mary Jane, his best friend is embittered with him because he believes Spider-Man killed his father (the Green Goblin, flashback fans), his Aunt May's house is gonna be foreclosed on... all in the first ten minutes.

(An unexpected bit which just broke me down completely: Aunt May stuffs twenty bucks into Peter's hand -- all this crap happened on his birthday, poor slob -- and she says, "Now, you take it, and you don't leave it here!... It's not that much," and her voice breaks with a sob, and I just lost it, because it reminded me so much of my grandmother, of my mother.)

It's a metaphor for sexual dysfunction. Peter's problems, accumulated guilt, exhaustion, and helplessness start to take its toll. He loses his strength, he can't inch as high as he used to, and the viscous white fluid that --

Maybe we don't need to talk about this.

Continued....

Spider-Man 2 Review, Continued (WARNING: SPOILERS EVERYWHERE)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

It's a coming-of-age love story. Peter Parker chooses not to be with the woman he loves, Mary Jane Watson, because he is Spider-Man, and Spider-Man will always have enemies who would strike at him through his loved ones if they found out who he is. The responsibility of being a superhero constantly runs into his desperate love for MJ, and it paralyzes him. Finally, Aunt May gives an excellent little speech on the nature of heroics (which has Anne quite convinced that May does indeed know Peter is Spider-Man), and, along with an emergency or two, Peter finally gets his head together, and tries to set his life in order.

Pity there's this multi-limbed nutbar in the way....

It's an actor's showcase. Alfred Molina flat-out rocks as Doc Ock. He also rocks as Otto Octavius -- the dinner scene with him, Donna Murphy as his wife Rosalie, and Tobey Maguire as Peter is wonderful, and very real. You can see the love between Rosie and Otto, and feel what good people they are, which makes what happen next that much more tragic, and makes Dr. Octopus's insanity that much more frightening.

James Franco steps up to the plate as Harry Osborn Descending. Haunted by his father's death, by his belief that Spider-Man is responsible for it, by the failure of Octavius' experiment, he crawls into a bottle and develops an air of menace which I anticipate will be fully matured by Spider-Man 3, with the help of his late father, played in a moment of reflection (hardee har har) by Willem DaFoe. (An excellent touch: Norman Osborn had reddish-orange hair -- but when Harry sees his father in the mirror, Norm has hair the same color as Harry's.)

Rosemary Harris has a lot more to do as Aunt May, and she's really good -- no Jessica Tandy, but very good nonetheless. J. K. Simmons, as J. Jonah Jameson, unapologetically steals every scene he's in, and, brother, he's welcome to 'em -- he's probably the best comic-to-screen character conversion we'll ever see, better than Reeve as Superman, Stewart as Professor X, or Cumming as Nightcrawler. Other minor characters are also well done and engaging, especially Mageina Tovah as the landlord's daughter who's sweet on Peter, Cliff Robertson as Ben Parker somewhere in Peter's head, and Bruce Campbell as the Usher from Hell.

Kirsten Dunst is straight-up great, playing the lonely and confused Mary Jane, who can't figure out how Peter can act as if he's nuts about her and yet not do a single thing about it. She's trying to go on with her life, and Peter's apparently trying to be a fly in amber.

Which leads us to Tobey Maguire, who could be accused of playing Peter Parker as flat and unemotional. Ohhh, he's not. He's got so much emotion boiling up inside that he has to clamp down on it 24/7, or he would go stark raving mad, or, worse, tell people what he really thinks and feels. Caught between being Spider-Man and being Peter Parker, he keeps getting ground down by circumstance until he knows only one thing for sure: his "great power" and "great responsibility" are ruining his life. In a scene right out of the early Lee/Ditko/Romita days, he leaves his costume in the trash, and is... Spider-Man No More.

