I was contemplating on whether to do a review of the movie “Spider-man 2” here or just present some of the sidelights that were noticed throughout the film. And then I thought, “Oh well, instead of doing a review, I’d just recommend that you watch the movie, and proceed with the sidelights”. It was really a marvel-ous (pun intended, hehehe) movie. So if you haven’t seen it yet, I suggest you catch it before it ends its theater run. Even the negative comments made by some people that the scenes with Computer-Generated Images (CGI) were obviously unreal (come on, suspend your disbelief for a second), or that there were lots of prolonged and unnecessary scenes (hey, give the filmmakers credit for putting emphasis on certain details) should not be a deterrent to your enjoyment of the film as a whole.
Now, Here are some behind the scenes trivia from the movie.
The very beautiful artwork presented during the movie’s opening credits was created by comic book artist Alex Ross. These drawings sort of summarize the first Spider-man movie, bringing the audience up to date on what has happened so far.
The “Spider-man no more” episode pays homage to the comic book “Amazing Spider-man” issue #50. Where Peter Parker decides to trash the Spider-man costume resulting to a rise in crime (same as with the movie). Although in this comic book issue, the main villain was the Kingpin.
The scene where Peter walks carefree down the street to the tune of ‘raindrops keep falling on my head’ is actually a tribute to the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”.
During the scene where Peter tries to jump from the top of one building to another (a la Keanu Reeves’ Neo doing his first jump in the movie Matrix), he fell hard on some cars causing him to hurt his back. As he got up, he was stressing how his back got hurt badly, saying “My back, oh my back”. This scene was probably meant to be a joke based on the fact that Tobey Maguire’s injured back almost prevented him from coming back and playing the part of spider-man for this movie. In fact it was rumored that Kirsten Dunst’s real-life boyfriend, Jake Gyllenhaal (Bubble Boy, Donnie Darko, The day after tomorrow) was already being lined up as a possible replacement for Maguire.
Stan Lee, who co-created Spider-man (together with Steve Ditko), has a cameo appearance in the film. He has a scene wherein he was dodging debris, although this was more like a ‘blink and you miss it’ sort of appearance. There are other notable cameo appearances all throughout the film. There’s Hal Sparks (from E!), who has a funny elevator scene with Spider-man; Also, Bruce Campbell (the ‘wrestling ring announcer’ in the first Spider-man movie), who plays the snooty usher who wouldn’t allow Peter to enter the theater where Mary Jane was performing in a play; and lots more.
The movie also gives us some hints on which super-villains might appear on the next sequel (set to be shown in 2007 yet). Dr. Curt Connors, who is Peter’s professor in the movie, actually transforms into the villain known as ‘the Lizard’ in the comic books. John Jameson (the astronaut who is J. Jonah Jameson’s son and Mary Jane’s Boyfriend in the movie) transforms into ‘Man-wolf’ in the comics. Also in the comics, Jameson, during one of his trips to outer space, brings an alien symbiote to Earth. This alien symbiote bonds with a human named Eddie Brock to form the creature called ‘Venom’. And of course there’s Harry Osborne, who could end up being either Hobgoblin or a second Green Goblin.
Aside from these, director Sam Raimi gives bonuses to hard-core Spider-man comic book fans by including lots of details pertaining to the comics. These sidelights and references will not be missed by the avid readers but will most probably not even be noticed by non-comic book readers.
courtesy, your friendly neighborhood blogger
No comments:
Post a Comment