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Spider-Man is supposed to be the first big movie of the summer -- and it lives up to all the hype that Sony has thrown on it. What you get for the price of admission is a first-rate action flick that has a solid plot, character development, great special effects, and a cast that knows how to act. This movie is good enough to make up for the 70s Spider-Man series and the last Batman movie to boot. Yes, it’s that damn good.
Toby Maguire captures Peter Parker the science nerd perfectly. The scene where he thinks love interest Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) is waving at him, only to discover she’s looking past him at her friends, is so well played by Maguire that it hurts to watch. Willem Dafoe serves as the super villain for the movie and does so without overpowering the performance of the hero. That’s almost unheard of in movies that attempt to bring comic books to life. Not a single character is mis-cast in the entire movie, and there is not a badly-placed scene, either.
There are always long-time fans of comic books who want to pick the movie versions apart. The ones who try to do that to Spider-Man are going to be up late into the night looking for minutia to complain about. The movie sticks amazingly close to the early years of the comic book. The changes that were made fit in so well with the rest of the Spider-Man legend that if you’re not a diehard fan of the comic book you won’t notice them. The only real deviation is the fact that Mary Jane didn’t live next door to Peter and wasn’t in the comic version until after the death of his first significant love interest. We can forgive that oversight, though, because Dunst is such a pleasure to see as a redhead.
This is a comic book movie that works. (Have I said that already?) It’s got a few inside jokes -- but not so many that they distract the average moviegoer. There are layers of nuances that come straight out of the pages of the Marvel comics -- and some new wrinkles, too. All of the major events of the first twenty years of the comic book are worked into the plot on some level. The writers even set up the villain(s?) for the sequel well.
Having said all of that, what was the coolest thing about the movie? The shots of Spidey posing and swinging across New York. They look identical to all those great panels that Steve Ditko, Sal Buscema, Todd McFarlane, and John Romita, Jr. have drawn over the years.
If you’re a fan of the comic book, this is a movie that you are going to love. If you’ve never read Spider-Man, then you’ll be astounded at how intelligent and funny an action movie can be. Either way, this is a movie that you need to see.
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