Spider-Man

Last night I joined SIGGRAPH, a professional organization for those in computer graphics. I'd been meaning to join for some time now, but I was waiting for a monthly meeting to occur which would be interesting enough that I had to see it. And last night was such a meeting. SIGGRAPH regularly has presentations by professionals in computer graphics, and this being Los Angeles, there are some really high-profile people in the industry. At last night's meeting we were treated to a presentation by John Dykstra, the film pioneer who served as Special Effects Supervisor on Spider-Man, as well as Special Photographic Effects Supervisor on the original Star Wars movie.

At this point, I should give props to the man who, for many of us, will always be the first Spiderman: Nicholas Hammond. True, he wasn't as acrobatic and dynamic as the 2002 Spider-Man, and he wore a web shooter about the size of Batman's utility belt, and his webbing looked only slightly less convincing than a can of Silly String. But he was a mensch. He didn't need no fancy-schmancy computer-generated-pixel-shaded-color-corrected bullshit. He was a man, he put on a suit, he threw webbing on bad guys. He looked silly, he was poorly-written, he wasn't popular. But he endured, he persevered. Think about it: Why hasn't there been another live-action Spiderman in the past 20 years? Is it really because the Nicholas Hammond Spiderman was so lame and unsuccessful that Hollywood had given up on Spiderman? Is it really because legal entanglements kept any one studio from making the movie? Is it really because, until recently, doing Spiderman faithfully and well would have been too expensive? Or was it REALLY because everyone looked at the Nicholas Hammond Spiderman and thought, "man, there's no way I could compete with Nicholas Hammond..." Think about it.

Whole you're mulling that one over, let me tell you about my first SIGGRAPH meeting. The meeting was held in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences theater in Beverly Hills. This is about a mile down Wilshire Blvd. from the famous Rodeo Drive, and the auditorium was adorned with a pair of 8-foot-tall Oscar statues. It is this theater in which the Academy has its official screenings of all of the movies that which are nominated for Oscars each year. John Dykstra and four other CGI people on Spider-Man gave a presentation on their work on the movie, and brought various video clips of certain sequences, showing each sequence in several different levels of completion.

One of the guys headed a small team whose sole duty was to create the webbing. Another guy showed video of some of the motion capture tests they did while developing the Spider-Man character. Interestingly, they used motion capture for the CGI crowds they created for certain sequences, such as the shot of Mary Jane hanging from atop the bridge, but the animation of Spider-Man was done by hand, since motion capture of people, wire performers, gymnasts, and even Cirque du Soleil performers, didn't look right for Spider-Man. Motion capture of people on wires still looked like they were on wires. The Cirque people were too graceful for a character like Spider-Man, whose incredible physical agility had to be tempered by his inexperience and a degree of awkwardness. The guy in charge of animating Spidey lamented the effort to capture the motion of a superhero, without having a superhero whose motion they could capture. I could see his point. In the end, they decided that it would take just as long to animate Spidey by hand as it would to capture a motion that wasn't right, and then tweak it until it worked.

In the end, the professionals' presentation of their work on Spider-Man left me with a stronger-than-ever interest in seeing the movie. The hour-long session closed with a brief Q&A segment, and then John Dykstra made an announcement: Their presentation had been a little short this evening (the SIGGRAPH meetings usually last from 7:30 until 9:30) for one reason. Sony Pictures Imageworks had graciously allowed them to bring a copy of Spider-Man for us to screen! I hadn't seen Spider-Man yet, and this was a terrific surprise.

Spider-Man was great. I walked out of that movie feeling like, as much as I was anticipating seeing Attack of the Clones, I couldn't imagine coming out of another theater having enjoyed myself anymore than I did watching Spider-Man. That it is the best movie adaptation of a comic book is not saying that much. Like all adaptations, there have been some changes made to the character. I didn't mind the organic web shooters, the scaly/bumpy costume. I didn't mind the changes to the Green Goblin. I didn't mind the fact that Kirsten Dunst played Mary Jane. I didn't mind that Aunt May wasn't skinny. Ultimately, the movie all came down to Spider-Man, and he was about as perfect an interpretation of the comic book character as I could imagine. Now, if you haven't seen the movie, there are a few spoilers in this Jeffreview, but most of the plot points I mention should already be known to anyone who knows the story of Spider-Man's origin. If you know the names Flash Thompson, Uncle Ben (not the rice guy or Luke's uncle), and Harry Osborn, then you should know the plot points I mention here. And you should probably have seen the movie by now, too. My comments about the ending of the movie will be preceded by a ********* SPOILER ********* warning. So now, on with the Jeffreview.

