Like everyone, I was really impressed with Spider-Man 2. Everything just worked really well, it had thrills and hints of depth and a lot of iconic images and it was all clicking. Doubts began to emerge as it seemed that this movie would feature 843 villains [a DUMB IDEA that contributed to the ruin of the Batman movies], and continued when each of the 19 trailers for this movie seemed to be about an entirely different film. How would they bring all that together into a cohesive whole? Well, they don’t really.
I’m gonna go light on the synopsis since I’m sure you know it all already. Peter and MJ are chillin’ in a web when a meteorite crashes next to them and this goo [well-animated goo, by the way] goes home with Peter, only to lie dormant in his apartment until it is thematically appropriate. Then he gets attacked by his friend Harry, son of the Green Goblin from film one, who gets konked on the head and his thematic portion also lies dormant until the plot necessitates that it doesn’t. And there’s this escaped dude from prison with a sick daughter who falls into the kind of open-air particle physics facility that are just lying around everywhere in New York. Those things really are a public menace. He gets disintegrated and reintegrated as a big wad of sand.
But as usual there are personal problems. And the main characters seem not to have had a single conversation about them in the past three years—those are some communication issues. MJ has made it to Broadway and sucks ass and gets terrible reviews. She reveals herself as a needy narcissist as she bitches Peter out for any attempt to make her feel better, and he reveals that he doesn’t need any cosmic gloop to be a self-centered prick as he can only relate to her problems via what a superstar he is. Then there are flirtations and rival photographers and homespun advice from Aunt Bea or whoever and scenes with the Russian landlord and blahbitty blah.
So eventually the gloop takes Peter over and unleashes his dork side. He becomes a little nastier, but there are two problems: 1) it’s NICE to see him not be such a goody-two-shoes and show a little edge for once, and 2) since he was a stuck-up cock before, his transition isn’t much. A lot of other reviews have derided that his cocky strut down the street echoes Tony’s in Saturday Night Fever, but I think it’s clear that this is quite a conscious decision on Raimi’s part. It is obviously meant to be self-mocking. However, it goes a bit far when Peter is virtually boogying down the street doing hip thrusts. What should have had an edge of seriousness becomes too funny and goes on too long.
And that kind of becomes the main problem. At a certain point I leaned over to my friend and said “This is getting really long,” and he said “I was just thinking the same thing.” Actually, I had started thinking it fifteen minutes prior, but was just trying to be nice. So, if I had main criticism and quote that they could pull out and put in a movie ad it would be: IT’S SO LONG AND COMPLICATED YOU CEASE TO CARE.
There are many an action sequence, but you know what? They’re all kind of the same. Spider-Man swings around. Whether it’s an everyday out-of-control crane [the pointlessness of which was kind of a come-down] or the Goblin [now the New Goblin… like the New Monkees] or the Sandman… they're pretty much all the same. There are a LOT of storylines this time around and I just got tired of them all. Plus, in retrospect, the Sandman didn't have anything to do with anything. You could neatly excise him from the movie and still have a complete film with themes intact—in fact, it would be much more focused.
The special effects are good. They range from cheesy to quite good, and you can see that they poured more money into certain sequences. Those who were surprised to learn, in Spider-Man 2, that there is an elevated subway on the East Side that inexplicably dead-ends above the East River will be curious to discover that there is a massive cavern beneath Manhattan, seemingly 10 or more stories in height, where the subways move through on elevated tracks. The fights are also incredibly brutal, with someone or other getting their head slammed into a girder every few seconds or so. Everyone was fine. Other reviews have said that it seems that the characters haven't matured since the last film, particularly Maguire, but I didn't find that to be the case. However it did seem at times that their established characters were diverted to do out-of-character things in order to shoehorn them around the story and themes. What else? I don't know, I could nit-pick over other stuff [we did NOT need to see the Russians that much], but basically they just needed to scale it back and focus it. It's as if he thought it was the last one and he felt he needed to cram as much as he could in. The climax was a big 'so what?'
Yeah, it's too bad. I saw the second one three times and enjoyed and admired it every time. I couldn't possibly sit through this one again. What a bummer.
No comments:
Post a Comment