Movie Review: Spider-Man 2

I saw Spider-Man 2 over the holiday weekend. What a great film! What makes the Spider-Man series so much better than the others? It has all the action you would expect in any superhero movie, but it adds real characters, story, and casts actors who know something about acting. The father of the modern superhero movie is Tim Burton's original Batman, which had many of these elements as well, before the franchise got ground into dust by Joel Shumacher. The Spider-Man series is a worthy successor. The only caution on that is to remember that the Batman series was great too, for two films.

Anyway, the opening credits give a comic book review of the first film. Then we jump into the film. Peter Parker is trying to live two lives, one as a college student studying the wonders of physics and trying to support himself as a pizza delivery boy, the other as Spider-Man. Unfortunately, these lives do not mesh well. Spider-Man is always getting in the way, making him late for class and work, keeping him from doing his homework, keeping him from his true love MJ. So our hero decides to ditch the high-life and focus on himself.

What makes the Spider-Man movies great is that on top of the requisite special effects and action sequences, there is an actual story with actual characters played by actors who do actual acting. In how many superhero movies can you actually watch a scene and be impressed by the acting? This film has a wonderful scene between Peter and his aunt where Peter finally tells the real story of what happened to Uncle Ben, admitting his responsibility in the sequence of events. It is in scenes like this that choosing a real actor like Tobey Maguire pays off.

Beyond the acting is director Sam Raimi's quirky style, best shown in the sequence following Parker's decision to throw away the Spider-Man costume, all set to "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head." There's also the comedy, like Spider-Man's evaluation of his costume (kind of itchy and tight in the crotch) or an anxious citizen asking Spider-Man if he has any more bright ideas (I won't give away the context).

This is what superhero movies should be. Not too overwrought like Hulk, not too mindless like the latter Batmans. It shows what intelligent scripting, acting, and directing combined with state-of-the-art special effects and action choreography can do. Now the question is, can they keep this high standard going for a third film due in 2007. As I said at the beginning, the Batman series started strong too (but not as strong as Spider-Man) before tailing off into the creeping disease of franchise-itis.