Superhero Media: Spider-Man 2

Whereas I was pleasantly surprised re-watching the first Spider-Man, I began to find Spider-Man 2 a bit grating in parts. That is, of course, not to say that Spider-Man 2 is at all a bad film, if anything, it's probably technically "better" than the first one, but with the value of hindsight, it is somewhat diminished. Following on directly from the first film, Peter Parker's life is a mess, he can't hold down a job or get to class on time because of his duties as Spider-Man, is perpetually broke and even forgets his own birthday, being so wrapped up in his great responsibility. Meanwhile, Harry Osborn is obsessed with getting revenge on Spider-Man, but somehow running Oscorp even better than Norman did whilst drinking himself into familial insanity. Otto Octavius, in this version, a charismatic, chubby, "Latin Lover" type, is attempting to create a fusion reactor for Oscorp, which is big enough news for Peter to be on photographer duty, but no one makes a fuss over the artificially-intelligent quartet of robot tentacles he's using. When the experiment goes wrong, Octavius goes insane and starts plotting revenge. 

As with Spider-Man, Rami and the production crew lean heavily on Silver Age comics for inspiration, which is good in terms of short-handing, but some elements become anachronistic with close viewing. No, I don't mean that the Daily Bugle is still a big deal, newspapers were still pretty big in 2004, but there's a scene where Peter doesn't have enough change for a payphone, and one later where every student in a lecture is using paper rather than laptops. If the whole film had a matching aesthetic, it would be alright, but most of the background characters and extras are wearing contemporary clothing and New York looks like it did when the film was made. If I had to guess, I'd say that Rami and the team were working from a preexisting understanding and iconography of Spider-Man, rather than where the character was at at the time in comics. Now, there's nothing wrong with that approach, it worked for Batman in 1989 and Superman in 1978, but it does mean that you get more of a period film than may first be apparent. Superman The Movie rides this juxtaposition pretty well with the Smallville/Metropolis contrast, but Batman embraces the retro aesthetic wholeheartedly.

There are some great elements of Spider-Man 2, which really makes it a fun watch, like the train fight and Alfred Molina, even James Franco becoming goblinised for the next film. All-in, this is really probably one of the best superhero films of the pre-MCU era, warts and all. Toby MacGuire is still grating, especially in the emotional scenes, he cries worse than Deku and is clearly a decade older than the character he's playing. The showcase fight on the train between Spidey and Doc Ock is still a great action sequence, one of the best one-on-one superhero fights ever put to film, even if it gets sappy in the end; "I'm Spider-kus!" I don't think I'll be coming back to this series anytime soon, I much prefer the MCU Spider-Man efforts, not to mention that I now have Disney+ and therefore access to all of the Spider-man cartoons. Also, a friend has the Japanese Spider-Man television series on DVD, so look forward to that one as well.