Spider-Man

In 2002, among the hottest of hot summer blockbusters was Sam Raimi’s take on Marvel’s wondrous wall-crawler, the spectacular Spider-Man, which earned a whopping 821.7 million dollars at the worldwide box office; was nominated for two Oscars, two Grammies, and a whole slew of other accolades; and spawned two sequels over the next five years.  The film remains popular to this day, scoring an 89% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and many, many devoted fans.

And I don’t like it.

I will now take a short recess to dodge the bushels of rotten vegetables being thrown at my head, and then we shall proceed.

In all seriousness, though, this movie… is really, really stupid.  And it’s not even a good kind of stupid that I can respect.  Almost everything about this film just drives me up the wall (ha!), from the acting to the characters to the plot to the dialogue… I understand that superheroes are a silly concept, but again, it has to be a good kind of silly to work.  Even if you disagree with my assessment of this film, hopefully I’ll be able to get some of you to understand why—for me, anyway—Spider-Man never quite works, no matter which way I look at it.  But I’m sure half of you have skipped this paragraph and moved on to the actual review already to find out how ANYONE could POSSIBLY dislike Spider-Man that much, so let’s get started.

The film begins with some voiceover from Peter Parker.  Some really bad voiceover: “Who am I?  You sure you want to know?”

Stop fishing for compliments, Petey.  I know your self-esteem isn’t the best, but if we didn’t want to hear about who you are, then we wouldn’t be here, now would we?  (Well, okay, some of us don’t want to hear who you are so much as we want to make fun of you for it, but I’m sure most people are genuinely interested.)

Anyway, Peter, played by the very not teenaged Tobey Maguire, goes on to tell us that this movie isn’t about having powers or overcoming adversity or anything interesting like that.  No, it’s about this chick he’s been crushing on, Mary Jane Watson.  Because that’s exactly what everyone walking into a superhero movie is going to want to see, right?  Angsty one-sided romances?

Now look, I get that truly great movies have to be about more than blowing stuff up and that the characters should be the driving forces behind any decent plot.  The problem is that most of the characters are unlikable morons.  And in cases where the characters are unlikable morons, I say bring on the explosions!  Preferably in a place very, very close to said unlikable morons.

Peter spends the first five minutes or so being bullied and thoroughly failing to get it on with MJ.  We meet Peter’s only friend Harry Osborn, played by the equally-unconvincing-as-teenager-but-much-prettier James Franco, and Harry’s daddy Norman, who seems to prefer smarty-pants Peter to his own son.  Smell the tension!! 

And then we cut right to the chase—a school field trip to the world’s most negligent museum, which specializes in misplacing irradiated arachnids.  Peter gets bullied some more, fails with Mary Jane some more, and gets bitten by a rogue spider, whereupon he immediately drops dead from radiation poisoning.  The end!

Nah, we all know they wouldn’t do that, at least not to the mainstream Spider-Man.  But we’ll get to that later.  For now, at Oscorp (owned by Norman), the military has shown up to see how the company is progressing in its creation of “performance enhancers” and WOW, I just realized how that sounded.  Didn’t anyone edit this script?  Or… or is that actually what they’re working on?  Here I thought we were talking about a knock-off of Super Soldier Serum but maybe what they’re really trying to do is protect their precious bodily fluids from Commie fluoridation?  Because I would watch that.

Well, whatever it is they’re doing, it’s not going well, and Norman is in imminent danger of being shut down.  In a desperate attempt to stay in business, he decides to test the performance enhancer on himself.  It works a little too well and he ends up going crazy and killing some poor minor character.

I tried really, really hard to come up with a snappy remark for this picture but… pffffheeheeheeheeheehahaha…

Meanwhile, a rather sick looking Peter returns to the Parker home and falls asleep on the floor.  We see the spider bite has swelled to about the size of an egg, but for some reason a) he, an unusually bright “teenager,” does not think to go to the hospital, and b) his perfectly loving aunt and uncle don’t think to check on him at any point during the night, and he is allowed to languish and develop spider powers.  Hmm.  Do you think if I hadn’t gotten treatment for that infection on my heel a few years ago, I could have developed powers too?  Granted, I wasn’t bitten by anything, I just scraped my foot on an old boot, and having the proportional strength and speed of a boot doesn’t sound like much fun.

