Spiderman 2 and Why I Love It

Well, I'm pretty sure that "Getting Things Done" says you should not keep writing blog entries all morning long. Last. Blog. Post.

The real story of Spiderman is one of sacrifice and guilt, and that's why Chabon's script worked so well. Chabon understood that Peter Parker is a lonely hero who, though wanting a normal life, cannot because the random accident that gave him his powers also gave him responsibilities to use those powers. There is no such thing as a free lunch you might say. Peter Parker is responsible for his uncle Ben's death. He knows it. He therefore cannot stop being heroic. It's an impulse he has motivated by his own felt-guilt. In this way, Spiderman is a quite different character than Batman, despite a similar origin. Bruce Wayne also witnessed a parent's death by a common crook, and the experience cast a shadow over his entire life making him a vigilante. But Bruce was not the perpetrator; Peter Parker was. Bruce Wayne was a little boy who couldn't stop the man who killed his mother and father, thus orphaning him at a very early age, whereas Peter Parker was a man with powers who could have stopped the crook, but chose not to out of selfishness, and his own desire for revenge on a crooked employer that wouldn't pay him his paycheck. Whereas Peter Parker is motivated by guilt, Bruce Wayne is motivated by obsession, revenge and hate. Even though both heroes are lonely as a result of their callings, Bruce is the lonelier one because his obsession has made him lonely in a different way. Spiderman is Peter Parker wearing the mask, whereas Bruce Wayne is the mask. They are very similar, and very different, portrayals of psychologically disturbed heroes haunted by their pasts.

This is why it is such a redemptive point in the film when the crowd of people on the subway car in Spiderman 2 lift Peter (sans facemask) over their heads in the iconic Christ pose, lay him down and stare at him. For a few minutes, the people Peter has committed to saving know him. They see that he is a boy, and that he is willing to give his life for them, even though they are strangers. It was a small, but important, gift given by Chabon and Raimi to give Peter, and us by proxy, that scene. We all want to be known; deep down, we want people to understand that there is a reason for why we act the way we act. It's not so much that we want to be heroes or are motivated by heroism, though we are that too. It's that we want to be touched by people - for them to give us compassionate understanding. That's one of things that made that movie so great - that one scene in the subway car. Spiderman 3 had nothing that even came close to that level of seriousness. It was just a stupid superhero movie, which is about the worst thing you can say about a story if you ask me.