I knew the CGI would kick ass. The trailers told me that. But there's a lot more to a movie than visual effects. If the quality of a movie depended on nothing more than its special effects, Wing Commander would have been a blockbuster. Just kidding. Anyway, after all the anticipation of this movie, and all the hype, I was worried that it might be a disappointment. That does happen, you know. Visual Effects can be fixed by throwing money at the problem. It's not as easy, though, with things like story, characters, acting. And while I loved the visuals of this movie, I think that ultimately the reason I loved this movie is the script. And if that makes me a woman, then so be it. Call me a woman. Put me in a dress and parade me through Bath & Body Works. I don't care.... Uh, what was my point again?

Oh yeah, script. As you may have picked up by now, part of my appreciation for this movie is the degree to which it stayed faithful to the elements of the comic book character that I consider most essentially Spider-Man. Of course, the movie got the broad strokes right, even while making changes to update the story a little. His origin story is effectively told, even while new details are added to the story to flesh things out. We get a glimpse of Mary Jane's unhappy home life with her abusive, overbearing, loud father, which gives her character a little more depth, and in a way even explains, to a modest degree, why she is dating the obnoxious, overbearing, loud jock Flash Thompson. This is in contrast to the comic books, where she dated Flash because she was essentially a superficial bimbo.

One scene that really worked well for me was the one in which Peter decides not to prevent the escape of a robber. In the comic books, Peter was gaining notoriety as a pro-wrestler, and it had somewhat gone to his head. When a petty thief ran past him, he declined to stop the fellow because he didn't want to dirty his hands. But in the movie, his motivation is changed to a petty bitterness, a desire not to help the asshole who had cheated him. This change worked for me, especially in the compressed-time context of the movie. Peter's motivation for his deed was still not a noble one, but it was easier for the audience to relate to, while not trying to make Peter into a flawless hero. After all, it is his flaws that put the "Man" into Spider-Man.

There are things that you expect to be in a Spider-Man movie. You expect Peter Parker to get bitten by a spider and gain his powers. But there were a lot of little elements and themes from the comic books that made it into the movie and were integrated really well, that I didn't expect. Peter's guilt over the death of his uncle Ben was effective. I knew that the frequently-quoted theme of "with great power comes great responsibility" would be in the movie, but other themes, such as Peter's fear that those closest to him would suffer for his actions, and his relationship with his Aunt May, and Jameson's hatred of the Wall-Crawler, and Peter making money by photographing himself, were really nicely portrayed. It was obvious to me that the writers of this movie had a real love of the Spider-Man character.

What else did I like about the movie? Spidey's signature wisecracking was as welcome as his physical antics, and the acrobatics he performed while fighting seemed neither out-of-place nor gratuitous. J. Jonah Jameson was a wonderfully-written character, and J.K. Simmons dominated every scene he was in with his portrayal of JJJ. Simmons, in addition to appearing regularly for years on the Law & Order franchise as the mellow and insightful police psychiatrist, also appeared alongside Tobey Maguire in The Cider House Rules (perhaps we should call it Spider House Rules, eh? BA-HA-HA-HA... yeah, like you've never heard THAT one before...).

Visually, the shots of Spider-Man swinging around the city were great, especially the final sequence, and it was great how they integrated poses directly inspired by the comics into his dynamic travels. I also liked the slo-mo-like "Spidertime" (my term for it) which depicted Peter's heightened reactions. Though the first shot which depicted his spider sense, that Matrix-y fly-around of the school which included the paper airplane and the fly captured in mid-flight, seemed out of place and gratuitous. And where were the wavy lines floating around his head? Spidey always has wavy, black lines floating around his head when he's using his spider sense! Where were they?

