Spider-Man (2002)

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I have loved Spiderman since I was a really little girl. He was my favorite of the superheroes, and I’m actually kind of jealous of the attention he’s been getting lately from the rest of the world. That said, the Spider-Man movie was *awesome*. Every time that commercial comes on for this movie—where the theme song blasts (“And they say that a heeeeeero can save us…”) and we see Spidey taking off from the roof of a NYC skyscraper—my heart does this flutter. Go on, make fun of me, I know it sounds lame, but it’s the same kind of flutter I get when two characters who just can’t be in love almost kiss (Mulder and Scully), or when the hero discovers his girl’s betrayal (Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger in L.A. Confidential). I can only chalk it up to a true love of movies, and a willingness to absolutely believe. I mean, we’re talking about a commercial here!

As for the movie itself, the acting is great—Tobey Maguire has something about him that makes me feel very…surrendered. What I mean is, there’s a sort of feeling of innate trust that I have in him (as my stepdad put it, he’s got that “aww, shucks” thing). He’s excellent as the nerdy yet ambitious Peter Parker, a teen who grows up and learns just like the rest of us. Stan Lee once wrote that the thing that makes Spiderman different from the other superheroes is that he *is*, actually, just like the rest of us, I mean, he’s fought bad guys while suffering an allergy attack before, and he lives in NYC, not some fictional city. Maguire simply captures that “I’m just another guy, trying to make the world a better place” feel.

Kirsten Dunst did an all right job as Mary Jane; although I like her as an actress very much, I may have been lukewarm to this performance because of my pre-movie vision of MJ: bright red hair (um, *naturally* red…something about her not being a natural redhead just bothered me!), and maybe more of a Lois Lane-type firey defiance. Williem Dafoe was extremely impressive as the elder Osborne, the business tycoon with not enough time for his son Harry (Peter Parker’s best friend), and who eventually is driven to become the evil Green Goblin. I sometimes notice that when big, already established stars are cast in big summer blockbusters (or opposite not-so-big stars or teens), they give a performance that feels dumb-ed down, or of lower quality (a perfect example: think the fourth Batman): not so here; Dafoe gives this role his all and it’s very scary! Of the supporting cast though, who surprised me the most was Harry Osborne, well played by James Franco. Franco’s character is unaware of both his best friend’s and his father’s alternate identities, and with such a role I imagine it would be easy to just fade into the script or the background, but Franco holds his own so well that Harry becomes a really definitive character, and you get a strong feeling of the rock and the hard place he finds himself caught between. Fantastic groundwork for future bad guy potential.

The movie deviates slightly from the original comic book origins of Spiderman, but makes it work well in this medium, especially with the über cool special effects of Spidey zipping between the buildings of NYC. The only real qualm I had with the movie was some of the plot holes it didn’t fully explain...specifically, the one that bugged me most was that at one point, the Green Goblin uses this wicked awesome bomb-disintegrating-thingy that basically dissolved anyone it was in a four-ft radius of. Why the hell didn’t the Green Goblin use this thing again?? o_O? no idea.

PS! Go see Pleasantville. It is another great Tobey Maguire flick that, unfortunately, didn’t get as much viewer support as it deserved when it was out (except from my 11th grade English teacher Ms. Cheney, who nearly had an orgasm when we were watching the preview. Haha, I have to admit, though, she was right: it’s an incredible, gorgeous, thoughtful film with an unbeatable cast).