Obi-Wan Starkiller wrote:
Okay, first, why would you punch the woman next to you? What does she do to deserve this? I don't see a problem with Spider-Man 2. The comics I have read of Spider-Man have always focused on Peter Parker more and the problems he faces trying to keep up with being a superhero and to protect the ones he loves from that. That is exactly what Spider-Man 2 was. I don't see what is so parody about it. It was a focused, character driven superhero movie. Did you like the original Spider-Man? If so, what was better about that movie?
First of all, I said 'wanted to'. It's a joke, you know, a hyperbole to demonstrate how frustrated I was watching the film.
Second, the second Spider-man was filled with pointless, poorly conceived scenes intended for comedy or drama but came off as foolish. One such useless scene involves Peter's discussion with a doctor in which he describes his 'friend' having dreams about being Spider-man losing his powers. Peter's slow-mo run atop the buildings, focussing to get his powers back while the tracked in main theme heats up and suddenly dies...Spider-man in the elevator...Give me a break... Then we get an absolutely pointless scene with Peter eating chocolate cake with the landlord's skinny ugly daughter that took up a good minute of screentime for no purpose whatsoever. I don't even have to go into how rediculous the bodysurfing Jesus scene in the subway was. "Don't worry spidey, your secret is safe with all of us honest New Yorkers" (a rehash of the absurd and rediculous scene in Spider-man one where we get New Yorkers bossing around the goblin with garbage).
I have no problem with focussing the story on Peter, of course that's what Spider-man is all about, just do it properly...take us into Peter's world without the tacky scenes of a top 40 pop song playing while Peter undresses in front of his apartment window. The film insulted me as a fan of the character and comic series and as a moviegoer by tossing in all these rediculous elements. Now we get to see another Goblin in Spider-man three...yay...there's only dozens of great villains in Spidey's universe to choose from.
The original Spider-man was more tolerable. In fact, I really liked the Spider-man origin stuff. Hell, I didn't even mind the organic webbing...but once the second half kicked in, it got stupid. The Goblin story was essentially a different movie than the first half (the power ranger goblin is fucking rediculous), and while there were some decent scenes, the film lost its direction. Using Mary-Jane in place of Gwen during the bridge scene was blasphemy, especially since Mary-Jane lives. Basically what I'm saying is that Raimi translated the comic to film and changed WAY too much important mythology to keep me involved. Why couldn't Gwen be in the first film and Mary-Jane still be the girl next door to tease Peter for future movies? If Gwen died at the hand of the Goblin in the the first movie, we'd cheer for Peter to kill Norman a hell of a lot more and then truly the last words of the film "This is my curse" would actually mean something. Peter lost NOTHING in the first movie due to his powers/being spider-man (Uncle Ben died out of Parker's spite for the wrestling director).
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Oh, and I love X2. Definitely the best of that trilogy. Probably my favorite movie after SM2. But does it follow the comic books better than Spider-Man 2? Not really. Yeah, Wolverine finally gets to cut loose at one point (because up until that point in the first 2 movies you wouldn't have ever thought that Wolverine was a man/beast who was more comfortable in the wilderness than in public), but the Bryan Singer movies never made X-Men a team. It was mostly each character going off, doing their own thing. Cyclops and Xavier for the most part being totally underused (which happened in X3 as well).
Really, I can live with the fact that things change from comic to screen if they make it worth it. Both X2 and Spider-Man 2 did that for me. But for me, Spider-Man 2 was the more entertaining.
I don't demand that the adaptation has to be verbatum translation of the source material. That would never ever work, especially with comics; but what I want is a compelling story that takes advantage of the opportunities the source material gives the filmmakers. The first two X-men movies (I dont count the third as being spawned from the original vision of Singer) grounded mutancy in a believeable reality for which the X-men could exist. If you try to translate X-men literally you get Fantastic 4 (a joke), if you identify the main issues that Stan Lee was tackling when he conceived the series then you get something tangible that a good filmmaker can mold into a good film (X1) and great film in the case of X2.
Raimi, to me, has identified Peter's struggle with his powers as the problem facing Spider-man as well as how he deals with tackling a double life. Good, terrific, but the plots were weak in both films and the scripts sub-par. Of any superhero out there, Spidey has tons and tons of source material to work from and we've gotten so much drag in these movies and I can't figure out as to why. We haven't even heard any of Spidey's clever quips or one liners and it's been two films. He's supposed to be a funny kid superhero, he hasn't lived up to that character trait.