The next day at school, Peter’s new powers get him into all sorts of fights with generic bully Flash Thompson and all sorts of new opportunities to unsuccessfully perv on MJ.  Which I don’t really object to, since it wouldn’t make sense for him to become an instant god.  What DOES bug me is the fact that Peter openly uses his new powers to win the fight with Flash.  And then he goes out onto the rooftops of New York to test his webslinging prowess in the middle of the day.  Yet later on, when Spider-Man shows up, no one suspects anything?  Are they trying to out-stupid the civilians in Metropolis or something?  I have to admit that the scene where Peter wall-crawls for the first time is pretty awesome, but he does it in civilian clothes, and then he’s screaming like a crazy person as he runs around New York trying out his powers.  You’re telling me that no one in a city of eight million people noticed any this?  Also, I’m not sure I’d want to test my previously untested superpowers on multi-story buildings right away.  Just seems like a recipe for street pizza.

WheeeeeeeeBONKkerSPLATvroooooomWHUMPcrunchitycrunchitycrunchity…

Upon returning home, Peter and next-door neighbor MJ talk a bit about their dreams—he wants to be a photographer, she wants to act—until she abandons him to go joyriding in her boyfriend Flash’s new car.  Yes, MJ is dating Flash Thompson, the biggest jerk in the school because… well, the obvious answer is because it creates more tension and drama for our protagonist.  But Mary Jane is treated like she’s supposed to be a genuinely kindhearted person, not to mention the only girl in the school who is ever nice to Peter, so the fact that she is knowingly dating the school’s leading Peter beater doesn’t compute.  Is she being bullied into staying in this relationship?  I guess it’s possible, but we don’t really see evidence of that.  She never tries to leave him, and he’s never anything but decent to her.  And if she did want out of the relationship, she isn’t exactly a shrinking violet here, so she shouldn’t have a problem telling Flash to buzz off.  Which, spoilers, she does eventually anyway.  So the only explanation left is that MJ is, in her own way, just as much of a jerk as anyone else in the school.

Anyway, Flash’s new ride has made Peter jealous, and he decides that he must compensate even harder than Flash is and buy his own set of wheels.  But in order to do that, he first needs a job.  Unlike any normal teenager who would just mow the neighbors’ lawns or sell hard drugs, he decides he’s going to get into the wrestling business and designs a silly costume to go along with it.  Meanwhile, Uncle Ben suspects something is wrong and tries to ask Peter about it, but somewhere along the line, Peter has inexplicably become a horrible, horrible person.

Uncle Ben: "And I know I'm not your father--"
Peter: "So stop pretending to be!"

Yeah, he’s not your father, he’s just the guy who raised you since childhood, you massive prick.  I’m assuming the justification for this is that his spider powers and MJ-stalkin’ have been stressing him out lately, but as far as we’ve seen, having powers isn’t that much of a burden.  If anything, life is better than ever for our “hero,” so the only reason he would behave like this is if he was a selfish moron.  Getting carried away with training and forgetting to come home on time I can understand.  Telling the man who loves you and treats you like a son to stop loving you and treating you like a son?  Inexcusable.  I hope Green Goblin gets him with a giant flyswatter.

So back to the wrestling thing.  I admit that I know nothing about wrestling, but is it common procedure to allow random fans to get into the ring with a professional wrestler, especially when you’re not making them sign waivers?  And especially when wrestling is less a sport than a performance that requires a great deal of physical training, steroids, and rehearsal?  Last I checked, that hasn’t been common practice since the Great Depression, when wrestling wasn’t completely insane. 

Peter: "That's a cute outfit.  Did your husband give it to you?"

On the upside, Peter appears to be well on his way to mastering the homophobia aspect of wrestling!  Good for him!  But now that I think about it, how come the guy in line ahead of Peter didn’t have to cage fight but Peter does?  What kind of a deal is this?  Obviously this joint ain’t all that reputable.  How smart is Peter supposed to be again?  Whatever, let’s just go with it.  During the fight, Peter’s opponent gets his hands on a crowbar (!!!!) but he manages to fight back and win instead of getting bludgeoned half to death and blown to pieces. 

Eat it, Jason Todd.

But the owner of the wrestling place refuses to pay Peter on account of a technicality.  Peter leaves angry and well, we all know how this goes down—a thief comes in to steal the night’s profits, and the embittered Peter lets him get away with it.  And then the guard on duty gets mad at Peter, a.k.a. Not the Guard, for sitting on his hands.  Look, I don’t care if the guy is a great wrestler or fighter.  That doesn’t mean it’s his job to put himself in danger when he hasn’t been trained to take down criminals, especially since it’s not made clear if the cop even knows who “Spider-Man” is.  He could just be a dude in a funny sweater for all he knows, so what’s with the moral preaching?  Not to mention the fact that the thief has a presumably loaded gun.  Considering spiders are not bullet proof, I think that would give any rookie untrained future superhero pause.

