One of the sources of Spider-Man’s lasting appeal has been his rogue’s gallery of villains. Over the 55 years of the character’s existence, he has had an impressive array of colorful bad guys to face. In fact, I’d argue that no other hero at Marvel has as wide a range of interesting villains as Spidey: the Green Goblin, the Vulture, the Hobgoblin, Venom, the Lizard, the Sandman, Electro, the Shocker, the Rhino, Carnage, Tombstone, the Scorpion, Kraven the Hunter, etc., etc., etc.
Having said that, the prime spot in Spidey’s rogues gallery has pretty much always belonged to Otto Octavius, a.k.a. Dr. Octopus. Many of the seemingly endless drafts of Spider-Man had Doc Ock as the bad guy before they settled on the Green Goblin instead. So it’s not real surprising that Octavius would be the villain in Spider-Man 2.
From his first appearance in Amazing Spider-Man #3 in 1963, Dr. Octopus was a compelling antagonist. Some of Spidey’s greatest stories have involved Ock as the bad guy, from the “Master Planner” storyline in Amazing Spider-Man #31-32 (in which Ock dropped twelve tons of machinery on Spider-Man’s back, and he threw it off himself in one of the all-time classic Spidey scenes) to the classic Superman vs. Spider-Man crossover (in which Ock teamed up with Lex Luthor to fight Supes and Spidey) to the recent “Superior Spider-Man” storyline (in which Ock succeeded in taking over Peter Parker’s body and posing as Spider-Man, wanting to prove that he would be a superior Spider-Man to the original).
When Cannon Films had the rights to a Spider-Man movie, Stan Lee wrote a treatment that had Doc Ock as the bad guy, and it tied Octavius’s work with radiation to the radioactive spider that bit Peter Parker and turned him into Spider-Man. When work began on Spider-Man 2, Doc Ock, the Lizard, and the Black Cat were all going to be villains in the story, which at first was written by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar (the developers of Smallville for what was then the WB). Other drafts were by David Koepp (writer of the first film) and Michael Chabon (author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay). Chabon, like Stan the Man, tied Octavius’s work to the genetically engineered spider that bit Parker in the first movie.
Alvin Sargent was brought in to sift through the three drafts with Sam Raimi and pick the best elements. In particular, Raimi wanted this film to emulate Superman II and the classic Spidey comics story in Amazing Spider-Man #50, “Spider-Man No More!” which ended with Parker giving up being Spidey, leaving his costume on a trash can in the iconic final panel, which Raimi re-created in this movie. (The deluxe box set DVD of the movie comes with a minicomic of ASM #50.)
Most of the cast from the first movie came back, including Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man), Kirsten Dunst (Mary Jane), Rosemary Harris (Aunt May), James Franco (Harry Osborn), J.K. Simmons (J. Jonah Jameson), Cliff Robertson (Uncle Ben), and Willem Dafoe (Norman Osborn). Of note regarding the latter three is that the filmmakers recognized how brilliant Simmons was in the first film, and so beefed up his role considerably in the sequel, and both Robertson and Dafoe come back for cameos as hallucinations of, respectively, Peter’s and Harry’s.
Alfred Molina was cast as Octavius, with Donna Murphy playing Rosalie Octavius, Daniel Gillies playing Jameson’s son John, and Dylan Baker playing Dr. Curt Connors. Rosalie was a new character created for the movie. In the comics, Octavius has really only had one love interest, a fellow scientist he knew before he went villainous. John and Connors are both from the comics, John first appearing in the debut issue of Amazing Spider-Man—his background as an astronaut is kept intact, though not his future as Man-Wolf—while Connors became the Lizard in the comics. The character later appears in The Amazing Spider-Man and actually becomes the Lizard, played by Rhys Ifans.
“I believe there’s a hero in all of us”
Spider-Man 2
Written by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar and Michael Chabon and Alvin Sargent
Directed by Sam Raimi
Produced by Laura Ziskin and Avi Arad
Original release date: June 30, 2004
It’s been two years since the last movie (which we get a summary of in the form of comic-book-style artwork of still from the film over the opening credits—hey, remember when movies had opening credits? I really miss those days…). Harry is now running Oscorp and he’s funding a project run by Dr. Otto Octavius to harness tritium as an energy source. Peter is living in a crummy room-share and attending Columbia University, since Norman Osborn is no longer alive to pay for the nice apartment he and Harry lived in (and Harry’s living in the Osborn family mansion now anyhow). Why Peter hasn’t moved back in with Aunt May is never addressed, especially since she’s facing foreclosure on the house due to late mortgage payments. Mary Jane has gotten some modeling work and is in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest; she’s also dating the astronaut John Jameson, the son of J. Jonah Jameson. Peter has continued selling pictures of Spider-Man to the Jameson at the Daily Bugle, but Jameson continues to insist that Spider-Man is a menace. The web-slinger himself, however, is loved by most of the public.
Being a full-time superhero and a full-time student doesn’t leave much time for work. He doesn’t make enough as Spider-Man’s “personal photographer” to support himself, but his responsibilities as a superhero keep him from holding down a job. (We see him failing to deliver a pizza on time, even though he web-swings to the delivery destination.) It’s not doing his college career any favors, as one of his professors, Dr. Curt Connors, threatens to fail him if he doesn’t get his fecal matter together.
Peter is doing a paper on Octavius’s work. Connors is a friend of his, so he expects good things, and he’s working for Harry, and Peter is able to leverage his best friend to meet his idol. Octavius is reluctant to talk to some random student, but he is the boss’s best friend, so he agrees—however, Octavius, Peter, and Octavius’s wife Rosalie get along like a house on fire. Octavius invites Peter to attend the demonstration of his reactor.
Distracted by a crisis as Spider-Man, Peter is unable to make it to MJ’s play. MJ is disappointed, and pretty much writes him off, as he claimed to be her friend and there for her no matter what at Norman’s funeral, but he’s the only one of her friends and family who hasn’t seen her perform. She realizes the empty seat in the theatre is the perfect metaphor for their friendship.
Octavius has his demonstration. (Hilariously, Peter has no trouble arriving on time for that.) He manipulates the elements with four “smart arms”—basically high-end waldoes that are hooked into his spine and respond to his thoughts. The experiment goes horribly wrong, but Octavius insists that it will stabilize and refuses to shut it down. The reaction becomes incredibly magnetic, and anything metal in the room is pulled toward the reaction. Peter changes to Spider-Man and manages to pull the plug on the reaction, but not before a window frame is yanked toward the reaction, the broken glass killing Rosalie.
Octavius is taken to the hospital where a surgical team tries to remove the arms, but the arms instead go crazy and kill everyone in the operating room. Octavius wakes up and leaves the hospital (completely unnoticed by security or anyone else, as no one seems to react to a patient killing an entire surgical team). Setting up in an abandoned dock, he decides to re-create his experiment, only with more tritium this time. In order to purchase the equipment, he robs a bank—one where Peter and Aunt May are unsuccessfully trying to get a loan to pay the mortgage. Spider-Man foils the robbery, though Octavius takes May hostage. However, Spider-Man saves her after an extended battle on the side of a building. (At one point, a chunk of debris falls to the sidewalk and almost hits a little girl, but she’s pulled out of the way by someone who looks just like Stan Lee.)
On several occasions, Spider-Man’s powers have cut out on him, to the point where he needs glasses again. (A doctor finds nothing wrong with him, and thinks whatever issues he’s having might be psychological rather than physical.) Between that, the fact that he can’t be with MJ when he’s a superhero because of the danger to her, and constantly reading in the Bugle that he’s a menace (the paper’s headline is that Spidey helped Octavius rob the bank, not that he stopped him), he decides to quit being Spider-Man, leaving his costume in a trash can in an alley. A sanitation worker finds the costume and sells it to Jameson, who hangs it on the wall and puts out a “SPIDER-MAN NO MORE!” headline.
For a while, things are better. He gets to see MJ’s play and his grades improve. But May is still being forced to move out of her house, and MJ is still getting married to John Jameson. Plus, the crime rate is skyrocketing, and Peter eventually just can’t keep not helping people. He rescues a little girl from a fire, though someone else in the building did die whom he didn’t know about until it was too late.
