The Spider-Man Trilogy
(2002-2007)
About a year or two before the first movie came out, I heard that Sam Raimi had been tapped to direct a new big screen Spider-Man movie and that it would be the first of a planned trilogy. To put things mildly, I WAS STOKED!! You’d have to be a fool to believe Raimi wasn’t the right man for the job. Just watch ARMY of DARKNESS and DARKMAN. Those movies featuring the exaggerated action and kinetic camera work that are synominous with Raimi are as good a show reel as you were ever going to see.
I actually experienced that nervous anxiety and impatience that I hadn’t felt since the first Superman movie was announced.
Then the weirdness started setting in. I read an article in a fanzine where Raimi proclaimed that Tim Burton & later Joe Shumacher’s BATMAN movies weren’t all that bad at all. Didn’t know what to make of that one. Then it was announced that Spiderman would be sporting a pair of organic web shooters per the ill-fated James Cameron “scriptment”. Raimi indicated that he didn’t see how someone could invent a web like substance in their room, when scientists had been trying for years.
More antics abound as I viewed the Spiderman press conference on rival AICN. Toby Maguire is introduced to the world as Peter Parker / Spider-man. Toby is all smiles on that stage wearing a black t-shirt and showing off some biceps in the nerd’s equivalent of being jacked up. I remember being happy with the selection of Maguire because I had recently viewed Pleasantville and he stood out in that film. I thought, “Hey they’re really going all the way with this movie” after William Dafoe was cast as Norman Osborn. Dafoe is one of those actors that fit in a class all by themselves kind of like Christopher Walken, Gary Oldman and sometimes Robert Deniro.
The mentions of Burrton’s Batman franchise and the organic web shooters had me on edge just a little bit, but the next development would begin what I term complete and utter “NERD RAGE”.
SAM RAIMI’S INTERPRETATION OF THE GREEN GOBLIN
When I saw this photo of the movie’s villain, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I like many others thought that perhaps this was an early stage “look” of the Goblin and that perhaps he would become his familiar self as the story progressed.
Raimi would later be quoted as saying that he couldn’t think of a reason why a guy would put on a “purple jerkin” to commit crimes.
Sidebar: During the course of the first Spider-man film, we find out that Daily Bugle Editor J, Jonah Jameson is responsible for naming the villain.
“I want a quarter every time somebody says it (Green Goblin).”
Duh!! There was Raimi’s reason for the “purple jerkin”. I could see Osborn mulling over the morning paper after a night of mayhem and coming across the blurb containing his stage name, deciding to alter his costume to fit the description. But alas, unfortunately for the audience, Raimi wasn’t that witty.
So, I figured that the GREEN GOBLIN (Power Ranger Mode) was probably as bad as it could get. I mean, besides Paul Verhoven at the time , Raimi was probably most know for the hyper-kinetic action scenes in his Darkman film & Evil Dead trilogy. I could hardly wait to see how he applied to his version of Spider-man.
May 03, 2002 arrived and I was one of the first to be seated in Hollywood’s Arclight Theatre. (Note: I actually attended the midnight showing at 11:59pm, Thursday night.)
Spider-Man
Release Date: May 03, 2002
Distributed by: Sony / Columbia Pictures
Budget: 140 million
Gross Revenue: $821,708,551
Produced by: Laura Ziskin, Ian Bryce, Grant Curtis, Avi Arad & Stan Lee
Written by: David Koepp, Scott Rosenberg (uncredited) & Alvin Sargent (uncredited)
Story credited to Koepp, Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
Featuring: Toby Maguire, William Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Cliff Robertson, Rosemary Harris & J.K. Simmons. (Special Note to Bill Nunn horribly miscast as Robbie Robertson-Eat one less twinkie a day.)
