Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
I saw that movie three times. The first time I saw it in theaters I went in with high expectations and came out feeling let down but liking it overall. The other times I saw it on TV with friends and others and my feelings toward it haven't changed for the better or the worse. I find Spider-Man 1 to be a better film on every level compared to 2, it had a perfect structure and wonderful concept of Norman and Peter having separate parallel origin stories that are intercut and gradually and organically cross over building to a perfect and bloody climax which is quite satisfying and impressive. It's got two parts...Part 1 is the origin, AF#15 stretched out for a full hour, Part 2 is basically all action with a series of fights between Spider-Man and Green Goblin, each one different from the last in staging and fighting.

-- Spider-Man 2 is very poorly structured on the whole. Everything until the train sequence works (more or less). That's the emotional climax of the movie and that should have been the actual climax. Instead, right after that we have a series of denouements one after the other -- Harry finds out Peter is Spider-Man, MJ finds out Peter is Spider-Man, Peter defeats Doctor Octopus, Harry finds out Dad is Goblin, and then MJ chooses Peter over rich suitor. It's basically one after-shock after another, and its a comedown after the intensity of the train scene. People who talk about movies having an ending problem often talk about the third LOTR movie, but Spider-Man 2 is a better example and less justified than LOTR.
-- The other issue is that the main story of Spider-Man 2 is Peter's romance with Mary Jane and Doctor Octopus and all that is basically an after-thought next to it. In Spider-Man 1, the whole point is that Norman Osborn is a cautionary tale for Peter, a character who is essentially an older version of what Peter could be...isolated, aloof, disliked by his company and his son, a misogynist. He reinforces the entire theme of "with great power comes great responsibility" (hence Tobey's Peter saying "I have a father his name was Ben Parker" to Norman when Goblin unmasks himself). Molina's Doctor Octopus though doesn't really illustrate that at all. Initially when Otto and Peter meet, he's an example of a scientist "who has it all" (great work, job he likes, happy marriage) completely different from Dafoe's incredibly selfish and self-destructive Norman. And then the character spends the rest of the movie as a meat-puppet to his AI rather than an actual person. So there's literally no characterization there to speak of after the accident.
-- The final scene with Peter and MJ is great but the stuff leading up to it is less satisfying and interesting. The whole MJ romance with JJ's sap of a son is cheap melodrama and it probably did a lot to add to this idea of KD's Mary Jane being a selfish b-word. It's illustrative of "false good" ideas in Hollywood screenwriting where the idea is to give a character an arc and dramatic hurdles to jump over...which is not bad, but it often leads to the cheapest dumbest melodramatic shorthand. The big disappointment is that the ending of SM-1 implied that she suspected Peter was Spider-Man after kissing Peter at the grave and looking at him clearly thinking of when she kissed Spider-Man. And in the sequel you see her piecing it little by little, but rather than actually have her figure out Peter is Spider-Man on her own before Peter tells her...the finale simply has her seeing Spider-Man without a mask...and that's just lame. I mean the movies clearly set that up...and had she figured it out, I think that would have been stronger for her as a character.
-- Speaking of melodramatic shorthand, the whole impotency metaphor in the movie, and Spider-man's powers going out and that being the reason he goes "Spider-man no more" is a lame dodge. The point of the original story is that Peter quit being Spider-Man in ASM#50-52 because he was overworked and stressed out not because he lost his powers. Peter having powers and quitting proves that the character is making a conscious choice...whereas when Peter loses powers, and he sees a mugging in the street at the end of the Raindrops montage and walks past, well he doesn't have powers so what can he do. So it's a way for the movie to invite and pile guilt on Peter without actually driving home consequences for his decisions. So that I felt was weak. I mean when Peter ruses in no-powers as a civilian to save that kid from a fire and then we realize that some others died in the fire...that didn't happen because Tobey's Peter didn't use his powers, he genuinely didn't have it at that time. Using elements of Spider-Man no more is not a bad idea, but the way it was done, largely to give Tobey's Peter acting stuff to do without the mask, feels quite transparent.
-- Spider-Man 2 is also the movie where the concept of Spider-Man losing his mask to show the actor's face in big moments began*...the train sequence being most blatant really took off. And that felt lame then and even moreso when later movies continued this tradition of laziness.

That said, let me belt out positives...Tobey Maguire's performance here is aces. That scene with him and Aunt May is incredible. The scenes with him and Kirsten Dunst at the Cafe right before Ock throws a car into the restaurant and she askes him if he loves her and he obviously lies to her and she knows immediately that he's lying is well acted by both of them. Whatever issues I have with how the movie handled Doctor Octopus, Molina's Octopus is an impressive visual presence...the brown suit, chic glasses, and those gunge covered arms looks really scary and effective. The train sequence and also the bank heist before are great action sequences. For this stuff alone, Spider-Man 2 is an excellent movie and a worthy sequel.


* Some would say that Goblin blew up Spider-Man's mask at the end of 1. But a) Goblin already knew Peter's identity and Peter knew he knew, so it makes sense to have Peter sans mask there, b) the bomb blew up a part ofthe mask and both of the lenses but Peter's face was still largely covered by the cloth of it, looking unrecognizable (as Harry when he sees Battle-Ravaged Spider-man in the third to last scene.
I agree with all these points. The Raimi movies are certainly flawed and they break down a bit on a story level when you really pick at them (I think Homecoming, regardless of how one feels about the changes it makes to the characters, is the best movie from a pure storytelling standpoint). However, the Raimi movies have a charm and authenticity to them that the MCU movies lack. They feel so vibrant and full of life, and they are all packed with wonderfully iconic moments. All three are very watchable, and I would know. I've probably seen them each at least a hundred times over the years (I was a really little kid when they were coming out and I basically had the DVDs playing constantly). The MCU movies are fun and have a spunky, 80s attitude to them, but they aren't as iconic or as memorable, and they represent a more compromised vision of the character because they've had to avoid certain elements on the basis of being the 3rd live action version of Spider-Man in less than 20 years.