Octavius has stolen or bought with stolen money all the equipment he needs—now he just needs tritium. He goes to forcibly take some from Harry, but Harry offers him a deal: bring him Spider-Man, and Octavius can have all the tritium he wants. Octavius agrees, and Harry tells him that Peter Parker is his best bet to find Spidey, given their relationship involving Bugle photos.
MJ and Peter have coffee. MJ can’t stop thinking about Peter and wants to find out where their relationship stands. She also wants to kiss him once, as she still thinks that Peter might be Spider-Man based on the similarities between their kisses.
Before they can kiss, however, Octavius throws a car through the coffee shop window. He tells Peter to find Spider-Man and meet him at the West Side Tower, and he kidnaps MJ to accentuate the point.
MJ being kidnapped is enough to plow through whatever is going through his head and cutting off access to his powers, as he tosses debris aside and gets rid of his glasses. After stealing his costume back from Jameson, he goes to confront Octavius. They have an endless fight, which includes a lengthy sequence on an elevated train (neat trick, since they’re in Manhattan, and there’s very little by way of elevated trains in Manhattan, not to mention that none of them end as abruptly as this track does). Octavius sabotages the train forcing Spidey to stop it, a Herculean effort that exhausts him. The crowd on the train try to protect Spidey out of gratitude, but to no avail.
Octavius brings Spidey to Harry, who gives Octavius a crapton of tritium. Harry then unmasks Spidey and is shocked to see that he’s Peter. Already having trouble getting how his best friend could have killed his father, Peter convinces him to let him go to stop Octavius from destroying the city and killing MJ, whom he’s kidnapped. Harry, not knowing until now that Octavius has kidnapped his erstwhile love interest, lets him go.
Octavius, with a bound MJ nearby, activates his new reactor, which has an even more violent reaction than the first one. Metal bits from all around the dock started being drawn in. Spidey shows up, and they fight. At one point, Octavius is electrocuted, and that, plus Peter unmasking to try to talk to him, gets him back to himself, as Peter reaches the good man he met at Oscorp rather than the psychopath he’s become. Determined not to die a monster, Octavius sacrifices himself to stop the reaction, which is now functioning independent of the reactor.
Meanwhile, MJ has now seen that Peter and Spider-Man are one and the same. He saves her life from a heavy bit of debris and admits that he loves her. But he also lets her go back to John’s waiting arms.
Harry is tormented by the revelation that Peter is Spider-Man, and a hallucination of his father in the mirror encourages him to kill him anyhow. Harry shatters the mirror in anger, and discovers that the mirror hid a secret door to a cache of weaponry and armor belonging to the Green Goblin. Harry now knows the truth about his father.
Days later, it’s the Jameson-Watson wedding, and MJ backs out at the last second, leaving a note for John and running to Peter’s apartment in her wedding gown. She declares that she loves him, and that she is a grownup whom he should let make her own decisions about who she wants to love, not self-righteously decide to protect her. Good for her. Then they hear sirens, and she encourages him to put on his Spidey suit and be responsible and stuff. He swings out the window, leaving MJ standing in his crappy apartment in a wedding dress.
“He’s just a kid, no older than my son”
Let me start by saying that I’ve always loved Dr. Octopus as a villain as portrayed in the comics. I’ve even gotten to write the character, in a short story in the Untold Tales of Spider-Man anthology in 1997. (I’m proud to say that some of the things I established in that story later became part of the official canon, as it were, as Tom DeFalco incorporated it into a Doc Ock story in Spider-Man Unlimited that same year.) In the comics, Ock is a bitter, miserable person, a genius who had a horrible upbringing, and turned into a psychopath. He was always a worthy foe of Spider-Man, a brilliant scientist and clever tactician. The Superior Spider-Man storyline where Octavius took over as Spider-Man was a simply fantastic storyline by Dan Slott, one of the cleverest takes on the Spidey/Ock rivalry.
I’ve always loved Alfred Molina, and he does a decent job with this role, it just doesn’t come across to me as the Otto Octavius I’ve been reading about for all these decades. And that isn’t in and of itself a bad thing, but what they changed him to is spectacularly uninteresting and badly handled.
Okay, first of all, they completely botch the notion that Octavius was a nice, compassionate guy until the accident that killed his wife. It could have worked, but as actually shown, it’s ridiculous, as they play it as if the arms themselves are somehow controlling him, or at least influencing him. On top of that, at no point do we see Octavius actually mourning his wife, or responding to the fact that he’s killed tons of people—like, say, when Peter brings him back to himself at the very end. One utterance of “I will not die a monster” isn’t enough. Bad enough that they fridged Rosalie, but they don’t even really do anything with it.
Ultimately, the psychotic break seems to be happening because of the arms, a notion that doesn’t really make any sense, and both gets Octavius off the hook and makes Dr. Octopus completely uninteresting as a villain.
And that’s only half the problem with the movie. The fight scenes are decently done, but there are too many of them, and they go on too long. Maguire continues to be a good Peter Parker—I especially love the bit at the reception when he keeps trying to grab an hors d’oeuvre or a drink and not getting to the tray until it’s empty, which is a classic example of the ol’ Parker luck—but his Spider-Man is lifeless. That was workable in the first movie because it was the first movie and he was still feeling his way around, but now he’s two years into being Spidey and the best he can come up with for witty banter is telling a kid to eat his vegetables?
One of the problems with Spider-Man as a live-action hero is one of the things that makes him effective as a superhero with a secret identity. An issue generally with superheroes in live action is that the feebleness of the disguise is more obvious. This goes all the way back to the first-ever superhero movie, Superman and the Mole Men, where George Reeves did nothing to differentiate Clark Kent from Superman in any way, so it’s impossible to credit that nobody has figured out the secret identity. This continued for a long time, as seen in so many places, brought into sharp relief in, as one example, the Justice League of America pilot in which Guy Gardner’s girlfriend doesn’t recognize him under the domino mask Green Lantern wears, which strains credulity well past the breaking point.
Spider-Man’s costume has always been one of the better ones for preserving a secret ID because all the usual indicators of identity are hidden: skin tone, hair color, distinguishing marks, facial hair, and eye color are all completely obscured, and you can’t really tell his height either, because he spends most of his time doing odd acrobatics and generally gadding about with his spine practically folded in half.
But—as we’ll see again in the MCU with Iron Man—this means that your lead actor’s face is hidden, which makes it hard for said actor to be expressive. In the climax of the first movie, this was addressed by having Green Goblin’s weapons cut through the mask, revealing part of his face. It’s far worse in this movie, as Spider-Man loses his mask at several critical moments so Maguire can be expressive—particularly the dopey elevated train rescue. (Digression: it’s not dopey because it’s a train rescue—it’s actually a classic villain move, distracting the hero by endangering innocents, and I like the way the people on the train support Spidey in the end, though the mosh-pit bit when they bring him onto the train is goofy as hell. No, it’s dopey because the elevated train setup makes nothing like sense, especially that sudden end to the tracks and a drop off. All elevated subway tracks in New York end at actual stations with much more structure past the end of the tracks precisely so something like that doesn’t happen with an out-of-control train.)
But ultimately, while I always felt like I was watching a story about Peter Parker, I never once felt like I was watching Spider-Man. Part of Spidey’s appeal is that he’s a regular person, but a good one, who has problems, but who is also a hero, and who is also generally optimistic despite the best efforts of the universe, and also one with a great sense of humor. We get the problems, and we get the heroism, but we also get a Peter who’s a bit too mopey, and we never get the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, just a CGI effect whose primary dialogue while web-swinging is a loop of the “woo hoo!” from the first movie.
As for the rest of the cast, Molina does well with what he has to work with, and while wearing a really weird outfit (a duster over an exposed torso and the harness for the arms), even if the script fails him. Rosemary Harris is a perfect Aunt May, from her slapping the wrist of the bank manager who tries to steal a gold coin to her hero speech to Peter that is part of what inspires him to put the Spidey suit back on. J.K. Simmons continues to hit it out of the park as Jameson. Kirsten Dunst doesn’t have nearly enough to do as MJ, but I like the way she whups Peter upside the head, both after he fails to show up for her play and she proceeds to list everyone who did make it, and at the end when she tells him to let her decide for herself who to love. (Having said that, leaving John at the altar is a really skeevy move and doesn’t make her look good at all. Sure, it seems like a grand romantic gesture, but mostly it’s screwing the Jameson family out of money and being spectacularly rude to your wedding guests.)
