SPIDER-MAN

Does whatever a spider can...
Guest Review by Mike Flores

Well, by now you have read and seen probably everything you wanted to about this movie.  I don’t really do reviews per se, and am more interested in speaking about these films as trends and the like.  So at least a few of the ideas here you haven’t seen anywhere else.

To be frank, this film had been kicking around so many years I thought it would be a miracle if it didn’t suck.  How many writers, directors and producers have worked on this project?  Wisely, Sam Raimi was put in charge of the film.  His sense of humor, evident in his films (Evil Dead) and TV shows (Xena, Hercules) snatches the film from the grim soap opera it very well could have been.  I enjoyed watching Spider-man, and who wouldn’t?  OK, mainstream critics might not -- and they make an observation that I think you should be aware of when they criticize films like this.  Way back in the silent film era, we had heroes saving women from cliffs, trains, everything else you can think of.  To the critics who prayed that Woody Allen’s latest would beat Spidey at the box office, these rescue scenes are clichés.  What they don’t recognize is that, universally, people want to identify with the hero and save the beautiful girl.  This goes back to the legends of knights fighting the dragon.  This is not a cliché. This is the human condition.  It is why people still never tire of the tales of King Arthur, and it is why we go back to see the Bond movies.  It is why Spider-man will become the biggest hit in film history.  The failure of critics to recognize the human condition in Spider-man while seeing it in every pretentious and self-conscious “art film” is one of the reasons people will ignore the reviewers and line up for Spider-man.

There is a problem with Spider-man -- it is almost like two films.  The humor held my interest when the serious parts took over.  If any director other than Raimi had been at the helm, this film would be gone out of the theaters already.  The serious parts almost stop the film!  If Raimi is not at the helm of the next movie, it will have more serious problems.  Tobey Maguire does a fine job transforming into Spidey, but the film is stolen by Kirsten Dunst.  (Let’s face it, would anyone have seen Bring It On more than once if she wasn’t in it?)   Playing Mary Jane, the girl next door with a troubled home life (and dating almost every guy in the movie but Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin), she is mesmerizing on the screen.  Because she reminds almost every guy in the audience of the girl in high school that always dated the wrong guys and not them, her character is one of the most fully developed in the film. We all know a Mary Jane, although they are usually more disturbed than Mary Jane is here. When she finally decides to choose the good guy for a change, she is spurned.  For her own safety.  In the next film she should play a stripper!  Only a spoilsport could not enjoy Spiderman, however.

This is also the most publicized film to change scenes after 9-11. We get shots of New Yorkers rallying in Times Square, and shots with the World Trade Center are removed.  Hollywood still has no clear idea how to treat heroes and uneasy scenes.  Let’s put it this way: for 50 years every anti-social, anti-government anti-hero has been made into a hero.  That is over.  The lone avenger will be coming back.  Police, firemen, the flag will return as heroic.  The groups and icons trashed or ignored since the Viet Nam war will return. You see, all those American icons existed for reasons the now 40- and 50-year old generation did not see in the cynical wake of Watergate.  War movies will return.  This is the legacy of 9-11. 

I love Spider-man.  I have no apologies for that.  I intend to see it again on the big screen.  I am less anxious to see the new Star Wars film, but I will.  And I can guarantee my observations will be unlike what you have seen elsewhere.  (If they still don’t have a smart-aleck Harrison Ford-type in the film I am NOT going to be happy).  But for now I can close my eyes, watch Spidey get a kiss from Mary Jane, and that is enough.  Thank you, Sam Raimi.  Thank you, Kirsten Dunst. Thank you, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.  Excelsior!  

Cool spider bites Parker; The Green Goblin blows people up, Mary Jane is promiscuous!; nothing is cooler than watching Spidey webbing himself around the city; great fight scene with a bully; the crowd went nuts when the trailer for The Matrix sequel was shown.  Oh boy, can’t wait. 

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