SPIDER-MAN (2002) Ha ha, Aunt May - you're all alone now! There's just something cool about Spider-Man that other superheroes in his league can't touch. Superman's kinda dorky, but at least he's sensible enough not to appear to care and even have fun with it in Kent mode. Don't let Batman's macho costume fool ya, he's just as dorky, but in this case it's kinda sad because he's so obviously ashamed of his own dorkiness he lives in a freakin' cave and wears plastic-molded abs to make you think he's in better shape than he really is. As for the Hulk, well, hell, self-loathing is pretty much central to his character. Here's a guy with the power to turn into a huge behemoth and he runs around all day begging people not to provoke him into doing it. Spider-Man, though, he's different, and loves it. Sure, Peter Parker's classmates and co-workers at the Bugle might see him as a nerd, but he's the nerd a lot of us remember being, and what's uncool about that? Besides - he makes the sign o' the horns when he casts his web. Metal! So, yeah, first BIG big movie of the summer (Summer? It's been snowing here for three days! I'm up to my knees!), and it's Spider-Man - hype aside, any fool could've seen that this was gonna be huge. But I soon got pretty sceptical. The trailers looked a little too cartoony, and contained the line "It is my gift, it is my curse", and Tobey "Mr. Excitement" Maguire was playing Spidey, no less. The released-in-advance soundtrack was repulsively trendy. And somebody was quoted in a local paper as saying "It's better than the first Batman, which is the yardstick." That's not exactly shooting for the moon. Hell, it ain't even shootin' over your shoulder. But, hey. I can be sceptical and still plonk down the cost of a space shuttle to buy a ticket for the movie I'm sceptical about. And I can certainly, honestly say this was worth at least the admission price. It's a blast. It's not perfect, and who knows, maybe its problems will start feeling overwhelmingly intrusive on repeat viewings. This is, after all, a Spider-Man movie where most of the Spider-Man action is, er, semi-believable. On the other hand, maybe those problems will become part of the movie's most lasting charms. Who knows? I liked The Matrix about this much...at first. I suspect this'll age a hell of a lot better. What problems I do have with it, I write about with a smile. The plot is, from what my friends told me, extremely faithful to the comics origin story of Spider-Man, with a few changes here and there, like where Spidey's webs come from. Peter Parker is a much-abused high school nerd with exactly one friend, who I kept thinking was Freddie Prinze Jr. until the credits showed me otherwise. He's bitten by a spider and manifests neat-o new abilities, dresses in a costume, fights crime, talks without moving his mouth, does battle with the Green Goblin, played by Willem DaFoe, who happens to be that one friend's dad. I was never sold on Tobey Maguire playing Spider-Man until I actually saw the movie. I mean, the guy does seem a little lethargic, and he has a much higher-pitched voice than most superheroes. But as Peter Parker, he's awesome. He's awkward and shy without being pitiable, and that's most of where this performance COULD have gone wrong right there; we're not supposed to feel superior to him. Sure, he finds later on that his introverted nature comes with more of a price than he first knows, but he doesn't whine about it, and sees the connection clearly and quickly. Whilehe attacks the possibilities of the changes in his life with a kind of near-psychotic bravado you pretty much have to be a teenager to still have, his revenge on his high school tormentors is nicely understated (especially in an age where kids like this are usually expected to snap and kill a bunch of people), we are allowed to see a side to him which enjoys the suffering of the deserving (that self-satisfied smirk when he lets that robber go)...which, of course, turns out to be another educational experience for him. Actually, I thought his darkest moment was when he moved out of Aunt May's place - right after Uncle Ben was murdered! Great timing, for reducing your aunt into the kind of person who spends half their lives going back and forth to the mailbox. (I don't think the makers of the movie really stopped to notice Aunt May's perspective) Among the changes Parker undergoes is the secretion of webs from his wrists, or maybe just one wrist. Either way, hilarious scene where he tries to figure out how to work it on command, and I'm glad this movie took the time to show him working on his skills instead of being an instant master of them, like those gymnastic vampires in Dracula 2000. Parker's perception becomes so acute that, I gather from Sam Raimi's typically (but enjoyably) overdone direction, he can see spitballs flying through the air in slow-motion from quite a distance. Is he like this only when his spider sense is tingling, or all the time? I can see the poor guy unable to have normal conversations with anybody anymore because everyone else is talking too slowly for him. But then, maybe Maguire's lethargy balances things out. A definite lowpoint for the movie has to be Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane, who's about as bland as a bread sandwich. I mean, shit on toast, was Jennifer Love Hewitt not available? Could they not dye her hair as convincing a shade of red as the stringy blood clot hanging off of Dunst's scalp? I'm glad the makers of this movie had the guts to cast Maguire and DaFoe, but with Dunst, they blew it big. If you're gonna have a girl who Spider-Man adores from afar, pick somebody with a little charisma. As for the CGI Spidey, which is something I'm hearing a surprising number of grumbles about (I'd figured this movie would be the online DON'T YOU DARE BLASPHEMOUSLY QUESTION THE PERFECTION OF THIS MOVIE! movie of this year), he looks fine, except when we see Spidey (or the Goblin, for that matter) go from a guy in a suit to a CGI stunt double (stunts: worst thing to apply CGI to, ever) and back again. It's the movement which is bothersome. I can grant