Spider-man 2
Comments: 3
I took my daughter to see Spider-man 2 and it was terrific. Better and more enjoyable than the first. I mentioned seeing the first one and there a couple of things I said that need revisiting.
[Toby Maguire has] probably thrown away any shot at an acting career by taking this role; he’ll be Spider-Man like Christopher Reeve was Superman.
I doubt this is going to be the case. Maguire is too good an actor. Even in a cartoon role like Spider-man it’s clear he’s very talented and expressive. He’s so perfectly cast here.
One disappointment was in the way Spider-man’s motion through the city was shot and edited. With very few exceptions the film deals with these sequences the way any other action blockbuster would; vertiginous angles, lots of quick cuts — “hyperkinetic” I believe is the mot du jour […] the great missed opportunity here lies with the fact that Spider-man is an unpowered superhero […] Spider-man’s motion relies on a lightening-quick understanding of everyday physics: attached to a building by a strand of web, he’s basically a big pendulum in a spandex suit.
Gravity, elasticity and the tensile strength of spider’s silk are the true enablers of Spider-man’s motion and this would seem to dictate a different way of shooting and editing than if he were powered. There are a couple of shots where the film seems to realise that finding yourself on the end of a 10-storey pendulum would confer a certain grace and joy to the fearless […] which should be filmed with a similar grace and sweeping enjoyment, but for the most part it’s your standard, habitual 120-bpm Hollywood action delivery which ends up robbing Spidey of something that’s uniquely his.
This must have been a common complaint with the first movie because it’s been addressed with a vengeance in the sequel. Spider-man’s movement through the city is shot and edited with a fluidity that enhances rather than compromises the speed of the action. There’s an obvious attention to how the physics come into play and a clear effort at maintaining a strong continuity between cuts which, despite the still-frenetic delivery (but what did we expect — Ingmar Bergman?), creates a surprisingly solid illusion. In fact, the effect is absolutely exhilarating.
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Posted to Film • 2004.07.19 (Mon) • 12:18
Comments
Posted by ericville 2004.07.20, 12:20
it was definetely a great movie in my opinion too, but it seemed to me like it started off kinda slowwww, like there was too much drama in it… y’know? the action scenes were effin amazing, for sure ;)
/prolly just me. heh.
Posted by sypher7 2004.07.24, 01:01
Hi from a random visitor :)
I thought the movie was a decent flick (this coming from a non-spidey fan) but there were parts where I thought the cheesiness was a bit too much (like the train scene…). Overall it was still a good movie.
The sad thing is that I really liked Chronicles of Riddick much more (in comparison as a fun summer movie), which was hailed as being one of the worst movies this summer… I guess have some sort of eclectic movie taste.
Posted by Camilo 2004.07.29, 04:19
I wast completely amazed at the villain and his arms. Doc Ock was it! On the other hand, NY seems more diverse than in the first movie, and that in itself is an advance. But the action shots were so similar to Daredevil (or this, or that) that they completely lost appeal.
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