Music by: Danny Elfman
Cinematography by: Don Burgess
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Plot:
This is basically the first in a planned series of movies and thus, is a by-the-numbers telling of the origin of the title hero, Spider-Man. Nerdy and socially retarded Peter Parker is accidentally bitten by a “genetically altered” arachnid during a field trip and becomes our friendly neighborhood hero in varying degrees over the course of the film.
Parker taking a photo
Note: Parker is bitten while taking a picture of a high school crush, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). During the course of this first movie, the audience discovers that a lot of Parker’s motivation and behavior is routed in either getting MJ’s attention or impressing her in some form or fashion.
Problem: Mary Jane Watson as portrayed by Kirsten Dunst is not exactly a particularly likeable character. Dunst instills and invests the character with a flawed tragic appeal. MJ appears to be most at ease with men who treat her like trash (Flash Thompson) or men seeking to possess her as some sort of status symbol (Harry Osborn). There are quite a few scenes that give the viewer the idea that she may see Parker as some sort of “Special Needs” individual with little to respect for him at all.
How is the audience supposed to relate to a character introduced to them as a marginally talented inept social climber? Seriously, over the course of the first film, she is seen dating a bully (Flash Thompson), Parker’s Best Friend (Harry Osborn), lusting after Spider-Man & finally coming to the “conclusion” that she is in love with Parker.
“I think I have a super hero stalker”-quote: Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson
Maguire’s “Parker” is flawed beyond belief and never grows beyond his status as a social retard. I picked up that he had been overly coddled as a toddler by his loving surrogate parents Aunt May (Harris) and Uncle Ben (Robertson). The level of his non-growth as a person drags the movie down at times. In the comics, Parker was a nerd only in high school. He more than his fair share of action in college and emerged from his shell a little bit after acquiring the abilities of Spider-Man.
In fact, Parker’s social ineptness wins over MJ due in equal parts to convenient tragedy (Aunt May being attacked by the Goblin. / Norman Osborn’s death) and her apparent lack of self esteem. Maguire and Dunst only seem to come to life in scenes calling for some form of grief.
I’d like to note here that Cliff Robertson’s portrayal of Uncle Ben is right on the money as well as Rosemary Harris’ Aunt May. His scenes with Maguire definitely lend a dramatic gravity to the proceedings and because of that, I found myself hating Peter for leaving his uncle alone to get shot and later leaving his body on the street to chase after the killer. I understand dramatic license, but there had to be a better way to shoot the
scenario.
Uncle Ben Dying
James Franco is almost a non-issue here in the first movie as a privileged underachiever who swoops in on his BEST FRIEND’S perennial crush and attempts to purchase her affection. Definition of a loser as portrayed by James Franco. In fact I felt after the film that these two characters had more in common than either of them had in any capacity with Parker.
This may have been intentional as this explains Franco’s screen father being borderline obsessed with Parker to the point of distraction. William Dafoe’s Norman Osborn is presented with a lot of sympathy in this film. It is never explained why Harry has such dislike and apathy for his dad. It is never explained why Osborn’s’ own board of directors as well as the military liaison are continually trying to undermine and thus put him out of business.
The side effect of this hack-n-eyed plotting by the screenwriters unfortunately makes it easier for viewers to route for Osborn as he systematically destroys everyone who makes his life difficult or anyone perceived as a threat.
What am I supposed to think of Norman Osborn?
So that brings me to the ACTION SEGMENT of this particular review. Did Raimi pulls off the aforementioned hyper-kinetic action scenes?
Everything is middle of the road here as he strikes a happy medium between campy setups and some “O-Kay: action.
I don’t blame Raimi for this however. I’d have to stick the fault with Sony / Columbia pictures for this fiasco. Sam Raimi filmed one of the most brilliant bank heist scenes since heat for a segment of this movie meant to introduce SPIDER-MAN to the world as a crime fighter.
A teaser was released.
THIS TEASER IS BRILLIANT!!
Unfortunately, a REAL LIFE tragedy would derail this decent piece of action from seeing the light of day for years to come.
