Spider-Man 2... What went wrong?

[Fsiphskilm]

Mistake

[Technomancer]

Personally, I loved the movie and thought it was better than the first one in pretty much every way. The whole point of the film was that Parker couldn't tell MJ about his feelings, since he felt that anyone close to him could become a target for his enemies. MJ of course, didn't know anything about this, and so kept getting mixed signals. Hence all of the confusion. In the end, I thought the movie was ultimately hopeful in its outcome given MJ's decision to stick by Parker come what may, and Octavius' regaining control of himself. Bad things happen to the heroes, that's the point. They're heroes because they struggle through adversity, and do so with integrity.

[Golden_Griff]

Mistake #1, Spiderman2 was flimed in the Fall, dead leaves, college starts but none the less the Atmosphere of Fall is very unsuiting for an inspirational "HERO" movie. It should of been filmed during the Spring, which subliminally represents Life, Inspiration, Begining, a new chapter. Instead Fall (dead leaves, depression, chilled air) was used... This changed the movie a lot.

Volt, I have to disagree with you on that. The atmosphere of Fall didn't bother me, in fact I didn't really notice that it was fall. But now that you've mentioned it, I think the season of Fall was very suitable. Just as you said: Fall is "dead leaves, depression, chilled air."

I think that the season of Fall was symbolic of what Peter was going through in the movie: a depressing, cold season in his life. He couldn't keep a job, he was struggling in school, he had girl problems ( ), the death of his uncle was on his mind, all kind of stuff! Dude was carrying a burden! I think this was the same reason why his powers were malfunctioning.

As for the robotic arms, I couldn't understand why they needed a "brain" of their own. You saw how each arm had it's own "eye?" FOR WHAT!! What, you're going to teach them to read books or something??

Toby McGuire's Face CLose-Ups
They just looked hilarious, down right Comedy Releife! Everything was serious and had great atmosphere and mood, until they start showing those hilarious Close-ups of Peter's Face when he's running or trying to stop a train. He looks Constipated

ROFL!!

As for those other comments, well umm I got tired of reading

[SManBeyond]

Wow. I'm a film critic too, and I actually liked this movie a lot. Roger Ebert is the critic I almost always agree with, and he said that it is the best superhero movie he's ever seen and gave it a four out of four star review. Honestly, I feel the same way. I'm going to respond to each of your complaints, but I really don't want to start an argument. I just want to state my opinion and leave it at that.

Musical Score: I thought the music was pretty good. Sure, it had some of the same themes as the original Spiderman, but that's because it's the "theme" music. I wasn't bothered by it at all, and I particularly liked how they blended in "modern" songs into the movie as well.

No-one talks!: They didn't talk because it wouldn't have made sense. Peter had decided not to tell Mary Jane he was Spiderman at the end of the first one because he didn't want her to get hurt, and I walked in knowing full well that despite any amount of anguish he was going through, he'd never actually tell her because he didn't want to take the risk. Also, I knew Peter wouldn't tell Harry the truth about his father. At the end of the first one, Norman's dying words were "Peter, don't tell Harry", and I know Peter took that to heart. In both of those cases, if I were Peter, I would have made those same two choices, so I didn't find that annoying at all. Characters are far more interesting when they don't act on logical script-cue / autopiolot, but instead do things like a person would in real life.

No hope: There are times in life where everything goes wrong. Job, for instance, had just about everything go wrong for him, but God came through in the end. I've also had moments where everything goes wrong for a few days, but then the darkness lifted. I didn't get the feeling that the movie was saying "no hope". Instead, it was showing a bad set of days in Peter's life, and later showed how the light broke through and things got better. Sure, his grandmother lost the house, but it didn't feel like a plot device, but something that would actually logically happen.

Mary Jane I actually liked Mary Jane a lot better this time around. Her character didn't feel to me like the typical perfect female character companion, but a real woman. Sure, she was a little mean from time to time, but she was confused and thus acted accordingly. I can't blame her for getting mad at Peter, though. How would you feel if someone you liked kept ditching you? She's had that happen too many times to her, and she acted like I'd have expected a person in real life to react.

Losing Powers I liked this element. Plain and simple: He lost his power because he was stressed and lost his focus. People can have their health break down if they're too stressed, and thus Peter lost his powers because he couldn't decide between the life of Spiderman without Mary Jane or the life of Peter Parker with Mary Jane. It made a great deal of sense to me, and once he finally made his choice in his head, his powers returned. I thought this was a great part of the movie.

Toby MacGuire's facial close-ups: Umm...I thought they were realistic, and I didn't find those funny at all. I guess we just react differently to those. It worked well for me because the movie seemed to be focused more on the duality between Peter Parker and Spiderman, and about how the two are really one.

Comic book or realism When an animal senses that it's going to be hurt, it's first instinct is to attack the creature that wants to hurt it and kill it. I didn't think the scene was too creepy or out of place. It made sense to me.

The experiment Granted, it was not the wisest move on Doc Ock's part, but we were shown that he was an arrogant genius and thought that it wouldn't fail. He kept insisting on it, and I suspect Harry wasn't too smart and trusted him on it.

The robotic arms Since this is a comic-book movie, you just have to accept that he was able to create tentacles that could think on their own that he could control with the chip. Having assumed that, everything that happened made sense to me. Those arms needed to have a brain so that he could control them with his own. Since he's arrogant, he wanted to be the one that did everything in the experiment to ensure that there would be no problems, and the arms allowed him to do / hold multiple things at once. Now, regarding the brain control, any extremely intelligent thing doesn't like being controlled, but wants to take control. I thought it made sense that they took control of his body and started influencing him. Allegory-wise, though, I liked it because it reminded me of the theme of sin, much like the Ring in LOTR that was evil, but people used it anyway because of its great power, but eventually the evil took control of them.

