Just got back from
Spider-Man 2 and, much to my great surprise, thought it sucked.
Okay, that's a broad generalization. I thought large chunks of it sucked. But I'll start out positive.
Stuff I liked:
- Doc Ock. Seriously, when I first learned Dr. Octopus was the villain, I sort of sighed and shook my head. Doc Ock, with the hair-stylin's of Moe Howard, funky sunglasses that would put Elton John to shame, and, generally speaking, not even a hint of malice. I gotta say, the movie made me realize that as a comic book fan, sometimes I stitch myself into vision and it can be pretty narrow. Doc Ock ruled.
- Doc Ock's Arms. They get their own mention because, honestly, they were a character unto themselves. Wonderful job designing how these things would look, move, act ... Everything about them was incredible. And I love love love how they were imbued with so much character.
- J Jonah Jameson. I liked him in the first, I liked him in the second. Jonah's such an asshole, and I love the way ... Uhm, Shillinger ... can't remember the actor's name ... anyway, I like how the actor portrays him. Fast-talking, acerbic, and a colossal, probably bipolar jerk. Well done. Only one major flaw with this, and I'll talk about that in a minute.
- The action scenes. Every last one of them kicked ass. And I'll include every scene where Spidey goes swinging through New York in this, because I swear I could watch that for half an hour or more on its own. Seeing that sort of stuff makes my inner fangirl squee like there's no tomorrow. It feels so damned real, almost like you could expect to look outside and see it for yourself. Lovey loved it.
And unfortunately, that's about it. Which brings us to what sucked.
That'd pretty much be the rest of the movie.
And I can pin it down to exactly what went wrong: the script.
The script, simply put, sucked the big fat one. It was overwrought, overly emotional, and came very close to making my physically gag. Nobody
talked in this movie. They preached. They preached in long, five to ten-minute soliloquies that came from nowhere and went nowhere. There wasn't just a point to be made here, there was a point to be summoned up from the fiery depths of creation, hammered into a fine edge, and then stabbed into your yielding flesh repeatedly.
You know. Because you might not be able to get it any other way.
And the cheese. Oh my god, the cheese.
I can accept a certain amount of cheesiness in my movies. Particularly with a hero like Spider-Man, who is himself something of the quintessential heroic figure. And it occurs to me that maybe -- just maybe -- they were trying really,
really hard to make it like the original comic books. You know, all moral-y and ... well, yes, overwrought. But there's a
reason that stories aren't written like that today, and an attempted return to such a state just
doesn't work. Not any more, and
certainly when it's not consistant, nor when it's meant to be taken seriously.
Winner of the "longest most boring-ass oh-my-god-shut-the-fuck-up" speech goes to Aunt May.
She would not stop talking. Okay. You think Spider-Man's a hero now. And the world needs heroes. Notice how I made your point in under 15 words? Try that. You're old. You shouldn't be wasting your precious remaining few moments on Earth by spewing forth pretentious garbage.
And again, hating how the script felt I was too stupid to pick up plot points woven subtley into the plot. Note the key word: subtle. That does not mean have an extra's only line be (and I paraphrase here), "Wow, thank god there was only a little tiny speck of this material we've never heard of before in that experiment, else
the entire city would have been destroyed." Now not only have you spilled a cup of plot all over me, you've made my seat all sticky and ruined any possible hope of me wondering what the villain is going to do next. Because it's a stupid line and stood out there like a sore thumb.
Every major plot point of this story was revealed ahead of time, not in a nice, easy-going way, but in broad, garish neon letters that stunned and disoriented. Good stories are not crafted in this way. Children's books are crafted in this way.
And my final bitch, because I've talked so much in my Blog today that I'm probably overloading everyone's Jet Wolf capacity for today, the train scene.
I'm going to ignore the physical impossibility of what Spider-Man was doing. I mean, when you read comics and see comic book movies, you go in with a certain degree of belief suspension. And I forgive it because I liked the fight scene so much. I'm even going to ignore the fact that Spidey's attempt to stop the train by using his feet instantly brought to mind
Uncanny X-Men #218 (but I'm a geek). The pill I cannot swallow was the "your secret's safe with us" mentality of the mob.
Nuh-uh. Sorry. My belief can only be suspended so far.
People do not work this way. Not today's people. Doesn't happen. Somebody, somewhere, sometime, is going to tell. They're going to be offered $500 for Spider-Man's identity three months from now, and they're going to cave. Because people (people as a whole, not necessarily a person) have short-term memories and are greedy sons of bitches. And, again, we come back to cheesy. So very cheesy.
What I would've done (and no, nobody asked me, but I played the "I would've done it this way" game throughout most of the movie, so now you can be a participant of that) was to have Spidey keep his mask. If you want to be able to see the strain stopping the train is having on him, I would've ripped it by his mouth. possibly even had one eye thingie ripped/shattered. Enough to convey, but not enough to reveal. Have him nearly fall at the end, that works for me, and I'll even go for the Christ-like mosh pit thing. Then he's lying in the subway car, and the crowd are gathered around. Someone reaches for his mask, to see who he is, and someone else stops him. They choose to allow him to remain anonymous. Once Spidey wakes up, finding out his true identity is no longer an option, so problem solved. The message is still the same -- they are thankful to Spider-Man for saving their lives, and will, in a way, return the favour. But it's without the completely unbelievable "We won't tell" bullshit that you just
know somebody's going to break.
Cynical? I prefer realistic.
I was wondering why I liked the first movie so much, but not this one. The cast was pretty much the same, the director was certainly the same, and I thought initially that the writer was too.
Nope. Turns out the first was pennedy by David Koepp. The second is credited to three people for story and one for screenplay. Too many cooks, perhaps? Or just a lame vision? You be the judge.
Me, I have seen and I have judged. And I am quite disappointed.
After Joyce's deliciously filling Christmas dinner, "The Body"
