Review of Spider-Man 2 (2004) by Pur__0_0__ — 11 Apr 2021

Personally out of the three Spider-Man movies in Sam Raimi's trilogy, this is the one I was the least interested in. It wasn't introducing Spider-Man for the first time like Spider-Man 1, nor did it have all the villains I knew like Spider-Man 3. In fact I didn't even knew who Doctor Octopus was before watching this movie. And seeing him as a fat man with tentacles didn't help either. So I had watched it from a reluctant point of view, only to start liking it by the end.

In the beginning it is established that no matter how many powers Peter gets, it won't change the fact that people still see him as a nerd, which is something that happens in the comics too. And this time he has a lot more interaction with his best friend Harry. They are shown to be really good friends, until it is revealed that Spider-Man was the one who killed his father. And instead of justifying that Green Goblin died of his own fault, Peter didn't make any excuses and just told Harry that there are more important matters to attend. This shows how Spider-Man understands his responsibilities as a superhero, something that Uncle Ben had taught him very well before his death.

Later on Peter is completely depressed and he loses all his superpowers. He embraces back to his nerd self, but doesn't hesitate from playing hero again when he sees a building on fire. He can't see anyone suffering any longer now that he has played a hero for so long. This is also established when he sees a couple of goons beating up someone in broad daylight and no one comes to help him. Finally Peter decides to go back to being Spider-Man and steals the costume that JJ had kept in his office.

Doc Oc is also another great character. I had seen him with an absolute blank slate, so I didn't have any kind of expectation from him. And yet he surprised me. Someone who doesn't want to be the bad guy but is slowly turning into one because his mind is not under his control. I was expecting Spider-Man to beat some sense into him the way he was doing in the train fight scene. But Spider-Man decided to do the absolutely right thing by talking him out of it and helping him gain back control over his senses. This is something I could only expect from Spider-Man. If it were someone like Iron Man or Batman he would have simply beaten him up till the machines stopped working. And that's exactly what sets Spider-Man apart from the other superheroes.

And finally we have the ending, where Peter and Mary are shown to have a happy ending while Harry is grieving over the fact that his best friend murdered his father. And when he discovers his father's secret lab he knows what to do. Spider-Man trilogy is a perfect trilogy and I really like how this movie bridges Peter Parker from being a high school nerd to one of the greatest superheroes of all time.