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mollyringleSaw Spiderman 2 today. I liked it. Naturally you cannot apply scientific skepticism to it, or it falls to pieces faster than performance-anxiety!Spidey tumbling from a building. But if you view it as you're supposed to--as a comic-book super-hero movie--it stands up pretty well. Could use some minor dialogue editing here and there, and yeah, I did wish he'd be a little less indecisive. But I still thought it was a heck of a lot better than many sequels. (Matrix, anyone?)
One scene I really loved was the bit on the subway. I don't mean the action part of it. Sure, we know he'll fight Doc Ock on the train, and we know he'll end up saving the passengers and not letting them fly off the tracks. The remarkable part, though, came when he whipped off his mask, and turned to look at the passengers as himself, as nothing more than lowly Peter Parker in a Spiderman outfit. And then, when he has stopped the train and passes out from exhaustion, gentle hands reach out from the broken windows and catch the unmasked Spidey, rescuing him from a deadly fall. They lift him quietly, and pass him crowd-surf style back into the car, where everyone kneels around in concern and fascination. When he wakes up, they thank him, say "We won't tell," and give him his mask back. They even try to defend him when the Doc returns--to no avail, of course, but the thought really was what counted.
Doesn't take serious psychoanalysis to figure out why this scene works so well. We all wonder sometimes, "If I were unmasked, if I were vulnerable, if everyone knew who I really was...would they still like me?" If anyone but ourselves asks the question, it's obvious to us the answer is "Yes." But still we wonder whether it's true for us, and therefore it touches us when people prove a truth I've long believed in: we love each other for being real, not for being perfect; and the more real someone becomes, the more likely we are to love them. None of us actually have secret superhero identities, but in this internet age we have other types of identities we hide behind, and it's common enough to feel angst about what's "real". Are we representing ourselves correctly? Are we deceptive? Are we being deceived by our web friends? Sure, it's a stretch, but those themes were struck for me, at least.
Anyhow...
Tobey Maguire, incidentally, is sheer adorableness. With or without the glasses. Smart, modest, noble, loyal, geeky--ahh, that's my type of boy.
-M.J.
(Seriously, those are my first two initials. Is that cool or what?)
One scene I really loved was the bit on the subway. I don't mean the action part of it. Sure, we know he'll fight Doc Ock on the train, and we know he'll end up saving the passengers and not letting them fly off the tracks. The remarkable part, though, came when he whipped off his mask, and turned to look at the passengers as himself, as nothing more than lowly Peter Parker in a Spiderman outfit. And then, when he has stopped the train and passes out from exhaustion, gentle hands reach out from the broken windows and catch the unmasked Spidey, rescuing him from a deadly fall. They lift him quietly, and pass him crowd-surf style back into the car, where everyone kneels around in concern and fascination. When he wakes up, they thank him, say "We won't tell," and give him his mask back. They even try to defend him when the Doc returns--to no avail, of course, but the thought really was what counted.
Doesn't take serious psychoanalysis to figure out why this scene works so well. We all wonder sometimes, "If I were unmasked, if I were vulnerable, if everyone knew who I really was...would they still like me?" If anyone but ourselves asks the question, it's obvious to us the answer is "Yes." But still we wonder whether it's true for us, and therefore it touches us when people prove a truth I've long believed in: we love each other for being real, not for being perfect; and the more real someone becomes, the more likely we are to love them. None of us actually have secret superhero identities, but in this internet age we have other types of identities we hide behind, and it's common enough to feel angst about what's "real". Are we representing ourselves correctly? Are we deceptive? Are we being deceived by our web friends? Sure, it's a stretch, but those themes were struck for me, at least.
Anyhow...
Tobey Maguire, incidentally, is sheer adorableness. With or without the glasses. Smart, modest, noble, loyal, geeky--ahh, that's my type of boy.
-M.J.
(Seriously, those are my first two initials. Is that cool or what?)
