Great genre stories don’t “transcend their genre,” they
exemplify it, fulfilling preexisting potential. Spider-Man
2 is indeed, as many critics have said, “the best superhero
movie ever.” It is also a philosophical romance that probes the
dilemmas and paradoxes of altruism. It is “the best superhero movie
ever” because it probes the dilemmas and paradoxes of
altruism. It is just a notch or two below a brilliant achievement,
and taken in train with its 2002 predecessor and the planned third
installment, has the potential to be a landmark movie series.
It’s a philosophical romance with fight scenes, and I don’t want
to scant their pleasure or craft. Surprised robbing a bank, villain
Doctor Octopus and uses his mechanical arms to whip bags of coins
at the hero as he hops from pillar to pillar. The two struggle atop
a moving elevated train and up and down the sides of skyscrapers.
The CGI effects outstrip the first movie and the fight choreography
is more inventive. Cars smash with a crunch that goes straight to
some quivering tip of the urban hind-brain.
And it’s all in service to the film’s ideas and emotions, which
is the key to the film’s appeal. The story takes Stan Lee’s
now-famous formulation, “With great power, there must come great
responsibility,” and, in ways alternately showy and subtle, prods
at it for two hours. What, the movie wants to know, does this maxim
mean?
Bitten by a genetically altered spider, young Peter Parker gains
its abilities and, by a sin of omission, allows the murder of his
uncle. Resolving to make up for his failure to do the right thing,
he dons a costume and sets about stopping crimes, rescuing people
from burning buildings and doing whatever a spider can to save
people. Telling that story occupies the first film, at the end of
which Peter renounces the love of the one woman he has ever cared
about because his duty as Spider-Man comes first, and his love
could only endanger her.
The new movie picks up two years later. Peter is estranged from
his former roommate and best friend, Harry Osborne. He hasn’t seen
his erstwhile love, Mary Jane Watson, in so long that he has to ask
her where she’s living these days. The bank plans to foreclose on
the mortgage of his surviving guardian, Aunt May, and the very
first thing that happens in the movie is that he loses his job
because he keeps showing up late and then ducking out to chase
sirens and save a few lives.
Everything slides for the sake of his self-perceived duty. Peter
construes his inner conflict as between his desires and his
responsibilities, but he is only partly right. He’s also
sacrificing one set of responsibilities for another: He’s
sacrificing his responsibility to people he knows for his
responsibility to people he doesn’t. (“Everyone has come to see my
play,” Mary Jane recriminates, “except my best friend.”)
There is narcissism to this level of selflessness and
Spider-Man 2 is a great movie because it realizes this. In
both films the costume comes apart under stress as the distinction
between ego and alter ego frays. In the second movie
Peter/Spider-Man spends down to his seed corn helping others, and
his very body rebels. He begins to suffer psychosomatic power loss.
Renouncing his alias, Peter’s circumstances improve in direct
measure as his guilt waxes. We know, as soon as we see Peter dump
his costume in a garbage can, that he’ll be wearing it again before
the film’s close, but note, despite a pretty speech by Aunt May
about how heroism means “giving up the thing we want the most,”
just what circumstance finally revives Peter’s powers.
The film profits from improvements in every aspect over the
first movie. That one featured a solid story but so-so dialogue.
The new script is more quotable, with some genuinely resonant
lines. It contains what appears to be a classic Hollywood “MOS” in Aunt May’s heroism speech, but
considered as advice to a loved one the speech can chill. The cast
members who were good last time are as good or better, and the
weaker ones have improved.
If Rosemary Harris does not get at least a nomination for Best
Supporting Actress for her role as Aunt May, there will be hell to
pay. There’s not the least whiff in Harris’ performance of the
“slumming” Dame This or Sir That often project when they stoop to
appear in a fantasy film. Unusually for a big-time actor playing a
super-villain, Alfred Molina keeps himself on a scenery-chewing
diet. And Kirsten Dunst has grown substantially as an actress
between the last film and this one. She gets more respect from the
camera (no outlined-nipple shots this time) and earns every bit of
it. Her character is the linchpin of the series, and it’s not
giving away too much to say that her face is the first and last
thing we see. Importantly, she is plausibly beautiful —
starlet-gorgeous when dolled up for a play or a party, but everyday
good-looking in her character’s off-hours. We see large pores,
rough cheeks and an ironed hairstyle that is not her best possible
look.
How the next movie will develop the still-open themes of the
first two nobody yet knows. But we have real cause to hope that the
third will live up to the promise of the first two movies because
the property’s brain trust clearly know what they’re doing. There’s
none of the embarrassment at the material that marred Tim Burton’s
two Batman movies. They’ve been faithful translators of the spirit
of a character whose appeal has lasted forty years and more, and
their stewardship has earned $200 million in six days. That’s great
power in Hollywood, responsibly earned.
