Opinion

Spider-Man

Dir: Sam Raimi
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst

With great power comes great responsibility

You may know the plot of this one - nerdy high school student Peter Parker is bitten by a genetically-modified (not radioactive) spider, and thereupon gains incredible, spider-like powers. Driven by a personal tragedy which he could have prevented, he adopts a masked persona, and as Spider-Man, battles crime in New York City. Meanwhile industrialist Norman Osborne, the father of Peter's best friend, is experimenting with some less-benign technology....

As with all comic-derived films, there are two ways to approach reviewing Spider-Man; as an adaptation of the comic, and as a film in its own right. And of course you can always combine the two once you've done so:

Like 2000's X-Men film, as an adaptation, this one works extremely well. It updates some of the concepts (that spider for instance), and loses some of the baggage that is acceptable in a constantly-growing comic series, but which would just slow the film down. At the same time, it holds onto the core concepts, and does so intelligently and with surprising maturity.

It's interesting that in the comics, it's taken 40 years for someone (current Amazing Spider-Man author J M Straczynski) to make explicit the totemic nature of the character (and a great many of his related bad-guys: The Vulture, The Lizard, The Rhino, Dr Octopus, etc). Whether consciously or not, Stan Lee drew on a totemic tradition of humans with animal abilities when he created Spider-Man and his world, and in doing so, simplified much of the story-telling required of himself and future writers. Once a character is established, it falls into its place in what effectively constitutes a pantheon of totemic/iconic figures, each of which is in opposition to, or aligned with, the others.

Here then, Osborne's evil persona, The Green Goblin, is established as almost an embodiment of chaos, and from that moment onwards, no further exploration of his motivations is required. (The initial "Military funding under threat/Company being sold" motivators serve only as plot devices to establish the Goblin in the first place). From the point of view of a film's narrative, this is a godsend, because it cuts out the need for more than the most basic exposition and frees up time to be used on drama and spectacle. So does the film work as a 21st Century adaptation of a 20th Century icon? Yes, it definitely does.

But does the film work as a film? Well, yes and no. Structurally, it's very straightforward - the characters are established, the plot expounded, and the drama built. Raimi's direction is very strong in achieving this - there are almost no wasted scenes, and the narrative flow is extremely well-managed. Screenwriter David Koepp helps here, by keeping the expository material (Mary Jane's abusive family background, the establishing material during the early, High School-set scenes) down to a minimum. The cast, too, do extremely well with their parts, Maguire's initial confusion then wonder at his new abilities being particularly well-handled, as is Dunst's dealing with the somewhat Lois Lane-ish "loving the hero and having no time for the man" riff (mercifully, seemingly resolved within this first film), and the various supporting characters recreating the feeling of their comic equivalents very well.

On the 'no' side, there are weaknesses. The chemistry between Maguire and Dunst is not as strong as it might be, and a couple of the jokes fall somewhat flat. The method by which Koepp and Raimi manage to incorporate Ben Parker's "With great power comes great responsibility" line - so central to the creation of Spider-Man in the comic - comes off as gratuitous and forced, too.

A particular weakness, though, is the soundtrack. Danny Elfman has crafted some wonderful film scores over the years, but sadly, this isn't one of them. Or possibly, sadly, this is all of them, as the Spider-Man score sounds too much like some of the others to do this film any favours. Coupling the theme-tune with the opening credit style he chose is a fundamental error on Raimi's part, because it sets an expectation for an entirely different tone and style than the film subsequently delivers.

Overall though, I loved it. The film has drive, energy, humour, and excellent effects. Keeping things simple, and avoiding the need to incorporate 'messages', makes for one of the purest examples of film-as-entertainment I've seen in a long time.