Unfortunately, James Franco doesn’t come across well at all here. His performance is all surface, and not even a very nice surface. He just doesn’t sell Harry as a person at any point in the movie, least of all when he stumbles backwards after unmasking Spidey and it feels like we’re watching a high school senior try to act. It’s weird, because Franco’s generally an excellent actor, as recently as the first film, but he’s just completely off throughout this one.
Overall, a disappointing sequel, but it did well enough to justify making a third in 2007, which we’ll cover next week.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is pleased to announce that his high fantasy/police procedure series is back in print with the re-release of a new edition of Dragon Precinct from eSpec Books. This new edition also has the bonus short story “Gan Brightblade vs. Mitos the Mighty.” Coming soon are new editions of Unicorn Precinct, Goblin Precinct, Gryphon Precinct, and Tales from Dragon Precinct, followed by the long-awaited next book in the series Mermaid Precinct.
(neat trick, since they’re in Manhattan, and there’s very little by way of elevated trains in Manhattan, not to mention that none of them end as abruptly as this track does)
New Yorkers, man. Always bitching about getting city details wrong.
(I kid, I kid. As Keith knows I’m also a New Yorker. And New York is very much a character in these movies, as witness last time and the “you mess with New York” sequence.)
Wow. This might be the first negative review I’ve ever seen for this movie. Spider-Man 2 is usually hailed as the gold standard of comic book movies.
Interesting – I remember loving this when it came out, although I was also upset by the ‘leaving at the altar’ trope. Like you, I get that it’s always played as this grand, empowering, romantic gesture (and obviously it’s right for MJ to be true to herself, and to tell Peter that she can take the risk if she wants) but it’s also an enormously selfish and hurtful one, and usually such usages of the trope don’t really explore the wreckage they leave behind for the others (since we have no reason to believe that her intended was abusive or coercive in any way).
But other than that, I enjoyed Peter’s struggles, but I was kind of into mopey/sensitive guys back then, lol. I also liked Molina a lot, but I agree you never quite got enough about his motivations (I basically accepted for the sake of suspension of disbelief that the AI in the arms was influencing him in the wake of his injuries/trauma) and Rosalie was wasted. But I also had no previous knowledge of the character.
Austin: I never liked this movie, and never understood the love it always got. The funny thing is, I actually enjoyed it more this time than when I first saw in 14 years ago.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’ve seen this twice and both times I walk away wondering why the NYPD doesn’t do its job and have a sniper on the SWAT team take the shot. Ock has no superpowers and no armor.
Spider-Man 2 was very probably the best superhero movie I’d ever seen up to that point, and the “very probably” is just me being cautious. Almost everything works if not downright delights, from the opening Alex Ross paintings recapping the first film (brilliant idea, the best “Previously on…” ever) to that last sweet saxophone riff at the end of the closing titles.
It was a classic Spidey-type story, showing the everyday hardships of being a superhero, like laundry hassles and itchy spandex. (I bet we’ve never seen Superman mix up his whites and colors.) Of course the story of Peter trying to walk away from the superhero life is another classic trope. While it was kind of predictable in a way — everything in Peter’s life falling apart one after another, with his life as Spidey responsible (or at least blamed) for all of it — Raimi and the writers handled it with sensitivity and strong dramatic effect. And whatever my opinion about Maguire not being right for Peter Parker, he can always be counted on to deliver a sensitive performance. The moment where he “told” Uncle Ben that he was walking away was potent, and the scene where he confessed his guilt to May was captivating.
The origin story they gave Octavius here was also quite effective. Giving him a loving marriage and taking it away from him was wrenching — I had to look away when that shard of glass came at Rosie. The one problem is that they didn’t really follow up on Octavius’s loss. Aside from a momentary cry of grief, they focussed more on the control the arms had over Octavius, driving him to finish his work. Maybe on some level that was him hiding from his guilt at Rosie’s death, denying that his experiment had failed. But if so, I didn’t really get the sense that Rosie’s death had very much impact on the story, as potent as it was at the time.
Still, Doc Ock was a really effective villain here, even more so than Gobby was in the first film. He came off as far more powerful and menacing than he’s ever seemed in any other version, thanks to the brilliant design of his tentacles and Alfred Molina’s commanding performance. And unlike Keith, I thought the way the writers approached the character was intriguing — the arms as entities with minds of their own, taking him over, holding him prisoner to their programmed imperative to finish his work, making him pursue it with ruthless, machinelike efficiency, and with the cold, predatory malevolence of the serpents they resemble. Another idea that’s been done before, but handled very effectively.
I was also glad that they allowed Octavius to redeem himself, to become a hero at the end. It tied in nicely with what May said earlier, about there being a hero in all of us — which was really the theme of this movie. We saw it in May when she proved herself a pluckier hostage than Ock had bargained with. We saw it in that little girl in the burning building who helped pull Peter up when he fell. We saw it in the brilliant, moving scene with the subway passengers, a sequence that made me cry. We implicitly saw it in Harry — for a moment, anyway — when he accepted Peter’s statement that there were bigger things at stake, and told him where to find Octavius. And we saw it in MJ at the end, when she chose to accept the risk of doing the right thing, and choosing to be with Peter. The movie shows that heroism isn’t the sole province of a superpowered elite, but something we all have the potential for. (Even Stan Lee got to be a hero again.)
This film made up for the first film’s underuse of Jameson, and J. K. Simmons did a better job of playing him. The one misfire was his overly broad turnaround when he confessed to being wrong about Spidey and then did an instant 180 when Spidey took his costume back. I didn’t buy it — JJJ might grudgingly admit that Spidey was the only one who could take on Doc Ock, but he wouldn’t admit Spidey was a hero. Meanwhile, Rosemary Harris was still absolutely the perfect Aunt May, and pretty much stole the show. But what were the odds that of all the people in that crowd, Ock would just happen to grab Spider-Man’s aunt?
I did feel there were just too many unmaskings in this film. Each one worked in its own way — although Peter unmasking himself to Octavius seemed a bit too casual — but cumulatively they were a bit much.
And this Spidey isn’t as creative with his webbing as the comics’ Spidey. When he was trying to stop the train, I wondered why he didn’t try gumming up the wheels with webbing, or spraying it on the tracks to make them sticky. He could also have spun his webbing into a large drag chute.
But I do like how populist these movies are. The citizens aren’t just an undifferentiated mass standing around waiting for rescue or blindly buying what the Daily Bugle tells them; they’re individuals with minds and wills of their own, and they play a part in the story.
Overall, this was a very effective film. It worked as action, it worked as comedy, it worked as drama. It was well-directed on a technical level and on a human level, and its misfires were few.
Oh, by the way, Mageina Tovah, who played the landlord’s sweet daughter Ursula, now has a recurring role on Syfy’s The Magicians as the Head Librarian.
While I agree with everything said about the “Leaving him at the altar,” trope, I will forgive its use in this movie because it let JK Jameson whisper to his wife, “Call the caterer. Tell her not to open the caviar.”
So my favorite pop culture reference to Spider-Man #50 is this song by the Dexateens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxNTnetoSjI
It wasn’t until I read this article that it occurred to me they also have a runaway bride song on that record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfj6cRqHP64
Coincidence? Probably. But maybe not. If I get to see them again any time soon–missed ’em by that much a week or so ago–I’ll ask. I’m curious now.
I’ll always remember being just as offended as a teenage science nerd can be that they put out a tiny nuclear reaction with a river.
I thought this one was as good as its predecessor. Which is no mean trick, because sequels almost never stand up well. I thought Molina did a good job as Ock, and that is one of the reasons I liked it so well.