911 (nuff said)
John Dykstra was charged with bringing the wall crawler’s antics to life on the big screen and mostly it’s a mixed bag due to the over use of a CGI Stunt Double. Ask any little kid today to sit through this film and they can tell you whenever the CGI-Stunt guy appears in the frame. Its movements are way too fluid and rubbery in conjunction with Maguire’s stunted movements as Spider-Man / Parker.
There is little actual acrobatics employed in this film when it comes to Spider-man’s fighting style. It appears that every time Raimi was challenged when shooting action, he ran screaming to computer programmers.
So, Spider-man defeats the villain, wins the heart of and ultimately rejects his dream girl and learns that … “WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY”
The movie made a crap load of money for Sony. $821,708,551 to be somewhat exact.
And with that being said … we move on to the next film in this trilogy.
Spider-Man 2
Release Date: June 30, 2004
Distributed by: Sony / Columbia Pictures
Budget: 200 million
Gross Revenue: $783,766,341
Produced by: Laura Ziskin, Avi Arad, Joseph M. Caracciolo, Grant Curtis & Stan Lee
Written by: Alvin Sargent
Story credited to Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Michael Chabon, Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
Featuring: Toby Maguire, Alfred Molina, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Cliff Robertson (cameo), Rosemary Harris & J.K. Simmons.
Music by: Danny Elfman
Cinematography by: Bill Pope
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Of the three movies that make up this trilogy, I like Spider-Man 2 enough to include it in my list of all time favorites.
The Reason being is that it shows the audience what it’s like to be a blue collar, working class super hero. Bruce Wayne can always hide out in his mansion or create / buy equipment that he needs because he is a billionaire. Superman can use his extraterrestrial powers to escape the rigors of everyday life, but Spider-Man is basically …. One of us.
Spider-Man 2 demonstrates what it’s like to be a wage slave with superhuman abilities and a strict moral code. Half the time Peter uses his abilities to get past a pedestrian obstacle, it usually backfires in his face.
Raimi has a little more control this time out and it works to perfection in certain scenes. The writing still suffers on occasion from just too many cooks in the kitchen so to speak.
Plot:
Peter Parker is finding his double life increasingly difficult. Precariously struggling to balance his crime-fighting duties with the demands of his normal life, Peter often finds his personal life taking a back seat. He loses a job, faces financial difficulties, and struggles to maintain his physics studies at Columbia University. Moreover, he has become estranged from both love interest Mary Jane, who to Peter's disappointment is in a relationship, and best friend Harry Osborn who falsely accuses Spider-Man of murdering his father, and Aunt May is threatened with foreclosure.
That’s it in a nutshell. Spider-Man 2 benefits greatly from the presence of a really great villain in Alfred Molina’s Doctor Otto Octavious or Doc Ock as he is known in the comics.
Octavious early in the film accidentally ends up with four extra robotic limbs. These limbs, each equipped with an artificial intelligence make him more than a match for Spider-Man. Alfred Molina invests the character with a large degree of likeability much like William Dafoe in the preceding film.
Doc Ock however presents the film with its first oxymoron. Octavious is conducting an experiment that appears to have something to do with an alternative source of energy and has created the robotic arms to personally handle the resulting energy sphere.
Octavious is conducting the experiment in his loft.
I repeat, Octavious is conducting a DANGEROUS experiment in his loft. How safe could that possibly be? His funding is provided by Oscorp, which is now being run by Harry (Franco). This could possibly be the explanation for such a stupid idea as we have seen that Harry is no great intellect by any means.
Of course the experiment goes awry and Octavious is driven mad with the aforementioned robotic arms fused top his body and their individual A.I. driving him further into madness. Doc Ock decides with the help of his “arms” to re-conduct the experiment on a grander scale.