And while we're in the neighborhood of nitpicking, I'll tell you the few things that bothered me about the movie. First of all, while I enjoyed Tobey Maguire's portrayal of Spider-Man, at times I thought he could have displayed a little more emotion, more emotional struggle written on his face. I'm not calling for histrionics, just... a little more, sometimes. But he was still very good in the role. Also, I would have liked a quick scene showing where he got his costume. Sure, we saw him sketching it, but when he goes to wrestle (like on the comics) he has to resort to a sweatshirt and a ski mask, because he doesn't have a cool costume. Then all of a sudden, he has one! Now, I can sew a little, and you've seen my embroidery on my jackets. (Or maybe not.) But I'd be pretty sorely tested to have to make a costume like his for myself to swing around New York in. Maybe there will be a deleted scene on the DVD that explains it. Along the same lines, where did the Goblin get his mask? The suit had an obvious origin, but I can't believe that they were also developing a high-tech helmet shaped like a gargoyle's head. Unlike some reviewers, I liked his suit just fine. I didn't mind its departure from the comic books, I thought it looked all right, and I thought it made sense. But where'd that mask come from? We saw that he owned exotic masks of the world (collectible by mail from the Franklin Mint), but that's nothing like that Goblin helmet. And how about the webbing? Sure, it looked cool and it worked like it should have, but as we saw in one scene, after playing with his webbing for a little while, Peter's room was filled with criss-crossing strands of webbing everywhere. In the comics we know that it dissolves after about an hour, but the movie gave no indication of what would become of his webs.

The dialogue had some problems, and I am referring specifically to the Green Goblin. How many times can we say "Time to die?" This ain't Bladerunner, dammit! I did like the exchange in the scene where he converses with his mask, hanging on the chair. The Goblin side of him had a distinctive way of speaking that worked for me. But his dialogue overall could be kind of uneven. Still, I thought Willem Dafoe was the right man for the job, and switched nicely between characters in that mirror scene. It might have been even better plotwise if they could have drawn out the ambiguity of whether or not Harry Osborn was really the Goblin, but since he killed the guy in the gas chamber, it was never a mystery. I vaguely recall reading that he was a candidate for the Joker in the first Tim Burton Batman movie. At least this time he didn't need to put on clown makeup.

Those are pretty much the only things that nagged at me. Otherwise, I found the movie a marvelous experience.

*********** SPOILERS BEGIN ***************

And what about that last fight with the Goblin? I don't recall when I've seen a superhero comic book fight that looked that painful, brutal, and real. Sure, you expect to see people being punched through walls, but that shit looked painful! It could have been bigger, more spectacular, grander, but it worked so well being the nice, intimate fight that it was. Nicely done, Raimi.

The ending worked for me, too. I've heard whiners moaning about the ending. Well, I thought it took courage for the filmmakers to stay true to the theme of Peter's guilt over people close to him suffering for his actions, which is the entire point behind him wearing a mask as he fights crime (that and the avoidance of the negative aspects of celebrity). It would have been easy for them to give Peter the Hollywood ending and let him swing off into the sunset with the girl, and I'll bet that's what the focus groups said, too. But I'm glad they didn't, and stayed true to the character. And speaking of courage, they kind of wussed out a little with the bit where Peter catches Uncle Ben's killer. We knew that he'd catch the guy, and we knew that the guy had to die, for thematic closure (good thing they didn't do that Batman thing where the guy turns out to be the Green Goblin), but we knew that the hero couldn't kill the man in cold blood, so it was pretty much the foregone Hollywood conclusion that he would basically kill himself.

I didn't like Mary Jane figuring out Spidey's secret identity at the end. That seemed gratuitous. Seems like every goddamned costumed hero movie, the love interest discovers the secret identity. I mean, what the hell is the point of having a secret identity anymore? At least with Superman it didn't happen until the second movie. With Batman it happened over and over again, in like every freaking one of the movies! Why is it that superheroes can save the world, but they can't keep one simple secret? In this movie it didn't even serve as a plot point, they just threw it in at the end.

*********** SPOILERS END ***************

I loved this movie. When the credits started rolling, I felt that chill down my spine, like when I saw Batman for the first time. It's has been years and years that they've been talking about this movie, and there's nothing to match the excitement of sitting there in that theater, knowing that you're finally going to see it, this thing which has been nothing but talk for such a long time that actually seeing the movie in front of you seems an abstract concept. It was worth the wait.

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© 2002 Jeffrey P. Hui