I Will Not Die a Monster

Rating: 9/10 (1 February 2012)

The Sam Rami Spiderman movies just seem to get better and better and I am surprised myself that I missed them when they first came out, but I guess it is because I was not really all that interested in Spiderman at the time. It was not until the third movie hit the cinemas that I decided that I would watch the other two, just so that I could at least catch up to the third one. Then again, I didn't realise that the director of Army of Darkness had actually been allowed to make these movies.
This film begins with Peter Parker (Toby Maguire) struggling through life. He is trying to hold down a job, go to college, make money as a photographer, and also play Spiderman at night. Needless to say that this is a huge responsibility, even for a superhero. Not only does he have to manage his day to day activities, but at night he is out keeping the city safe from bad people. His best friend, Harry Osborne, is also trying to bring his father's company out of the pits after his father's death, and he believes that he can do this by helping fund a fusion reactor.
Things don't get better though, because poor Peter has no money and no way of getting any more money, and his Aunt is looking at having her house foreclosed on, but Peter simply cannot through away his morals to get himself out of this mess. Further, the girl that he loves, Mary Jane Watson (Kurstin Dunst) looks like she is going to marry an astronaut (as well has making her move into Broadway, though Peter is finding it even more difficult to even maintain a promise to her, as she said, all Peter has become is an empty seat). If all that is bad, it gets even worse when Peter suddenly discovers that he is losing his Spider Powers, but because nobody knows that he is Spiderman (namely so that his enemies cannot use those he loves as leverage) he finds it even more difficult to get to the floor of this problem.
What I really like about these films are twofold, first of all this is purely a fantasy movie. Okay, it could be considered a superhero movie, but the way that it is set out, namely that everybody that he interacts with (including the supervillians) are all connected to Peter's personal life. The Green Goblin was the father of his best friend, and Doctor Octopus is the mad scientist that Harry Osborne (Peter's best friend) is funding. Further, Peter is present when the experiment goes wrong, and Doctor Octavian becomes Doctor Octopus.
The next thing I like are that the characters are well developed. They have the strengths and the weaknesses, in fact they appear to be very well rounded characters that the actors bring out really well. I guess the reason for this is that since Spiderman is evolved from a number of comic book series, it is easy to tease out the character from them (though once again it is cheaper to produce a comic book than a movie). Peter is not the rich millionaire that a lot of superheros appear to be, and though he has some very rich friends, he does not seem to rely upon them for his survival. In fact he seems to want to try and make things on his own.
Then there is the fact that he is torn between the love of his friends, and his knowledge that Harry is determined to get revenge against Spiderman for the death of his father. Peter knows this, but he will not desert Harry, and also knows that he didn't actually kill Harry's father, but rather Harry's father was responsible for his own death. However I will leave the discussion of death in Spiderman for the next movie.