Spiderman

2002 superhero movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Young Peter Parker deals with puberty and tries, despite having a "grandmother with benefits" relationship with his grandma, to get it on with the neighbor girl. He has an affair with a spider and begins developing some superhuman abilities, like the ability to beat up Randy "the Macho Man" Savage. Meanwhile, his best friend's dad keeps turning into Metallic Elf Man and tries to kill everybody. A whole bunch of characters get the chance to say "With great power comes great responsibility." And the audience wishes they were watching the one with the tentacle guy instead.

And the Academy Award for Best Use of a Retired Wrestler in an Action Movie goes to. . .Randy "Macho Man" Savage. Actually, I'd give him best actor, best actress, best picture, whatever the guy wanted. Yes, best picture because Randy "Macho Man" Savage is Spiderman. Out of the 12 points I'm giving this movie, the late wrastler represents 11.5 of them.

Time hasn't treated Spiderman very well. The story, the Spiderman-origin story, is tired anyway, and although I liked some of the human element in the story and thought Tom Cruise made a pretty good Spiderman, I would much rather read the comic book or watch the old cartoon version of this. But those special effects! They look awful, just so cartoony, especially when Spiderman or the green guy are doing there thing in broad daylight. The darkness of the city covers up the limitations of the special effects, but Spiderman's floppiness (he suffers a bit from Superman Leg Syndrome) just looks silly when the sun's out. Speaking of Superman, this is an obvious attempt to capture some of the magic of that superhero movie, but it just doesn't work and the novelty of seeing Spiderman dicking around with his new gifts early in the film wears off about as fast as Tom Cruise's lone facial expression in this movie.

Question of the Day: Who do you think would win in a fight--Macho Man or El Santo? Wait! Don't answer that. Either way, you're going to make yourself a powerful enemy.

7 comments:

  1. rio blanco racingOctober 8, 2011 at 7:47 AM

    i could take macho man. he's dead. as long as he isnt't undead i'm fine

    ReplyDelete
  2. ShaneOctober 8, 2011 at 8:25 AM

    You better watch your mouth!

    In other news: miss ya, man...

    ReplyDelete
  3. rio blanco racingOctober 8, 2011 at 10:50 AM

    aaaahhhhh shucks

    ReplyDelete
  4. KairowOctober 8, 2011 at 6:08 PM

    Did you know Macho Man was drafted by the Cards out of high school?

    Also, it's Spider Hyphen Man.

    This was in the first generation of super hero movies, and has not held up as well as others. Spider-Man 2 was the best of the three, with 3 falling into the too many villans curse.

    I did like the ending.

    I'm sorry, but "With great power..." is a direct line to my heart strings.

    14/20

    ReplyDelete
  5. BarryOctober 10, 2011 at 10:57 AM

    This one I saw. I tend to agree that its already fairly dated. The thing that bothered me were the masks, of both the Goblin and Spider-Man. The Goblins was plastic, and so there was no movement at all when he talked. There are tons of scenes where he is trying to be evil, but since there was no way to convey any emotions he just looked like a cartoon as he threatened Spidey.

    Spider-Mans mask had a different problem. It was painfully obvious that all the dialogue of his character was dubbed in post production. There would be extreme close ups of Spidey talking away, yet no part of his face would move. (Even though the mask is shown to be tight cloth)

    It distracted the hell out of me.


    Anyway, I give this one a 15 because it tries to be fun, and has some decent scenes in it, plus an all right storyline.

    ReplyDelete
  6. coryOctober 10, 2011 at 9:17 PM

    I agree with you and Kairow (Barry, not so much). S2 was great, but this one was too full of itself. I think I mentioned this when commenting about another film...when he has the chance to exact righteous vengeance on the guy who killed his beloved father or uncle or whomever the old coot was, Spidey is saved the trouble by a freak accident doing the dirty work for him. Making us think the movie was going to be daring and contain some interesting moral ambiguity, but then chickening out, ruined a film I was iffy about to begin with. Also a 12.

    ReplyDelete
  7. ShaneOctober 14, 2011 at 10:03 PM

    I did know that about Macho Man, Kairow...mentioned it in my post about the superhero dog.

    You're right, Barry...the characters kind of look like toys in this movie. That is a huge problem!

    And you're right, too, Cory! It does give Spiderman an easy way out of his moral dilemma. Is that how the comic plays it?

    ReplyDelete