SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004)

SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004)

Tagline: This summer a man will face his destiny. A hero will be revealed

(Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi) [PG-13]

Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs. Four mechanical arms welded right onto his body. What are the odds?

In this one Peter Parker (played by Tobey Maquire) and his life basically sucks. While he is popular he is distant from Mary Jane (played by Kirsten Dunst) and has a sucky pizza delivery day job to try and make enough money to live, because J. Jonah Jameson doesn’t pay him enough for pics of Spider-Man. At some point, Peter decides to give up on being Spider-Man to pursue a life with Mary Jane, but bam, she is marrying a freakin astronaut. He then gets to meet the much celebrated and brilliant Doctor Otto Octavius who is trying to develop an infinite energy source. He comes up with the most bizarre possible way to do it and the experiment fails rendering him the extension of 4 mechanical tentacles hell-bent on re-creating the experiment that Octavius designed them to help complete. One of the things he needs is a rare metal only Harry Osborn (played by James Franco) has access to. Harry wants Spider-Man’s head whom he blames for the death of his father, so Peter can either skip around to 70’s music or find his destiny and become who he was meant to be.

This thing has strong performances all over the place. Kirsten Dunst in my opinion is still by far the best on-screen Mary Jane we’ve seen. Alfred Molina as “Doc Ock” is by far one of the best villains or at least most complex in the Spider-Man series. He also looks incredible on-screen and you can tell Molina loved doing the role. Doc Ock’s tentacles are given a knife mechanism which was never part of the comics. I actually loved this touch. Tobey Maquire is still a great version of Spidey. This thing doesn’t disappoint. The effects even by today’s standards are extremely impressive and we are now in some cases sliding backward CGI-wise. It also helps that in some instances like a hostage situation with Aunt May, actress Rosemary Harris performed the action scenes herself. 

I loved the storytelling in this movie for the most part, but there are some strange choices regarding both music and montages thrown in here. Doctor Octavius was right that a lot of women like poetry, but I highly doubt the way Peter Parker was reading it could have won over anyone. The lines they give him in certain sequences have aged extremely poorly and I remember even then being a bit cringe-worthy. 

What is effective in this movie is the film's ability to capture the tragic aspects of Peter Parker’s life which is something the newer movies seem to have almost completely abandoned aside from Tony Stark’s death. The fact that this movie wasn’t afraid to go there, is a credit while it still works with the newer movies in the sense that we don’t need to keep rehashing Ben’s death. Save that crap for SPIDER-MAN 3. To this day SPIDER-MAN 2 still contains some of the most incredible action sequences in any MARVEL film and just that alone is worth going back to this movie over and over.  

When you really start looking back at the now 7 film SPIDER-MAN live-action series, even segmented into 3 iterations of the web-slinger himself, as a movie SPIDER-MAN 2 really stands out among the best if not the best. Some fans even consider it still the single best super-hero movie ever made. While I won’t go there, I can’t give this thing anything but a 6 out of 7. Some goofy dialog in certain scenes being taken out would have made this a 7 out of 7, but oh man, it’s a total blast. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF COLUMBIA PICTURES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.  

Please check out the link below by clicking on the picture. Because no one should die buttonless. Until next time.