Exceeded my expectations!

Rating: 9/10 (3 July 2004)

First off, let me mention that I was very disappointed with the first Spider-Man movie. I had high expectations with S-M1 ... the trailers for that movie looked awesome, and were very engaging. I couldn't wait for the arrival of S-M1! When I saw the film (on the first day of the release, of course!) I was pretty unhappy. My main complaints were echoed by others:
(1) The plot, pacing and character development of Spider-Man 1 was too congested. They were trying to introduce too many characters and plot-lines to comfortably fit in a 2 hour movie. The switching between scenes / plot-lines was pretty chaotic.
(2) The special effects were substandard for a movie of this size. Marvel's take on this was effectively: "It's a movie based on a comic book. We want the movie to have a comic book look." Oh, come on! How gullible do you think we are? The movie ran short on funds, plain and simple.
(3) Some of the lines by the characters were *so* bad that it was laughable in serious moments. The script on one of the love scenes between Mary Jane and Spider-Man was so bad, I'm surprised that they ever got a usable scene - the actors must have busted a gut laughing through it on almost every take.
(4) The acting fell short in a number of spots, where I lost the "magic" of watching a movie - I wasn't into the characters, and remembered I was just watching actors on the screen.
That said, I gave S-M1 a low rating.
Now ... on to S-M2!
On the outset, I'll just say that each of the complaints mentioned above were addressed. Apparently, Sam Raimi and Marvel paid attention to the problems in the first movie and learned from their mistakes.
I'll address the same issues in the same order for S-M2:
(1) Plot, pacing, and character development: Excellent! There was only one or two spots where I was thinking "OK, let's move on." (One noticable problem: The elevator scene. You'll know what I'm talking about if/when you see the movie) The overall plot was more cohesive than in S-M1, giving enough time for characters to develop properly. Even if you've never read the comic book, you had enough information on each character to understand their motivations. 9/10
(2) Special effects: Incredibly better than in the first movie, but not quite "real" 100% of the time yet. Some of the scenes where Spider-Man is swinging amongst the buildings still had an artificial feel to them. It wasn't bad enough to draw your attention to it, though. 9/10
(3) Scripting: Very few bad lines for the actors. Most of the conversations had a "normal conversation" feel to them. There were a few scenes where a character would get a little long-winded (Think Aunt May here) to drive home a particular point. 8/10
(4) Acting: Dead-on. I never lost the "magic" on this one. All the actors did an excellent job, and nobdy went "over-the-top". 10/10
Overall rating: 9/10
azjazz