Spider-Man 2: Guilt be a two way street dear spider.

Fun fact, one of my earliest Spider-Man experiences was one of the Lego Sets for this movie (aside from watching… I’m not sure if it was the DVD or VCR, of Spider-Man 1 at my grandparents’ house with my cousins. You can blame them (or at least one in particular) for exposing me to superheroes). If anyone is curious as to the set, 4857 Doc Ock’s Fusion Lab. Doubt it will get a review cause I’ll probably have to replace parts (if I can find them), but it’s still a fun fact.

With a hit in the form of the original Spider-Man, it only makes sense that a sequel would be made, not to mention this was a point in time where the number 2 didn’t have negative views if it was attached to a Marvel movie, though Marvel did have a mixed reception at this time. People were still excited for Spider-Man 2, so how well does it hold up over a decade later? (Yeah, the first Spider-Man movie is going to be 20 years old in 2022, and the first X-Men movie is going to be 20 in 2020).

 At least one year has passed since the events of the first movie. Peter’s no in college and has a pizza delivery job, but due to the requirements of being Spider-Man, his life’s falling apart. He’s failing his course, lost his job, drifted further and further away from his friends, so much so that he gives the life up… At least he would have, if a new villain known as Doctor Octopus wasn’t causing havoc in the city in his attempt at recreating a failed attempt at making a stable Fusion reactor, which caused four robotic arms to become fused to his central nervous system and his wife to be killed in the accident. So of course the logical thing to do, even after the initial hit of trauma dies down, is to remake the same experiment, but even bigger. Motivation loopholes aside, the story itself is still very strong due to the fact that Doc. Ock is a very good villain, tying heavily to the “to do the right thing, sometimes you have to give up everything” theme the movie goes for. Even giving up your secret identity will have the negative consequences of… getting the girl of your dreams, convincing the main bad guy to kill himself and sink his fusion reactor in the river, and convincing a bunch of random people on a train to try and protect you from the guy with the four robot arms… Oh and secretly turning your best friend into a supervillain to follow in his dad’s footsteps… ok then.

While the cast is the same, the performances between films have improved a lot, as they all feel like better fits for their roles. Things feel more grounded overall, there’s less goofy performances (though the chemistry between Peter and Mary Jane still isn’t quite there, even with the final scene of the movie to consider). But, like with the first movie, the good does outweigh the bad in terms of the performances, as the only bad performances I could think of are those related to the minor characters.

My biggest problem with the presentation in Spider-Man 1 was the gap between “human that is actually there” and “animated puppet made to look human”. Thankfully, two years is clearly a lot in CGI development time. There is still a clear cut between what’s there and what isn’t, but it blends in far better and when it doesn’t, it’s at points in the movie where I don’t care about the cracks (any of the battles between Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus being the biggest examples). Ironically, the big problem isn’t what wasn’t there in recording, it’s what was but edited out in post. Some of the cable work used when Spidey’s jumping off the ground looks really awkward in this movie thanks to some of the camera angles used. Take shots at the Star Wars Prequels all you want, at least the camera work helped make the Force Jump look as smooth as possible. And this movie came out two years after Attack of the Clones! (I will admit I had to look that one up as I could have sworn it came out in 2004. Turns out I was thinking of Revenge of the Sith (2005)). One of the biggest things the CGI had to get right was the Doctor’s arms, and even to this day, they still look amazing. It honestly makes me want to see what they could do with the character now, with current advances in CGI. If I had to nit-pick, I find it a little hard to believe the range the arms have at times, along with some of their functions, but I also don’t care enough to call it a genuine problem. As for music, it’s as good as the first movie, and once again finding that nice balance between blending into the film, and standing out in its own right.

I will admit I’ve been genuinely shocked at how well these two movies have held up, though to be fair, they are considered classics for a reason. Some people have said that they could have put these Spider-Man films into the MCU cannon with relative ease, and I do agree overall (heck, Doctor Strange was named dropped in a movie 12 years before he’d hit the screen. Should we call that foreshadowing?). Alas, things would get hard for the wall crawler, as one of his most dangerous foes lurks in his third movie. But before then, we have more mutants to deal with in X2.. or X-Men 2, though its apparently officially called X2.