Everything is amped up in the sequel. Spider-Man 2 has action to spare with a number of note-worthy sequences, chief among them being the commuter train set piece and the second third of the film. It is an EXCITING and thrilling piece of business and anchors the film in a way the missing world trade center piece wasn’t able to in the first movie.
Once again I have to mention the performance of Kirsten Dunst as ahem, “Mary Jane Watson”. Her character has not progressed much from the second film. Besides pursuing Parker simply to find out how he feels about her (It appears his rejection of her has bruised her ego.), she continues the MJ trend towards dating as a shameless social climber. It seems the character has been dating an Astronaut (John Jameson, cast for god knows what reason.) and is engaged to be married.
Dunst takes an already unsavory, unlikable character and makes matters worse. Mary Jane is presented here as a screeching shrew and seems angry and spiteful at being rejected by Parker. Her motivation seems to be to get the guy to admit his feelings just so that she can say …GOT YA!!
There’s a quote off of the comments section of AICN that I just have to paraphrase … Kirsten Dunst looks like Billy Corrigan with HAIR!! She appears extremely dowdy in this second outing to say the least.
I was extremely disappointed when MJ discovers Peter’s identity at the conclusion of the film and offers herself to him out of spite. She takes a great speech about love and simply skewers it to death with a flat delivery and angry expression.
Maguire follows suit by amping up the “social retard” aspect of his “Spider-Man” character. Ego also appears to be a factor as he repeatedly removes his mask while saving the fair citizens of New York and delivering the beat down on Octavious.
There’s actually a scene in the film where an exhausted Spider-Man (mask less).is gingerly carried over the heads a group of subway pedestrians who claim that they will not reveal his identity to the media.
This is New York City right?
(nuff said)
So, that being said … Spider-Man gets Otto to realize the errors of his ways and the villain subsequently sacrifices himself to “save the world” from the now ever expanding energy sphere.
Another noble villain …. What can I say about that that I haven’t said before?
Spider-Man 2 rocks and for all it’s flaws is GOOD, SOLID story telling for a fan boy’s point of view. I wasn’t about to complain … and then Spider-Man 3 came along.
Spider-Man 3
Release Date: May 4, 2007
Distributed by: Sony / Columbia Pictures
Budget: 258 million
Gross Revenue: $890,871,626
Produced by: Laura Ziskin, Kevin Feige, Grant Curtis, Joseph M. Caracciolo, Avi Arad & Stan Lee
Written by: Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi & Alvin Sargent
Story credited to Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
Featuring: Toby Maguire, Thomas Haden Church, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Cliff Robertson (cameo), and Topher Grace (miscast & misused) Rosemary Harris & J.K. Simmons.
Music by: Danny Elfman & Christopher Young
Cinematography by: Bill Pope
Directed by: Sam Raimi
The trailers for this movie make it look like the GREATEST COMIC BOOK EVER!!
It wasn’t.
IT WAS HORRIBLE!!
Plot:
Peter Parker has begun to feel secure in his life and plans to propose to Mary Jane. While Peter and Mary Jane are on a date, a small meteorite crashes nearby, and an extraterrestrial symbiote attaches itself to Peter's moped. Meanwhile, escaped convict Flint Marko falls into a pit of a particle accelerator that fuses his body with the surrounding sand.
The result allows him to shape shift at will, becoming the Sandman. Peter's best friend, Harry Osborn, who seeks vengeance for his father's death, which he believes Peter caused, attacks him using new weapons adapted from the Green Goblin technology his father had left behind. During the scuffle, Harry injures his head and suffers from partial amnesia, making him forget his feud and the fact that Peter is Spider-Man.
Not much changes here, except my attitude towards Sam Raimi and Co. At this point in the Spider-Man Trilogy, it was seriously time for NEW BLOOD as Raimi repeatedly bent over for Sony and allowed them to mute his signature style even further by forcing the ill-advised inclusion of VENOM as a secondary villain in the franchise.
