What a Disappointment

Rating: Null/10 (12 July 2002)

Spiderman: the Movie
Spiderman. What a disappointment. And from the director who made The Evil Dead and Darkman which makes it doubly disappointing. Just as another promising director, Tim Burton, fell by the wayside when he made a big budget, summer blockbuster remake of Planet of the Apes, so, too, has Raimi with this adaptation of the comic.
Based on the Marvel comic strip and updated to contemporary New York, Tobey Maquire (The Ice Storm) plays Peter Parker, the inept, bespectacled, bumbling nerd who is bitten by a genetically modified (in a reworking of the original, radioactive and no doubt reflecting our contemporary fears over GM as opposed to postwar fears of nuclear apocalypse) spider during a field trip to Columbia University.
This story is a conventional love story. As the opening voiceover says, `like all good stories, it's about a girl'. Parker - all spectacles, spam and centre parting - has loved his next-door neighbour, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), since the age of six. Once bitter, Peter grapples with the overnight transformation to his body, a very obvious metaphor for the hormonal changes all teenagers go through. He develops muscle tone, the ability to jump, climb walls and, in another reworking of the original, shoot webs out of his wrists.
Things seem to be going well for Peter - he impresses Mary Jane, he beats up her bullying boyfriend - until his uncle is shot and the Green Goblin (played excellently by Willem Dafoe) arrives on the scene. Peter internalises the last words of his uncle: 'with great power comes great responsibility' and, as Spiderman, he sets out to fight crime, prompted by the knowledge he could have prevented his uncle's death. His crime-fighting, though is compounded by the entrance of the maniacal Goblin, who is determined to persuade Spiderman to join him or kill him if he won't. The Goblin is the alter ego of Norman Osborn, an scientist and businessman, and the father of Peter's best friend who, it turns out, is also dating Mary Jane.
The sequences of Spiderman demonstrating his skills are by far the best. Spiderman leaps, swings, jumps and so on. The battle sequences with the Green Goblin are exciting, particularly against the backdrop of the re-edited New York City (sequences depicting the World Trade Center were recut). J.K. Simmons as Jonah Jameson, the tabloid editor who gives Parker his first job as a photographer, was great (particularly when compared to his role as a neo-Nazi on the cult series Oz). And Kirsten Dunst looked cute as the gal.
Overall, though, the parts did not equal the sum. The CGI wasn't adequate: when Spiderman climbed walls I did not willingly suspend disbelief. The narrative pace was jerky. Long-winded romantic scenes slowed action sequences down and the overall pace was not maintained. Perhaps big-budgets do not suit Raimi, but then he has a hard act to live up to because his Darkman was, and probably still is, the best comic-book style adaptation on film. This does not bode well. If Raimi can't handle such an adaptation, then what hope do we have for the forthcoming Scooby Doo and others?