Movie Review: Spider-Man 2

Spider-Man 2 [2004]

Sequels are an interesting thing. They're sometimes a godsend, a sign that a movie has blossomed into a franchise, and sometimes they end up showing that either the creative team or the franchise itself just doesn't quite have the oomph needed to be a long-running film series. But when 2002's Spider-Man ended up not just being a great adaptation of everyone's favourite neighborhood superhero but also an actual box office smash, a sequel was pretty much inevitable. 

And 2004's Spider-Man 2 (and the later released director's cut, Spider-Man 2.1, which is what I watched for this review) ended up being widely regarded as one of the contenders for the best Spider-Man movie ever. And, honestly, watching this movie more than a decade later... it's easy to see why. Sure, Spider-Man 2 suffers from a lot of the pre-MCU superhero movie tropes that made some of them feel a bit too cheesy and brings the movie down a bit. The villain's plot essentially takes place in the background separate from the hero until the inevitable Act 2 and Act 3 confrontations. The main leading lady is just there to be a damsel in distress and a romantic love interest. And some of the dialogue feel a bit too stiff and cheesy. Old Aunt May hanging on to a building with her umbrella, anyone? 

But with the exception of the final installment of the Raimi movies, what these old Spider-Man movies did right was adapt the source material relatively faithfully and they do so with heart. Sure, there are some shortcuts that are inevitably taken when taking hundreds and hundreds of comic book history and condensing them to two hours. But the storyline adapted for Spider-Man 2 is pretty solid and well-done. I wouldn't say tightly-paced, because there certainly are some parts of the movie that leaves me scratching my head, but otherwise, it's done relatively well. 

The movie itself is simultaneously funnier, more action-packed and arguably even darker than its predecessor, the 2002 Spider-Man. It does try to follow up on some of the plot threads set up there, particularly on the Harry Osborn path, but it's mostly a running B-plot while the main storyline is mostly about Peter Parker struggling with his dual life of Spider-Man being a huge, huge obstacle to his civilian life. He misses Mary Jane's huge play, driving a huge wedge between the two's relationship. His relationship with Harry is also strained (although that's more Harry's fault than Peter's). He misses his pizza deliveries, costing him his job. He misses classes and his grades suffer. He struggles to make ends meet, and he's owing money to both his landlord and even JJJ's secretary. Sure, he's saving lives, but being Spider-Man ends up being a horrible influence on Peter Parker as a person. Throw in the fact that due to Peter's other boss J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle painting Spider-Man as a goddamn menace, and Spider-Man leads a very, very thankless life. Tobey Maguire really ends up portraying Peter Parker as someone who tries his best, a plucky young man trying to do the best with what he's got, but who life always kicks down. 

During the course of the movie, a scientist that Peter looks up to, Dr. Otto Octavius, ends up being funded by Harry Osborn to create some sort of... science experiment or other. And while watching this in 2019 made me chuckle a bit at the sheer lack of realism with the huge science experiment mumbo-jumbo (not even a glass panel separating the press from the experiment in the warehouse?), at the core of things, the story is told relatively well. Giving Octavius a prior connection to Peter as a mentor talking about science and discovery is a neat, if easy, way to give Dr. Octopus a connection to Peter that some of the antagonists in lesser Spider-Man movies don't quite have. And then we get the obvious supervillain origin when Dr. Octavius's robotic tentacle arms and the (very unsafely exposed) inhibitor chip keeping the A.I. in check ends up being destroyed in the explosion, and driven insane by the death of his wife, Octavius is manipulated by the tentacles to... repeat the experiment? Or something? Yeah, making Dr. Octopus be essentially a puppet to his robot tentacles robs the villain of a lot of agency, and I honestly would prefer it to be him just being driven mad by the death of his wife. 

And as Peter Parker struggles with his own personal demons, things get even worse for our hero, and I really do like just how personal the stakes are. Eventually, in the midst of trying to get a bank loan to save poor Aunt May's house, Peter finds himself facing off against Dr. Octopus in a fight on the bank, and... hoo boy, despite some of the criticisms I may have towards this movie, the best thing about it is easily the special effects behind Dr. Octopus's mechanical arms. Which are completely practical effects, done with puppeteer teams. It's amazing and it holds up even now. 

Spider-Man manages to save Aunt May from certain doom, but fails to actually apprehend Dr. Octopus. This failure is spun off, once more, by the Daily Bugle, as Spider-Man assisting the supervillain. Throw in the added blow to Peter's life when Mary Jane reveals that she's became engaged to J. Jonah Jameson's son John, and Peter basically suffers a bit of an emotional breakdown, abandoning his Spider-Man identity and dumping his costume in the trash. 

And we actually see that Peter Parker's life is so much better without the stress of the double identity. He performs better in university, he has a better relationship with his Aunt (through a very, very emotional scene when Peter reveals his role in failing to prevent Uncle Ben's death), hell, he even flirts with Mary Jane moderately successfully, and that blissful "ah, the pressure's off" when he sees a bunch of police sirens whiz by is pretty nice. It's not very often that these superhero movies explore just how much devoting your life into superheroing takes a toll, and showcasing just how much Peter's life is actually better for him personally without Spider-Man is amazingly done. 

