Does Whatever a Spider Can

Spiderman 2 is not the best of a bad genre (link from Bookslut)... I reserve that prize for X-Men 2 (capturing the spirit of the serials without apologizing for being a big budget action flick) or American Splendor (a comic that transcends being a comic book, a movie that transcends being an adaptation). S2 is manically disjointed and the series' characters have turned into caricatures of what they were in the first film. Overall, the movie seems uncertain how it wants to spend its time when there are not collossal battles going on.

What makes S2 better than the first and a pretty decent comic book film, then, is this: the villain.

Let's be honest... Most Spiderman villains are small-time. Sure, they can do some real damage, but these guys aren't the devour-the-world, wipe-out-the-human-race, gruesomely-unstable types. True, somebody has got to stop Lizard or Rhino and stop them quickly, but on a national or even global scale their potential to harm is low. They are little buckets of rage, which makes for intense dueling with other superhumans and a few dozen homicides but no real danger to society as a whole. They are the status quo of villainy - they punch really hard and are good at blowing things up. There's nothing particular captivating about their method of destruction, they're just hell bent on it.

There are really only a few Spiderman villains you are interested in seeing in action: only one is human. He is Doctor Octopus. Four bionic tendrils attached to his back reach, grab, suspend, crush and delicately manipulate in ways that a two-ton muscle man or a special suit on a hovering glider could not even attempt. Sure, the real spider is Peter Parker, but when Otto Octavius sinisterly looms above another character he is as frightening as a prowling arachnid. The wild strands of chaos are spectacular when these cyborg arms claw and climb against the web-slinger. Where Spidey's fights with the Green Goblin were like tennis, a concentrated volley of lethal strikes, his fights with the Doc Ock are like football, multiple fronts on each side attempting to outposition the opposition.

These scenes and this character mask the faults of the film so exceptionally well that you don't mind the fact that the rest of the movie has regressed.

Of course, the problem for the foreseeable future is that Sam Raimi will send us back to the lackluster world of the Green Goblin and astronaut John Jameson as Manwolf (maybe even Dr. Connors as Lizard?) before we get another not-dull, maybe even spectacular villain (in the form of Venom).