Two years ago, the big-budget, blockbuster version of Spider-Man was darned near perfect. The only thing wrong with it was, well, Spider-Man, or rather, the computer-generated, high-tech version of everyone's fav-orite webslinger.
It was highly distracting every time the flesh-and-blood Spidey gave way to a cheesily bouncing, computer-generated thing that sprung off the sides of buildings like a red-and-blue beach ball.
The bad news is that the beach ball is back.
PHOTO COURTESY OF BVI
The good news is that nearly everything else about director Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 (which opened on Wednesday) is, again, close to perfect, from the acting to its reverence for the original comic book. There are even a few winking nods at movie heroes past and several sly scenes portraying the everyday absurdities one would encounter while scaling New York City in red and blue skivvies.
When last we saw young Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), Spider-Man's alter-ego, he was stoically walking away from a future with true love Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), because their relationship put her in danger from his various strangely costumed enemies. (I also think he's one of those mopey guys who doesn't know how to do happy.)
Peter's other joy-obstacle was the ocean of guilt he'd been drowning in, ever since he failed to catch a robber who wound up killing his Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson). That incident, along with a radioactive spider bite, spurred Peter's leap into the wall-crawling hero business.
PHOTO COURTESY OF BVI
Also, his first arch nemesis, Green Goblin, was really the father of Pete's best friend, Harry. And when Harry (James Franco) discovered Spider-Man over his dad's dead body, Harry swore vengeance on the masked man, not knowing he was his best friend. Yikes!
It was all very messy, and since it wasn't really an option to take Harry out for a beer and say, "Dude, I was sorta in a fight-to-the-death with your father, but he was really a psycho threatening the city and, well, he started it," Peter is pushed further into the guilt mill.
Now, a couple of years later, Harry is running his dad's company, OsCorp, and has temporarily traded in his petulant "Rebel With A Trust Fund" pout for oily corporate showmanship. Mary Jane, or MJ, is acting, modeling and dating an astronaut (Daniel Gillies), and Peter's delivering pizza, still free-lancing pictures of Spidey for the Daily Bugle and saving the city in skintight PJs.
But Pete's becoming aware that Spidey duties cut into his homework time, and he can't pay his rent because he can't work while he's busy saving people. And friends Harry and MJ are getting a little annoyed at him for never showing up to meet them and being generally unreliable.
Once again, here's a situation where the real explanation -- "Fine! Next time I'll just let that busload of nuns and puppies plunge to the bottom of the East River!" -- just won't cut it. So Peter has to watch as Harry rants about killing Spider-Man and while MJ gets closer and closer to the bland-ish astronaut, who happens to be the son of rabid Daily Bugle editor Jonah Jameson (JK Simmons)
Meanwhile, his professor (Dylan Baker) tells Peter that he's got one last chance to salvage his academic career -- a project on brilliant scientist Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), an OsCorp-funded genius who's created a machine that will allow man to harness matter. Octavius and Peter hit it off, and the good doctor invites the student to the heralded unveiling of his machine.
You don't have to be a brilliant scientist to guess that something goes (repeat after me) horribly, horribly wrong, causing the six-armed machine to go kablooey, blow up Octavius' lab and fuse irrevocably to Octavius' body. And when Peter changes into his Spidey suit and saves Harry from the ruckus, Harry freaks out and dedicates himself anew to exterminating his nemesis for good.
Octavius, or Doc Ock, as the newly eight-armed villain comes to be called, is the element that sends Spider-Man 2 into the stratosphere, far outdoing the original. See, you can't have a good comic-book flick without a good, conflicted supervillain. Although Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) was scary-crazy, he just wasn't a kick-butt, over-the-top agent of doom like, say, Jack Nicholson's Joker in Batman.
But Doc Ock, inhabited by British stage actor Molina, has a serious operatic God complex going on, fueled by the evil tentacles that whisper destructive suggestions into his ear. And Raimi, who cut his teeth on wild-n-cheesy fantasy action fare such as the Evil Dead series and Darkman, uses this opportunity to cut loose with a combo of somewhat restrained violence and a clever comic streak.
For instance, Doc Ock's tentacles not only spur him to do bad things but also helpfully light his cigars and remove his rakishly placed fedora from his head. They're just cool like that.
Also cool is Tobey Maguire's talent at making Peter Parker vulnerable without making him seem like a weenie. Ditto for Dunst -- the first time around, MJ was sort of a redheaded, miniskirted bundle of need, but you cheer for her this time when she puts her foot down and dares Pete to admit he loves her or stop mooning at her already. We've all been there.
And the always amazing James Franco, who usually seems to be channeling James Dean (whom he played in a TNT biopic), gives Harry just the right amount of edge and grief-driven fury without making him utterly villainous.
Even with the sequel's increased edge, Raimi allows some too-obvious moments. There's a particularly syrupy speech by Aunt May (Rosemary Harris), who tells Pete about the importance of heroes and destiny and rainbows and puppies and other inspirational hooey stolen directly from a high school graduation song. Blech. I almost expected Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and the Up With People choir to appear on the stoop and provide backup.
But the cheese cannot quell the awesome rush of the fast-paced action sequences that out-thrill any Lethal Weapon movie, as well as the human fireworks exploding between Peter, MJ and Harry.
And by the time it's all over, Raimi has neatly set up Spider-Man 3 while adding an emotional coda to an already compelling story. I'd hope that next time they find a way to make the computer effects a little less obvious. But otherwise, I wouldn't mind a few more sequels like this one.
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