What I did not like about Spider-Man II
01/04/2006 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
Now Mark realises that most of America liked the movie Spider-Man II, he feels he should get out his list of complaints about the second film before the third launches out into the world's cinemas. Buy Spider-Man II in the USA - or Buy Spider-Man II in the UK  I see that discussion and publicity is already starting about Spider-Man III and the film is in production even as I write this. There is something about a publicity release showing him in a black suit rather than his usual red one. It is being readied for May of 2007. But if I want it to be better than Spider-Man II, have little time left to express my complaints about the last film. Now I realize most of America liked Spider-Man II. I am not responsible for that, but I should get out my list of complaints about the film. People may want to review the film to refresh their memories, and there are a zillion copies out on DVD.
The film Spider-Man II was released in June 2004. Now I had liked the first Spider-Man film, rating it a 7/10, and the critics seemed to be very favourable on this sequel. I had high expectations for the film. Perhaps they were too high. When I actually saw the film it seemed to me to be an unending stream of poorly thought-out ideas. I told myself at some point I would try to collect all the bad touches in one article and, well, this is it. There will be spoilers in what follows and it assumes the reader has already seen the film.
Let us look first at the physics of Spider-Man. Part of this may be explainable by things I do not know about his powers, I suppose, though they should have been explained in the film. A spider can actually fall a great distance without being hurt, because its weight is a small fraction of an ounce. A man of 160 pounds or so is more likely to be injured when he falls even a moderate distance. However, three times in this film Peter Parker falls a distance of something like ten stories. He always recovers very quickly without much damage.
Maybe he suffers a little pain in one scene. It is not clear what would have to be done to his body to withstand pressures like this, and it certainly does not seem to be something that could happen from some strange contact with some scientifically modified spider. I suppose there is no point in watching the film at all if you don't suspend disbelief on his. I list it here as a matter of completeness but I suspend belief on this one just like on his ability to in five seconds go from street clothes to his superhero suit. It is all that spider's doing.
But Peter Parker also seems to have been a materials genius. He puts stickum on his hands or has natural spider ability or something that keeps him stuck to the vertical side of a building while catching his aged aunt who has been picking up speed falling ten stories or more. How he has the muscle strength to pull away from a wall that he is stuck to that strongly I really have no idea. Things he does at the end that web should rip his arms off. Again we have to suspend disbelief on this one because it is basic to the Spider-Man character.
However, various people, not just Spider-Man, hang on a single strand of this web and are accelerated at rates that would have the web cut right through them like the ribbon on a pack of gum. This web material must be a miraculous substance that any chemical company would want to get their hands on. And they can. Spider-Man seems to leave samples of this webbing all over the city yet nobody synthesizes it. I believe in the comic Peter Parker actually invented this substance, but never thinks to sell it to get out of his desperate financial straits. In the film it is a natural product of his body, like silk from a spider's body, though it does not come from his thorax but his wrists. Other forces that Spider-Man's body is subjected to and survives include being thrown dozens of yards through a window. Also there is a scene in which just the web and the tensile strength of Spider-Man's body stop a speeding train. I will suspend disbelief on this also because it is the definition of the character.
Before this he tried to stop the train by standing in front and dragging his feet. It doesn't work and he only kicks up some railroad ties. Even being dragged through the streets by the train does not harm him. He must have tremendous muscle power just to do the whole Spider-Man swing thing. He propels himself at a speed many times that of an automobile and does it by muscle-power alone. He certainly does not inherit a strong tensile strength from spiders, but these are all long-standing assumptions about the character as he is written in the comic. But as my friend Nick Sauer points out, Spider-Man is really the Marvel Comics version of Superman. Okay, let me accept that Spider-Man has this sort of strength. I will give the stories that. But let me look at his chief villain.
Doc Ock seems to have some fairly amazing physical characteristics himself. This is the guy who has four mechanical arms attached to his body. At one point he picks up a taxi driving at him and tosses it in the direction from which it came. Newton's Laws say he would have massive recoil throw him backward unless he with his arms was extremely massive himself. He does have those arms, but it still seems unlikely. Of course, Doc Ock is a pretty amazing guy. He creates a fusion reaction like a little sun levitated over the ground a few feet from spectators and they do not seem to need to be shielded from it. It is not really clear what this whole thing with tritium and the sun is all about, but it looks very powerful. (Tritium is a gas, by the way. It is an isotope of hydrogen.) Luckily in the end the whole self-sustaining, fusion-reacting, highly radioactive mess, when it get out of hand, can be flushed away by simply dropping it into a river. Look out below. And the thing looks as hot as the sun. Why does it not vaporize the water and give off a cloud of radioactive steam that would kill everybody in the city?
Of course, the Doc's judgment does not have the best track record. He didn't think the reaction would run away in the first place. He didn't think that welding those arms on his body might cause a problem either. How did he attach metal to flesh? We see it happening, but it doesn't make sense. It would also be hugely painful. For that matter, what do the mechanical arms have to do with his physics experiments anyway? Anything close enough for them to manipulate could not be much further from the doctor, so they do not protect him much. But can't he work on one new innovation at a time? Anyway, doesn't he think the little sun he drops in the river will cause a few problems to the good people of New York? I guess New Yorkers have to be strong enough to adapt to anything.