a number of superhuman leaps and swings; Spider-Man is, after all, superhuman. And yes, I understand that in a movie about a comic-book superhero, a certain amount of hypo-realism might be called for. I just never really believed that a) Spidey was ever in any danger of falling, b) Spidey was ever in any danger of hurting himself when he lands from being launched a hundred feet in the air, c) Spidey was ever in any danger of accidentally smacking into a building, d) Spidey was ever in any danger of anything until the climactic knock-down drag-out. Maybe the point of the action scenes for most of the movie isn't danger to Spidey, but to the other people. Maybe. The Green Goblin design is mostly pretty good, but the mask is completely motionless and, as was inevitably the case with Spidey himself, so obscures the wearer that all we're watching is, essentially, a talking costume. This has, of course, been done before, but there just isn't enough potential in this approach to do it too often. And considering where the mask came from (it's the prototype for a military assault bodysuit), one wonders just why it's shaped like a, uh, Green Goblin. Frankly, so far as villains go, this one kinda looks like it might've been a refugee from one of those Schumacher Batman movies, thanks to that mask. Looks kinda creepy hanging off of the corner of a chair, though, and his glider sure looks like fun! But I don't understand what the point of the bodysuit is other than to look like a villain; does it give him strength on top of the 800% boost he got from the serum? I suppose so; otherwise, how would he support the weight of a cable car full of kids? Without leaning? I was never quite sure what to make of DaFoe's performance and the role as written, however. His final line made me laugh out loud - but I was the only person in the crowded theatre laughing. I wasn't laughing AT the line, I'd thought the gag was intentional, but now, I'm wondering. Additionally, the circumstances leading up to his demise are...well, the fact that he's crazy doesn't do enough to explain this to me. He's trying to kill Spider-Man, but even if he'd succeeded, all that would've happened would be they would BOTH have been killed in an extremely gay-looking embrace. No, really, imagine the front-page photos at the Bugle the next day if that had happened. And if he wants to kill Spider-Man, why not make more simple work of it and use one of those devices that instantly skeletonizes everyone nearby? (that scene creeped me out) An uncommonly corporate-friendly villain, the Green Goblin makes a point of circling around a huge banner ad on a building twice, so we can get plugs for both two companies. It's like a new side of evil to him! Still, there's an interesting dynamic between Osbourne (that's the Green Goblin's real name) and Parker, along with a "Come join me and we could rule the galaxy!" angle for Green Goblin and Spider-Man before they find out about each other's day jobs. It feels a little underplayed by the time the movie is over, though; partly because Osbourne seems to think more was going on here than there actually was, partly because with this being the most character-driven superhero movie I've seen, it just feels like a sidetrack compared to the more well-explored angles like Parker's growth into Spider-Man and the romance with Mary Jane (whose kiss-in-the-rain scene is likely to be remembered for some time). Theoretically, the lowpoint would be the soundtrack. Steve Tyler, that hideous old woman who sings for Aerosmith, does a "cheeky" cover of the Spider-Man song we all remember from the cartoon. Sum 41, Nickelback, one of the guys from Slipknot who thinks that exactly one-ninth of the talent in that band is enough to release a solo track, the trendy corporate shit goes on and on and on. In the future, when my children and my children's children ask me what was so fucking horrible about rock music around the turn of the century, I can just point them to this. The good news is, you never actually hear any of this garbage during the movie. The score by Danny Elfman is serviceable, but fairly familiar ground for him. I was a bit concerned about having Raimi at the helm before; Darkman was what Batman would've been if Batman didn't suck an aircraft carrier through a hosepipe, but since then, his idea of larger-than-life adventure heroes have been TV projects like Xena and Hercules; wacky, slapsticky stuff. I didn't like the inclusion of Randy "Macho Man" Savage in a pro wrestling scene either, but then of course I was reminded that this was straight from the comics. While some of Spider-Man's action scenes have a bit of a lighthearted quality, showing off Spidey's smart-alecky side, I'm very relieved to report that the pro-wrestling scene (which is very funny, and briefly under-features Bruce Campbell) is pretty much the extent of Xena and Hercules-type stuff. Clearly, the best comic-book superhero movie in twenty years, maybe even giving the first two Superman flicks a run for their money. J.K. Simmons is the best J. Jonah Jameson that could possibly be imagined, Miss Brant is a fox, the Green Goblin isn't wearing a purple touque and his pumpkin bombs don't actually literally look like pumpkins, and the climax really feels climactic. The two-way beats-delivery between hero and villain is...wow, that's a lot of beats. Still, "It is my gift, it is my curse." Sounds like something Batman would say. Spider-Man made enough money on its opening weekend to purchase the sun, which just goes to show how much spending power the comic-book guys of the world have. The take, of course, says nothing about whether or not the movie's any good, so don't be proud of it yet, webheads. There's a long summer ahead during which this can prove it's got legs - all eight of 'em! Unsurprisingly, they're making sequels already. I hope that after Dr. Octopus, they forget all remaining Spider-Man villains and just make up new ones. I mean, can you imagine Spider-Man II, pitting Spidey in a fight for his life against the awesome power of the headbutting Rhino? BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE