h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just returned from watching Spider-Man. One advantage of convalescing - I might as well sit around in a cinema for two hours than at home.

WARNING: This entry contains spoilers

After the huge success in the US I was hopeful, but braced for disappointment. I've been a comics fan all my life, and Spider-Man was a big part of that. I used to read SMCW (the UK reprints) and picked up again in the mid eighties during the comic renaissance of that time, and enjoyed Todd McFarlane's work with writers like David Michelinie and Peter David (although I was a little underwhelmed by his solo work, frankly).

Anyway, this is just a little full disclosure - I was a huge comics fan (not so much now - I lost interest when Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld became the benchmark, and suddenly everyone started squinting).

So I approached this movie with a little trepidation. Having seen plenty of stills, and the trailer, I was unconvinced. Mostly by the hair. Harry (and his father) missed his trademark weird haircut, and Flash Thompson should have been blond. At least they got J. Jonah Jameson right. And from the trailer, the effects didn't look quite right.

But what of the movie?

Oh

My

God

With a few minor niggles (including the hair) it was about as perfect a Spider-Man movie as I could have hoped for. Tobey Maguire was pitch-perfect as Peter Parker. Nerdy at the beginning, insecure even when he got his powers, and basically the best actor you've ever seen play a superhero since Christopher Reeve.

The rest of the cast were excellent (except maybe Harry - but then Harry was always a bit of a nonentity to me. It'll be interesting to see if he fulfills his comic-book destiny in future films). Kirsten Dunst was a perky Mary Jane, and her and Maguire's scenes together had good chemistry.

Willem Dafoe excelled as Norman Osborn and his Alter Ego. By far the best of any recent supervillains, and on a par with Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor. He could so easily have done a Jack Nicholson and overwhelmed the movie. Instead he played the part to perfection, chillingly convincing in his switches between Osborn and the Goblin.

Aunt May was almost perfect - not quite frail enough - and was it a heart attack she was hospitalised for? They never said explicitly, but I guess we should assume so.

The effects were, for the most part, great. Some of the animation suffered from that bugbear of mine - non-ballistic motion. When Spidey jumps from one place to another, he too often falls far too fast. The brain is good at recognising true ballistic motion (that's how you can catch a ball) so when animators fake it or exaggerate that kind of movement it reads false. But this wasn't too widespread, and the quality of the effects in general was high.

In particular, what we all wanted to see: Spidey web-slinging through New York. And here, they played a blinder.

Rather than cut from Peter training and practising to a fully-realised Spider-Man swinging through the streets, we saw his first attempt, and with it experienced the pure joy of being Spider-Man. And once more, a movie has reduced me to tears of joy. First, Yoda and his lightsabre, now Spidey swinging through New York. Two iconic scenes brought to life to perfection in a way that only a movie can do.

The rest of the movie would have to be pretty good to match up to that high. And it was. The Goblin was a good choice as the first villain - because he linked all the main characters, nothing was forced. My one disappointment was the lack of mystery as to the Goblin's identity - something the comic played with for a long time - but I suppose they knew that a lot of the audience knew anyway, and those that weren't comic fans would have realised that in a movie like this, Willem Dafoe wasn't playing a good guy. So that's a very minor point, since I did like his dual personality scenes.

At this point, I feel I should address The Gwen Stacey Issue. Yes, by rights, it should have been Gwen Stacey as the love interest. And yes, she should have died on the bridge. However, that would not have worked in this movie. In the comics, we'd had *years* of backstory leading to that event, and in an isue of a comic that's been running for years, your hero *can* let the heroine die. But it would not have worked in this movie. We haven't had years of this Spider-Man being a hero and saving people, so we wouldn't allow him to fail at that point.

So I say the filmmakers were right to make this (rather major) change from the comics, and personally, I preferred it. Frankly, I don't like seeing heroes fail. I want good to triumph over evil, and I want the innocent to be rescued. And in this movie, I wasn't disappointed. Even the slightly cheesy 'people of New York vs The Goblin' made me smile.

And the final showdown was grim. A knock-down, drag-out fight which took a true hero to overcome. And fittingly, the Goblin got his 'stake of humble tin' at the end - the filmmakers realising they couldn't improve on Gerry Conway's ending (although the comic still has the edge with this, thanks to Gwen's death).

There were loads of nice touches - Peter's first job was working for a Doctor Connors, for example - and some of the moments you expect are still handled well. I was never fully convinced in the comics when Peter let the thief go at the TV studio, but here it's completely understandable, and of course makes his epiphany shortly afterwards all the more heart-breaking.

I can now see why Spider-Man has been such a phenomenon in the US. This movie has been on the cards for so long that it was like it would never happen, and I had worried that a light character like Spider-Man might get buried under the kind of gothic presentation that fitted Batman so well. But the tone was right, the casting perfect, it looked fabulous, and so becomes the best superhero movie I've yet seen.

See it.

You didn't mention the great score!

But otherwise, I agree

I was disappointed by the score - no real theme to speak of, basically forgettable.

Elfman hasn't really recaptured his glory days of Batman and Edward Scissorhands, IMO.

Bah, so others have said.

But when the opening credits started, the music put a grin on my face that lasted almost to the end of the film. (Sad bits excepted, of course)

I love Elfman's style, but his scores can become a bit samey. Batman and Beetlejuice rank among my very favourite scores.

I saw the film on the plane over to NY. I must admit I didn't like it that much, but I cut my comic-devouring teeth on the likes of Alan Moore's 'Watchmen' and 'V for Vendetta': very much darker stuff. Talking of which, someone is trying to make a film of the former. Now *there's* an adaptation which can't hope to succeed.

I read Sam Hamm's screenplay for Watchmen a little while back. Quite a lot different to the comic, to the extent that the whole plot revolved around a completely different device (not the fake alien in the comic). If I'm honest, I'd say the screenplay device worked a little better, except that it was a little too much of a 'With one bound they were free'.

More interesting was the screenplay for 'V For Vendetta' by the Wachowski brothers (of Matrix fame) which seemed almost too faithful to the book.

Strange - I'm not usually one of those people who likes reading scripts before the movie comes out, but in these cases, the chances of those scripts being the ones produced are very slim. The Watchmen project has a new writer on board (David Hayter, also, most oddly, the voice of Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2). I'll believe it when I see stills of the production.

This ought to be quite a lot of fun:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0311429

I find it slightly amusing that an actress called Peta is playing a character called Mina.

I thought you might.