Maybe superhero movies should forgo their initial chapters and just start with sequels. After last year’s triumphant “X2,” which dwarfed its exposition-heavy predecessor, this summer we have the glorious “Spider-Man 2,” an action movie of the highest order that also provides us with a healthy dose of superhero angst.
“Spider-Man 2” wisely and consciously incorporates blockbuster elements into the film’s seamless, near-flawless script by “Ordinary People” scribe Alvin Sargent. Save the obvious one-dimensionality of the embittered and vengeful Harry Osborn (played by the still-excellent James Dean look-alike, James Franco) and a convenient articulation of all the movie’s major themes by Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) in a ridiculous speech to Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire), this is almost a perfectly conceived movie.
Peter is having a pretty tough time. He apparently is enrolled at Columbia University, and who knows how he’s paying tuition, considering he can’t hold down a job at a pizza place or the Daily Bugle, neither he nor Aunt May can pay rent, and Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) — whom he so honorably deserted at the end of the first film — is about to get married.
Peter befriends Dr. Otto Octavius (a wonderful Alfred Molina), a brilliant scientist who is attempting to harness fusion energy. And then the comic book begins — first the scientific catastrophe and then Otto’s subsequent demise into Doc Ock, a megalomaniacal villain with four robotic arms coming out of his spine.
The budget for “Spider-Man 2” has been reported to be $200 million, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t show. There are at least five knock-’em-dead action sequences in this movie, each one eliciting a different emotion. Spider-Man’s initial crimefighting that opens the film is a joy, and the disaster that creates Doc Ock is tense, even frightening.
Director Sam Raimi then reaches back about 25 years and delivers a scene inspired by his breakthrough 1981 film “The Evil Dead” (budgeted for $250,000), complete with chainsaw and amateurish, expressionistic lighting.
The fighting between Spider-Man and Doc Ock is downright beautiful. The car-through-the-caf
