Peter-Parker 2 *SPOILERS*

Rating: 4/10 (8 July 2004)

I don't understand why this movie has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. X-Men 2, while not being a cinematic masterpiece, held my attention throughout, and even made me smile repeatedly. I loved the ending. I should say that I am a long-time Spider-Man fan (subscribed for over ten years) and enjoy comic book movies, so it's not the subject matter that is the problem for me. It's just the crappy movie making. Really.
Peter-Parker 2--sorry--Spider-Man 2 has several obvious problems.
1) Say it with me: Exposition!
The intro credits are beautiful, and cleverly establishes the back story from the first movie. But for some reason we still get to hear the whole story told again in the movie, in one of the most annoyingly slow scenes.
I don't know how many scenes there are where characters have long monologues explaining to the audience what their motivations are, how they are thinking, what will happen next, and so on. Sometimes they have another character standing in front of them, but they aren't really speaking to them, they're speaking to us. This is evidenced by the fact that sometimes they don't have anyone in front of them, or even in the same room. They are just speaking out loud, talking to themselves.
There is a saying that anyone who has taken a writing class will have heard many times: show don't tell. But in Peter-Parker 2, nothing is shown. Everything important comes out of the mouths of the characters instead of being played out for us on the screen. Every motivation, every conflict, every idea.
Peter Parker says loudly to himself: "I can't tell M.J. that I'm Spider-Man. My enemies would never leave her alone!" (Or something like that.) What enemies?? Spidey has enemies? The Goblin is dead, Doc Ock isn't around yet, and we have seen no other enemies. He's imagining things. Out loud. It would have been a good idea to show us some of these enemies.
One of the funniest sequences, that actually had me laughing out loud, was when Aunt May tells Peter about the young boy from next door who idolizes Spider-Man. Somewhere in the monologue the line turns from a story about the boy next door to a motivational speech for disillusioned superheroes. It's so blam in-our-faces it cracked me up. And it wasn't a nice chuckle.
There isn't a plot point in the story that couldn't have benefited from more scenes where stuff happens, and less talk.
2) Spider-Man should be about Spider-Man
I know, I know. The Spidey comic was so great because Peter Parker is a realistic character with ordinary problems and, like, dimensions and stuff. But we didn't buy the comic because we wanted to read about Peter Parker. We bought it because it was about Spider-Man. Peter Parker is an attribute of Spider-Man. He is Spider-Man's secret identity, not the other way around. What made us nerds really like Spidey was that during the day he was this feeble nobody with few friends who Flash could pick on--but we knew that he wasn't really like that at all. He could lift a van over his head and had the wittiest lines in Comic-Verse. That was how he really was.
Sam Raimi seems to think that he is honoring the comic by making it about Peter Parker's love stories firstly, and about Spider-Man's struggles against super-evil secondly, but he isn't. He just misunderstands the concept. Peter Parker's life is seasoning. Spidey's battles with villains is the real subject matter.
This shines through in the casting as well. As much as I like Toby in most movies, he's not a good Spider-Man. (In the very few scenes when he and not a CGI effect is Spider-Man, I mean.) Parker/Spidey are two radically different characters, as is so often the case. (I mean Kent/Superman? Banner/Hulk?) But Maquire is Peter Parker ALL the time. In the movie, Spidey is just Peter Parker with a Spandex mask over his head, and that is simply wrong.
3) Lousy crook
I bet you thought Doc Ock was real cool, huh? Yeah, he looked pretty mean and was decently acted. But think about it. What is his motivation? He MUST finish the project at any cost! He MUST make a mini sun on Manhattan, whatever the consequences! Why? Who knows? Whatever, he's just a subplot in the movie about Peter Parker's somewhat predictable love story anyway, right? Compare Doc Ock with Magneto in X-Men. Magneto used to be in a Jewish concentration camp in Germany. Non-mutants are trying to force all mutants to register with the authorities. He's starting to recognize the old pattern. Add some pathological megalomania to the mix and the result is inevitable. He overreacts, and goes on the war path against humanity. Meanwhile, Doc Ock MUST make his little sun, and nothing will stop him! Jeez, Magneto is a Shakespearian character in comparison. (And that has nothing to do with that McKellen has played Richard III on the big screen.) The script writers didn't care very much about the Doctor Octopus plot because Spider-Man is a sensitive story about a young man with relationship problems, doubts about his future, and such uncertainties as young men are wont to have. Ptooey to that! Bring in the doomsday machines!
What about the good stuff?
There is some. J.K Simmons as J. Jona Jameson is absolutely wonderful. Every scene he is in is pure pleasure. His lines are okay but his delivery is perfect. Jameson is an important character in Spidey's life. The movie also has its moments when the drama works. Most of the time it drowns in exposition or never lifts off because of poorly established motivations, but there are exceptions. When M.J sees Peter as Spidey near the end is one such exception. The earlier train scene also works action-wise, and is more or less the only one that really does. Dunst is good, although under-utilized throughout.
And the intro credits are some of the coolest I have ever seen. I wonder who the artist is?