Spider-Man 2 (2004) Review: When Responsibility Becomes Melodrama
We have been working through Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films with the kids this summer, and Spider-Man 2 produced an unexpected result. They had quite liked the first film. The sequel frustrated them considerably more, and I understood why.
On paper, Spider-Man 2 improves on almost everything I liked in its predecessor. It has the better villain, better action and probably the better central idea: Peter Parker discovers that being Spider-Man is ruining the rest of his life. The problem is that the film pushes that idea so hard that responsibility begins to look less like a burden Peter carries than a punishment the screenplay keeps inventing for him.
Being Spider-Man Is Terrible
The premise is genuinely good. Peter Parker, played again by Tobey Maguire, has discovered that becoming Spider-Man was easier than remaining Spider-Man. He is trying to study, earn enough money to live, maintain friendships and keep some connection with Mary Jane Watson, all while disappearing whenever someone in New York needs saving. His grades are suffering, his jobs barely cover his expenses, and his landlord seems to materialise whenever the film feels Peter has gone too long without another reminder that he is poor.
There is a compelling inversion of the superhero fantasy here. Extraordinary power is normally assumed to make ordinary problems smaller. Peter discovers the opposite. Spider-Man can stop a runaway vehicle, but Peter Parker still has to find enough money for dinner, arrive at university on time and somehow explain why he continually disappears when the people around him need him.
That should be enough to carry the film. Instead, the misfortunes accumulate until Peter’s life begins to feel calibrated specifically to punish him. Losing a job makes the point. Missing an important event makes the point. Being unable to pay the rent makes the point. Spider-Man 2 keeps making the point.
The exaggeration is clearly part of Raimi’s comic-book style, so strict realism is probably the wrong standard. Peter’s civilian life is almost a screwball sequence of humiliations, with each obligation colliding with another. But repetition eventually works against the idea. Once every corner of his life has been arranged to go wrong, one more disaster does not make his predicament more convincing. It makes the construction more visible.
Peter and Mary Jane: Conflict by Misunderstanding
The problem becomes more serious with Mary Jane, because Peter’s relationship with MJ is not a side plot. It carries much of the film’s emotional weight. The underlying conflict makes sense: Peter loves Mary Jane, played by Kirsten Dunst, but believes that anyone close to Spider-Man will eventually become a target. MJ sees only the consequences. Peter fails to appear when he says he will, behaves strangely and repeatedly seems unwilling to commit to her. Peter cannot fully explain himself without revealing his identity, while MJ has little reason to interpret his behaviour generously.
That is enough material for a painful relationship. The film rarely seems content to leave it there. Peter and MJ repeatedly communicate in almost the least useful way available to them. One moves forward precisely as the other changes course. Peter decides what he wants just after MJ has adjusted to his previous rejection. Conversations arrive at the wrong moment, information remains unspoken and emotional decisions reverse whenever another obstacle is needed.
This is what made the relationship feel artificial to both me and the kids. Peter Parker should be awkward. He spent much of his adolescence socially uncertain and unable to tell MJ what he wanted. But awkwardness is different from watching the screenplay move two people into the positions required for the next misunderstanding.
John Jameson makes the problem more obvious. He exists primarily as the alternative to Peter rather than as a developed person in his own right, so the romantic triangle has surprisingly little tension. The film has already made clear which relationship matters; John mainly supplies a reason it cannot happen yet. Comic-book logic can carry mechanical tentacles and impossible fusion experiments. The romance asks for a different kind of belief: that these people would actually behave this way.
I also noticed something on this viewing that I had not remembered from before. Mary Jane often seemed much paler and less visually vivid than in the first film, where strong colours—particularly red—frequently surrounded her. I may simply be noticing differences in lighting, costume or makeup, and I would not claim without closer study that the cinematography deliberately tracks her emotional state. Still, it suits this film remarkably well. Peter is exhausted, Aunt May is struggling, Harry Osborn is bitter and increasingly obsessed with Spider-Man, and MJ has begun achieving some of what she wanted without looking especially happy. The whole world feels slightly drained.
Doctor Octopus: Bad Science, Better Tragedy
The strongest new element is Otto Octavius. Alfred Molina plays him as a brilliant and charismatic scientist working on an experimental fusion-energy project. Four sophisticated mechanical arms are connected directly to his nervous system so that he can manipulate dangerous materials from a distance. An inhibitor system prevents the artificial intelligence in the arms from influencing his mind.
