Spider-Man 2 (Widescreen Special Edition) DVD
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 Rating: - Spidey faces a crisis
This is the winter (or perhaps the autumn) of Peter Parker's discontent. Two years after receiving his spider-powers, his life seems to be falling into chaos. He's devoting so much time to fighting crime as Spiderman that his part-time job (from which he's fired in the first 15 minutes of the movie) and his college career are floundering. For reasons unclear, he's no longer rooming with his buddy Harry Osborn, who has assumed the chieftainship at Oscorp; instead he's living in a poky one-room apartment in a shabby old brick building--and he's in arrears. His beloved Mary Jane Watson, who's made it as a model and on Broadway, is mad at him because he hasn't come to see her in "The Importance of Being Earnest." And he's discovered that his Aunt May's house, where he grew up, is being foreclosed on. Then he finds that his webbing isn't always shooting when he calls on it, and he can't always stick to the walls he tries to crawl. A doctor pronounces him healthy--physically. What's a floundering Spiderman to do?

To makes matter worse, a new villain has arisen in New York--Dr. Otto Octavius, a physicist who, in trying to originate a working fusion process for Oscorp, is transformed into the terrifying Dr. Octopus. Peter's first battle with him is nearly fatal, though he does contrive to rescue his endangered aunt. Shaken, he begins to doubt his calling. In the end, his solution is to "hang it up"--or rather, to dump his costume in the garbage (it ends up mounted on Jonah Jameson's office wall). But there's no rest for a hero. Gradually, with Aunt May's unwitting help, he realizes that his Uncle Ben was right: great powers require great responsibility, and he'll "always be Spiderman."

Besides the continuing angst that is a Marvel trademark, this film is distinguished (of course) by eye-popping SFX--perhaps not *quite* so good as those in the first installment (when Doc Ock climbs up a wall, you can tell it's a computer animation), but still very impressive. Especially noteworthy: Spidey's battles with Octopus and a thrilling sequence in which he barely manages to stop a runaway el-train (the fact that Manhattan doesn't have any of these any more is beside the point) with his webbing and nearly tears himself apart in the process. (The following scene, in which the rescued passengers gently and carefully draw him into the car and to safety, is all the more affecting on account of the contrast.) And Doc and his sentient robot arms, when seen at "eye-level," are definitely among the better film villains on DVD. Both Spidey and Ock are human-scale despite their powers, capable of doubt and, in the latter's case, reformation. And there's a great surprise at the end of the film that makes all of Spidey's trials worthwhile. In the final scene we see him (urged by Mary Jane to "Go get 'em, tiger") once again swinging through the skyscrapers toward another crisis, whooping joyously, with two NYPD choppers close behind him--a sort of symbolic suggestion of the possibility that he and the forces of law and order may finally be coming to an accommodation despite Jameson's ongoing (and, at one point, rather hypocritical) efforts to demonize him. Though probably not for the youngest and most sensitive members of the family, this is a great wild adventure ride for everyone else, and may well serve as a launching point for some good conversations about ethics, perseverance, and the definition of heroism.

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