The next episode of our series, 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot,' arrives tomorrow. It's focused on Spider-Man 2. Here's Cláudio's entry.
Before the plague times we're living in, it was my annual tradition to celebrate my birthday by going to the movies. Indeed, way back in 2004, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2 was the picture that marked the occasion of my 10th birthday. It was love at first sight. While the first Spidey flick was good, this sequel seemed perfect to my young eyes, and, as the years went by, it soon became something of a platonic ideal for what superhero movies should be but seldom were. And yet, despite all this love, I think I started to take the picture for granted.
Revisiting Spider-Man 2 for the first time since my teen years was a revelation. I also had a blast…
Granted, nostalgia may be clouding my vision a tiny bit. After all, Spider-Man 2 introduced me to so many brilliant things that it's easy to overpraise it. For starters, the cast of supporting actors is incredible. Everybody's quick to applaud Alfred Molina's Doc Oc, and while his performance is remarkable, he's only a drop in the movie's ocean of acting excellence. Beyond the performers, this movie represented my first brush with Oscar Wilde, while the DVD's special features made me an early fan of costume designer James Acheson.
Moreover, the present state of comic book-based blockbuster cinema is so dire that it's easy to impress by comparison. Spider-Man 2 seems like a perfect counterpoint to the MCU's worst traits and trends -to the DCEU's too. One can trace most of these central qualities to Sam Raimi's direction. Logically, the director's penchant for poppy compositions and genre-mixing, absurdity holding hands with earnestness, were at the forefront of this search for best shot.
Before we get to it, though, here are some honorable mentions:
The relationship between Peter and Aunt May represents the movie's most devastating material, with some shots dripping with tenderness. Others speak of a growing chasm between the two. Lies weight on a heavy conscience, and so does grief. It's not the gargantuan worldwide loss of half the cosmos but something more intimate. The path to true universality is often specificity, grandeur via a microscopic focus.
In contrast to the delicate handling of familial tragedy, violence splashes across the screen in bold comic book fashion, a scream mirrored in the shard that's about to silence it forever. Or is it, perhaps, B-movie artifice like in the famous massacre in the operation room? Raimi delivers a PG massacre capable of scaring and entertaining in equal measure through projected shadows, cartoon despair, and POV mosaics.
Speaking of that balance between comic book illustration and B-movie pulp, don't you love these compositions? Sure, they can be cheesy, but there's value to such popcorn excess. Self-conscious seriousness is nowhere in Spider-Man 2, and I am grateful for its absence.
That's not to say the film is without drama. It's impossible to ignore the naked need for hope in a post-9/11 New York City. While it's clichéd to describe the setting as another character, such is the case here. Way before the train set-piece, one can feel the metropolis's personality shining through. Be it wide windows that look out at residential buildings, cramped humanity, or lonely laundromats, there's a visceral sense of place.
It also feels that the world is making fun of Peter, the city included. His sad-sack existence is a big part of the picture's appeal, for it always sees the superhero as a person before he's an icon. This sometimes manifests in visual gags that elicit laughter and sympathy, maybe pity or melancholy. Raimi can run through that gamut of emotion in a single shot. Consider when Peter walks home alone at night, a picture of disappointment as Mary Jane's visage gazes down at him, multiplied into infinity by plastered ads.
Alternatively, gaze upon this nifty close-up leading to the movie's final act. It starts funnily enough, a nerd's panic at being kissed by the woman of his dreams before the camera gets some distance, and we see a car coming straight at the lovebirds. Such a feat of tonal flexibility would have been a good choice for the best shot. However, it's only my runner-up.
;)
THIS is my best shot!
After Feige and company turned Peter Parker into a billionaire's heir apparent, being faced with this version of the character felt shocking but reinvigorating. Financial anxieties reign supreme in Spider-Man 2, ranging from Aunt May's inability to pay her mortgage to Peter's squalid room. It's painfully real, honest, and strikes instantaneous affinity between our on-screen hero and us. He is one of the people rather than a distant ideal existing on a higher echelon. Furthermore, his unnatural capabilities a responsibility, not a one-dimensional power fantasy. Oh, how I've missed this Peter Parker and what he represents.
Don't forget to post your #bestshot choices from Spider-Man 2 so that Nathaniel can include them in tomorrow's Best Shot post.