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Reviews - Spider-Man |
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The summer is finally upon us. No, I can't
tell from the sub artic temperatures outside - I can tell because the
first true summer blockbuster is finally upon us. Destined to be the
king of all cinema for at least two weeks, Spider-Man finally opens up
the summer season of movies.
Being as Stan Lee would put it, a "True Believer", I was very
pleasantly surprised with this movie. It was very true to the character
created many years ago, with a few differences. Let me get these out of
the way because they were the only things that bothered me about the
movie.
First, very disappointed in his spider sense. Using slow motion really
didn't let the viewer see him sensing or anticipating his danger. I'm
not saying use the squiggly lines like in the comic, or even the half
Peter Parker face and half Spider-Man mask, but something else needed to
be done to convey his awareness to danger. Second, with all the hoopla
about his webshooters before the movie, I was very disappointed to not
even see one in the movie. To many people it was a real big deal that
the webs were organic and not chemical, so director Sam Raimi adopted
the use of webshooters to guide his webs. It would have been fun to see
Peter Parker develop and test the shooters to perfect the web slinging.
Finally, and this may be minor, but to an avid comic book reader, I
wanted to see him make his costume. We saw him design it, but not make
it. I know, I know I'm being real picky here, but it was just something
I was expecting to see. Finally, the usually strong Danny Elfman. I was
excited to see his name in the opening credits, but found afterward that
his musical score didn't meet the heroic nature of the movie.
The movie itself was very well done. Let me put to rest any fears over
the use of CG in this movie. Yes it's there and yes you can tell, but
you forgive every second of it because there is no way in hell that this
movie gets made without it. This is a movie that was supposed to be made
10 years ago, if they were able to settle the legal mess sooner, this
movie may have been pretty bad. The CG is very much needed in this movie
in order to get Spider-Man into his trademark poses and swings.
Otherwise, it couldn't have been done. The way Spider-Man moves and
crawls and strikes a pose throughout this movie is incredibly faithful
to the comic. Watching him swing through the city left me feeling a
genuine sense of awe and wonderment. It was graceful and exciting. For
that I am in debt to Raimi.
I'm sure this will be said over and over a thousand times but Tobey
Maguire was a perfect Peter Parker. The science nerd just oozed out of
him and his subtle transformation into a likeable science nerd who gets
the girl was very well done. However, as great as Tobey was, the
performance by Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborne was fantastic. Even hidden
under the Goblin suit, he was fantastic. His body language and voice
were perfect. It put to rest the fears I had going into the movie about
the Goblin. (I still didn't like the Goblin mask). Watching his insanity
grow and seeing the split between the Goblin and Osborne's personalities
was chilling.
The movie, does manage to cram so much into its 2 hours, a truncated
origin may have been a little better. But still the first movie manages
to set up any number of possibilities for the sequel. The reference to
photographer "Eddie" at the Daily Bugle - yes that Eddie, as
in Eddie Brock aka Venom. Peter also gets fired from a lab by Dr.
Connors aka The Lizard and at the end of the movie, Harry Osborne vents
his hatred for Spider-Man swearing vengeance on him, setting up his
possible turn as the Green Goblin.
The rest of the story was pretty simplistic. It follows the geeky Peter
Parker who becomes the Amazing Spider-Man. A few liberties were taken
along the way. The biggest was the combination of the Gwen Stacy and
Mary Jane Watson character. But overall, it manages to keep the viewer
interested until the climatic battle near the end between Spider-Man and
the Green Goblin. This was a classic battle taken directly from the pulp
pages and transferred very nicely onto celluloid. The only complaint is
this - I think Spider-Man needs to take a self defense class or two. He
just seemed a little less amazing than he should have been. However, it
was still a great finish right down to the battle torn spider costume.
Raimi was a great choice to direct this film. Fans of the Evil Dead
series, or even Darkman get to witness a comic book director finally
directing a comic book character. Spider-Man manages to raise the bar in
the comic book genre.
  
- 8.5/10
Blair Barbesin -
Contributor
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