I don’t, really. When they started disappearing, I started to realize just how much I welcomed their disappearance. Because they didn’t cut down from the length of the end credits – everything gets repeated at the end. And the style these days seems to be to have the most notable credits in the format of the old opening credits WITH BIG SINGLE LINES of only one name/title each, and then they follow up a minute or two later with the crawl of everyone else. So.. they basically just take the opening and move it to right before the end, so to speak.
I like it much better that way, although I think I would feel differently if they just did the crawl and didn’t call out the primary players.
This trilogy is next on watching with my teenagers, we did the Nolan Batman trilogy last month.
My main nitpick was the abuse Ock’s body was taking…with no actual superpowers some of falls and acrobatics going on should have broken him in some manner. I have the same issue with Stark/Ironman…sure he is wearing advanced armor, but a human body hitting a tree hard enough to snap the tree is going to leave on helluva mark. Justice League did ok with portraying Batman as actually being way out of his league as a squishy human in a fight with meta-humans, as the bruising and dislocated shoulder showed.
One hilarious critique I remember reading was about the scene where Ock throws the car through the window to get Peter’s attention…he didn’t know Peter was Spidey, and lucky for him he was otherwise that car would have crushed them both instead of just getting their attention!
I liked this movie better than the first. I generally liked the action sequences better–I quite liked the train sequence, and also the scene where Otto throws the car through the window. And I thought that Molina was an interesting casting choice, and generally worked better as a sympathetic villain who might actually like Peter–no offense to Dafoe, but Osborn’s attempts to play father-figure to Peter never made much sense. Do they ever really explain why Spider-man is losing his powers though? Is it basically just performance anxiety?
I’m not as sure how well this would hold up rewatching it more than ten years later. Some of the problems mentioned in the article are things that were set up in the first movie; the arc of MJ and Harry’s characters was already put into place. I just re-watched the ending scene, and it ultimately seems like a dark foreboding of the next movie; Mary-Jane tells Peter that she loves him, and he says ‘thanks,’ and then heads off to fight crime while she stares wistfully after him. This kind of verifies what I remember; that it doesn’t really feel like Peter and MJ are madly in love, and so all of this pining is going to end in disappointment. Also that Maguire’s Peter doesn’t really feel like someone who enjoys being Spider-man, so why is he in such a rush to ditch her?
Quoth Colin R: “Also that Maguire’s Peter doesn’t really feel like someone who enjoys being Spider-man, so why is he in such a rush to ditch her?”
Spider-Man’s entire reason for being as a superhero is because he put his own needs ahead of his responsibilities as a person with abilities far beyond those of normal teenagers, and his father figure died because of that selfishness. Him enjoying it has nothing to do with it, it’s his sense of guilt and responsibility. He’s not in a rush to ditch MJ, he’s in a rush to be Spider-Man because if he isn’t, someone else may die.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
KRAD, another interesting trivia note, the name of Peter’s Landord Mr Ditkovitcb was an homage to the name of Steve Ditko…Part of me also wonders if Ursula was some sort of pastiche for Deb Whitman…@CLB Number 6, the Ock/May hostage scene may be a throwback to the comics, where for a time at least, May was oblivious to Ock’s evil doings and he would take advantage of that, at times with romantic wooings…I’ll go into more detail on my thoughts on the film when I have time later…Im almost in same mind of it as KRAD was, dont like using such superlatives much, but found it to be somewhat overrated…
My preference is definitely for the first Raimi film when it comes to Spidey, but this one does give it a run for its money.
I disagree with our esteemed reviewer when it comes to the change to Doc Ock. I think the comic book version of Octavius – particularly the version from the Lee/Ditko/Romita era that at least the first couple Raimi films draw heavily from – would translate badly to film. He really has no redeeming qualities. This Ock works better because we see what broke him. We see that – in fact – he could justify his actions by saying he was doing the greater good. Also, trying to make his wife’s death mean something. And also having the evil arms working on his brain.
Its been a bit since I saw the film, but are we sure that the arms actually KILLED any of the medical staff? I know it’s heavily implied (the scene is the most Evil Dead-ish thing Raimi put into these films), but I don’t recall anything but them throwing people around.
I actually disagree also about this film’s version of Spidey being less interesting than the first film’s. This film had a more humorous Spidey than the first one. I do agree that the endless unmasking (a problem that gets much worse in 3) is annoying. One of the best things about the Homecoming/MCU Spidey is that the eyes allow him to be expressive in the mask.
I remember thinking that the elevated train sequence went on too long, but the payoff is worth it. That said, I’ve always wondered if that scene inspired the moment in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon in which the brain-swapped Luthor looks under Flash’s mask and says “I have no idea who this is.”
Im not sure that I agree that Rosemary Harris is the best Aunt May. I guess I’m most partial to Sally Field in the Andrew Garfield movies. She seems to be the happy medium between the too-doting Harris and Marisa Tomei’s more …. uh … modern take.
The madcap sequence in the hospital where Ock’s arms kill everyone in the room may still be my favorite scene from a superhero movie, at least from the last 20 years. It was such a surprise on first viewing. I wasn’t that familiar with Raimi’s style at the time, but having seen his earlier work since then I appreciate it even more. The studio let him go Evil Dead, and the movie is better for it.
capt_paul77: Yeah, Elya Baskin’s character was a cute tribute to Spidey’s co-creator. I got no kind of Deb Whitman vibe from Ursula beyond her being blonde, and honestly the character didn’t really serve much purpose. I mean, it was nice to see someone being nice to Peter for a change, but still….
And yeah, when I mentioned classic comic stories featuring Doc Ock, there’s a reason why I didn’t mention the storyline where he tried to marry Aunt May to get her inheritance of a Caribbean island that had a nuclear reactor on it. (Yes, really.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@15/capt_paul77: I wasn’t asking why the writers had Ock kidnap May; it’s a standard trope for villains to kidnap people the hero cares about. My point is that, in-universe, Ock had no idea that May was important to Spider-Man. So it was pure coincidence that, out of all the people in that crowd, he just happened to pick her as his kidnap victim. What are the odds?
I guess it could’ve been because she looked like the frailest, most helpless person in the crowd, and thus the best hostage. Shows what he knew.
Incidentally KRAD,agreed about MJ leaving John at the Altar, not only skeezy but too cliche…One of my issues was that I never really bought into MJ’s seeming whirlwind romance/engagement with John, which struck me as a little contrived. I get the need for the Peter/MJ romance drama, but could’ve been better done in other ways…Maybe a rebound with Harry, which would’ve added a different dimension, or better yet maybe a renound with Flash, if only to see his developing into a more mature or redemptive person as shown in the comics, but sorely missing from the Raimi films…
Well, at least we know that Keith isn’t afraid to air highly unpopular opinions.
Oh, and by the way … PTHBTHPTHBTHPTHBTHPTHBTHP! :P
capt_paul77: we don’t know how whirlwind the MJ-John romance was — remember, it’s been two years since Spider-Man, and she could have met John very soon after that movie ended and Peter tossed her to the metaphorical curb as relationship material.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
That’s a lot of words to be wrong.
love this movie!
but ya can’t really stop the sun by getting it wet.
24… You’ll never know until you try!
@krad/22…Point taken…As I said, seemingly whirlwind, I get a lot happens in two years, but somehow to me, from a filmmaking perspective their relationship just struck me as somewhat forced, even understanding the need for the romance dramatics beteeen Peter and MJ..
I don’t think Doc Ock’s psychotic break happened because of the arms. The break happened because of the combination of the guilt over his wife’s death, the failure of his experiment, and his ruined reputation as a scientist. His entire self-worth was invested in those things, and only one of them—the experiment—can theoretically be corrected.
I suppose the argument could be made it’s meant to be a simple AI run amuck story, but I think it’s more human than that. The arms are like the devil on his shoulder, or like Osborn speaking to the Goblin mask and his reflection. They represent their insecurities, driving them to quest for power, revenge, or, in this case, obsessing over failure.
