The superhero as existentialist.

Rating: 5/10 (18 January 2005)

*Spider-Man 2* is clearly an improvement on the first feature in every significant way, from the script to the F/X (though Spidey still looks like a cartoon when he swings from skyscraper to skyscraper). I watched with increasing amusement as director Sam Raimi and his commission of hacks (including the likes of Alvin Sargent and prize-winning novelist and comic-enthusiast Michael Chabon) irresistibly turn Peter Parker into a comic-book Hamlet, replete with metaphysical conversations with beloved dead relatives and existential soliloquies. It can be argued that *Spider-Man 2* is the perfect movie for our times, a stripped-down and workmanlike rehash of the old, artsy-fartsy cosmic themes that have engaged writers since Aeschylus, custom-made for a generation made pathologically jittery from too much TV and too many colors and lights from noisy Hollywood blockbusters.
But let's not get carried away, shall we? The movie isn't a masterpiece, or anything. And not because of its comic-book -- that is, fantastical -- origin. The subject-matter here is no more foolish or "unrealistic" than, well, the plays of Shakespeare, with their ghosts and witches and fairy-queens and the like. The difference, of course, is that Shakespeare (and the other great writers who dabbled in fantasy) added magnificent poetry to their nonsensical plots; Raimi & Co., on the other hand, dumb things down by necessity. The Medium Is The Message, as McLuhan pointed out, and the Medium here is the Summer Blockbuster -- no big words allowed. And that's fine; not every movie should be High Art. But even genre pictures can attain masterpiece-status by rigorous crafting: *Spider-Man 2* is a little too bloated and excessive (over 2 hours of running time) to pass the discipline test. Also, the dialog, while required to be simple, does not have to be simplistic, as well: most of this movie's wit, as in the case of the first *Spider-Man*, resides in the personage of J. Jonah Jameson, played by J.K. Simmons (having a ball by stealing yet another movie). Thus, while the movie's themes are worked out rather magnificently, the tools that build the edifice are just too dull to get us really excited.
Stepping away from theoretical flights, let it be said that Doc Ock is probably the biggest reason why the sequel is better than the original. This new villain's exuberant monstrousness -- four gigantic mechanical limbs grafted onto his back, giving the man a total of eight limbs (hence "Dr. Octavius") -- is more in line with the source material's conception of Atomic Age bad guys. That is to say, he's a perfectly modern mutant in the tradition of not just comic-books in general but the various monster-movies of the Fifties and Sixties when the *Spider-Man* comic was created. He's a villain truly in spirit with the material, unlike the Green Goblin from the first movie, with his ridiculous airborne surf- or skateboard that smacked of a bad Mountain Dew commercial. And Alfred Molina takes what little characterization that the script gives him and makes the most of it.
As for the other actors: Tobey Maguire, by sheer force of his talent, makes Peter Parker a great role. He intuitively grasps what the character is struggling with, which is, of course, the transition from adolescence to adulthood. The "Spider-Man" persona, from his comic-book origins, was always just a web-slinging metaphor for Growing Up; and while the pedestrian dialog denies Maguire any real exposition on this theme (no poetic flights in iambic pentameter, natch), no actor of his generation has proved to be better at manifesting inferiority. He does it all with his eyes and inflection. Besides Maguire and Molina, the rest of the cast are not served well by the script, but even so, I felt that they were inadequate, especially James Franco as the son of Spidey's former nemesis Green Goblin (and, rather doubtfully, Parker's best friend).
All in all, 5 stars out of 10. I have to commend Raimi on his bravery: he's making a franchise that he wants to make. I hope the suits continue to let him have his way, which, if untrammeled, will finally produce a masterpiece that will flop at the box-office. Raimi's auteurist ambitions have been clearly manifested by the loftier goals of *Spider-Man 2* . . . as well as by the ever-so-slightly disappointing box-office returns in comparison to the first outing. In other words, the ground-lings may be catching onto his act, and are starting to get suspicious. Good.