They were just fighting at dizzying heights on a clock tower, then they fall into the depths and rumble across the roof of a subway that is racing through the urban canyons of New York. Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) and Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) are engaged in a duel to the death, while left and right the big city rushes past – in the heat of the moment, it is sometimes even torn apart.
Spider-Man slides across the asphalt, crawls along walls and catapults himself straight through the narrow opening of an overpass before he can catch the civilians thrown around by Doc Ock in his web. The subway fight in Spider-Man 2 is the best action sequence in superhero cinemaDespite all the furious movements, the most powerful moment occurs when standing still.
In the most powerful scene of Spider-Man 2, Peter Parker is saved by all of New York
One of the most impressive things about Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films is that he lets the staging of a $200 million comic book blockbuster so light and dynamic It seems as if we were swinging from one skyscraper to the next with the Marvel hero. In the final seconds of the subway fight, there is still an incredible feat of strength that can be seen and felt in every single frame.
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Spider Man 2
Spider-Man tries with all his strength to stop the subway train sabotaged by Doc Ock before it falls into the depths at the end of the tracks. Peter Parker stretches himself out in front of the first carriage and clings to the city’s houses with his spider webs. It looks as if he will burst at any moment. He has even lost his mask, his suit is torn. But then New York pulls him back.
Just before Spider-Man falls into the abyss from exhaustion, several hands hold him. They belong to the passengers whose lives he has just saved. They pull him into the car, pass him across the rows of seats and place him carefully on the floor. “a boy, not older than my son”as one of those standing around says, astonished. Not a superhero. Or a superhero like the rest of us?
Spider-Man 2 allows for a vulnerability that is increasingly lost in superhero cinema
What makes the moment so moving is its incredible simplicity. Raimi uses all the possibilities of modern blockbuster cinema to capture the greatest possible spectacle on the screen. But suddenly there is a sinceritywhich for a split second even disarms Doc Ock, who in this sequence completely exchanges his tragic side for his sadistic instincts.
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Spider Man 2
But even more touching is the vulnerability and the Understanding vulnerabilitythat Raimi allows. No cool saying, no clever editing and certainly no ironic break to conceal the fact that one of our protagonist’s greatest fears has just come true. For two films, Peter Parker has done everything he can to protect his identity so that the people he loves are not in danger.
Now the whole of New York is looking at him, straight into his face, but not with the eager eyes of a J. Jonah Jameson looking for the next scoop. An unexpected tenderness transforms Peter’s panic into something completely unfoundedIt almost feels as if Raimi is dissolving the teen angst of this coming-of-age story disguised as a superhero film with a fundamentally human gesture.
Spider-Man 2 hides the last innocent moment of superhero cinema
The boundaries between the superhero and his city are blurring. Spider-Man is not only supported and embraced by New York. Before he knows it, New Yorkers are standing between him and Doc Ock because the real person inspires more than his mask. It may be the last innocent moment of superhero cinemabefore the depths of Christopher Nolan, Zack Snyder and Co. take over.
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Spider Man 2
If we look closely, but Raimi also struggles with the idealism that flows through his Spider-Man and thwarts his new-found courage. “If you want him, you have to get past me”says one of the passengers. Others join in. “Small thing”replies Doc Ock, grinning cheekily as he drills his way through the crowd with his mechanical tentacles.
Will the selflessness of his naivety be punished? Is Raimi secretly a cynic and not the romantic who primarily as great melodramas? Although it looks like it soon, Doc Ock is wrong. Raimi is already one step ahead of most of his fellow directors who later redefined the genre with their dark stories.
What Sam Raimi has over the dark superhero films of Nolan, Snyder and Co.
Where films like The Dark Knight are clearly influenced by the aesthetics of post-9/11 blockbuster cinema and their Figures in urban rubble and theaters of war, Raimi brings people together again. No lonely knight in front of ruins, no omniscient surveillance cameras and certainly no military fantasies of revenge à la Iron Man: Raimi finds something much more powerful.
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Spider Man 2
The solidarity that develops between the people in the subway car when they stand protectively in front of Spider-Man is only possible because Raimi in the considered and careful introduction at the emotional climax, the vulnerability (of the hero) was allowed and thus all the characters were on the same level. No matter what trauma they experienced that still haunts them today.
Raimi is not looking for larger-than-life heroes in his Spidey films. What concerns him most is the Exploring interpersonal relationshipswhich in the end also reveals Doc Ock’s tragedy, although he previously appears as the unstoppable evil and wins with his poses. But Raimi has an admirable empathy for the characters’ pain – and in the end, all of New York is one of them.
Spider-Man 2 opened in American cinemas 20 years ago today. Since then, the blockbuster landscape has changed and we have experienced a superhero boom that has never been seen before on the big screen. With all the variety of cinematic comic book stories, Raimi’s unconditional, hopeful and simply overwhelming Sincerity nevertheless remains a rarity.