Like many others, I highly anticipated this film, and the only reason I didn’t see it on opening weekend was because I was away on vacation. When I finally did see it, I was left feeling underwhelmed. Still I found it watchable, and a week or so later was invited to see it with a friend, and gave it another chance, and subsequent “second chances” on DVD/Channel Surfing views. In all honesty, I found that I liked it, but didn’t love it…Just seemed to me there were issues with pacing, Krad’s pacing issues related to the action scenes, but to me a lot of pacing was slowed by the downtime/talking scenes. The introspective elements helped define Peter/Spider-Man in the comics, but adapted for the screen, having too much of it didn’t seem to translate well…I thought much of the cast were fine in their roles, again JK Simmons nailing JJJ in particular. However, John made such an unmemorable impression on me that I can’t even remember the name of the actor who played him. My biggest casting problem was with Kirsten Dunst…One of the few flaws I found in the first film was that MJ came off as a weaker antithetical portrayal of the edgy, emotionally mature, self assured and bravado filled MJ I knew (or at least remembered) in the comics and 90s cartoon series. Dunst’s performance only seemed to exasperate that in the second, and MJ came across to me as overly whiny, and having something of an “It’s all about me” attitude. I also found the surgical scene, and some of the Subway scene to be somewhat over the top as well. To me a good movie, not a great one, not as good as the first, better than the third, I think I even liked the Garfield Spideman (at least the first one) better than this one…
Pointless trivia: Alfred Molina was the first actor to be represented in minfig form in three different Lego sets from three separate properties. He has a figure as Doctor Octopus from this movie, as Satipo from Raiders of the Lost Ark (“Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip”), and as Sheik Amar from Prince of Persia (Lego did a very small Prince of Persia line). Warwick Davis has four now, but two are Star Wars characters and two are Harry Potter characters. Chris Pratt has three distinct properties, if you count his voice-acting as Emmett in The Lego Movie. But if you open the door to voice performances, then Dee Bradley Baker vaults to the top with 12 different characters, mostly from Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Brian: that is a magnificent example of pointless trivia, yes. Thank you for sharing. :)
Scotty: opinions can’t be right or wrong, only informed or not. I accept that others do not share my opinion of Spider-Man 2, and that indeed a majority do not. I stand by it anyhow, as it is an informed one. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Wow. I guess that I benefited from relative unfamiliarity with the source material on this one, because Doctor Octopus absolutely works for me and that character is what makes this films great in my mind. This is one of the few Marvel films of which I’d say that the villain is at least as big a key as the hero, but part of it here is that the real villain is Peter’s war within himself.
I also think that the VFX for the amrs/tentacles is superb. That’s just a technical note, but it amazed me how good they looked.
@31/SpaceJim: Familiarity has nothing to do with it. I was familiar with the classic version of Doc Ock, but I still loved this alternate version. It’s not just about whether something is changed or not; heck, just last week, Keith was praising the way the first film changed and added to Spidey’s origin story. It’s just a matter of whether the specific change works well enough. I think it did in this case, Keith thinks it didn’t. Molina’s Octavius is a very different, much more sympathetic character than the comics’ supreme egomaniac, but there’s nothing intrinsically bad about having two or more different interpretations of the same character, not if they’re both interesting and well-done in their own right and offer interesting contrasts.
I loved the arms too, and what impressed me was how much of the FX work with the arms was done practically, with animatronics and puppeteering, rather than digitally. There were digital shots, of course, when we saw Ock moving full-length or walking/climbing with the arms, but a lot of the digital FX work was simply erasing the puppeteers, rods, and wires working the physical arms from the shots.
And I liked the CGI version of Ock too, because it had a not-quite-photorealistic quality that reminded me very much of Alex Ross paintings (such as the ones Ross created for the opening titles).
A significant improvement over the first film, but it still falls a tad short of being the classic it’s often hailed as.
The biggest problem is that incorporating the “Spider-Man No More” storyline reduces the conflict between the film’s ostensible protagonist and ostensible antagonist to nearly nothing. There’s no game of cat-and-mouse between Spidey and Ock, no prolonged pursuit – just a hero who has ceased to be one having a very few chance meetings with a villain who is largely just going about his business building a big machine. It’s as if they’re in two different movies, at least one of them less than fully compelling.
Secondly, and I think even Stephen King has pointed this out, it’s absolutely ridiculous that Octavius’ demonstration of the reactor includes an almost tossed-off mention that he has invented mechanical arms that plug directly into his neural network – – and nobody recognizes this as a much bigger story than the one they’ve been summoned there to cover! Seriously, you’ve revolutionized the very concept of prosthetics, and you’re not even going to give that revelation its own public rollout? This is just an afterthought for some reason? On what planet?
I guess the same planet on which a revival of The Importance of Being Earnest is playing on Broadway. Apparently, Raimi thinks the Great White Way is just a more elaborate and better-funded version of a high school drama department. When I noted last week that Raimi reveals himself in these movies to be quite the cornball, this is primarily what I was thinking of. He’s like David Lynch without the irony.
On the plus side, I’m glad krad made a pull quote out of “He’s just a kid; no older than my son” from the train scene. That line really reinforced for me (even after decades of reading the comics) why Spidey is such a special character: He’s like a sidekick without a superhero to protect him and show him the way. Any trial he faces, he struggles through alone. And thus his triumphs are all the more miraculous.
I also love Molina’s delivery of the line “Listen to me now. Listen … to ME now” as he attempts to regain control over his arms. So much of what makes the character work as depicted in the film is down to his performance.
(And thank God we didn’t get the interpretation of Octavius presented in the Chabon script, in which he’s a young hot guy involved in a love triangle with Peter and Mary Jane. Honest to God.)
KRAD- Not sure if you can blame the writers’ lack of Spidey banter on Tobey Maguire (if I understand you correctly.
I still like this movie. Maybe it has been outshined by the MCU movies since, but remember the decades of crap movies before!
What do I think of this? Well…It’s possibly not the all-time classic that it’s often hailed as and possibly not as bad as this review makes out. I take the point about Doctor Octopus, and I’ve seen it pointed out in the past that the version of Octavius in this film actually seems closer to Lizard, a good scientist turned into a monster by an experimental accident and struggling to recover his humanity. (See ASM.) However, I also think that the interpretation of him in this movie works much as it bares very little resemblance to the evil monster from the comics.
I agree that John getting shafted because Mary-Jane has to end up with Peter is very awkward, but we all want Mary-Jane to end up with Peter so we don’t mind that much. And yes, the train passengers’ sympathy towards Peter is a great moment. And yes, Peter gets unmasked way too often in order to show us Tobey Maguire’s face, but as the review points out that is kind of the problem with Spider-Man and one of the reasons why the live action TV series failed, that Spider-Man was just a faceless stuntman. And we do get a great role for Jameson. Interesting that the film chose to give him a wife when I believe he was a widower from the start in the comics.
I think I’m right in saying that the big iconic “SPIDER-MAN NO MORE!” panel is actually the mid-point of Spider-Man #50, with the second half covering the emergence of Kingpin, Peter saving an ageing security guard and being reminded of Uncle Ben, and ending with Spider-Man recovering his costume from Jameson’s office and bantering with him.
@33/Stephen Schneider: Did they ever say that Otto’s arms were an unprecedented breakthrough? It could be that, in the film’s universe, they’re just an incremental advance on an already established cybernetic/prosthetic technology. After all, just because something wasn’t mentioned onscreen before, that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before.
“I guess the same planet on which a revival of The Importance of Being Earnest is playing on Broadway. Apparently, Raimi thinks the Great White Way is just a more elaborate and better-funded version of a high school drama department.”
There have been eight Broadway revivals of The Importance of Being Earnest since its original Broadway debut in 1895. The most recent revival was in 2011. So I don’t know why you’d think this is implausible.
Good point about Spidey being like a sidekick without a hero, though. That’s what made him such a revolutionary character at the time. Young comics readers had been given youthful superheroes to identify with since Robin the Boy Wonder, the Sensational Character Find of 1940, but they’d almost always been sidekicks to adult heroes (except the Star-Spangled Kid, a boy hero who had an adult sidekick, but that still meant he was partnered with a father figure). Spider-Man showed that a teen character could be a solo hero, and it revolutionized superhero storytelling — and started the decline of the teen sidekick as a character type.
