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Starring: Tobie Macguire, Kristen Dunst, Jimmy Franco
Directed By: Sam Raimi
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I grew up the biggest Spiderman fan on the planet. I collected every comic of Amazing, Spectacular, and Web Of that I could get my hands on (and stopped collecting around the time of Seth McFarlane's "Spiderman"). Spiderman has always been my favorite superhero, and being a dorky Brooklyn boy myself, I always related to Peter Parker.
When the first Spidey movie came out, I went in with high expectations. After all, it was being directed by Sam Raimi of Dead Alive fame, and featured Tobey McGuire - maybe not my first pick for Spiderman, but the idea grew on me. Anyway, I wasn't disappointed by the first movie. It recreated Spidey's origins faithfully, had all the elements of a great action movie, and the Green Goblin looked awesome.
Where Spiderman succeeded, Spiderman 2 failed. Where S1 had heartfelt drama, S2 was like a bad episode of 7th Heaven. Where S1 had action, S2 was all about dialogue and feelings and crap. Where S1 had Macy Gray, S2 was all about the emo rock.
Worse, the loyalty to the comics was gone. Some mistakes, intentional or not:
Dr. Octopus (or "Doc Ock" as the movie stupidly calls him) is portrayed as some brilliant scientist who magically gets grafted to metal tentacles because of some really hot ball of fire. I'm sorry, what? And I'm a huge fan of Dr. Octopus, but I'm pretty sure he can do more than throw cars around. What happened to his magnetic powers?
Spiderman suddenly loses his powers whenever he doubts himself. Superman has krypronite, and Spiderman has... self-confidence issues? Since when has Spiderman been anything but a smart-alecky, one-liner-flingin' cocky son of a bitch? And here's a flub that they'll be teaching in history classes 100 years from now: in the diner scene, how could have Peter Parker's spidey sense tingled, warning him about the car coming through the window, if he had lost his powers?
The subway scene... There are no above-ground subways in New York! And they're not nearly as clean either!
Norman Osbourne is suddenly back to life? What's that all about? And if he's trying to come back to life as Hobgoblin, that doesn't happen until REALLY late in the Amazing Spiderman series.
The only thing that the movie gets right is Peter Parker's romance with Mary Jane. But if I wanted to slap down $10 to watch some badly acted, sappy soap opera, I would've seen The Notebook instead. Plus, Kristen Dunst's breasts weren't wet this time.
It really says something when the best scene goes to Bruce Campbell as the obnoxious guy in the elevator. But as Spiderman said to him, the costume can be uncomfortable. And so can be watching Spiderman 2. |
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Rating: PG-13
Reviewer: READ Staff |
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