That being said, yes, Peter could have taken the guy out, and if he hadn’t been so angry he probably would have at least tried it, regardless of the stupidity of such a move.  But I really couldn’t bring myself to blame him if he’d been too scared to do so.  And personally, I think having Peter too afraid to act would have made for a much stronger film.  If we had a Peter who was much warier about using his powers, it would fit a lot better with his initially meek personality (though of course he’d become bolder the more he got used to them) and eliminate the problems from earlier with him swinging off multi-story buildings despite not knowing if it would work.  Plus, the scene where the thief kills Uncle Ben as a direct result of Peter’s inaction would be just as sad and even more powerful by virtue of the fact that Peter is now a considerably more sympathetic character.  (And, incidentally, the cop would be less of an idiot.)

On the flip side, I wouldn’t have minded a story about a teenager who lets his powers go to his head and allows his selfishness to overshadow better judgment, only to learn the hard way that with great power blah blah blah.  But this film is very shaky on just what Peter’s attitude toward his powers actually is at the moment.  Are they a great way of deflecting bullies and making money to impress MJ?  Or are they a curse that burdens him to the point where he starts lashing out at loved ones?  We see plenty of justification and evidence for the former, but only evidence sans justification for the latter.

Regardless, the end result is the same.  Ben gets his brains blown out (metaphorically speaking: I don’t think there’s any actual blood in this scene, come to think of it), Peter chases down the murderous carjacker only to realize *le gasp* it’s the same guy he didn’t stop at the wrestling venue.  Peter exposes his face to the thief right before said thief conveniently falls off a building so Peter doesn’t have to worry about the guy knowing his identity.  Not that that’s really a concern with this kid, apparently.  That’s not even getting into the fact that Wrestler Owner Man not only saw Peter’s real face but gave him the name Spider-Man, and yet we never hear from him again with so much as a blackmail attempt.  Really, Wrestler Owner Man?  You don’t want any sort of revenge against Peter for letting the thief steal your money?  Really?

Anyway, the world continues to turn, and Peter eventually graduates from high school.  It is at the ceremony that MJ breaks up with Flash for some vaguely defined reason.  Oh, wait, did I say vaguely defined?  I meant NEVER defined. 

After the ceremony, Peter angsts about Ben’s death some more, stares thoughtfully into the eyes of his Phil Jimenez-drawn Spidey sketch and is suddenly inspired to begin a new career of saving the citizens of New York City, the place where he moved after graduation… or at least that’s what was implied to happen. 

Er, where’d he get the costume?  The last time he made himself a costume it consisted of a sweater and a ski mask.  Where did he suddenly get the funds and the talent for spandex?

Ah.  That would explain the lack of a cape.  (Also, is that a shot of the Twin Towers in Spidey’s eyes that they forgot to edit out after 9/11?)

Meanwhile, as it turns out, Harry has been dating Mary Jane behind Peter’s back.  Is it just me, or is every “nice” person in this film secretly terrible?  Oh, and Peter has just lost his job due to chronic tardiness (would have been nice to hear about this job sooner…) and decides to take up the Daily Bugle’s offer of cash in exchange for Spidey pics. 

And just how has Oscorp been doing all this time?  Quite well, really, thanks to their competitors’ constantly being sabotaged by Green Goblin.  In fact, they’re doing so well that Osborn’s board of executives decides to sell it out from under him and throw him out.

Norman is not amused, but Willem Dafoe’s spectacularly bad overacting means that the same will never be said of the audience.

This leads right into something called a Unity Day Festival, which I suspect is really an advertisement for Oscorp in the guise of promoting international friendship.  In the middle of the festivities, Peter’s Spider Sense goes off as Green Goblin crashes the party and vaporizes the Oscorp executives right in front of the obligatory product placements.

The whole fight scene is tediously predictable.  Every fight cliché you can think of is here—the love interest who needs saving, the useless cops, the stupid child who just stands in the way of danger instead of running away, the property damage, the villain swearing revenge as he retreats, the gratuitous Stan Lee cameo… I guess it’s pretty to look at, but there isn’t the slightest trace of originality to be found.  Oh, and then there’s this—after saving MJ for the first of what is sure to be a billion times before the franchise is over, Spidey carries her far away from the chaos because… because he does, at which point Mary Jane says… wait for it…

"Who are you?"