And he wanted to rebuild the lab in a harbor because he was crazy, wanted to rebuild it to prove himself right, and the harbor was deserted and far enough out of the way of most people. Let me put it this way: Where else in New York City would you build it?

Train scene I thought the emergency brakes were broken by Doc Ock. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm sure he did something to it that prevented them from being able to do that. Oh, and people don't generally encourage people when their lives are in danger. If someone tries to do something to save them and it doesn't work, their attitude isn't gratitude, but frustration and anger: i.e. "Can't you do something?" Very realistic, I thought.

Regarding the mask: if he took it off on top of the train, it's a bit of an error. However, it's a small error I'm willing to let go. Besides, Peter was knocked out for a bit, and I'm sure the kids could have run back and found the mask. Nit-picky errors do not destroy a movie unless they're humongous errors.

Killing sprees Sure, Harry told Doc Ock not to kill Peter, but Doc Ock didn't throw to kill. Since he has intelligent tentacles and a very intelligent brain, he would know that if he threw the car like that, it wouldn't kill him, but just go on top of him and knock him down. Besides, he was crazy, so he wasn't going to react like a normal villain, walk inside of the place and terrorize everyone. I thought throwing the car made a great deal of sense, and I liked the scene a lot.

[Kawaiikneko]

.... I really liked Spidey2 I thought it was well made (except for Toby's close-ups.... that was weird) It just seems like since it wasn't what you expected, you're saying its bad. Thats probably not what you meant, but thats how it came across to me.

Edit: btw what I got about the arms was that they were programed to make the solar thingy, so they did anything possible to be able to do their work. The things were only robots, they couldn't really think

[olorc]

Spidey 2 was okay in my book. Although I didn't seem to pack the same punch as the first movie, it still seemed to be a higher quality super hero movie than some others I have seen. *cough* Daredevil *cough* Oh.. ummm..... exscuse me..... Anyway, the people weren't supposed to talk to each other to add to the drama and suspense and also to make the audience squirm a little i think. I thought that the overall plot was carried on very well by this 2nd movie and am looking forward to the 3rd one.

[JediSonic]

I actually read BOTH of those long arguments and now my eyes hurt

I personaly LOVED the movie, but a little of what you Volt said did make sense. But then, some of it seemed kindof silly too. Of course, SManBeyond already covered anything serious I might have said.

My PS2 controller interprets my fingers pressing the buttons but that doesn't mean sony put an Artificial Inteligence inside the controler, so that it thinks on it's own. And even if it did think on it's own, If my PS2 exploded and somehow my controller got connected to my spinal cord, I'm possitive that the PS2 controller won't attempt to take over my mind

Most likely it already did.

I Felt as if I was watching two CG models kiss each other.

But seriously, it was really stupid to create machines with free will and then hook them up to your own brain, with just a little lightbulb thingy to protect you

[Stephen]

Things I see wrong with Spiderman 2...or any movie for that matter...people that waste there time tearing into it for no real reason. If you like the movie, cool. If not, thats your problem. It seems there is a popular wave to hate stuff just for the heck of it.

[uc pseudonym]

And that's exactly the attitude we all hate, Shatterheart.

Personally I agree (with Shatterheart). Some like it, some don't, no big deal.

You made some good points, Volt, but I can't say that I think some of them are bad things or that I agree with several of them. Personally, I stand in favor of a good dose of suspension of disbelief.

Though I must say that the fact that Spiderman temporarily lost his powers stretched it slightly for me. It worked for the movie, yes, but I appreciate when movies stick to their invented phisiological traits.

Did anyone else notice that basically any time Doc Ock appeared in public there were screaming women? This really jumped out at me. I'm not commenting about it, just noting it.

The arm's AI... presumably it was necessary to interprete signals directly from his spine. Significantly more complex than a controller, unless you have some mad skills. Considering they had only one purpose (apparently sucking energy off the sphere) it makes sense to me that they would try to fulfill that purpose. Considering that they aren't intelligent, they really wouldn't care what they had to do to fulfill it... hence the car-chucking, money-stealing, etc.

[Fsiphskilm]

[quote="Golden_Griff"]Vo

[greyscale42]

***Things I dont agree with and why***

The musical score was done by Danny Elfman. One of my favorite composers.
The plot rocked and they used one of my favorite villains.
Sometimes no matter how much faith you have things go wrong. Its a fact of life. Ever read Job?
Spiderman loses his powers due to a later plot development in which he begins to mutate into a monster so dont judge if you have no idea what ure talking about.
Some relationships end badly or start badly and some people are REALLY shallow until they discover reasons to not be. This is also a fact of life. DEAL WITH IT!!!
People do anything for money including trying to maintain a small sun. Theres ur motivation.
The robotic arms were needed to withstand the extreme heat and control the nuclear reaction.
Doctor octavious was a raving lunatic fueled by a dead dream and a wasted lifes work. Why would he care if he killed thousands.

[uc pseudonym]

greyscale42, it would help a great deal if you quoted other responses in some manner. It would make your text a great deal more readable.

Regarding the mask: I'm pretty sure he kept ahold of it for quite a while, though, and I'm not sure when he dropped it.

I also agree with Volt: there's nothing wrong with talking over a movie.

[Fsiphskilm]

[quote="greyscale42"]Spid parents?![/b]

[uc pseudonym]

Welcome to the forums; we're glad to have you with us. You may also be our first member from Bolivia.

Unfortunately, I'm posting for another reason. You probably didn't intend to, but your post has brought back a thread that is nearly two years old. The discussion is long over.