The new Spider-Man movie is superb, the best superhero movie to-date, by far. Far better than Batman and Superman I and II, and their unwatchable sequels. I have been a Spider-Man fan for over twenty years, and thoroughly enjoyed this adaptation. James Lileks has written an excellent review (except for his reasons about why Spider-Man is the movie of the year–“because it sums up who we wanted to be. ” I think that’s a bit much–but judge for yourself). The swinging and action scenes were great. I loved the way Spider-Man moved–the way he would squat low to the floor when he landed, alert for danger, just as the comic illustrations always suggested. The organic webshooters were an inspired idea, in fact it probably should have been that way from the beginning, in the comic.
Other reviews have been generally positive, but way off base in the criticisms they apparently felt compelled to come up with. Roger Ebert, for example, inexplicably criticizes the action sequences: “‘[the] action sequences […] zip along like perfunctory cartoons. Not even during Spidey’s first experimental outings do we feel that flesh and blood are contending with gravity. Spidey soars too quickly through the skies of Manhattan; he’s as convincing as Mighty Mouse.” This is absurd; the web-swinging and related action sequences are very well-done, and impressively visualized what comics the fluid and tumultuous action that still comic panels can only suggest. Ebert also implies that the Batman and Superman moviews are superior to Spider-Man: “The appeal of the best sequences in the Superman and Batman movies is that they lend weight and importance to comic-book images.” This is ridiculous. Batman was almost painful to watch (Michael Keaton?!), and took itself way, WAY too seriously; Superman, even the first two, was hokey and campy (remember the fumbling Ned Beatty?).
Charles Taylor’s otherwise largely excellent review in Salon goes off-course in trying to analogize Spider-Man’s web-shooting with teenage ejaculation: “Koepp and Raimi do some sly comedy of their own in the scenes where Peter tries to get his web-spinning abilities under control. The gummy white fluid that shoots out of his wrists becomes a metaphor for the other thing that teenage boys often can’t control.” Beware of any high-falutin’ critic who uses the term “metaphor” (Taylor does it twice–the second time, he claims that the scene in which “Spidey’s mask is half torn off” is “an elegant little visual metaphor for the divisions in the character”. Spare me.). The link between Spidey’s web and semen is perverse and unwarranted; and Taylor is wrong about this scene, when he writes: “Peter invokes every superhero slogan he can remember (‘Sha-zam!’ and so on) to take charge of the webs as they fire wide of their target.” No; Peter invokes these slogans to try to get his webs to fire, not to get them under control. A. O. Scott of the NY Times bizarrley refers to Willem Dafoe’s amazing performance as the Green Gobling “uninspired and secondhand”; it is not, Taylor rightly calls it “perhaps the single best piece of screen work Dafoe has ever done” and even the somewhat critical Ebert admits, “there’s an effective scene where Osborn [Dafoe] has a conversation with his invisible dark side”.
Forget the critics. Listen to Lileks. The movie is great.
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