Responses to this message:
It and "X-Men" are the best comic book adaptations since the best days of the "Batman" franchise. But the fact that "Spider-Man" would probably be in my top 2 for the year right now is just an indication of how weak the year is so far, not how great "Spider-Man" is. The beginning is full of a bunch of stilted dialogue, with people speaking unnaturally about the past, but once Peter Parker gets bitten, the pace really picks up. It's really rather unusual for an action movie in that it almost continuously alternates between action scenes and dramatic/romantic scenes from beginning to end -- the climactic showdown is bookended by dramatic scenes. With all due respect to Tobey Maguire, William Dafoe and the lovely Ms. Dunst, I think I gotta go with J.K. Simmons as having the best character in the movie, as Parker's brash, fast-talking, over-the-top newspaper editor -- he had me cracking up constantly. Then again, I liked Jim Carrey's Riddler -- what do I know? I think the Green Goblin may have been just a little bit TOO over the top (shades of "Fight Club," in fact -- you'll know what I mean when you see it), but Maguire proved me wrong by being a perfect Spider-Man and the effects were 95 % excellent, which is saying a lot these days, especially considering I shrugged my shoulders at most of the trailers (other than the WTC teaser that started them all). The only other real criticism I have (besides Randy Macho Man Savage's appearance, which made sense in the context of the film, but still...) is that it seemed like David Koepp tried a little too hard to make sure he had some character development -- I guess he finally took the criticisms of his "Jurassic Parks" scripts and "Mission: Impossible" script and "Shadow" to heart and made sure that this wasn't just another "Episode 1": all effects and no characters.
Anyway, I'd probably watch this again -- which, once again, is saying a lot (I saw about 5 films out of 180 twice last year) and Sam Raimi's direction, though not typical for Sam Raimi and not exactly "Batman-ish" (any of them) or "X-Men- ish" or "Crow-ish" as we might have expected, it's still quite exhilarating and not very campy at all. 8/10
And I know I said I wasn't really planning on being around to make a post about "Spider-Man," but since I came back for things related to Layne Staley's death, I figured, what the heck?
Responses to this message:
Post a response to this discussion thread