Of course... with great power, comes great responsibility, and all that jazz. Peter's good heart ends up winning out when he sees a building on fire, and while Peter Parker manages to rescue a little girl all on his own, the firemen tell him that there was another man who died on an upper floor -- with the unspoken implication (great restraint there, movie!) that Peter could have saved him if he had been Spider-Man. Another cheesy scene was when he helped Aunt May move. Aunt May had been critical of Spider-Man before, labeling him a menace thanks to the Daily Bugle, but after their team-up in the bank, the fact that both Aunt May and some random kid neighbour actually look up to Spider-Man as a hero ends up reinvigorating Peter to reclaim his mantle. 

The fact that the villains are doing their villainous stuff helps out too. I'm... I'm not quite sure who the hell is selling doomsday science equipment to Dr. Octopus after he robs his bank (no, really, who?) but Dr. Octopus ends up demanding the isotope tritium from Harry Osborn. Harry, still obsessed with killing Spider-Man after blaming Spider-Man for his dad's death, demands that Dr. Octopus bring Spider-Man to him alive. One thing leads to another, and Dr. Octopus kidnaps Mary Jane to threaten Peter Parker. 

The subsequent face-off between Spider-Man and Dr. Octopus on the train is perhaps remembered as the iconic superhero scene, and for good reason. It's paced well, it's tense, and the sheer awesomeness of Dr. Octopus's tentacles smashing around a speeding train while Spider-Man tries his damnadest to stop the train is pretty damn awesome. As cheesy as Spider-Man stopping the train is, you really do feel just how much the poor kid is hurting and giving his all to save these people. And... okay, the citizens of New York lifting him on his back and promising not to reveal his identity is cheesy as shit, but the subsequent scene of them standing between Dr. Octopus and the wounded Spider-Man is awesome as shit. 

And then... we get a series of events as Dr. Octopus delivers Spider-Man to Harry, gets the plot device isotope, Harry discovers Spider-Man's identity but we don't get much resolution because it's a sequel plot point, and then we get a showdown in the villain's lair. After a brief action scene and a lot of Mary Jane screaming, Spider-Man manages to appeal to Octavius's human heart and he ends up sacrificing himself to stop the reactor. Oh, and Peter reveals his secret identity to Mary Jane, and insists that this is the reason they can never be together.

The final scenes show Harry going crazy as he hallucinates Norman Osborn's ghost, and discovers that his father apparently has Green Goblin equipment hidden in a secret room, while Mary Jane abandons her wedding to be with Spider-Man, accepting Peter's double life as part of the deal. Aww!

And... and for the most part, the movie is well done. It's themes and the story it tries to tell -- Peter abandoning his superhero identity only to realize that it would be selfish for him to not be Spider-Man, and willingly sacrificing his happiness for the greater good -- is well done. The pacing is all right, particularly in the 2.1 Director's cut. But there are certainly a fair amount of criticism going into this one from me. Mary Jane and Peter Parker has a lot of great chemistry, but while I understand Mary Jane's confusion from her point of view, the fact that she actually ended up abandoning her fiancee (and John seems to be a nice dude) on their wedding and not calling it off before honestly ends up feeling a bit too selfish, and honestly, everything about Peter and MJ's relationship ends up feeling a wee bit too melodramatic for my liking. 

The villains of the movie are also... eh? Both Alfred Molina's Otto Octavius and James Franco's Harry Osborn are well-acted for sure, but I really am not a big fan of Dr. Octopus basically being mind-controlled by his robot tentacles and the movie really not doing anything with it until the end of the movie to give the character an excuse to go out in a heroic sacrifice. How much cooler would it be to have him just be driven by grief? Or how much cooler would it be to have him constantly argue with his tentacles, really setting up the tempting-devil influence? Or how much cooler it would be if the tentacles do even more evil things than Otto himself? Imagine that bank scene, with Otto Octavius only wanting to rob the bank, but the tentacles, out of their own accord, are doing evil things like kidnapping an old woman or trying to stab Spider-Man? And until the climax Otto is convinced that this is him? I dunno, it seems like they just wasted an interesting concept. 

Harry Osborn is also somewhat problematic, with his obsession not really being given enough time to develop. Every single time Harry shows up in this movie he's just being a little shitbag about how evil Spider-Man is and how terrible Peter is for not helping him hunt down Spider-Man, but the movie ends up really not going anywhere with it other than the obvious setup for Spider-Man 3. And while it's all right for a movie to set up for sequels (the MCU makes a living out of exactly this), I did feel like they really should've given Harry a more solid character arc throughout the movie itself. 

Overall... it still holds up pretty well. There are parts of the movie that are a bit iffy, for sure, and I'm not a big fan of the mishandling of some of the characters. But the good parts of the movie outshine the bad parts. Tobey Maguire's entire performance in particular, but also the awesomeness of the effects behind Dr. Octopus's arms, the train scene, the bank robbery scene, J. Jonah Jameson hamming things up, the horrifying scene as Octopus's tentacles start rampaging in the hospital... it's slightly dated for sure, but definitely a pretty vast improvement to its already well-done predecessor, and easily one of the better superhero movies of its time. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Stan Lee has a blink-and-you'll miss it cameo as a man pulling a mother and her child away from rubble when Dr. Octopus is holding Aunt May hostage. 
• When spitballing names for Dr. Octopus, one of Jameson's employees suggests "Doctor Strange", which JJJ likes... but then notes that it's taken. 
• The whole "Spider-Man... no more!" line, as well as Peter dumping his costume in the trash, is a homage to an iconic comic, Amazing Spider-Man #50-52.