Still The Best Spider-Man movie, and one of the best CBMs.

Rating: 9/10 (21 December 2018)

Spiderman 2 is the best Spiderman movie. To me it feels more like a movie about Peter's struggles of being Spiderman. This was the movie which cemented my love for the character.
The cast is great again. Especially Peter and Harry, which are both much better. However MJ is more of the same being a damsel in distress.
Throughout the movie Peter sees the consequences of being Spiderman. His life is literally falling apart. Everyone is moving on and he's stuck because he has to be Spiderman. He loses his job, he's failing his classes in University, MJ is getting married, Aunt May is moving out, he's struggling to pay rent, while J. Jonah Jameson (J. K. Simmons) is dragging SpiderMan's name in the mud. Everything is going wrong for Peter and you can't help but feel bad for him. He's such a nice guy, and he's going above and beyond to help others, but no one is helping back. This is the first CBM to truly show the struggles of being a Hero. This movie shows Peter at his lowest.
In this movie we see him tell Aunt May he "caused" Uncle Ben's death, and Aunt May kicks him out. Just WOW, his life just went downhill.
Sometimes the movie is a bit goofy the way it shows his misfortune, but it works because it's played out in a surprisingly hilarious way. It uses comedy to lighten up the movie. He even starts to lose his powers.
Later in the story we get introduced to Dr. Otto Octavious (Alfred Molina) who was great. He's creating a sustainable fusion power reactor, and he made 4 bionic arms which are impervious to heat and magnetism and are needed for the reactor. He teams up with Oscorp for funding, and With the help of Harry, Peter is able to write his paper on Otto. Peter and Otto hit it off with both being "brilliant" and we meet his wife. He explains why he is doing this with a great line very similar to "With great power comes great responsibility" line. "Intelligence is not a privilege, it's a gift, to be used for the good of mankind." This instantly shows the parallels between Peter and Otto and shows his motivations. When Otto finally tests out the reactor it unfortunately becomes unstable. Instead of stopping the reactor, Otto believes it will work. However the reactor kills his wife and damages the neural inhibitor chip in his spine, which doesn't let the AI from the arms influence his own brain. He's brought to a hospital while he's knocked out, in a great scene which shows Sam Raimi's horror roots. The arms take over and start brutally murdering the doctors. Oscorp is left bankrupt. Now we have the birth of our villain.
After everything going wrong Peter decided to give up being Spider-man. I think this is great. It shows peter is a human and sometimes you just want to give up. So he does, and his life does get back on track. He's getting better grades, he can finally make it to MJ's play, he can possibly pay rent. He's starting to ignore crime, but soon realizes he can't stop. This is where the hero is tested and needs to come back. Crime is up 70%. Very similarly to the first movie there's a fire where Peter decides to be the hero himself, and he saves the baby, but just when he was about to be praised for his bravery he's told that someone was stuck and died. Once again peter realizes that Spiderman is needed. With great power comes great responsibility, so Spiderman comes back!
Theres the bank robbery with the bags full of gold coins, which is very comic book like, and we have the iconic train battle. Peter gives it his all to stop the train and saves everyone, but he doesn't have his mask, and everyone sees him as a hero, and understand that they need him, so none of them say anything about his identity. This is hero praise done right. They respect the hero, despite revealing his identity probably getting the person famous or rich, they respect Spiderman for the sacrifice. And then when everyone tries to protect Spiderman it shows how everyone is trying to give back to Spiderman.
After this Spiderman is given to Harry where we get a great scene where Harry finds out Peter is Spiderman to further fuel their rivalry.
The third act is somewhat weak for me. MJ is of course the damsel in distress again, the reactor is a bit too unrealistic, but I do think
overall it was a pretty good fight with large stakes. Doc Ock sacrifices himself to finally stop the machine and MJ now knows who Spiderman. Peter finally gets his happy ending.
This is one of the rare sequels where everything has been improved. I think Spiderman 2 is one of the best CBMs. It really shows the struggles and consequences of being a hero, and I think it was done marvelously.