Sam Raimi is like unto a god. I mean, we knew that, but still. He really knocked this one out of the park. I was in a hurry to watch this movie. I had 8 minutes to get to the theatre (which is conveniently 12 minutes from my house), and as I ran in, I thought to myself, if I'm late, all I'll miss is the inevitable 'watch the main credits while POV flying through a CGI world' opening that every comic-book movie has done for the last four years.
I was pleasantly surprised not only by the fact that they didn't do this (instead opting for a series of water-colour shots of moments from the first film, a great way to get us all up to speed) but that they did the 'CGI flying' bit for about 45 seconds, and then stopped. Not only is Raimi aware that it has become cliché, but he uses it to his advantage by playing it up and then abandonding it.
I won't ruin the rest of the movie for you, but I will say that the CGI is way better this time around, primarily because the animators and directors didn't try to over-reach themselves again. There is a combination of more live-action, more believable CGI animation, and less demand that the animation look deliberately inhuman, thus making it look worse.
The thing that I really appreciate is that the plot was actually unified. Every narrative thread contained the seads of its own conflict and its own resolution. Not only that, but all the of the character development is seemlessly interwoven with the action elements.
The film is about 'Peter Parker' struggling to live in the same world as 'Spider-man,' but the story ends up being about Peter himself. This isn't exactly a radical concept, but Raimi and his writers (Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Michael Chabon, and Alvin Sargent) do it well. They seem to understand that fantasy, science-fiction, and to a great degree, superhero stories work wonderfully as media through which to explore the 'everyman' mind. All comics do is turn the drama up to 11 while leaving the basic elements the same. SF and fantasy writers who want to explore basic human experiences know this and use it.
Posted by orion at July 9, 2004 1:01 AM