SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t seen Spider-Man 2, and don’t want to know the ending, don’t read the “more” part of this post! Merry Christmas and go watch the movie! :-)
Okay, just finished watching a couple of movies tonight. “Elf”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002F6BRE/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2 I watched because my Mom wanted to see it, so my family watched it. It was okay. Funnier than I expected in several areas, and Bob Newhart is good in it, but not worth subjecting myself to twice. Not like I usually watch movies more than once.
“Spider-Man 2”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JMQW/davidsworldva-20?dev-t=mason-wrapper%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2, on the other hand, was awesome. It didn’t quite have as much action as the first, much more plot development, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There was action, it just wasn’t in spurts quite as long as I rememember them being in the first movie. I could be remembering incorrectly.
My favorite part (and this is where the spoilers start) was at the end where M.J. (Mary Jane) Watson finally has found out who Spider-Man is (she said she “knew it all along.” Um, sure, “suspected” maybe, but “knew”?) and decides to give it a shot rather than marry the astronaut. I’ve seen rumors (and I’ve never read the comic books) that when Spider-Man 3 comes out it’s unlikely it will last, based on the comic book storyline. Whatever. Maybe I won’t see that one. I’m a romantic sucker, and it ticked me off at the end of numero uno when M.J. still didn’t know. I wasn’t hopeful that things would change in number two, but after throwing my emotions back and forth (guess that’s what makes a good movie) for two hours they finally gave me what I wanted. M.J.’s line, “Isn’t it time someone saved you?”, had me thinking, “yes, darnit, it’s taken you two frickin’ long movies to get here and you better not be kidding now!” I’m not a big movie reviewer at all, so beyond that I don’t have a whole lot to say, but I did find a blog entry by Brayden King called “The embeddedness of Spiderman“:http://www.braydenking.com/weblog/archives/000308.html interesting (ignore the non-Christian worldview of the author as revealed in his other blog posts, I still like this particular analysis). Actually, by following the links to the people he quotes, “Matt”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/07/long_philosophi.html and “Henry”:http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002124.html, I found a lot of good material that will serve to stirr up some thoughts that I can just point to. Daniel Drezner talks about “the philosophy of Spider-Man 2“:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001436.html and has a lot of great comments, two of which talk about how ‘”Peter Parker/Spiderman is conflicted”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001436.html#020687 between what he feels is his responsibility as hero, and his desire to lead a normal life as a college student’, and “oldman comments”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001436.html#020759,
With the revelation of “who he truly is” to those that matter most to him, he no longer is living a dualistic life. As Spiderman was weak and could not keep on going without Peter Parker, so too Peter Parker found that he couldn’t turn away from Spiderman. In the end he is both, running around in the costume but symbolically his mask is removed. He is unmasked as his true self, Peter Parker AND Spiderman.
Once that happens, MJ can love him for himself because he has finally “let her in”. The city dwellers also agree to keep his secret, because they understand that this is the only way to keep him as their champion. In short the movie begins by battling back and forth between Spiderman and Peter Parker, but in the end it takes both to win.
Then “aaron has to go and say”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001436.html#020795, “I think you can count on MJ being killed in the next movie” while I held my hands over my ears (eyes) and yelled “la-la-la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you-la-la-la-la”.
In a really good “interview with Avi Arad”:http://www.superherohype.com/spider-man/index.php?id=1624, the President and CEO of Marvel Studios, he says among other things,
“… Where do we wanna see Mary Jane in the future? How is Peter going to deal with this touch decision he made? When you get all of these movies, there are really interesting opportunities for Peter and Mary Jane. Thought of the happy ending, if you will, but Marvel, there’s never a happy ending. So we make sure we take care of that in the next movie.”
That doesn’t bode well, but I can always hope.
Over on the Outside the Beltway blog, James Joyner comments, in “Spider-Man 2: Philosophically Speaking“:http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/006724.html, that “…being a hero-even a superhero-doesn’t require that one become a full-time volunteer policeman. It’s simply not necessary to chase after every set of sirens one hears in the off chance that the police can’t handle the situation.”
Matthew Yglesias, a “Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community” (ha ha), has a “Long Philosophical Rant About Spider Man 2”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/07/long_philosophi.html that has some more unique insights, despite his claim that, “…Moving into the Christian tradition, they tie up the untidiness of this view with a little eschatological sleight-of-hand. It certainly doesn’t seem like doing the right thing will always make you happy, so Christianity cleans things up by inserting heaven and hell.” But that’s not the main point of his post, and I highly recommend reading it. The comments alone are numerous and good, in fact I’ve mentioned some of the sites in them already.
I was about to finish up, but I found three “really”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2004_07_04.html#005476 “good”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2004_07_04.html#005475 “comments”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2004_07_04.html#005474 (that last one references the first post I mentioned way up top, saying “What does Brayden King get? The biggie: ‘Like every story worth telling, it’s about a girl,’ to quote the first line of the first movie. Whose face is the first we see, and whose the last? That would be Mary Jane Watson’s.”) to add to the list. I know I’m sticking a lot of links in here, but I’ve read them all and each offers something different. Obviously I’m not forcing you to read it, but if I can come up with a guilt trip that will send you off and reading, I’ll let you know.
I also happened to find a great little article in the Seattle Times called “Comic to film: The do’s and don’ts of adaptation”:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2001964401_spiderman27.html that has an excellent analysis of that topic, broken down into six do’s and don’ts: 1. Respect the source, 2. Wait for technology to catch up to the hero, 3. Cast right, not big, 4. No hero’s stronger than a lousy costume, 5, The villain makes the hero, and 6. Weak trailer = Kryptonite.
In a somewhat related but also completely unrelated matter, there’s a post that relates Spider-Man to the Iraq war in a really interesting way, called “With great freedom, comes great responsibility…“:http://kaedrin.com/weblog/archive/000847.html that I highly recommend (like everything else I just mentioned…but if you don’t care about Spider-Man, you will probably still enjoy this post). If my reasons for reading haven’t convinced you to check out yet, try an excerpt that seems fitting also as my endpoint:
There is something almost paradoxical about freedom. You see, it isn’t free. Yes, freedom brings benefits, but you must pay the price. If you want to live in a free country, you have to put up with everyone else being free too, and that’s harder than it sounds. In a sense, we aren’t really free, because the freedom we live with and aspire to is a limiting force.
On the subject of Heaven, Saint Augustine once wrote:
The souls in bliss will still possess the freedom of will, though sin will have no power to tempt them. They will be more free than everโso free, in fact, from all delight in sinning as to find, in not sinning, an unfailing source of joy. …in eternity, freedom is that more potent freedom which makes all sin impossible. – Saint Augustine, City of God (Book XXII, Chapter 30)
Augustine’s concept of a totally free will is seemingly contradictory. For him, freedom, True Freedom, is doing the right thing all the time (I’m vastly simplifying here, but you get the point). Outside of Heaven, however, doing the right thing, as we all know, isn’t easy. Just ask Spider-Man.