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Review: Spiderman
First off lets talk about the cast. Toby Maguire was great in The Cider House Rules. He's just a solid actor. But I was seriously wary of him in the role of the webbed one. He seemed like a flimsy choice. He needed to pull off the one liners, but still convince us of his love for Mary Jane. But he pulls it off admirably. From the goofy glasses wearing scenes in the beginning to his badass battle scenes towards the end, its a solid showing. The best scenes in the whole movie are the ones where we see Peter Parker coming to grips with his new spider powers.
Now I'm gonna skip in a bit with a statement about staying true to comic books. Yes- some of the details have been changed from the books. Like most noticably, the nature of Spiderman's webbing. But whatever- this is story telling and it works for me.
Kirsten Dunst does a good job in what could have been a bland role in the hands of an actress who was just a pretty face. Mary Jane is convincing, and since she is in many ways the thing that grounds spiderman, its a tough burden. And the other biggie is of course the head of Oscorp, Mr. Norman Osborn, Willem Defoe. he does allright, but most of his maniacal scenes are covered by a mask that leaves him little room for any actual facial expressions.
So the plot: Boy loves girl. Boy gets bit by radioactive spider and develops super powers. Boys friend's dad inhales nano gas that makes him super powerful, and super crazy. Boy explores powers and eventually must save city from the attack of the newly crazed buddy's dad, all while dealing with the loss of his family. It's spiderman in a nutshell, and it's just damn solid.
The special effects are smooth. From the ads I was a little concerned since spiderman looked a little fake leaping around. But within the context of the movie it usually worked for me. They looked unnatural, but frankly seeing spiderman leap off inflatable balloon floats and swinging around flagpoles suspended by spiderwebs is already pretty unnatural so I let the suspension of disbelief win out on this one.
Danny Elfman hasn't sounded this good since Batman. I loved the score. It doesn't really feel original, but it sure fits like a glove.
In short, its a great movie. I won't comic-book-guy the details that were missed in the transition from paper to film, but I think they did a great job of making an entertaining movie, and staying extremely true to what I think Spiderman is all about. And goddamn it, the raw sense of excitement as he discovers his abilities is enough to make every guy wish he had those powers- swinging from building to building and howling like a mad freak. God I loved it. Congratulations to everyone involved- you win.
All that, and I even scored tickets to the 12:01 showing of star wars on opening day ;)
It isn't GC (Geekily Correct) of me to know this, but Phoebe and Chandler did a nice job with this very joke a few years ago on Friends.
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WWJD...For a Klondike Bar?
There are some "graphic scenes" especially the end. Some blood, punching, and lot of Green Goblins laughing.
Well, In the comic books he had web-shooters that he(Peter Parker) designed. They shot out a special compund sort of like a liquid cement that hardened on contact with air(once again peter designed this). This compound also disolved in air after a few hours(so that there weren't webs lieing all over New York City). The compund was loaded into tiny air compressed cartridges. These cartridges then were loaded into his "web shooters".
The webshooters were essentially a metal apparatus that wrapped around his wrists with a little bulb that rested in his palms...when he touched his middle fingers against this bulb.the compund shot out of a little falve on the underside of his wrists and BAM web bonanza!!!
later on in life he got a special "alien" suit(now worn by Venom) which had the webbing stuff all built in and shot out at a simple thought by peter. This suit fired the stuff out of the tops of his wrists. This was all fine and dandy then he realized that the suit was a symbiot trying to take over his body. So he ditched it and went back to the old web shooters.
I have not seen the movie yet but can only guess that he produces webs without the aid of anything special...just his body. That must be the case because the reviewer mentioned that there was something odd about thew nature of Spidey's webbing.
All of this Spiderman stuff should not be mistaken with SPIDER-MAN 2099 in which he had spinnerets in his arms(just like a spiders). The squirted real wbs when he flezed his arms in a special way.
Anyway that's it....more than you wanted to know....
The Only Person Willing to be Me is ME!
The link is broken.. try this link, to the main page of the event, insted.
Uh, you don't have to go far to find another method of killing Wolverine....
Drop by your local comic store this weekend to pick up your FREE COMIC BOOK. While there, you could also pick up Wolverine #175 -- the most recent -- for another possible answer debated in this thread.
(I'm trying not to lone-gunmen-are-dead the ending, but I think I'm failing miserably)
Some light language, violence, and nipples through a wet shirt.
Expect the kid to get scared by the green goblin though (but then, scaring kids is his job).
Nope, at least not originally. Spidey was just sticky. It was explained in one of the Spiderman annuals with the hologram covers from years back (I'm sure in other places before and since, but that was during the period I actually read comics). The whole issue was Peter explaining his powers to Mary Jane (kinda a rip-off of an issue, but ah well). He said he could make any part of his body stick to anything (which sparked a query from Mary as to whether he could do it with any part, which rather surprised me considering how much less risque comics were back then) and that he made the gloves and boots of the suit extremely thin so he could stick through them. That, in turn, prompted Mrs. Parker to fret about him catching cold through the material.
Yes, I know, I have an inordinately detailed memory for absolutely useless facts. Now if only I could do the same with actually useful facts...
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
If you want to hear those lyrics, stick around through the credits.
There's very little bullet time in the movie. Bullet time was a specific way of doing things that let you see all angles around the target. It takes a lot of cameras, a lot of time, and a lot of fancy work.
What you saw was just good old slow motion. They slowed everything down a bunch, and that was good enough. It wasn't anything special, but conveyed the fact that Spidey was moving faster than you'd normally be able to see. It was perfect.