Right!  Of course!  Someone who puts on a mask to fight crime and therefore obviously doesn’t want people to know who he really is is TOTALLY going to reveal himself to a random woman he just saved!  Why didn’t I think of that before?  IT’S GENIUS I TELL YOU.  Though hey, given Peter’s track record thus far, I’m surprised he didn’t peel off his mask right then and there.

Goblin decides his next target will be the Bugle’s editor, J. Jonah Jameson, since he figures that whoever takes the pictures of Spider-Man also knows how to find him.  Well, I guess if I didn’t have any other leads, I’d do the same.  Except… shouldn’t Peter’s name have been in the byline?  You know, "Pictures by Peter Parker" or something?  So instead of breaking into the Bugle, couldn’t Norman have just… bought a paper…?  Heck, he didn’t even have to buy it, he just had to look at it.  Or, if he was feeling particularly evil that day, he could have stolen it.

In any case, it should be noted here that, when Gobby asks Jameson for the name of the photographer, Jameson blatantly lies and says he doesn’t know who Peter is.  Even when Goblin calls his bluff and is about to hit him in the face, Jameson continues to lie to save some kid he hardly knows and who talks back to him all the time.  So while everyone else in the film pretends to be nice while secretly being a moron, Jameson does the opposite.  I say we make a spin-off movie about him.  We’ll call him… the Golden Grump!

Spidey tries to save Jameson only to end up passed out and carried to a nearby rooftop. 

If I ever get married, this is what my wedding pictures will look like. Though hopefully, whichever one of us is Spider-Man will be slightly less unconscious. And less blurry. Getting screencaps is hard.  My apologies.

Green Goblin offers Spider-Man a job as his assistant, which ends about as well as you’d expect.  This scene is also the first time we get to see the Green Goblin costume up close.  I guess it looks decent if he’s standing up straight or all blurry in a fight scene, but otherwise, you can see how stiff and awkward it is for the actor to move around inside of there.  His movements don’t look natural at all, which makes the costume look that much worse. 

Does this look at all natural to you?

The next time Spidey and MJ meet up, Miss Danger Magnet has attracted the attention of a mini-gang of hammy robbers/rapists/murderers.  This scene is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things—the word padding springs to mind—but I mention it because it leads to the famous upside-down-kiss-in-the-rain bit.

Okay, two things.  One, if he was serious about keeping his secret identity, he wouldn’t allow this supposedly random woman who has already expressed the desire to know who he is to touch his mask.  People complain about Superman’s secret identity being too transparent, but at least when he kisses a woman, she doesn’t remember it.  Two, this is a lot less romantic when you learn that the rainwater kept going up Tobey Maguire’s nose.  You’re welcome.

After a brief interlude where Spider-Man saves a bunch of people from a burning apartment building, we get to spend Thanksgiving at the apartment Harry and Peter are sharing, where Aunt May, Norman, and Mary Jane have all come to partake of the egregiously fake-looking turkey.  Norman notices that a cut on Peter’s arm matches a cut that Goblin gave Spider-Man earlier that day.  Is this… is this logic cropping up all of a sudden?!  …Well, I shouldn’t get excited.  It’s far too late to save the film, especially since Norman immediately rushes out and, later that night, uses his newfound knowledge to attack Aunt May.  He interrupts her nightly prayers, at which point he demands for her to “FINISH IT!!!”  Add that to the rapidly growing list of scenes where I cannot help but ask “Were they serious with that?”

As a result of the attack, Peter assumes that Gobby knows who Spider-Man is… I’m not entirely sure why he instantly jumped to that conclusion.  I mean he didn’t jump to the conclusion that Goblin knew everyone at Oscorp despite the fact that at least a dozen Oscorp employees were killed by Gobby right in front of his face.

At the hospital, Peter and MJ discuss her crush on Spider-Man via an extremely long, extremely terrible monologue.  You ready?

"I said, um... Spider-Man, I said... the great thing about MJ is when you look in her eyes... and she's looking back in yours... everything feels... not quite normal.  Because you feel stronger... and weaker at the same time.  You feel excited and at the same time terrified.  The truth is you don't know how to feel except you know what kind of man you want to be.  It's as if you've reached the unreachable and you weren't ready for it."

MJ responds with “You said that?” to which I would like to add “Because nobody talks like that and that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”  At the very least, it’s still leagues ahead of Alfred’s “luminosity of spirit” speech from Nightwing #99, but that’s about the only good thing I can say about it.

