"With great power comes great responsibility" is Spider-Man's motto in his first Hollywood outing. One film later, this mantra remains prominent. It is at the very heart of who Spider-Man is. It is an edgy theme that elevates an enjoyable superhero romp into something weightier.
This time round, Spidey/Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) struggles with his personal ideology. He decides that he isn't obliged to defend the defenceless any more, that he has a choice in the matter, and that he may spend his time studying and focusing on love interest Mary Jane 'MJ' Watson (Kirsten Dunst) instead. There are echoes here of Superman II when Clark Kent gives up his superpowers to explore his romantic side.
But the Spider-Man franchise benefits from a credibility that was lacking in Christopher Reeve's adventures. If Spider-Man screws up, he can't just leave Earth to spin the globe in the opposite direction at a speed sufficient to turn back time. While Spider-Man isn't really plausible, its creators are at least economical with the superhuman stuff. He's can swing, climb walls, spin webs, and kick ass. And that's it. He's just a big spider – like the one in your shower, but more intelligent and harder to squash. He's vulnerable without Kryptonite, and this makes him interesting.
Maguire milks it for all it's worth: the audience loves to see such an unassuming hero, someone so driven by responsibility that he forgets about ego. The character-driven side of this franchise is almost as exhilarating as the breathtaking CGI. Even without the superpowers, you feel that director Sam Raimi could do interesting things with the Peter Parker character: with a different premise, he'd be fascinating in other dramas. Audience expectations set by the original – they know they are going to get plenty of colourful action scenes – seem to have filled Raimi with the confidence he needs to focus on the more interesting elements of the story.
Indeed, the curse of the sequel no longer applies: Spider-Man 2 elegantly builds on the foundations laid by its predecessor. With all the characters in place, Raimi develops the relationships between the principal characters (particularly between Peter and Aunt May), and breathes more life into his spectacular vision ofNew York.
The new bad guy, Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) is menacing in the extreme, his steel tentacles waving around like snakes ready to lash out. With eight limbs (four real and four artificial), the way he moves is innovative and a pleasure to watch. And the way he fights is just terrifying – the physical impact is far greater than that of the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) in the first movie, although the character is less compelling.
One nagging problem with the film is that it is overly sentimental in places. The Peter/MJ/Harry/John love rectangle is too erratic for an emotional rollercoaster, and you wonder whether MJ is really worth the effort. But in most instances there is enough substance in the plot to warrant the emotional gush. Watched without cynicism, a number of scenes involving members of theNew Yorkpublic are very touching: you can't really blame Raimi for taking the post-9/11 community spirit angle – it was also there in the first one, in the can before the towers fell.
In fact, if it weren't for this, there's a lot of stuff that could perhaps be seen as metaphorical of current affairs: Spider-Man (America) devotes himself to the thankless task of protecting the general public (the world) from mad scientists (terrorists), while the media tut-tuts disapprovingly and the NYPD (the UN) want to stop him from doing what they regard as being their job. "With great power comes great responsibility." One wonders how much of this is accidental.
Copyright © Robert Hayward 2002-2005
Rating:
4.5 / 5
(2 votes)
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