It happens like clockwork: every time an even halfway decent science fiction/fantasy/superhero movie comes out, the movie's fans (most frequently, fans of whatever preexisting property the movie animates) start claiming Oscars for it. Worse yet, the historic number of awards accorded to the bombastic Lord of the Rings: Just Get Up the Goddamn Volcano Already means we fanboys now expect to snag a couple as a matter of course.
Certainly nothing's wrong with a good movie getting accolades, but I'm a little saddened when I see fellow genre fans trying to stack the deck. I'm referring, obviously, to Spider-Man 2, whose enthusiastic reception has been accompanied by some wildly exaggerated claims of its quality.
I generally enjoyed the movie, but I would have a hard time stating, as Jim Henley does, that Rosemary Harris deserves an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. As I recall, her performance centered around a couple of hectoring speeches that badly oversold the movie's already too obvious themes. I'm not suggesting Harris did a poor job - she did a decent turn with a condescending script and, frankly, with one of the most irritating characters in comics - but do we really want to hand out superlatives merely for adequacy? If this were a movie about an aging widow's relationship with a nephew who couldn't spin a web any size - a movie that did not animate a beloved character or a favorite fantasy genre - would we be as impressed by her speeches about Heroes and Duty and other such Important Capitalized Themes? And even if we were, would we be so insistent that she receive an Oscar for delivering them?
Alex Ross - no, not that one, the music critic for The New Yorker - writes on his weblog, "If you’re worrying about how your music ranks with other people’s, I wonder if you’re actually listening at all." He's writing from a different, in some ways diametrically opposed perspective, that of a classical music fan who wants to convince nonlisteners that his beloved genre isn't elitist. But for all that comics suffer from too little cultural clout rather than too much, they do enjoy parallels with certain of the "fine arts." Comics, classical music, contemporary poetry - all are confronted with dwindling audiences of overspecialized fans. All face a vicious circle in which art catering to that overspecialized fanbase further alienates any nonfans. And all of them, Ross suggests, whether they are seeking to gain legitimation or struggling to get out from under it, are better served by a focus on the work itself than by any anxiety over how it rates.
When I read a good book I don't immediately demand that it receive a Pulitzer; when I watch a good TV show I don't instantly clamor for an Emmy. That we automatically associate any halfway good movie or performance with Oscar's approval is probably more indicative of the Academy's successful marketing of itself than it is of any honor that still clings, like some obstinate but degraded radioactive isotope, to the golden statuette. Who cares how many awards Spider-Man 2 gets? I wouldn't want it to join any club that'd have American Beauty as a member anyway.
But enough about this anxious quest for legitimization - what about the movie? The beginning and ending, I thought, were about as perfect a Spider-Man story as I've ever seen, the beginning for its understanding that Spider-Man functions best at a certain hard-luck state of grace, the ending for its stunning choreography and its final image, which reminded me that it's Mary Jane's movie after all.
But in between those moments was a movie filled with disappointments, particularly in the dialogue. The trailers and previews had primed me to expect a truly outstanding movie, I suspect because they heavily featured the exhilarating Doctor Octopus scenes. Little did I know that the long middle section would be filled with one painfully overarticulated speech after another, including a cringe-inducing scene in which Uncle Ben returns to help Peter grab his lightsaber and kill the Wampa - or something like that. The "Spider-Man No More" trashcan moment, which looked so good in the trailers, turns out to be the culmination of a series of repetitive scenes that exist to drive home the themes you'd already figured out. Unfortunately, Hollywood seems to think that's the billion-dollar formula: spell it out until the dumbest guy in the audience is just a little bit sick of it. The first movie was susceptible to this (how many times did they have to explain that Peter got his powers from the spider?) but the sequel, in aiming for more complicated emotions, is equivalently hamstrung by somebody's desire to spoon-feed them to us.
That all disappears when Spider-Man and Doc Ock wrestle atop a runaway el train, when Octavius sinks to the riverbed like the ragged claws from that poet he doesn't get, when Raimi ends the movie with a haunting reminder that we haven't quite reached "happily ever after" yet. Which is pretty good news, for us viewers.
I'm so glad that there's someone else out there who thought that this movie was horribly overrated. I can't believe that it's getting like a 90 some percent rating on rotten tomatoes. Honestly, if it wasn't for Molina this movie would have been unbearable in it's boringness and blandness and ludicrousness. Eesh, talk about suck.
Posted by: Rick | July 09, 2004 at 04:38 PM
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I had quite the opposite reaction to the trailers and commercials, which probably explains why I've yet to see it. My girlfriend saw it and pretty much shares your opinion. Overwrought, heavy-handed, poorly acted, pretty much the opposite of the popular opinion. I'm trying to figure out, comparing her reaction to popular opinion, just what the hell is wrong with people. I guess comics readers are still reeling from Captain America and Shumacher's Batman films...?
Maybe I should see the movie for myself, but jeez, I've read so much about it I feel like I already have.
Posted by: Mark | July 10, 2004 at 02:41 PM
So..i had written this great post about the movie, but it didn't save.
So anyways: It wasn't too bad.
Posted by: Kan Mattoo | July 11, 2004 at 06:47 PM
No, I didn't think it was too bad either, although if you'd asked me during the Uncle Ben scene I might have told you different. (Come to think of it, Kan actually could have asked me during the Uncle Ben scene, and I damn well would have told him different.) Fix the dialogue, though, and trust the audience a little more, and it would be vastly improved. I doubt the movie would have reached $250 million any less quickly if it hadn't oversold its themes.
Did your post mention that Otto Octavius apparently majored in advanced science?
Posted by: Marc | July 12, 2004 at 03:01 PM
I enjoyed Spider-Man 2, but some fans need to let a popcorn movie be just that, a popcorn film, and not declare it the best movie ever. It sets others' expectations WAY too high.
The Uncle Ben scene was obviously only there to give Cliff Robertson work. I didn't care for it, either.
However, the dialogue this time around is a LOT better comapred to the rhyming stanzas we got from Mary Jane in the cemetery in the LAST movie. :)
Posted by: Hysan | July 12, 2004 at 05:14 PM
I was impressed that they allowed Peter and MJ to be 'together'....thank god Raimi gave the audience that....
I'm personally not a big fan of Dunst, but she wasn't too bad this time...
And I think Advance Sciene was in there somewhere.
Posted by: Kan Mattoo | July 13, 2004 at 12:29 AM