Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 opens with Peter Parker already worn down. He is juggling multiple jobs, overdue rent and schoolwork, while his aunt May faces eviction and the Daily Bugle’s J. Jonah Jameson keeps attacking Spider-Man in print. Something has to give.
Trailer, via Sony Pics at Home.
Peter Parker Quits the Mask
So Peter quits. His powers fade under the strain, and he walks away from the mask to try civilian life. The city pays for it. Dr. Otto Octavius, a nuclear scientist Peter admires, has built a fusion power machine funded by Oscorp, now run by Harry Osborn. At a public demonstration with his wife Rosie, Octavius wears a harness of four mechanical tentacles driven by artificial intelligence. The reaction destabilizes, Rosie is killed, and the harness fuses to his body. The inhibitor chip that restrained the tentacles is destroyed.
The Warehouse in the Harbor
What follows is the film’s real engine. The tentacles have gained sapience, and Octavius acts under their influence, fleeing to a harbor warehouse to rebuild the machine. He robs a bank and takes May hostage; Peter rescues her. Tobey Maguire plays the exhaustion plainly, and Alfred Molina gives Octavius a warmth that curdles rather than snaps. Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane, engaged to John Jameson, carries the other half of the loss.
The set pieces matter less than the choices around them. Peter’s refusal to act on his feelings for Mary Jane, and Harry’s brewing anger over his father Norman’s death, both land harder than any webline.
What Actually Works
Ranked, the film’s strengths:
- Molina’s Octavius, a villain with a stated reason and a dead wife.
- The powers-fading stretch, which makes quitting cost something.
- Raimi’s direction, which keeps the melodrama sincere.
- Danny Elfman’s returning score.
- The hospital sequence, where the tentacles turn on the doctors.
The weakness is pacing. At 127 minutes, the middle sags before the warehouse.
By the Numbers
- Release: June 30, 2004
- Runtime: 127 minutes
- Worldwide gross: $797 million
- Academy Awards: Best Visual Effects (77th)
- Also nominated: Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing
- AFI top ten films of 2004
Spider-Man 2 is the rare sequel that improves on its predecessor by subtraction. It removes the hero from the center and finds the movie underneath. The Best Visual Effects Oscar was deserved. Twenty-two years on, the tentacle work holds and the emotional weight holds harder. 8.3/10.
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