Spider-Man 2 Review, Concluded (WARNING: SPOILERS EVERYWHERE)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

It's a filmmaker's playground. Sam Raimi obviously knows and loves the characters on an almost cellular level. Many, many shots are taken right from the earliest days of the comic, especially Ditko's Spidey poses. But he also cuts loose with his own directorial tools, and there are at least two scenes (the surgery scene, complete with chainsaw, and the look-down-the-train-tracks-to-impending-doom shot) that are pure, Evil Dead-days Raimi. His camera angles are innovative, his pacing crisp, his blocking of fight scenes convincing. (That last is really important -- Spider-Man gets beaten up in this movie as badly as any hero since The Spirit, and if you don't believe it, then nothing in the film has as much piquancy.)

The special effects are also much tighter this time around, especially Ock's arms, a combination of CGI and sixteen puppeteers -- four for each arm -- that makes them utterly convincing as implanted limbs. Kudos to John Dykstra and his teams, including Edge FX, Entity FX, and SPI. Danny Elfman's musical score is effective without being obtrusive. And Alvin Sargent's screenplay just sings.

It's a confirmation of a franchise. It's not just in the screenplay that Peter Parker decides once and for all that he is Spider-Man. About half an hour from the end of the film, when the mask goes back on, there is no doubt that Tobey Maguire owns this role.

The set-ups for the third and, perhaps, fourth film are many and well-done. We meet Dr. Curt Connors; Harry Osborn finds out that his best friend is Spider-Man, and that his own father was the Green Goblin; Jonah's son, astronaut John Jameson loses his fiance at the altar -- Mary Jane, who ends up with Peter. I do not think it at all unlikely that the third film could have Harry as the Hobgoblin, using some of that awful green slime that changed his father to create hisself a Lizard and a Man-Wolf....

Yeah, you can find problems with the movie. As per usual in these affairs, you can make fun of the science. Maybe Ock should've just threatened to kill Harry instead of bargain with him. Does the emotional-conflict-interfering-with-superpowers thing really work? (Anne thinks not. I think it does.) Aunt May probably shouldn't be able to hang onto the umbrella as long as she does, and her speech is a little hokey (unless, as mentioned above, it was her way of telling Peter I'm On To You, And It's All Right). And, regarding chemistry between Maguire and Dunst, Your Mileage May Vary.

But, mostly, this is the first superhero film that works on pretty much every level. Not merely a good Spider-Man movie, it's a very good and very entertaining movie that has something for everyone. And if you don't go out and see it, you will only be cheating yourself.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

I really have only two comments, and a quotation from Neal Stephenson.

Comment the First: Man, what a perfect closing line.

Comment the Second: I recognized the pianist in the planetarium...Peter Cincotti was starting his career as a world-famous jazz pianist when he was a grade or two above me in high school. Cool!

Quotation (from Zodiac): Peter Parker is the guy who got bit by the radioactive spider, the toxic bug if you will, and became Spider-Man. Normally he’s a nebbish. No money, no prestige, no future. But if you try to mug him in a dark alley, you’re meat. The question he keeps asking himself is: "Do all those moments of satisfaction I get as Spider-Man make up for all the crap I have to take as Peter Parker?"

Fantastic movie, but one little nagging question...

[adam-goss.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with just about everything you've said about the film, Tom. I've already seen it 3 times in the last week and will probably see it once or twice more, something I almost never do (usually I see a movie in the theaters once, twice if I really liked it, 3 if i absolutely loved it and want more - but i went and saw the first LotR movie SEVEN times!).

However, one nagging question does bother me, a plot continutity error I am being generous in forgiving considering how great the movie is otherwise:

After Doc Ock leaves Spidey tied-up with Harry, Spider aka Peter asks Harry where Doc Ock has got Mary Jane hidden. How the heck does he find him??!! After all, Harry had no clue where Doc Ock was hiding out, Doc Ock didn't tell him. And yet, right after Peter asks Harry where to find him and MJ, the next scene shows Spidey having found the lair. Um... oops?