And secondly, what qualifies Ivan Raimi as an adequate screen writer for the Spider-Man franchise?!!
I thought that Sony would take better care of their cash cow. But this movie alone proves that the proceedings had become a run away train.
Sandman is ….wait for it … ANOTHER SYMPATHETIC VILLIAN!!
The rest of the Plot goes like this:
Harry recovers from his amnesia and, urged on by an apparition of his dead father, forces Mary Jane to break up with Peter. After Mary Jane leaves Peter, stating she is in love with another man, Harry meets him at a restaurant and claims to be the other man. Later, Peter confronts him at the Osborn mansion.
With the help of the black suit, Peter is victorious in a brutal fight, which leaves Harry's face disfigured. Influenced by the suit, Peter exposes and humiliates Eddie Brock, a rival freelance photographer, who has just gained overnight star status at the Daily Bugle by submitting doctored photographs supposedly exposing Spider-Man as a criminal. J. Jonah Jameson gets wind of the photos and Jameson fires Eddie Brock. Peter changes how he dresses and alters his hairstyle and begins to behave arrogantly. Meanwhile, the Sandman recovers from his injuries, having somehow survived Spider-Man's attack.
In an effort to make Mary Jane jealous, Peter brings Gwen to the nightclub where Mary Jane works. He gets into a fight with the club's bouncers and unintentionally shoves Mary Jane, knocking her to the floor. Peter realizes the symbiote-suit is changing him for the worse. He walks out of the nightclub and goes to a church bell tower to dispose of it. Initially, he is unable to remove the suit, but the alien eventually weakens due to the loud sounds of the bell, enabling Peter to break free.
Eddie Brock, by chance, is at the same church praying for Peter's death when the symbiote falls from the tower and takes over his body. Eddie, now reincarnated as Venom, finds the Sandman and suggests joining forces to destroy Spider-Man, to which the Sandman agrees.
The pair put Mary Jane in a taxicab and hangs it from a gigantic web above a construction site, filled with sand. Peter approaches Harry for help, but is turned down. However, Harry learns the truth about his father's death from his butler Bernard, and arrives in time to rescue Peter; they form an alliance against the two villains.
As the fight progresses, Harry temporarily subdues a gigantic, monstrous incarnation of the Sandman, and Eddie attempts to impale Peter with Harry's glider, but Harry jumps in the way and is fatally wounded, suffering the same fate of his father. During his fight with Venom, Peter notices that falling lengths of pipe appear to distress the symbiote, and Peter recalls how the church bell's toll weakened it, and creates a ring of several pipes around Venom to make a 'fence' of sonic vibrations.
The alien succumbs to so much pain that it releases Brock, and Peter pulls Eddie away from it with a string of web. Peter throws one of Harry's pumpkin bombs at the symbiote, and Eddie jumps into the ring in an instinctive attempt to rebond with it; where they were both then killed by the explosion.
After the battle, Marko recovers and tells Peter that he had no intention of killing Ben Parker (but rather fired his gun as an angst reaction when the crook Peter allowed to escape grabbed his arm), and that it was an accident born out of a desperate attempt to save his dying daughter's life.
He claims that Ben Parker's death has haunted him for the rest of his life. Peter forgives Marko, who dissipates and floats away. Peter and Harry forgive each other before Harry dies with Mary Jane and Peter at his side. Peter and Mary Jane begin to mend their relationship when Peter walks into the jazz bar where Mary Jane is singing.
Mary Jane singing?
Draw your own conclusions about the last movie in this series. I’ve lost the will to even continue reviewing this thing properly.
Jazz Club setting? Parker dancing …at a jazz club?
Ivan Raimi writing a Spider-Man script in the first place?
Hopefully the recently announced Spider-Man RE-BOOT will correct at least some of the wrongs perpetrated on the movie going audience by Raimi and company.
We will just have to wait and see won’t we?
…shadowgeek10 returns to the shadows once more….