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House review of Spider-Man 2 (2004)

As the song says, there’s got to be a morning after. Too often films don’t take us that far. The hero makes his choice, and we exult in it, but we seldom ask what happens next. How does he live with the choices he’s made? And what happens if he changes his mind?
Spider-Man 2 takes us that next step. Our hearts broke when we watched Peter walk away from his true love, Mary Jane Watson, at the end of the first film. But he’s the hero, and as Uncle Ben says, with great power comes great responsibility, so we accepted his choice as right and proper. But hard choices are the beginning, not the end, and hard choices must be lived with.

Peter Parker isn’t living with them very well. Nothing is working out for him. He’s broke because he can’t keep a job; he’s about to flunk out of college because he can’t get to class or find time to do his homework; his friends and family are constantly disappointed by his failure to be there for them. All these things are happening because he’s Spider-Man; he has a million places to be, and a million emergencies that take his attentions away from the other things he cares about in his life. He can’t walk down the street without someone needing to be saved, and it makes his life really hard.

He finds himself once again in the position of having to make a choice. His powers, as though they sense his ambivalence, begin to wane, and he is confronted with the choice of letting them go and being normal. It’s an agonizing choice, which has been set up beautifully by Raimi and screenwriters Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Michael Chabon and Alvin Sargeant. There’s hardly any choice Peter, or his sympathetic audience, can live with, and the tension of not knowing what’s right is exquisite. Raimi milks it for all it’s worth, giving us a film whose extremes are not only appropriate for a comic book adaptation, but are emotionally wrenching for us, as well. When Peter confronts his dead Uncle Ben, played again by Cliff Robertson, we can hear the anguish when he says, “I want a life of my own.”

And we want it for him. We’re happy when he saunters down the street, glasses back in place, goofy grin on his face, bopping along accompanied by possibly the dorkiest song ever written—BJ Thomas’ rendition of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” He’s skinny and clumsy again, as well as being brilliant and loyal again. If it causes him pain to walk past crimes in progress without helping…well, nothing’s perfect. He’s got his life back together again, and we want him to keep it.

The rest of the story is, of course, about why he can’t keep it.

There is a villain in this piece, as well. More than one, actually. Conventional wisdom has it that a hero is only as compelling as his nemesis, but I really can’t agree with that. The film’s bad guy is once-respectable scientist Otto Octavius, or Doc Ock. The story gives us time to spend in his pre-badness company, which lays the foundation for a villain as conflicted as the hero. Alfred Molina plays this part with charm and humor in the parts where he’s still a good guy, and with a charismatic confidence as Doc Ock. While it’s a fine and round performance by Molina, I get annoyed by having my attention taken away from the real human drama to have to deal with a guy with six arms.

The other villain is still in progress, and is much more interesting, since this character actually plays a significant role in the human drama—James Franco as Peter’s best friend, Harry Obsorne. His obsession with Spider-Man, who he believes killed his father, gets more and more out of control, coming between him and Peter and gradually eroding their friendship. I actually gasped out loud during the slapping scene. The final moment between the two is, in the words of Flannery O’Connor, “surprising but inevitable.”

Franco gives a splendidly dark and varied performance as the rich boy with the chip on his shoulder. We see him at his glad-handing, charming best as the financier of Octavius’ experiment, and we see the seeds of his father’s madness take root and grow in him. That line is fully crossed in a return appearance by Willem Dafoe as the now-dead-but-still-creepy Norman Osborne. Harry is losing his grip, and is prime material for a villain in the making.

Other strong performances include Rosemary Harris as Aunt May, in a pivotal role with a great deal more substance than she got the first time. J.K. Simmons always delights and infuriates as the opportunistic and bombastic J. Jonah Jameson. Kirsten Dunst is deeper and more conflicted (nobody escapes Raimi’s torture in this film), but shines most brightly at two moments near the end. One has her running through New York in her wedding dress with an expression of sheer exuberant joy on her face, and the other shows a close-up of her face, her mixed feelings and fears clear as she watches Spider-Man zip away from her to save someone yet again.

But this film, like its predecessor, rests squarely on the buffed-up shoulders of Tobey Maguire. He manages dorky and heroic, love-sick and determined, angry and pathetic, with equal skill and absolute believability. When he looks Mary Jane in the eyes and tells her flat-out that he doesn’t love her, we understand fully that he’s actually screaming out his adoration while his heart breaks into a million pieces. He is the element, supported but not carried by Raimi and the strong script, that makes the classic elements of this story come to life. Every archetypal narrative line that moves us is included in this story, and Maguire makes them real: you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone; you have to lose yourself to find yourself; you have to lose your life to find it. You have to let go of one dream to grab on to another. And of course, the best hero is the one who is faithful up to and including the giving of his life, which Peter also does in the movie’s biggest action sequence.

The train sequence is one of the best action sequences of the last decade, and the action is something else. But it’s not the action that elevates this sequence above most others. It’s the emotion. Doc Ock has sabotaged a train full of frightened New Yorkers, and Peter has to stop it all by himself as it careens toward destruction at a hundred miles an hour. He makes the save, of course, but at a terrible cost. His strength spent, his mask discarded, he collapses into the arms of the waiting passengers, who bear him gently on their shoulders and care for him until he revives. “He’s just a kid,” one remarks, “no older than my son.” “We won’t tell nobody,” remarks another. It’s the moment that parallels the scene in the first movie where the loyal New Yorkers throw things at the Green Goblin from the 59th Street Bridge, but it far exceeds it in emotional depth and weight. As one citizen after another puts himself or herself between Spider-Man and Doc Ock, Spidey is reminded that no matter what the Daily Bugle says, he is a beloved hero to his fellow New Yorkers. It is the dramatic and emotional climax of the film, and it satisfies in every possible way.

Some technological achievements deserve to be mentioned, as well. For this second movie, with a Spider-Man who is more confident of his powers and prowess, Raimi and his crew wanted to show off those abilities unique to Spider-Man. They usually manage this with great effect. There are scenes that only Spider-Man could do. In Spidey and Doc Ock’s first big confrontation, they battle up the side of a building, tossing Aunt May back and forth between them like a rag doll (Harris, admirably, performed her own stunts in this film). There’s the clock tower scene, in which the two hang on and tear off hands of a huge clock—on the top of some tower that’s apparently the tallest building in the city for this scene. And in the train sequence, the two battle on top of, beneath, inside, and up and down the sides of the speeding train, not to mention up and down the streets and buildings in the vicinity, while dodging and jumping other trains, bridges, and flying people. Those things could only be done by Spider-Man—and some other guy with a lot of the same powers. If you’re in it to see the superhero battle the bad guy, you’ll love it. If you’re in it to see how Peter resolves his tortured conflicted life, you’ll tolerate the interruptions, but still be able to enjoy them. Even if action isn’t your thing, these sequences are cool. Either way, it’s good film-making, and between top notch action scenes and world-class performances, there’s enough good stuff in this film for everyone.

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Film Rating: 5.6/10 (16 votes cast)

Reviewed by Elessar
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