@35/cap-mjb: The reasons why the Nicholas Hammond series failed were far more fundamental than the facelessness of the stuntman. And I always felt the suit actor did an excellent job conveying expression through body language and head position, much like the suit actors in Super Sentai/Power Rangers need to do. Although the Electric Company Spidey, who never spoke except in superimposed word balloons, did it first.
“Interesting that the film chose to give him a wife when I believe he was a widower from the start in the comics.”
He was, but his second wife, Marla Madison, was a recurring character in the comics for four decades, introduced in 1976 and being killed off (for now) in 2017.
This was always my favorite of the Raimi Spiderman movies, followed closely by the first one. But then, I never read the comics growing up, so this was all pretty new to me.
Side note, The podcast “Business Wars” is currently running a series on Marvel vs DC. Its a pretty good listen if you’re interested.
That train scene was one of the best scenes in any super hero movie I’ve watched. Sorry the movie about a guy with abilities like a spider fighting a guy with octopus arms didn’t have a realistic train track…
I think I most probably also benefited from not knowing any source material prior to seeing these. This movie (and the first one) were(and yet remain) some of my all-time favourite superhero movies. It’s probably partly because Peter’s life is always a bit pathetic and so I guess I can identify with the character a bit more than most of the other characters? There’s just so much heart in these movies and it probably helped that I saw them first when I was a teenager…but it makes me smile just to remember the various scenes from this movie. Seeing it in cinemas that year with my high school buddies remains a treasured memory.
I also still think that Doc Ock is one of the best superhero villains I’ve ever seen. I truly empathised with him and he seems so much more real and human than most villains. His sorrow and rage over losing his wife…this really hit me hard. And I totally bought into his descent into madness. Loved all the action scenes. And of course that train scene. Chills just thinking about it. I really want to go home and pop this in the dvd player now. =)
In rewatching this movie, I do think there was a bit of a missed opportunity with Harry – at least when taking a long-term view of the trilogy. Imagine if Harry had found the Goblin gear earlier on and then helped to rescue MJ at the end and either died in a battle with Ock – or better yet, flew the mini-sun away from the city and died a hero. Not only would we have had more of a role for Harry in this film, we’d have also cut a sizable chunk of the bloat from the next one … or not.
And apologies if this is a double post. My phone froze up as I tried o post this previously.
@36/Chris:
They’re mechanical prosthetic arms that attach directly to his spine and respond to thought commands. If the movie exists in a universe in which this is merely a refinement of existing tech, that needs to be established with at least one line of dialogue — because that’s way different to the universe we’re living in. But I would think the very fact that Octavius needs to explain the apparatus to the assembled guests indicates that the general public is not at all familiar with it or anything like it, which does indeed make it impossible to swallow that their reaction is essentially “Yeah, whatever. Now about this reactor…”
As to The Importance of Being Earnest and its appearances on Broadway — okay, that’s a total mea culpa. (Although at the time this movie was made, that play hadn’t been performed on The Great White Way for close to 40 years, which explains why the very concept struck me as so anachronistic when I first saw the film.) Maybe I should instead be focusing on the fact that “Mary Jane’s” acting and accent do indeed seem to be straight out of a high school production? ;)
Oh, and if I ever attend a Broadway play and one of the “professional” performers goes up on her line because she was scanning the audience for one of her friends and got thrown off by his unexpected absence — I’m asking for my money back.
@41/Stephen: What, you think the genetically engineered superspiders, strength-enhancing supersoldier formula, and Goblin glider in the first film didn’t already prove this world was more scientifically advanced than our own?
And there are lots of scientific advances that are well-known to scientists but not familiar to the general public. Plus, it’s just polite to explain what you’re doing to your audience, rather than assuming that everyone already knows. Heck, that was driven home to me throughout high school English, with regard to writing essays. Better to risk boring the people who already know what you’re explaining than to risk confusing or excluding the people who don’t.
You’re right about the implausibility of MJ reacting to Peter’s absence, but there’s a different reason. I once went to see a college friend of mine in a play, and she was surprised to see me when I greeted her backstage afterward, because the theater lights were too bright for her to make out faces in the audience. And I was in the front row.
@42/Chris:
I think what we’ve learned here is that everyone has his own personal dividing line between hyper-reality and science fiction, and mechanical arms that attach directly to your spinal column is mine. ;)
But not just for that reason, I think the movie might have been better had the very existence of the arms as technology been more of a focal point. I can see that the filmmakers wanted to do something more plausible than having an explosion fuse a fully external set of proxy limbs to Octavius’ body in a way that both put them under his mental control and drove him mad. But as I’ve noted, the way they handled the alternative they came up with made it no more believable in my mind, by reducing it to an afterthought.
What if we removed the reactor plotline entirely? What if Octavius’ big project had merely been the development of the arms as they are presented in the movie? What if there had been a similar accident at the rollout that had the same effect of making him and them inseparable? What if Spider-Man had been likewise present at this accident, and Doc Ock in his crazed state blamed Spidey for it? What if his quest for revenge dovetailed neatly with that of Harry?
That’s just as much of a movie to me as what we ended up with. It even removes some of the problematic aspects of the reactor plot that have been identified in these comments. Unfortunately, I guess it’s harder to sell a studio on a superhero plot the stakes of which are merely the life of your lead character and the soul of your antagonists, as opposed to the fate of an entire city (or, better yet, the world).
@43/Stephen: The problem is, if it’s just about inventing the arms, why are they these big tentacle things? Why not just make them some kind of more normal prosthetic? The only reason to make the arms like that is so a physically ordinary person can use them to manipulate something — logically, something very unusual or very dangerous that can’t be handled in a more normal way. I mean, if they were just for heavy lifting or carrying, you could just use a forklift. So the arms make more sense as a means to an end than as an end in themselves. Although, yes, the particular end they chose in the movie was very fanciful.
For some reason, this film always stands out for me partially for the discussion my wife and I had about it on the way home from the theater that evening. I don’t recall our exact words any more, but her main commentary was something to this effect: “the writers clearly understood the adage ‘if your protagonist is happy, your audience probably is not’; Peter Parker’s life just seemed to get worse and worse and worse until very near the end, helping to ensure that the whole move was compelling.” On subsequent viewings of the DVD at home, the movie seems to hold up as an excellent example of how to utilize this basic narrative structure to make an engaging story. While this review (as well as the subsequent discussion) lays out a plausible case why someone heavily invested in the characters from the original comics might be disappointed, there are apparently enough people willing to assess the film on its other criteria to explain its popularity: perhaps by some measures this isn’t the best Spider-Man movie, but it seems to be a very strong contender for the best movie featuring Spider-Man.
–
Even with the dizzying speed and the various CGI manipulations applied to the original footage, most of the buildings seen to the sides of the tracks in the train scene are clearly recognizable to those of us who have spent any significant time riding the Brown, Purple, and/or Orange lines around the Loop. I have to imagine that the sticklers for New York authenticity who complain about that scene must be additionally annoyed that the filmmakers had to go to Chicago to get the important shots upon which that scene was constructed. :-)
@45: One of the big draws to me about Spider-Man is the fact that it’s mostly about someone who has learned to do the right thing even when it comes at a personal cost. Exploring those costs and what happens when the needs of his private life clash with those of his heroic life have been the bread and butter of the series for more than 50 years. Overall, this movie did the best, I think, of representing an average issue of a Spider-Man comic than any of the others thus far.
That said, my rankings of the Spidey films would be:
1. Spider-Man
2. Spider-Man 2
3. Spider-Man: Homecoming
4. Amazing Spider-Man
5. Spider-Man 3
666. Amazing Spider-Man 2
@45/Ian: Peter Parker as tortured protagonist is pretty much the core of the comic for the last 50 years. His sense of what “great power and great responsibility” means has driven pretty much every choice in his life. This is reinforced by the fact that every time he tries to give up the webs, as referenced in this movie, karma smacks him down hard.
The comic has certainly played with this. Most recently, and perhaps most interestingly, was a long storyline where Doctor Octopus ended up taking over Peter’s body (long story). With Peter seemingly permanently out of the picture, Doc Ock immediately finished Peter’s PhD, and then founded a tech company that became one of the biggest in the world overnight, with Peter/Octavius himself becoming a Bill Gates / Steve Jobs figure. Ock, of course, assumed he made all this happen because he had the “superior” mind, but it’s also a demonstration of what Peter could do if he’d dial back the guilt a couple of notches.
