I recently reviewed
Spider-Man 2, and gave it an absolute thrashing. I've received a fair few comments about that – seems people didn't like my style. It would also appear giving a comic book movie a negative review when your own knowledge of the comic isn't exactly in-depth doesn't win you any friends either (I don't mean that literally, it's a figure speech).
There are a few times throughout that review where I refer to "the original", and I want to clear that up here and now. When I say that, I'm not referring to the comic-book, I'm referring to this movie, released in 2002. So I figured I'd go back and review it.
Also note that when I'm talking about the comics, I'll use
Spiderman, if I refer to the name of the movie I'll use
Spider-Man, just to make things clearer.
The way I look it, it's a bit dangerous making a movie out of a comic-book, especially one that's as long running as
Spiderman. Poor old Spidey, he's got a number of enemies throughout the comics, including Venom, The Lizard, Hobgoblin, Doc Ock (who will show up in the sequel) and the true star of
Spider-Man, Green Goblin.
The reason I say it's dangerous is because you couldn't include all his enemies in one film – that'd be a bit one-sided. Fans would be outraged if they weren't all included though, so the only thing to do would be have a series of films, a different villain in each one. This means a number of sequels, which as a general rule, suck.
However, director
Sam Raimi has taken the task on, and I say good luck to him. I reckon he made a gutsy decision, and if only for the first film, it's paid off.
Spider-Man begins by introducing us to main characters Peter Parker (
Tobey Maguire) and Mary-Jane Watson (
Kirsten Dunst). It then tells the story of Parker being bitten by that radioactive spider and becoming Spiderman. Near the beginning, we also meet Parker's best friend Harry Osborn (
James Franco) and Harry's father Norman (
Willem Dafoe), who, thanks to a science experiment gone wrong, becomes Spiderman's first enemy, Green Goblin.
So far, it's fairly similar to the comics, but if I remember rightly, in
Spiderman Parker worked at the lab where the spider bit him, whereas in
Spider-Man he's a high school kid on a class field trip. I could be wrong on that though, so feel free to correct me. Point is, he's a bit younger than he was in the comics and this is presumably done for a couple of reasons:
1) It makes better sense in a movie, because it raises more opportunity for things like teen angst, the love story and a growing up / coming of age as he grows into his superpowers plot.
2) It's a very minor change, and
Spiderman fans aren't likely to complain. Raimi's simply treading careful waters and that's not a stupid idea.
Not delving straight away into the Spiderman vs Green Goblin plot, the film spends a bit of time on the love story, but mainly deals with Spidey coming to grips with his new powers. He creates a costume for himself, and after convincing himself that he's responsible for his Uncle Ben's death, Peter Parker fully becomes Spiderman and the film starts to pick up the pace by introducing Green Goblin.
Green Goblin's a fairly complex character. Think of him as having split-personality disorder. Sometimes, he's the sane Norman Osborn, a scientist who owns a company. Other times his other personality takes over and he's Green Goblin – in a different frame of mind, and pure evil. The cool thing is, Norman doesn't control Green Goblin, Green Goblin controls Norman. Throughout the course of the movie you can see both sides of the charcter come through, and it makes for one particularly brilliant scene where Osborn and Green Goblin face each other… he talks to the mask and the mask talks back.
It doesn't take long for Spidey to come into his powers, and what better way to demonstrate than to kick the school bully's butt? This scene shows off a lot of Spidey's powers, most of which Peter is still coming to grips with (no pun intended) at that stage. We see the reflexes, a bit of web, and how fast he can move.
Apart from Spidey himself and Osborn / Goblin, not many of the characters have that much development. Harry Osborn is the worst best friend I've ever seen – taking Peter's girl. Of course, the completely predictable will eventually happen.
We barely have time to get to know Ben Parker (
Cliff Robertson) before he's killed off, but even before that happens, he delivers the line that the film spins it's web around -
"With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility". Aunt May (
Rosemary Harris) isn't given a lot to do, deliver some more pearls of wisdom and that's about it. As for MJ herself… it seems they leave the development of that character for
the sequel.
The love story can be a bit trite at times. Very predictable, kinda sappy. I don't like it when love stories aren't done well to begin with, so I had certain expectations. After all, the love story between Spidey and MJ is in the comics – Raimi's got the source material.
The one good thing to come out of the love story is the upside-down kiss. Everything else, you'll expect.
For the majority of the cast, decent performances are churned out. Slightly static at times, but overall, not bad.
Tobey Maguire fits Parker's shoes well, I wasn't sure of him as Spidey though. Something about it just didn't seem right.
Kirsten Dunst, on the other hand, proves she is no more than a pretty face, and I only see her that way on posters and such. She's the most wooden actress I've ever seen.
James Franco seems to think he's playing Anakin Skywalker in
Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones, whereas
Harris and
Robertson do enough to suffice and no more.
The show stealers are
J.K. Simmons as Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson (JJJ) and, of course,
Dafoe. The vast majority of the humour comes from JJJ, and
Simmons delivers it impeccably, while
Dafoe's Green Goblin is easily the best comic-book movie villain in memory. On the flipside, he also stands out as Osborn. For another excellent
Dafoe performance, try
Finding Nemo The only pieces of music that stand out are Chad Kroeger & Josey Scott's "Hero" (which is still being played to death) and Sum 41's "(Rock) What We're All About"", which I can't remember in the movie but is on the soundtrack. No, not much to the music.
The special FX are a different story.
Flamepillar reckons he lost all sense of which way was up – which goes to show how impressive the scenes are with Spidey swinging through the city. Personally, I didn't get
that engrossed in them, but they're certainly something. There's also some decent explosions here.
When all's said and done,
Spider-Man is a good movie. The
sequel certainly does not live up to this, and doubt any other movies in the
Spider-Man franchise will. It's certainly not the most amazing film you'll ever see, but while I would normally recommend this kind of action blockbuster wait until DVD before I see it, this one justifies seeing it in theatres. Shame my review's a bit late for that. See it anyway.
