Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Peter still can’t deal with his life and has a three-year-old’s grasp on relationships. Harry is still terrible. Mary Jane is still around to be saved (three times again) and still cheating on whatever boyfriend she currently has. The villain of the week is Doc Ock (Alfred Molina).

Spider-Man was serious! So, since sequels have to ratchet up everything, Spider-Man 2 ratchets up the self-importance. Peter whines, “What am I supposed to do?” and I am supposed to feel sorry for him. I don’t. His problems are epic if you are a child. For anyone not a child, “grow up” is the proper response.

The romance, again, has the maturity of a young teen’s view of the world. I hope that no adult takes any of this as accurate or they are doomed to a very sad life. And to go with that silliness, Peter’s teen angst now has a literal representation in his failing powers. It is not subtle, but then children’s films rarely are.

Harry has changed from the first film, delving into slimy James Franco mode, which makes him a bit less boring although no more enjoyable. Later he becomes nasty, and that’s beyond Franco’s ability to pull off. Molina steps in as the new cartoon villain, but he does it with as much heart as the trilogy allows. Whether that is an improvement or not depends on how arch you like your evil-doers. That he really is stoppable by anyone with a gun does make his campaign of crime harder to buy than the Goblin’s. After all, Aunt May messes him up. But yeah, I’ll call him an upgrade.

Once again , the CGI is less than it should be (with a fight on the side of a building standing out). The big set piece combat on a train isn’t bad (though it so overpowers Spider-Man that Doc Ock should have been dead from one punch), and has the trilogy’s only truly emotional moment, but I’ve become spoiled and it wouldn’t rank in the top thirty superhero fights now, and that’s all Spiderman 2 has to offer.

Reviewing Spider-Man 2 is pointless after writing one for Spider-Man. They are the same. Not that the first had any claim to originality, but this level of copying is extreme even for sequels. The villain is a touch better and the preaching is even more annoying (yes, yes, be a hero), but otherwise, we’ve seen it all before.

And as a big fan of The Importance of Being Earnest, I find it irritating that Mary Jane’s version apparently starts late in the second act.