Dylan Greene dot com

I saw Spider-Man 2 today, and I might be in the minority saying this, but I'll say it anyway.... What a mistake.... I had a headache for the rest of the day thanks to that movie. Somehow Spider-Man 2 made Chronicles of Riddick seem like a good movie.

(Spoiler note: I tried not to say anything that wasn't in the trailers, but if you haven't seen Spider-Man 2 yet and you are looking forward to it, you should probably wait until after you've seen it and made your own opinion before reading what I've written.)

• No real story or plot. It's basically a week in the life of Spider-Man where lots of bad stuff happens. Here's the sub-plots:
• There's some sub-plot with Peter's landlord and the landlord's somewhat freaky daughter that makes no sense.
• Guess what: Aunt May has money problems (which are never solved, maybe for SM3).
• The Dr. Octopus thing, which doesn't even start until about an hour into the movie and has a really silly premise. I never read the Spider-man comic books - is the premise really that dumb? "Oh no, the Mind Inhibitor is gone!"
• SPOILER THIS LINE ONLY: Peter decides to retire as Spider-man so he can have the woman he loves - but come on, we already saw this in Superman II, and we know he's going to come back to finish the movie. Not to mention Spider-Man 3.
• Way too many lengthy closeups of characters looking scared. Picture the many Frodo closeups in Lord of the Rings, especially when he's thinking I can't do this!, and you'll know what I mean. SM2 is two hours long, surely they could have cut these down.
• For slower audience members, characters repeat the same things over and over: Octavius' invention is the greatest thing ever, Harry wants revenge on Spider-man, Peter is in love with MJ, MJ is confused about Peter, Aunt May is sad, and so forth... It's like each character has one thought that must be said and re-said.
• For a summer action movie, it's doesn't have as much action as I would expect. To me this was a good thing! I'd rather have story and characters than pointless special effects. But there wasn't much story and the characters were too one dimensional.
• Fortunately there's only a couple stupid lines! They all got groans throughout the audience. "But Peter is my best friend!" ... and I won't give away the rest of the line because it involves a nice surprise. Another ugh: "Looks like you have a train to catch!"
• Almost all of the best scenes are in the trailer. My favorite was the car smashing through the café. Even though I saw it in the trailer a dozen times and knew what was coming, it was just as cool on the big screen.
• The fight scenes with Spider-man and Octo made no sense.... I know it's just a movie, but I wish they could explain why Dr. Octo's walking shook buildings, he could hurl cars at will, and smash through walls, but when fighting with Spider-Man he couldn't break a bone or keep his grip on him.
• Dumb extras: When trouble comes, nobody runs away! Everybody stays and watches. The only person that runs away is Peter (to become Spider-Man) but somehow he never has to explain to anybody where he was. Again, I know it's just a movie, but even Clark Kent always had an excuse for Louis or his boss.
• Terrible special effects when Spider-man is swinging his way though the city.... Nothing about the buildings, vehicles, or him look anything close to real. It looks like an XBOX game. On the other end, the special effects of Doctor Oct's arms were excellent. They never looked fake.
• In SM1, the Green Goblin's mask convinced him to do bad things. In SM2, Doctor Oct's tentacles "talk" to him to get him to do bad things. Why the same concept? BTW, anybody else thing the tentacles looked and acted a little too much mini metal versions of Audry II from Little Shop of Horrors?

It's not all bad... I liked the trademark Sam Raimi Evil Dead/Army of Darkness references and camera shots, especially in the ER room. Bruce Cambel has his de facto cameo. Kristin Dunst is "girl next door" cute, (but will always be the vampire child from Interview with a Vampire, and I still see her "fangs" in her closeups in this movie), and the casting and acting is good.

A lot of people will probably this movie. It's better than most summer action flicks. Maybe I was expecting too much. I didn't like the first one for a lot of the same reasons I listed above (the "learning his powers" part of SM1 was good fun). I have no interest in the Spider-Man comics so I looked at this as a standalone product and not a conversion from the comics (I read that Raimi did a very good job with the conversion). Finally, I'm 28, so maybe I'm just a bit too old to enjoy this sort of movie and I should stick with flicks like Fahrenheit 9/11, City of God, Fog of War, and other more "mature" offerings...