One tough nurse tending during Doc Ock's surgery is seen scratching deep ruts into a surgical steel table with just her fingernails when the Doc goes wild. Everything in the room is surgical steel including the steel surgical chainsaw. (Just where would you get a surgical chainsaw? Don't ask.) And what about those arms? We are never told why they have daggers at the center of each claw. They are controlled by artificial intelligence, but they seem to go well beyond that level of understanding. We never understand how the octopus arms work. They seem to tap into his spine and become part of his physiology. It is not clear what powers they give or why, but Doc Ock seems to recover very quickly. There is something mystical happening that between him and his metal arms that is never explained.
Speaking of those arms we never do get to see the scene I wanted to see. Doc Ock goes wears a full-length coat when he goes out. It appears to have holes for the octopus arms, not even long slits. I really wanted to see how he takes the coat off and puts it on. That must be something to see.
Some scenes in this film are downright silly. This is the kind of film where you have women running screaming directly into the camera lens, breaking the fourth wall. Other scenes have Spidey's girlfriend Mary Jane running down a New York street in a bridal gown. But the real surreal touch is having her lying in the Spider-Man web like a fly while Parker crawls around like a spider. Isn't that romantic?
The script seems to me to be extremely contrived. In all my years of going to New York City I suppose there were crimes being committed someplace, but I never saw a sign of it any worse than a public urination. Peter Parker goes into town and the world seems to fall apart. There are police car chases, police foot chases, and bank robberies. All these call for Spider-Man's help and the frequency of crimes only increases just when Parker most needs to have time for personal needs. Coincidence piled on coincidence seems to be the heart of the plot. Parker is already good friends with Dr. Octavius before the Doc becomes a monster. He is doing a report on the scientist's work. Also they know each other through a mutual friend who just happens to be the son of the Green Goblin. Anybody who is anybody starts out being not more than two degrees of separation from anybody else. And when Doc Ock picks a bank to rob, who is in it but Peter Parker and his dear old aunt?
Speaking of the bank robbery, I have no idea what the point of that is. Yes, Ock may need money for his further research, but I can't see his being able to use cash from a bank robbery. I can't imagine Doc Ock on the telephone saying, "Hey, I am depositing one million dollars into your bank account. Please deliver a bunch of tritium to the laboratories of the mad scientist Doc Ock, no questions asked, okay? Oh, and if the place may be being watched, which it probably is, can you try to deliver the goods when nobody's looking?" I just would like to see how the Doc intends to use the boodle.
What else? Rarely have we seen any superhero with a secret identity be so cavalier about revealing that secret. During the course of this film he reveals this super-secret identity to his friend/opponent Harry (1), to Doc Ock (2), and to his girl friend (3). He takes his mask off when sitting over the city in plain sight on a crane (who knows how many). He rips his mask off while fighting on the roof of a speeding train (who knows how many more). It clearly would have been blown away and be lost on the city streets. Slight digression: without the train ever stopping some passengers are able to rescue the mask. Parker lets a whole train carload of passengers see his face where anyone with a cell phone camera could snap a picture. Literally dozens of people have seen the face that they know to be Spider-Man's in the course of this film, yet he still officially has a secret identity.
The film assumes people are incredibly oblivious. And Parker is not very discrete about using his powers when people can see he is Peter Parker. As Spider-Man Parker makes no attempt to disguise his voice when he talks to his aunt, but it does not occur to her that there is anything familiar about the voice. Of course, the aunt seems a little deaf . . . and strange also. Her husband was apparently killed by a mugger. Not knowing Peter *feels* responsible for that death, she says, "Were I to face the one responsible . . ." rather than, "If I were to face the killer" as you or I would. She has no reason to think that anyone other than the killer would be responsible, so why not just call him "the killer"?
These are not real people in this film. Aunt May does not recognize her own nephew's voice, as I said. Peter Parker does not seem to know what time his school classes end. MaryJane is supposed to be a good actor, but gets distracted by checking out who is in the audience and she lets it show in her performance. And it seems unlikely that Parker would just leave this suit in a random garbage can.
Yes, the entire subplot of the lost suit makes no sense. Jameson is talking to two of his flunkies. Among the three of them they must see all parts of the room, yet none of them notices that Peter Parker sneaks into the room and steals back his costume and leaves a note in a matter of three or four seconds. Right! Even when somebody shares an elevator with Spider-Man that person does not believe this is the real Spider-Man in the real Spider-Man suit. But the hard-nosed Jameson sees a Spider-Man suit somebody has found and immediately assumes it is authentic.
A few more miscellaneous questions and comments: If Parker is such a nerd, why do so many attractive blondes seem to like him? Okay, it is only two, but for a nerd like him, that's a lot. Take it from me.
When Doc Ock wants to get away from Spider-Man why doesn't he go where there are no tall buildings for Spidey to swing from? This film seems to give the impression that there are tall buildings all over Manhattan. It just is not true. Why do people in this world seem to know the Spider-Man TV cartoon theme?
Other than those, I had few problems with the film. I don't find CGI objectionable but here frequently it is unconvincing. I guess I can live with that. But of 219 reviews of this film on rottentomatoes.com, 203 of the reviews are positive. All I can say is that there were an overwhelming number of problems with the film and most don't seem to bother anyone.
By the way, I appreciate comments on this article given to me by superhero expert and fan Nick Sauer. (Nick has an encyclopaedic knowledge of much of popular culture.) Nick is not as critical of the film as I am. (Nobody seems to be.) He actually liked the film overall. But he nonetheless added to my list of problems. I missed including the question of where in New York City do you find elevated train tracks right next to skyscrapers, or even where elevated train tracks than end with simple and easily breakable bumpers.
Mark R Leeper
(c) Mark R Leeper 2006. |
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