For the sake of drama, Harry walks in and sees them holding hands.  He then returns home and whines to Daddy about how MJ loves Peter instead of him.  Yeah, something I didn’t mention earlier in the interest of time—at one point Norman calls MJ a gold digging slut within her hearing range, and when MJ dares to get upset about it, Harry defends his father and declares that he wants to be just like him.  Harry, you should be counting your lucky stars that MJ didn’t kick you right in your man business, not complaining because she had the gall to seek solace and friendship from someone who didn’t implicitly agree that she’s a gold digging slut.  Great H’ronmeer, was the writer intentionally trying to make everyone an unlikable jackass?  Because intentional or not, it’s working!

Back at the hospital, Peter suddenly panics that the Green Goblin will try to hurt MJ just like he did with Aunt May.  And, big surprise, guess who’s been kidnapped and placed on top of a very tall bridge, Gwen Stacy style.  By the time Spidey arrives, Goblin has suspended both MJ and a cable car full of schoolchildren off the bridge.  Well, at least they weren’t nuns.  But what was a bunch of ten-year-olds doing out so late anyway?  Well, sucks to be them, as Spidey only has time to save the cable car OR Mary Jane before they both fall into the river.  He probably would have had plenty of time to save everyone if he hadn’t just stood there letting Green Goblin monologue for so long.  Ugh—I’m changing his nickname from Gobby to Gabby.

Spidey being Spidey, he manages to save everyone anyway.  And I do give the film some credit.  The scene where Spidey has to hold up the trolley by himself is pretty intense (so intense, in fact, that the trailer for the reboot movie has apparently stolen it…)… but what’s this?

"You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!"

A bunch of New Yorkers have stupidly heroically banded together to try to help Spidey defeat Green Goblin.  Given that this scene was hastily added to show the unity New Yorkers felt post-9/11, I’d probably get punched if I tried to criticize it too harshly.  I will say that this is why movie producers should think and plan very carefully before adding any social commentary on current events that won’t hold as much meaning for future audiences.  And if you do plan to add social commentary... for the love of Kirby, would you get a better writer?

Let’s wrap this up.  After the kids and MJ are safe, Gabby pwns Spider-Man with the aid of some silly slo-mo shots.  But when he threatens MJ for the fifty thousandth time?  Spider-Man rallies and Goblin ends up accidentally killing himself.  Okay, not to question the Great and Powerful Osborn (too late), but take a listen to this murder plan and tell me what’s wrong with it.  Goblin and Spider-Man are facing each other, and Goblin’s glider is directly behind Spider-Man.  Goblin plans to skewer Spidey by ramming him with the glider from behind at top speed.  Even if Spider-Man HADN’T jumped out of the way, where do you think that glider—which is traveling extremely quickly—is going to end up?!

Guess he won’t be needing those performance enhancers anymore.

Norman begs Peter not to tell Harry the truth about the whole “I’m an evil murdering psycho” thing, and then immediately drops dead.  Complete with a little *clang* sound effect.  It’s actually one of the funnier bits in the film.

Peter must have agreed not to tell the truth, because he allows Harry to believe that Spider-Man killed his dad, thus sparking Harry’s hatred for the webslinger which will in no way come back to haunt them in the sequels.  Peter also turns down the chance to hook up with MJ out of fear that that will make her a target for future villains.  Which makes zero sense, since she’s been getting herself into trouble since before Norman found out who Spidey really is and before she all but threw herself at Peter wanting to date!  And even if we assume that distancing himself from his loved ones is the only way to protect them from evildoers, then why doesn’t he ever try the same trick with Aunt May?  She was attacked too, remember?  Don’t you love your aunt, you horrid beast?!  But Peter is too stupid to realize any of this and gives MJ the “But we can still be friends!” speech.  Then he tries to shove the “with great power comes great responsibility” line down our throats again, but by this point, I’m fast-forwarding to the very end of the credits so I can hear the classic Spider-Man theme tune instead of this idiot’s inner monologue.

This movie… how do I put this… it does not even remotely deserve the 7.4 rating it has on IMDb.  6.4, maybe, and even then only for entertainment value, because this is not a good movie.  Its biggest weaknesses are by far the characters and the writing.  Almost everyone is either a jerk or so ill-defined that they come off as jerks.  This is not helped by the fact that everyone overacts at least a couple of times, though Willem Dafoe chews so much scenery it’s a wonder there’s any left by the end.  I think I covered most of my problems with the writing earlier, but the gist of it is that it’s too often bogged down by appallingly purple dialogue and clichés so old I’m surprised they haven’t disintegrated.  On the upside, we get a score by Danny Elfman, so my only complaint on the musical front is that the score is too often used to tell me how I’m supposed to feel as opposed to, y’know, decent characters and dialogue.

