Review of “Spiderman 2”

Thankfully, the People In Charge got this movie right! And in so many ways:

  1. Spidey's identity revealed to MJ. This was the biggest thing they did right. In a comic, with the serial nature of the medium, and the limited page space typically devoted to the hero's personal life, it is acceptable for something like revealing an identity to drag out for months and years. Movies, and movie audiences, need a faster pace.
  2. Spidey becoming unmasked in front of a crowd. In a city of millions, there is no one from the train who will recognize Peter Parker, ever. So this gave the story tellers the chance to make the hero a real person in the eyes of (some of) the public, as well as giving the public the chance to implicitly say “Put the mask on. Be the Hero.”
  3. Doctor Octopus not being an evil genius. This was critical to the Marvel Way. Marvel basically invented (in the comic medium) the treatment of many super villains as real people who were pushed into their deeds by various forces: social, political, personal, whatever.
  4. Setting us up for more. The obvious, of course, is the clear reappearance of the Green Goblin. Less obvious is the set-up for other enemies, though a true Spidey-phile cannot have missed the one-armed Dr. Connors. Will they ever do anything with it? How knows – but it’s there if they want it.
  5. The animation. Wow. The Spiderman sequences which must have been animation were so much more realistic, and flowed so much more smoothly into the Tobey Maguire scenes. Excellent job.

I could go on and on, but I don’t want to make this review sound like this was the best superhero movie ever. Still, it comes close.

Well done!

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Isn't it great that they named it "Spiderman 2" with no silly subtitle, like ": Spiderman No More" or ": Who Needs Heroes"? I bet someone fought hard to keep it that way. Hollywood seems to delight in adding subtitles, and in this regard, Marvel Comics (especially Stan Lee) is in vehement agreement, based on how they promote their products. But no, here we had a nice simple "Spiderman 2." I like that.

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