Sony
Pictures
Note
to All Filmmakers: The bar has been raised.
When moviemakers try their
hand at a superhero flick, the end result
usually gets compared to the first two SUEPRMAN
films starring Christopher Reeve. Few films
have survived that tale of the tape and
some that seemed fine upon initial release
(BATMAN FOREVER and DAREDEVIL
for instance) have rapidly shown their age.
But there's a new sheriff
in town. With SPIDER-MAN 2, director Sam
Raimi and the stars of SPIDER-MAN (2002)
have delivered the best one-two superhero
cinema punch of all-time. Better than the
first two installments of SUPERMAN. Far
superior to Tim Burton's overwrought BATMAN
efforts. Better even than the admirable
X-MEN
and X-MEN UNITED.
Opening two years after SPIDER-MAN
ended with the death of The Green Goblin/Norman
Osborn (Willem Dafoe), all is not well in
the world of Your Friendly Neighborhood
Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire). Love of his
life Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) is
now a perfume ad model and star of a Broadway
play, ironically, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING
EARNEST. Best buddy Harry Osborn (James
Franco) has taken over Oscorp in the wake
of his father's death, and still blames
Spidey for the loss, unaware that his father
was in fact the murderous Green Goblin.
Peter, on the other hand,
is trying to balance the dual life of a
mild-mannered college student and a masked
crimefighter. Unfortunately, being a tireless
defender of justice doesn't pay well and
Parker is forced to deliver pizzas and attempt
to pry a few more bucks from the pocket
of penny-pinching Daily Bugle editor
J. Jonah Jameson (TK Simmons), the very
man that has half the population of New
York thinking Spidey is a villain. It's
hard for Peter to even make it to class,
a deficiency noted by esteemed professor
Dr. Curt Connors (Dylan Baker) who patiently
awaits Peter's paper about colleague Dr.
Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina) and his fusion
device being funded by Oscorp.
As you might imagine, Octavius's
fusion device goes horribly wrong and the
good doctor becomes one with four artificially-intelligent
robotic limbs, earning him the Daily Bugle
nickname Doc Ock. (Jameson, in one of the
script's gentle jabs at the superhero world,
makes a crack about the odds of a guy named
Octavius becoming a villain with multiple
arms.) Obsessed with building a bigger,
better fusion device, the good doctor turns
to a life of crime and clashes with Spider-Man.
To boil the flick down to
a black-and-white battle between Spidey
and Doc Ock is to do the film a huge injustice.
Raimi – ably assisted by a story from
SMALLVILLE creators Alfred Gough and Miles
Millar and novelist/comic fan Michael Chabon
– has concocted nothing short of the
best superhero tale ever brought to life.
The best comics are not simply slam-bang
action epics, they're mythic tales of the
good and evil in all of us and how some
people choose good while others choose evil.
They're also about relationships,
and that's where SPIDER-MAN 2 really shines.
Peter has a genuine bond with his Aunt May
(Rosemary Harris) but feels consumed with
guilt over the death of Uncle Ben (Cliff
Robertson) at the hands of a criminal he
could have stopped. Fearing that his enemies
could use her to get to him, Peter pushes
Mary Jane away, and into the arms of John
Jameson (Daniel Gillies), the astronaut
son of his Daily Bugle boss. And
best friend Harry, consumed with avenging
his father's death at the hands of Spider-Man,
eventually boils over with a murderous rage
that sets the film's third act into rocket-fueled
motion.
As good as SPIDER-MAN was,
everything is better here. The effects,
occasionally hokey the first time out, are
dead solid perfect, featuring flawless scenes
of Spider-Man flying through the city, capturing
criminals and fighting crime. The action
sequences – particularly an edge-of-your-seat,
heart-pounding battle atop and inside a
NYC elevated train – make everything
that has come before them look like the
work of amateurs.
The script by Alvin Sargent
juggles everything from romantic-comedy
and action-adventure to emotion-packed drama
and superhero-shenanigans. The acting, save
for the alarmingly one-note Franco, has
been ratcheted up a notch. The chemistry
between Maguire and Dunst is still strong,
though I hope the filmmakers don't go to
the "villain holds Mary Jane hostage"
well a third time. And Molina, well, it's
nothing short of the single best superhero
villain performance of all-time. His Dr.
Octavius/Doc Ock is played to perfection,
bringing to life not only his character
but the mechanical arms that conspire to
lead him to a life of crime. And it doesn't
hurt that his face is exposed, letting Molina
give this genius a heart and sense of humor
to go along with the madness that consumes
him.
But the film belongs to director
Sam Raimi, who fuses his love for superheroes
(previously shown in DARKMAN and SPIDER-MAN)
with his knack for darkly comic horror (the
scene in which Doc Ock comes alive gets
its twisted energy from Raimi's groundbreaking
EVIL DEAD flicks), gentle parody and getting
the most from his actors.
