Dumbed-down the plughole
Spider-Man (12)
On general release. Written by David Koepp; directed by Sam Raimi. Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and Willem Dafoe
I'm out on a limb a bit here, but I've always thought that the appeal of comic books is similar to that of soap operas in that they are about known characters, who do not develop so much as have new things happen to them. This is why the film of the TV series is always a dud, and so far, the film of the comic is a dud too. Most screen time is spent explaining how it happens, always the least interesting thing. Look, he just flies, OK? Then he gets into lots of fights. That's it. You don't go around asking how...
This approach doesn't go down with the film people. While it's hard to believe that anyone is Southern California has learned to read, an awful lot of the movie industry claims to have been college educated, which means that they think there are things you just have to do. Beginning-middle-end is one of them. Plot, going by this film anyway, is not. Spider-Man is harm to summarize because it makes so little sense. If it has any merits, they are all down to the charm of Tobey Maguire, who slides around just the straight side of all-out physical comedy. Pretty much everyone else is terrible. Willem Dafoe is particularly disappointing. He may be unhappy with his effective demotion to the role of someone's dad (Peter's best friend Harry, James Franco) or simply defeated by the irredeemable silliness of the script, and the shallowness of his character. (He doesn't have a good side and a bad side - he's bad all through, with some bolted-on tenderness. This is a film which is doltishly anti-science, slice it where you like, and Dafoe's Norman Osborn, made the fatal mistake of choosing to be a scientist. Scientists are such a humourless, square guild, that Peter even gets sacked by a Dr Conners for being repeatedly late. The gall! Never happens in the arts world.)
Spider-Man ought to be good. It has potential for lots of fights and SFX, all the goods the pre-teens drink up with saucer eyes. For me it's too reverential, it's just a comic book. Sam Raimi managed a near perfect horror with the Evil Dead on next to no budget. Here, he has the luxury of reproducing what must have been sketchy thoughts with a literalness that is more frightening than anything depicted in the movie. The Green Goblin has a flying thing (never mind that jet-glider is an oxymoron), which can be drawn with a few quick lines, here it has to be worked out, and worked-out it makes no sense.
Some of the controversy in the UK has been over the fantasy violence. Which is most of the appeal of the film for children, and for me, anyway, the film's most appalling fault. I remember when I saw The Battle of Britain as a boy being utterly shocked that a pilot caught fire. Things caught fire. People didn't. Spider-Man has this strange kid-naïve physics. There are bombs which blow buildings to pieces but muss people's hair a bit. There are bombs which turn people to skeletons which then crumble, but don't seem to damage anything. A blow whoch knocks a wall down if taken in the face doesn't even break a tooth.
Spider-Man, in short, is not of our planet. Willem Dafoe is bad because he does not say grace, a negative right protected by the constitution in our world, and vigourously praticed in the real New York, but in this parallel world is the mark of Cain. Peter's aunt and uncle (living together, isn't that like incest?) are sickeningly quaint, when the uncle says "Great power brings great responsibility", would it have been any less true if great had been cancelled out of both sides of the equation? Spider-Man's moral dilemma is a lot like Travis Bickle being right. A freak's gotta do...
Not that our hero would go that far into the mean streets as to mess with women. The strangely fake ending when Peter eschews Mary Jane (in favour of what? great power presumably) seems to parallel Norman Osborn's practical, if charmless, advice to his son re women. Perhaps girls take your precious bodily fluids or something. And if the film has a plot it seems to be a rationalisation of this story. Awkward guy fancies girl, but doesn't act. Friend with more nerve does. First guy hates friend, and now realises ex-friend is snake-in-the-grass etc. How bad can some people be? Rest of story is first guy casting himself as silent deserving hero to get back at cruel world and unfaithful friends. There hasn't been a work so in favour of school bullies since Nabokov's Bend Sinister.
But all this carping (and I could go on) is wasted when compared to the obsessive nature of the cult the film has created. One peek at Spider-Man movie mistakes is enough to convince that some people have watched this way too closely. The comic has been going since the early sixties, and every critic on the internet seems to want to have you believe they read the first one, making Spider-Man the publishing equivalent of the Sex Pistols at the Marquee, how did all those thousands squeeze in? Spider-Man may not be the end of all hope for an intelligent culture, but right now it feels like it.
