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After letting it incubate for a week, I have a better idea of what one of my more complicated issues with Spider-Man 2 was. It's an issue I have only because Spider-Man -- and super-hero mythology in general -- was a major figure in my personal development, and I found the movie to play kind of loose with one rather important super-hero concept.
I really didn't like how Spidey removes or otherwise loses his mask in the company of others no less than three times. Read in what symbolism of adolescent fears that you will (and you wouldn't be incorrect), but superheroes are terrified of being unmasked, in part because it violently changes the relationship between them and the people who see. As a result, an unmasking is usually a rare and major plot development (assuming that there are no magic forgetting-drugs applied to the characters, or alternate-timeline-jumping, or whatever; in the Marvel universe that sort of crap happens all the time).
In the movie, though, Spidey loses his mask, in order of increasing ?!-ness, to Doc Ock (big deal; like all movie-adapted comic book villains, he (probably) snuffs it at the end, which also ticks me off but that's a different bag of apples) and at the same time to MJ (GAH, this is the sort of thing that happens only after YEARS of story development in the comics... which, granted, we sort of had, with the understood two-year lag in movie-time between the two movies (which I also thought was kind of neat)), and before that to Harry (same complaint as with MJ) and at some point to a bunch of civilians on a train (GAAAAAH... now, I bet this has happened in the comics, just as it happened in the movie... maybe a little ways into the series, when Stan Lee was writing it, only to be quickly forgotten about (until, 15 or 30 real-time years later, the series' current writer gets the idea to start a small plot arc involving one of those people, who perhaps has had a change of heart)).
Note that I parenthetically excused all of these unmaskings. I think one or maybe even two of them would have been acceptable to me. But all of them, all at once... it was a bit much, taking an important super-hero concept and just setting it to overload like that. It really did bother me, and I think made me much more grouchy about the film's other, rather minor flaws.
In other news, there were no Elves at Helm's Deep. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish polishing the custom bases for my Secret Wars action figure collection.
I really didn't like how Spidey removes or otherwise loses his mask in the company of others no less than three times. Read in what symbolism of adolescent fears that you will (and you wouldn't be incorrect), but superheroes are terrified of being unmasked, in part because it violently changes the relationship between them and the people who see. As a result, an unmasking is usually a rare and major plot development (assuming that there are no magic forgetting-drugs applied to the characters, or alternate-timeline-jumping, or whatever; in the Marvel universe that sort of crap happens all the time).
In the movie, though, Spidey loses his mask, in order of increasing ?!-ness, to Doc Ock (big deal; like all movie-adapted comic book villains, he (probably) snuffs it at the end, which also ticks me off but that's a different bag of apples) and at the same time to MJ (GAH, this is the sort of thing that happens only after YEARS of story development in the comics... which, granted, we sort of had, with the understood two-year lag in movie-time between the two movies (which I also thought was kind of neat)), and before that to Harry (same complaint as with MJ) and at some point to a bunch of civilians on a train (GAAAAAH... now, I bet this has happened in the comics, just as it happened in the movie... maybe a little ways into the series, when Stan Lee was writing it, only to be quickly forgotten about (until, 15 or 30 real-time years later, the series' current writer gets the idea to start a small plot arc involving one of those people, who perhaps has had a change of heart)).
Note that I parenthetically excused all of these unmaskings. I think one or maybe even two of them would have been acceptable to me. But all of them, all at once... it was a bit much, taking an important super-hero concept and just setting it to overload like that. It really did bother me, and I think made me much more grouchy about the film's other, rather minor flaws.
In other news, there were no Elves at Helm's Deep. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish polishing the custom bases for my Secret Wars action figure collection.
Re: i saw it for free, and i am thankful for that
5) Ted Raimi rocks. So does Bruce Campbell.
7) Goodgod it was like reading a Steven Dondaldson novel. Misery. Angst. Stomping on of emotions. I got tired of it about half the way into the movie.
Has anyone in NYC NOT seen Spiderman's face? Seriously.
Re: i saw it for free, and i am thankful for that