[Caduceus]

I am a comic book fan, mostly on the Marvel side of things. I read Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-Men, etc when I was younger, just before Image became a split-off with the more violent Spawn and Savage Dragon.

I have read a fair amount of Spider-Man comics, and I must say that the first movie nailed the origin very well with a modern updating. The trivial things like the webs coming out of Parker himself make more sense considering he's had his genome spliced with a radioactive spider.

Mary Jane was Parker's first crush. Now, I haven't read all the stuff from the sixties, but he wanted to go out with her. It didn't work out so he ended up with Gwen Stacy who was killed as a result of Parker's scuffle with Green Goblin.

CGI swinging thru the New York skyline aside (some of it was good, some bad), Sam Raimi, the director, did another great job of keeping the heart of Spider Man in this movie.

One of the greatest moments in comic book history is Parker walking away from the garbage can with the suit hanginging out with the words "Spider-Man no more!"

There was also a great nod to Maguire's real-life back injury which almost kept him out of SM2.

Maguire's character's interaction with Aunt May continues to be great, especially their discussions regarding guilt over the death of Uncle Ben in the first movie and how they both feel completely responsible for the events that transpired.

As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed the second movie. It boils down to a great summer movie based on a classic comic book. If you don't like popcorn movies with a pretty good character-driven story, obviously this isn't for you. But, if you've been waiting for Hollywood to get a comic book right, this is your ticket.

Wildcard

EDIT: For a good time, when you're browsing in a bookstore, pick up Secret Wars trade paper back and flip to issue #3 where Spider-Man takes on the X-Men and wins! Incidentally, Secret Wars #8 is the origin of the black costume which proceeded to cause a lot of headaches later on...

[ July 07, 2004, 02:00: Message edited by: wildcard06 ]