@46/twels @47/Brian: I’m not suggesting that Raimi’s focus here was particularly unusual or innovative. Quite the contrary! I think Spider-Man is one of the comic-book characters that translates best to the screen precisely because the personal conflicts and struggles that have made Peter/Spidey so compelling for 50+ years have huge amounts of overlap with the conventions of two-hour feature films. One can quibble, as krad has here, whether the right balance was struck between the ‘standard’ human aspects and the more unique elements from the comics; but I don’t think it is difficult to see how Raimi constructed a film that could appeal to both long-time fans and a more general audience
My one quibble with this film is the ridiculous montage of Peter devolving back into hapless nerd. The music only makes it worse. Raimi was going for over-the-top with this. And succeeded with flying colors.
That being said, it’s my only quibble. I find the second film to be just as effective as the first one. Sure, it could have spent more time on Octavius’ pain (it rushes through the death of his wife, with no payoff), but Molina absolutely delivers the human vs. animal struggle and his sorrow at the end. Probably one of my favorite villain deaths on any film.
I admit to having a soft spot for the train sequence. It makes no sense, obviously, but then again, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief (and extensive knowledge of the NY mass transit system) for the sake of drama and a great visual and visceral experience. And seeing the common folks treating Spider-Man like one of their own, to the point of protecting his secret identity is a special moment, in more ways than one (not unlike when the folks in Metropolis rushed to save Superman in the 2006 film).
To me, film is about taking choices. Raimi and Maguire made a choice to not focus so much on the wisecracking aspect of the character, preferring instead to focus on Peter’s personal woes. I don’t see that as a story problem, but a conscious choice, which is the whole point of it being an adaptation for me.
A superhero who can barely support himself financially is something that works for me. Being late for every appointment. In a way, Spider can’t escape the trappings and failings of Peter Parker. That’s something the Garfield films never quite managed to convey (but Homecoming does).
Am I wrong or did Raimi switch aspect ratios from the previous film to this one? I’m pretty sure the first film was shot in 1.85:1 while this one opened up to 2.35:1.
@36: I’d missed the fact that MJ’s play was supposed to be playing on Broadway. Does the script mention her giving her comp tickets? Because otherwise, it seems a bit selfish of her to expect him to buy a ticket to the show when he can barely afford rent.
It’s actually not at all clear that this production of The Importance of Being Earnest is on Broadway.
One thing thing I did find bothersome about this series is that at the end of each one, MJ gets reduced to “girl hostage.” Even Aunt May got to wallop Doc Ock with an umbrella. That’s the one thing that the first Garfield film did that – at least to me – was unequivocally better than the Raimi films: Giving the romantic interest something to do besides scream and fall from a great height. Then the second one came along …
Aside: Am I the only one who, upon seeing a mention of “the Garfield films,” thinks for just a second of those live action/animated movies with Bill Murray voicing a lazy cat? Just me then? OK.
@53/Brian: I never saw those Garfield movies, but it’s weird to me that they cast Bill Murray in the role. After all, Garfield’s original voice in animation was Lorenzo Music, who also played Peter Venkman in the first two seasons of The Real Ghostbusters, and who was later replaced with Dave Coulier because he didn’t sound enough like Bill Murray.
I certainly never saw them. I just know they exist. Am I correct that you’re not wondering why they didn’t cast Lorenzo Music (who passed away before the Garfield movies were made), but rather why they cast Bill Murray, if Murray and Music were considered to sound different? I don’t think the film producers cared much about continuity with an animated series, and simply cast a celebrity who seemed to fit.
@55/Brian: I think the animated Garfield was well enough known that it would’ve been an influence on their voice casting. Even if it wasn’t, it’s quite a coincidence. I just think it’s ironic that they thought Murray was a good choice for the same role as Music, given that Music had once lost a job because he didn’t sound enough like Murray.
(Although that was really a misunderstanding. Murray had mentioned in passing that Music’s Venkman sounded just like Garfield, not as a criticism but merely as an observation, but IIRC his overzealous agent or somebody mistook it for a demand to recast the role, and passed on that “demand” to the show’s makers. And while Coulier may have sounded more like Murray, he wasn’t nearly as effective in the role as Music had been. Because Music wasn’t doing an impression of somebody else playing the part, he was just playing the part his own way.)
While Dock Ock is an important villain in Spider-Man, he’s definitely not the one in the “prime spot”. That spot is the Green Goblin’s. That said, this movie was much better for me than the first one, and while I haven’t watched it in a long time, I believe it’s one of the best superhero movies so far (re-watching it now might change this, as it might have not aged well). The train scene is amazing, inspiring; the effects for Ock’s tentacles are great, and Alfred Molina is perfectly cast.
Does it have flaws? Is Ock not exactly as not he comics? Yeah, I guess, but the film still works for me.
Oh, I loved that Peter’s landlord is Mr. Ditko(vich).
@6 – Chris: OOOOOOOOH!!! That’s where I knew the Head Librarian from!
Completely unrelated, but for YEARS (as a kid) I actually thought Bill Murray was the voice of Garfield. I don’t know if my brain was just mixing up the fact that it was the same voice as the guy in Ghostbusters (which I also assumed was Bill Murray) or what, but I remember it kind of blew my mind once I learned that it wasn’t.
So it’s kind of funny to me that he apparently got fired for not sounding like him (as erroneous as that may have been).
@14 Yeah, I know. But checking out that scene again, all we really hear is a siren in the distance. He could be rushing into the tights for a traffic stop, for all we know.
I know what the scene is trying to accomplish: that Peter and MJ love each other and she understands and supports his responsibilities as Spider-Man. It just doesn’t quite hit home for me–in balancing the hard-luck responsibility and the fun of Spider-Man, these movies lean a little too much into what a drag the responsibility of being Spider-Man is.
I heard a story about a little boy in a Sunday school class. I don’t know if he’d been diagnosed, but he had several symptoms on the autism spectrum. This included having a subject he was absolutely obsessed with to the point it was the only thing he could talk about. His was Spider-man (I know you’re thinking “five-year-old boy” but, trust me, this was a bit beyond that).
Anyhow, it seems, in Sunday school, they were supposed to be discussing David as a shepherd and how this tied into the good shepherd. Only, because of this little boy, it turned into Spider Shepherd protecting Sheep May from Wolf Ock. Also, there was some stuff about knocking Wolf Ock’s arms off with a sword. The rest of the class, by the way, thought you should probably take the arms to a police officer or the mayor or something.
It was closer to the subject than this little boy usually kept, so call it a win.
Which is now what I think of whenever this movie comes up.
That sure looks like a Broadway theater to me. I would also venture that the likelihood of an off-Broadway theater performing a straight, traditional rendition of The Importance of Being Earnest strikes me as even less likely than a Broadway theater doing it … but we’ve established that my Spidey-sense in that particular area isn’t particularly strong. ;)
As for Lorenzo Music, his long and successful voiceover career was always utterly baffling to me. His weird, hiccupy voice struck me as perfect for Carlton Your Doorman and suited to absolutely nothing else. I was already a Garfield reader before the first animated TV special premiered, and I remember that a newspaper blurb had heralded the news that the character was going to be voiced by Lou Rawls. In truth, Rawls had merely been contracted to provide the singing voice of Garfield, and the paper had gotten confused. But the minute I read it, I thought it was perfect casting. And ever since, I have chosen to live in an alternate mental universe in which Garfield always sounds like Lou Rawls. Even when I’m reading the strip and hearing his voice in my head.
@61 “Hiccupy” is not a word I would ever think of using to describe Lorenzo Music’s voice. Sleepy maybe, or bored (both of which are entirely appropriate for Garfield), but I really don’t know where you’re getting hiccupy from. Unless it’s something about his performance in Carlton Your Doorman, which I’d never heard of before.
One of my favorite movies ever is a little-known animated feature from the 80s (produced by George Lucas) called Twice Upon a Time, in which Lorenzo Music voices the lead character, Ralph the All-Purpose Animal (who happens to also have orange fur).
