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Uncle Orson Reviews Everything
June 30, 2004
First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.
Spider-Man 2
It isn't always the kiss of death when Hollywood spends appalling
amounts of money on a special effects extravaganza.
Every now and then, out of the morass of money, there rises, not a
swamp thing like Titanic or The Mummy Returns, but something ... dare I say
it? ... beautiful.
Spider-Man 2 fulfils every expectation of the thrill-seeking FX crowd --
lots of flying, lots of danger, a cool villain, people in jeopardy, a vulnerable hero
who struggles to save people we care about.
There's also clever writing, with good dialogue and genuine surprises,
scenes and sequences that really click.
That would be enough to make this the blockbuster of the summer.
But that wasn't enough for director Sam Raimi, screen story writers
Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, and Michael Chabon, and screenplay author Alvin
Sargent.
That list of writers is significant. The three screen-story guys are from
the comic-book and action-adventure tradition.
Alvin Sargent wrote the screenplay for Ordinary People, for which he won
-- and deserved -- the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.
You don't hire a guy like that if you plan to put mere eye candy on the
screen.
Sargent delivered. So did everybody else.
This film moved me. To tears. More than once. And not just in the
expected places. I was surprised by moments of real emotional fulfilment,
moments of revelation and fruition that few filmmakers since Frank Capra even
try for, let alone deliver.
But I can't tell you what they are. It would spoil the surprises. And
maybe you won't be affected by them as I was. Maybe all you'll see is the eye-candy and the occasional silly comedy -- mostly from J.K. Simmons as the
newspaper editor. But so what? That's a good movie, too.
My only wish is that we could have seen something from Kirsten Dunst
besides soulfulness -- not her fault, the script just didn't give her the
opportunity, and frankly, there was no time for it. But next time, in Spider-Man 3 ...
Meanwhile, nobody does soulful better than Dunst -- unless it's Tobey
Maguire or James Franco. Has a movie ever been better cast than this one?
The first Spider-Man movie, unlike, say, Titanic, is almost infinitely
rewatchable. If I ever flip to it on HBO, I end up hooked and watch it to the
end. That's a mark of good writing and good acting and good directing -- the
story doesn't pall.
Whereas Titanic soon makes grownups cringe, with the cruelly bad
dialogue that they actually made real actors say in public, and the laughably
false and manipulative scenes and gimmicks.
There is a philosophy in Hollywood that crops up a lot: That the audience
is so dumb that you don't actually have to make something good to have a hit
and earn a lot of money at the box office.
And that philosophy is absolutely correct. Independence Day and The
Day After Tomorrow and Titanic and a whole ream of disaster movies, sci-fi
potboilers, cynical sequels, and Spielberg movies have proven that over and
over again.
But just because expensive but phony movies make money doesn't mean
you have to make them that bad. The audience won't stay away just because a
great special-effects film also has wonderful characters and truthful writing. In
fact, it will continue to draw audiences years later, because truthful filmmaking
doesn't grow old the way empty-calorie movies do.
The Spider-Man franchise, so far, is the kind of work that everyone
associated with it can be proud of throughout their careers.
Meanwhile, almost everyone who sees it -- or at least, everyone with an
open mind -- will find a movie with a hero whose powers may be unbelievable
in the real world, but whose heart is recognizable ... as the best sort of human
being, the kind we always hope to see in the real world, but rarely recognize
when we do.
That's enough from me. Go see this movie (if you haven't already) and
then you won't need anybody to tell you anything about it. You'll know for
yourself.
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