And I’m not being hard on this film because I hate Spider-Man in general.  I’m being hard on this film because it deserves it.  Actually, when he’s written well, I find Spider-Man very likable, very entertaining, and very heroic.  (I am STILL mad Spectacular Spider-Man was cancelled.)  Same goes for MJ.  But unfortunately, when it comes to superhero/action films… and I know this sounds horrible… I really, really hate the female leads.

Yeah, I know.  String me up from the nearest tree and use me for target practice with your weapon of choice.  I probably deserve it.  But honestly, the way female characters are written into superhero movies is just boring, not to mention insulting.  The moment a woman shows up in these films, I know exactly what’s gonna happen—“Oh, look, Kirsten Dunst/Kim Basinger/Katie Holmes/Margot Kidder just showed up!  I’ll bet SHE is going to encounter the hero during a dangerous situation, become obsessed and fall in love with him!  Then HE will feel the same way strongly enough to tell her his secret identity for no good reason, and she’ll realize that he’s really some guy she ignored in her daily life!  And then either she or he will realize that his hero work is far more important than a romantic relationship and break it off before it ever really gets the chance to begin.  HOW ORIGINAL!”

Out of the names I just mentioned, only Kidder gets a pass because Lois Lane was the original superhero obsessee/rescuee.  That’s not to say I enjoy or approve of it, but I’m willing to overlook it in her case.  Mary Jane gets no such pass.  Regardless of the opening narration, this story was not about Mary Jane or Peter’s love for her in any capacity.  It was about a dude who gets spider powers and has a generic love interest to push the story forward and add angst and “intrigue” whenever the writer got stuck.  That is not a character.  That is a prop.  And that’s terrible.

Is this the worst superhero movie ever?  No.  It does have some good elements.  Like I said, Dafoe’s performance is a welcome (though problematic, as I’ll discuss in a minute) breath of fresh, hilarious air.  The parallels between Peter and Norman are pretty interesting, e.g. they each get their powers at around the same time and end up spending the night on the floor afterward.  While these parallels aren’t the main focus of the film, they were there enough to get me thinking about the characters in terms of nature vs. nurture and how their individual ethics and circumstances could have dictated (consciously or otherwise) how they chose to use their powers.  Or at least it would have if it wasn’t implied that the Goblin Gas is more of a Jekyll-and-Hyde thing, but throw me a bone here.  Besides that, I also give the movie credit for making me want to crawl walls and swing from rooftops, which is kind of a big deal since usually just watching movies about heights makes me nervous.

                                                                                                                     

 Why didn’t anyone tell me Up took place so high up?!!

Is this even the worst Spider-Man movie ever?  Heck no.  But that doesn’t mean this one is any good either.  I think the problem is that the movie can’t decide whether or not it wants to be taken seriously.  It’s obvious that there are some moments when we are supposed to be genuinely upset by what the characters go through.  Uncle Ben’s death, for instance, is played perfectly straight, and I’m fairly certain that the ridiculously overwritten heart-to-hearts between Peter and various other characters are supposed to be taken seriously.  But then you get these over-the-top, irredeemably goofy moments, like Norman’s death (“…Don’t tell Harry…” *clang*) or whatever the heck that praying thing was, and I’m so busy snickering that I almost forget to question whether or not these are intentionally silly moments or if I’m actually supposed to be enthralled by the drama. 

With something like, say, the sixties Batman show, even more dramatic moments like the death of a potential love interest are treated in such a way that no one over the age of twelve could possibly take it seriously, and I therefore know how to react to the show as a whole.  But with Spider-Man?  I get the feeling they were trying to be at least partially sincere.  Maybe I’m completely wrong on that front, but when I watch this film, I feel like Raimi and company were honestly trying to create a superhero film for the grown-ups more than they were for the kids.  But if you’re going to put comedy into your drama (or drama into your comedy), you have to find a balance; you can’t let the light-hearted (or somber) moments run away from you and poison the tone of the film as a whole, and that’s where Spider-Man fails.  It is too serious to be silly and too silly to be serious, which leaves me with no other recourse but to smile confusedly and go watch something less complex.  Like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Next Time: Speaking of Batman, let's go watch the very... very... VERY gradual decline of one of Gonzo’s favorite superhero shows!

Images from Spider-Man, The Incredibles and Up