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STEVE PERSALLSpider-Man 2 avoids the tangles of the original through fuller characters, a better villain and more realistic special effects.
This summer's streak of laudable movies continues with one that might have been the easiest to botch. After making a fortune with Spider-Man in 2002, director Sam Raimi could have simply coasted to another payday.
Instead, the sequel does everything right that the first movie didn't - or couldn't with computer-generated images at the time - while proving that characters from a two-dimensional comic book can, with the proper attention, evolve into richly emotional roles. Give credit to Alvin Sargent for his screenplay and to actors who never are caught winking at the camera or playing to the rafters, two unavoidable temptations of such material.
Spider-Man 2 is more solid evidence that second chapters of superhero fantasies are generally more satisfying than the first. Raimi fell into the usual trap in 2002, rehashing Spider-Man's origins and his alter ego Peter Parker's biography. It's nice to see familiar myths played out on the screen, but that empty feeling when nothing new is presented is unavoidable. A better villain than Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin would have helped, as would have special effects without that hint of phoniness that reminds viewers it's only a movie and therefore nothing to get overly excited about.
Now that key introductions are out of the way, Raimi and Sargent can get down to business, putting Peter (Tobey Maguire) through angst-driven situations that made young readers identify with the comic books. His crush on Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) reaches critical mass when she gets engaged to an astronaut. His guilt about the death of his uncle in Part 1 culminates with a confession to his kindly Aunt May (Rosemary Harris). And rather than being shown as a kid enjoying a supernatural lark, Peter suffers an identity crisis, even quitting the crime-fighting business because it's messing up the rest of his life.
Best of all, the filmmakers create a nemesis that the web slinger deserves, the increasingly mad scientist Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), whose body is fused with four metallic tentacles with destructive minds of their own. Dr. Octopus, as he's called, wants to harness massive quantities of energy, at first for the public good, then for personal power. To do that, he needs materials available only through industrialist Harry Osborn (James Franco), Peter's best friend, who hates Spider-Man because he killed his father, the Green Goblin, in the first movie.
That's a tidy setup, filled with dual motivations lending tension to several scenes. There's an unspoken reluctance for some characters to harm others, plus sympathetic touches for even the darkest hearts. Ang Lee's Hulk got bogged down with its Oedipal subtext, but Spider-Man 2 gives us just enough armchair psychology to make the action matter.
And what action there is, often with the humor that marked Spidey's Marvel Comics career. The first time we see him swinging through New York skyscrapers, he isn't pursuing bad guys but delivering pizzas to save Peter's job. Then the action gets deadly serious, like a fight on a speeding elevated train between Spider-Man and Dr. Octopus with several breathtaking close calls. Bill Pope's agile camera work often provides that pit-of-your-stomach twinge, and Bob Murawski's editing, though certainly speedy, lingers on sights just long enough for us to fully appreciate what's happening.
This time, Spider-Man's physical acts are more fluidly conceived, without that cartoonish look that bothered me about the first film. Sometimes it's tough in the sequel to discern when Maguire steps out of camera and the computers take over. Dr. Octopus' tentacles are equally impressive, a seamless blend of animatronics and computer imaging.
But those special effects are used to complement the emotional drama rather than commandeer the movie. Maguire's frightened-deer expressions border on blandness, but that's what Peter is. Dunst is still a fetching object of affection led around by the script's washy-washy emotions planned for Mary Jane. Franco's idea of playing angry grief is a bit too whiny for my tastes. J.K. Simmons as Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson is still a scene-stealer, but it's Molina's carefully defined performance as Doc Ock that stands head, shoulders and arms above the rest of the cast.
Raimi is so confident with the franchise that he even sets up Part 3 with a preview of Spider-Man's next enemy, although it will require a major attitude adjustment by one character to make it work. And finally we get to see some effects of a superhero's secret identity being revealed, usually a tease in this genre because other filmmakers aren't sure of what to do next.
From the looks of things, there's a lot.
Raimi's emphasis on Spider-Man's personal problems causes the movie to drag a bit in the second act. But I defy any other action movie to feel so complete in its final half-hour when those detours converge. Spider-Man 2 ranks alongside Superman II and both X-Men films as the best screen adaptations of comic book heroes, a status that, as we've seen through the years, isn't as easy to master as it sounds.
Steve Persall can be reached at 727 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com.
Spider-Man 2