@57 Yeah, I always thought that Green Goblin was Spidey’s chief nemesis, but then I’m not much of a comics reader. (Superhero comics, that is. I absolutely devoured most of what Crossgen published before they went under, and nowadays I read a lot of webcomics, mostly serial fantasy like Girl Genius and Gunnerkrigg Court. Also working my way through the complete collections of Hellboy, B.P.R.D. and Valerian and Laureline via inter-library loan. But I digress.)
I think Dr. Octopus comfortably sits at the center of Spider-man’s rogue’s gallery. He is present from #3, and is clearly and immediately identified as Spidey’s most dangerous opponent. He organized the original Sinister Six. Norman Osborn didn’t appear until years later, and wasn’t really that standout iirc–killing Gwen Stacy is his claim to fame, and then he disappeared for two decades. The revival of Norman Osborn as a particularly dangerous is a pretty late development, but Ock was there all along.
@62/Matthew:
Yes, I’m absolutely basing my use of that term in the character of Carlton Your Doorman, which is the role that made Lorenzo Music. But it’s also an adequate description of everything he has done since. He always seems to be belching up random syllables due to some involuntary reflex. As Carlton, the implication was that he was perpetually drunk. But it’s carried over into all of his other roles. Just listen to the way, for example, his voice rises on the last syllable of his threat to “wring [Odie]’s little NECK” … that isn’t an intentional emphasis meant to convey urgency, but rather the product of some sort of physical phenomenon the speaker can’t control. A hiccup, indeed.
Both the Green Goblin and Venom have had periods when they were Spidey’s greatest villain, but those periods have come and gone at various points, while Doc Ock has always been there. Still, Spider-Man has such a huge and impressive collection of villains that lots of people have qualified at various points. Though Ock has handed Spidey two of his nastiest defeats, both in the 1960s with the Master Planner story and in the 2010s with the Superior Spider-Man story.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yeah it seems from the time back in the late 70s when I began to discover Spiderman beyond the Electric Company that Ock was his number one villain with Goblin a close second (Kingpin up there as well). I think it can be argued that Spidey’s Rogues Gallery is second only to that of Batman in the Comics Pantheon…
Green Goblin to me will always be Spidey’s greatest adversary, owing to the masterful Death of Gwen Stacy storyline. Obviously, him killing Gwen is a powerful moment. One that gets overlooked a lot is the follow up in which the Goblin dies and Peter realizes that he’s gotten the vengeance he wanted, but that it means nothing.
I also liked the stuff JM DeMatteis did in the 90s with Harry taking up the mantle of the Goblin before dying a heroic death.
One of the worst things Marvel did, I think, was to undo the deaths of both Norman and Harry. Those storylines were so good and definitive that nothing that’s been done with those characters since has justified undoing their deaths.
Ock, to me, (even though he is responsible for the death of Gwen’s father) has never been able to match that. Even the recent Superior Spider-Man arc in the comics really doesn’t have the gut punch that confrontations with the Goblin had.
And I’d the less said about Venom (at least until Friday), the better …
I’ve never really understood why this is always on those lists of sequels that are better than the original. Not because it sucks but when it came out I just felt like it was fine. Similar to the first movie and has a similar amount of flaws and strengths. It didn’t really do anything different or groundbreaking. Which is fine! It’s a fine movie but stylistically it’s pretty similar to the first movie.
I meant to come back here – we’ve been rewatching some of the movies after the post and I will say that I actually forgot how much I enjoyed Alfred Molina’s performance in this one. So I think I’d have to disagree with the article that this was a weak point – I found him to be a pretty compelling character. And I think, going back on my old comment – to me his motivations did seem clear and they imply pretty clearly that he’s wrestling with the AI (why such a powerful AI would be built with a flimsy, easily breakable inhibitor chip is another question ;) )
Also: totally forgot to mention “GOOOOOOO!” which my husband and I still use when one of us is in a hurry. I half forgot it came from this movie :)
@70/Lisamarie: Yeah, this was the film that made me aware of what a terrific actor Alfred Molina is. (Can you believe he’s the guy from the “Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip” scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark?)
As for the control chip, I don’t think it was meant to be flimsy; it’s just that the fusion energy surge was exceptionally powerful and even a robust chip couldn’t withstand it.
If the movie would take the original Doc Ock than we would have another egomaniac phsyco whose main goal is to beat Spidey, it would be too much alike GGoblin again, and as the second movie, meaning the second villain shown, it would be like a repeat button. Just as well that Malina did a wonderful job. Also a good choice for the bad guy making one of the few without a mask making it more viewable. Green Goblin and son always felt in my opinion more a personal nemesis then the rest,
@46 ahh I would like to hear some opinions on why they regard AMS2 as a failure, ist that the popular opinion?
Schwartz: Based on my current schedule, I’ll be covering Amazing Spider-Man and Amazing Spider-Man 2 in November, so we can talk about it then.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
A great sequel.
My biggest problem with the movie is this: why would sinking the energy ball into the Hudson River put it out? I mean, it’s not a big ball of fire. It seemed like to me that the writers had written themselves into a corner and this was the quickest, easiest way to solve the problem–a deus ex machina
Im-no-so-ho, Kirsten Dunst was the perfect MJ–and her “Go get ’em, tiger” made me smile and clap and cheer…still does.
And of course, the train scene.
@74/Mindy: Well, it was supposedly fusion, and fusion only happens at extreme temperatures and pressures; it’s quite hard to sustain unless you have just the right conditions. And nuclear fission reactors are cooled by water; it’s a very efficient way to conduct heat away from something, because water has a high heat capacity. So it’s logical that being dumped in the river could cool the fusion reactor enough that it could no longer sustain fusion.
I’m sorry you feel that way but I disagree about Doc Ock being “uninteresting”, He’s still far and away the best villain we’ve ever had in a Spider-Man movie and one of the best comic movie villains period.
I remember that when I was a kid, I much preferred the first movie to this one. Then again, my favorite of the trilogy was the third, so that’s not exactly saying much for my taste as a child. These days I flip-flop between this one and the first. I think that there’s a lot this movie gets right, especially in regards to how difficult Peter’s life is and his need to find balance between his dual identities. That’s the reason I always believed his powers were going away. His mind is so unbalanced that it begins throwing his body out of balance. Then, when Doc Ock kidnaps Mary Jane, everything literally snaps into focus. Both sides of Peter need to stop Octavius, and finding that balance between them enables him to put his body back into balance. This is then solidified when MJ comes back to him at the end of the movie. Plus it’s great to see a love interest in this genre stand up and say “Yeah, that whole ‘pushing me away to keep me safe’ thing is horsecrap”. Keeping his identity a secret from her didn’t keep her safe, it left her vulnerable to the villains who knew about Peter’s love for her. If Peter had been honest and told her right away who he was, how he felt about her, and what dangers that could bring, it would give her a chance to make her own decisions and prepare herself to face the danger. This is why I like the more modern trend of the hero building a support structure with their family and friends, rather than isolating themselves. No man is an island, after all.
That said, several of Keith’s criticisms do ring true for me. In particular, I do wish the script had done a better job of exploring the character of Octavius. As it is, he seems to flip a switch from good guy to evil psychopath. It’s entirely to Molina and Raimi’s credit that the character works as well as he does, because this role could easily collapse. It’s one of the reasons I prefer Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin. Cheesy dialogue aside, the structure for that character’s arc over the film was better handled.
Overall though, I do like this movie a lot. It understands that the best Spider-Man stories are really about the man under the mask, a lesson that the MCU took and ran with. We care about Spider-Man and New York because we care about the people who live there. That’s one of the most important parts of a good story, and one that the filmmakers behind this and the previous movie nailed.
@77/pcarl: “In particular, I do wish the script had done a better job of exploring the character of Octavius. As it is, he seems to flip a switch from good guy to evil psychopath.”
But that’s essentially what did happen. The inhibitor chip in the arms burned out, so the arms’ A.I. pretty much took him over and compromised his humanity.
EDIT: Although going back to re-read my own comments, I see that I did make a similar complaint about how the sudden personality changed prevented the film from exploring the emotional impact of Otto losing his wife.