Naturally, everything goes wrong. An accident leaves the arms attached to Octavius and destroys the inhibitor, allowing the machines to begin influencing their creator. The science is even less convincing than in the first Spider-Man. A genetically engineered spider giving Peter proportional spider powers was already a generous interpretation of genetics; the sequel adds an experimental fusion machine, an extraordinarily capable neural interface and robotic arms whose artificial intelligence can apparently argue their inventor into criminal behaviour.
My kids were unimpressed by the logic. Oddly, however, the AI element may feel less alien to children watching the film now than it did in 2004. Robotic tentacles gradually overriding their creator’s judgement remain firmly in science-fiction territory, but the underlying anxiety—that someone might create an intelligent system and then discover that controlling its behaviour is harder than expected—no longer feels particularly exotic. The mechanism is nonsense; the fear behind it has aged rather better.
Octavius works because his tragedy is also more causally coherent than much of Peter’s misery. He begins as someone Peter admires: brilliant, confident, apparently decent and completely convinced that his research can improve the world. The experiment destroys his life, but his ambition survives the disaster and becomes increasingly destructive. The arms influence him, yet they do not have to invent his obsession from nothing.
Molina gives Octavius enough warmth that the tragedy survives the absurdity of the premise. The mechanical arms help too. They feel heavy, dangerous and physically present, giving Doctor Octopus a distinctive visual identity without allowing the effect to swallow the actor at the centre of it. Peter’s civilian problems often feel as though the screenplay is imposing obstacles on him. Octavius, by contrast, feels trapped inside the consequences of something he chose to build.
When Peter Parker Wants His Life Back
The film is strongest when Peter’s crisis stops being a sequence of external humiliations and becomes something internal. His powers begin failing, with no convincing biological explanation. The film scarcely needs one. Peter no longer wants the life Spider-Man has given him, and his body seems to agree.
This is a more interesting sequel problem than simply finding someone stronger for Spider-Man to fight. Peter has already learned that power creates responsibility. Now he has to decide how much of an ordinary life he is willing to sacrifice to honour it. For a while, normality becomes tempting. There are lectures he could attend, friendships he could repair and ordinary pleasures he has continually abandoned because somewhere else another emergency is waiting.
The fantasy has reversed. In the first film, Peter discovers that the ordinary rules of life no longer apply to him. Here, ordinary life itself begins to look extraordinary.
That is also why the major action sequences often work better for me than the interpersonal drama. The train sequence turns the abstract cost of being Spider-Man into something physical. Peter pushes himself beyond exhaustion in front of the people he is trying to protect. Sacrifice is no longer represented by another missed appointment or unpaid bill; we can see what his choice costs him.
The sequence achieves in minutes what parts of the civilian storyline spend much of the film trying to establish. When Peter suffers because he chooses to save people, consequence follows directly from character. When he suffers because another conversation happens thirty seconds too late, the screenplay shows through. Raimi does not fail because he combines serious drama with comic-book action. The film is simply much better at dramatising consequences than at manufacturing obstacles.
Better Made, Less Enjoyable
This leaves me in the slightly awkward position of thinking Spider-Man 2 is better made than its predecessor while enjoying it less. Doctor Octopus is a stronger villain than the Green Goblin. The action is better staged. The film feels more confident. Most importantly, its central question is more interesting.
The first film asks what it would feel like to become Spider-Man. The sequel asks what it would cost to remain him. Extraordinary abilities have not solved Peter Parker’s ordinary problems; in several respects they have created them. He cannot solve rent, friendship, exhaustion or love by climbing walls.
That should be enough. Yet Spider-Man 2 keeps adding another missed appointment, another misunderstanding, another humiliation and another catastrophe, as though responsibility by itself were not sufficiently dramatic. I can admire the ambition more easily than I can fully connect with the result.
The excess may be precisely what other viewers love about Raimi’s sequel. It turns Peter Parker’s life into full comic-book melodrama and refuses to apologise for doing so. For us, though, the better question did not produce the better film.
Spider-Man showed Peter discovering that he could be extraordinary. Spider-Man 2 shows him discovering how exhausting extraordinary can become. The problem is that the film does not quite trust that burden to be burdensome enough.
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