WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2004
ENTERTAINMENT
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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21
HE SAID/SHE SAID
Graphics, Tobey Maguire make Spider-Man success
Movies like Spider-Man 2 usually don't make it clear whether they're about an ordinary guy who sometimes dresses up and fights crime or about a superhero who disguises himself as a loser to blend in. The first two Superman movies are clearly the latter, while Spider-Man 2 is the only movie I can think of that does a good job as the former. As much fun as the audience has watching Spider-Man, there's no doubt it's really just Peter Parker swinging around up there.
Fighting evil hasn't left Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker much time for more mundane concerns, like making himself presentable. He loses his job delivering pizzas despite superheroic efforts. He's behind on his rent, and times are also thin for his Aunt May. Peter's wealthy friend Harry, played by James Franco, is the only person looking out for him. Franco has great fun playing a flamboyant and melodramatic rich kid. Harry offers to lend a hand with Peter's flagging schoolwork by introducing him to Dr. Otto Octavius, an ominous nuclear researcher played by Alfred Molina. Soon, Peter questions whether being Spider-Man is really worth jerking around Mary Jane, played by Kirsten Dunst, and getting beat up by Dr. Octavius' (now Dr. Octopus') four mechanical arms all of the time.
The action scenes are exciting and kinetic,but the audience is never confused.
Sequel surpasses action movie criteria with plot, characters
Try to imagine an action movie that involves $54 million worth of special effects, interesting characters and a plot. If you don't believe such a movie exists, Spider-Man 2 might change your mind. Spider-Man 2, Sam Raimi's sequel to the mildly entertaining first film, offers everything the first movie had and a little more. There are still the same action sequences with Spidey (Tobey Maguire) swinging through the air on his web, and there are still the "longing for Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst)" sequences. What this movie has is plot. It's not just a cheesy action flick.
The movie starts off where the first one left off. Peter Parker/Spider-Man is having a hard time keeping up with his everyday life because his superhero one is driving him into the ground. His friends, Mary-Jane Watson and Harry Osborn (James Franco), also have their problems. Mary Jane desperately wants Peter to like her and even though she drops hints like a bad habit, Peter refuses to pick up and tell her his true feelings. Harry mopes around and contemplates avenging his dead father, Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) from the first movie. But if you missed the first one, every dead character makes their cameos. Norman Osborn shows up in some sort of hallucinogenic experience, and Peter's murdered Uncle Ben spouts advice from his car, which appears to be parked in heaven. These scenes are where Spider-Man 2 stumbles. Another misstep is the lack of focus on the movie's villain, Dr. Otto Octavius/Doc Ock (Alfred Molina). Dr. Octavius, who works for Harry, injures himself and kills his wife in a freak fusion-pausing experiment that involves strapping on huge robotic arms. Doc Ock felt like a sub-plot, and a weak one at that. Molina plays a disturbingly good villain, because his humanity makes him much more interesting than the obnoxious Green Goblin of the first movie. Doc Ock's story line, however, gets lost in the fray of Peter and Mary Jane's twisted romance.
This is where Spider-Man 2 really rises above the average action movie. Usually a bunch of ninjas chop at each other indecipherably behind a bunch of quick cuts, leaving the audience confused and disoriented. The action scenes in Spider-Man 2 may not be edited any less frenetically than most movies, but the computer graphics allow the camera to follow the action in ways live action couldn't.
Dr. Octopus's mechanical arms have a personality all their own — peeking around corners, sneaking up behind people and almost whispering advice into Dr. Octopus's ear. One of the most exciting scenes involves a team of surgeons trying to remove the arms. Screaming doctors and nurses run around while the arms chase them, leer at them and dispose of them as grotesquely as possible without earning the movie an R rating. The director, Sam Raimi, had to have been thinking about the possessed hand in his camp classic Evil Dead 2 when he looked at Dr. Octopus.
Spider-Man 2 is more than two hours which is probably too long. I got tired of Rosemary Harris's Aunt May pretty quickly, and the hook for the next movie appeared tacked on. In the end, though, there's enough sympathy for Peter Parker and awe for a surprisingly good computer-generated New York to make a terrific movie.
Bob Ward
'SPIDER-MAN 2'
Theater: South Wind 12
Rating: PG-13
Ward's Grade: A-
Kelleher's Grade: A-
Another plus to the movie is the great music. Action movies usually get one single to base their entire soundtrack around, and it's usually awful (Daredevil and Evanescence, anyone?). Spider-Man 2's music is scene setting, interesting and sometimes funny.
Spider-Man 2 proves that to be an action movie you don't need to have scene after scene of dark alley fights or save the day sequences. All you need is a good plot, good actors and good music. A more present villain would help too, but there is always Spider-Man 3.
Meagan Kelleher
General admission tickets are on sale in the KU ticket offices: University Theatre, 864-3982; Lied Center, 864-ARTS; SUA Office, 864-7469; and on-line at kutheatre.com: public $12, all students $6, senior citizens $11; both VISA and Mastercard are accepted for phone and on-line orders. The University Theatre is partially funded by the KU Student Senate Activity Fee. This program is presented in part by the Kansas Arts Commission, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
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