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Dracos

Dracos Reveiws: Spider-man 2
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Spider-man 2

A friend of mine got four tickets to a pre-showing of Spider-man 2 last night and I ended up going along. I’m not much of a Spider-man fan and the first movie didn’t really do much for me but I was extremely glad that I went. Allow me to explain:

Spider-man 2 is a bit of an oddity, its one of those films that has problems and more than a few small and obvious plot holes but, its all so cool you don’t care. The basic premise of the movie is Peter Parker is working himself to death trying to manage two jobs, friendships, college, and that whole being a superhero thing. Meanwhile, Dr. Octopus is created, and starts killing a bunch of people in an effort to gather parts to build a new type of fusion reactor he’s come up with (which consequently could blow up the city if its containment breaks down). Peter decides to give up being Spider-man but is brought into a huge conflict with Octavius. Lots of really cool fight scenes ensue.

With that out of the way I will say that this is, from credit reel to credit reel, much better than the first Spider-man. The acting is improved, the CGI is better, it faster paced, and Sam Raimi was given almost total control. Therefore it feels more like a really big-budget Raimi film as compared to a two-hour culmination of Marvel telling Raimi what to do. (For those of you wondering: that’s a good thing.) There’s even a scene in a hospital that is just pure Evil Dead in that it’s really cool and designed to be both pseudo-horrory and hilarious at the same time. This it pulls off very well.

Okay. Bad stuff time. There are as I said a few rather obvious plot holes but they aren’t too major. There are some small continuity errors as well. Kirsten Dunst’s acting still isn’t great and I have to say that she looked pretty ruddy throughout the film. Also, the plot-twist/villain for Spider-man 3 creation thing near the end was a bit rushed and to some extent groan inducing (You’ll see why). Past that the only thing I can think to complain about is that there are shots of the film that are quite obviously shot in San Francisco, to the point where I was getting confused as to where the film was set and wondering if they were somehow rushing around the country.

What else can I really say without giving away a whole lot of plot? As usual there are prolonged cameos for Raimi fans by Bruce Campbell, Ted Raimi, The Classic, and Scott Speigel (if you actually know what he looks like).

Oh, and J.K. Simmons grabs just about every scene he’s in and runs with it.

There, I’m done, go see it now. Or tomorrow rather. Whenever, just go see it.

-Dracos

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