SPIDER-MAN 2

SPIDER-MAN 2 is one of those happy sequels (for the audience the characters are as angst-ridden as ever) that builds on rather than merely repeats the original. 2002's SPIDER-MAN was a very good and spiritually faithful adaptation of the Marvel comic book that introduced Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), his beloved from afar Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), his best friend and future nemesis Harry Osborn (James Franco) and explains how Peter becomes the crime-fighting superhero with a secret identity.

With all of the main cast of the original returning (even a couple of characters we wouldn't expect to see again), as well as original director Sam Raimi, SPIDER-MAN 2 sensibly assumes we're reasonably familiar with the earlier film, though a comic book-style title sequence brings us up to speed with previous key events. This allows the filmmakers to skip either inventing a mythology or rehashing it, so they can spend that much more time investigating all the possibilities of their universe even as the plot drives relentlessly forward.

Peter is now juggling a job as a pizza runner (he can't make deliveries on time in Manhattan even with his superpowers), a college education, trying to be a good surrogate son to his widowed Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) and still keeping up his great responsibility to the public as Spider-Man. At the end of the first film, Peter has glumly decided that being Spider-Man means he cannot have a relationship with Mary Jane, even though her successful modeling career means her face is on billboards all over the city. However, one setback too many causes Peter to re-examine his life perhaps he'd be better off as plain old Peter Parker if he ditched the costume and responsibilities. For awhile, there's a case to be made for this his efforts to court the smitten Mary Jane meet with cautious approval (despite her involvement with another man) and he begins doing better at college. Peter's wealthy industrialist friend Harry Osborn, who blames Spider-Man for killing Harry's father Norman (Willem Dafoe) not knowing that Norman was the dreaded Green Goblin and not knowing that best pal Pete is Spider-Man arranges for Peter to interview one of his heroes, scientist Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina). Peter and the genius hit it off instantly and Octavius invites Peter to attend a demonstration of a new fusion device, funded by Harry's corporation. As these things often do in this genre, the experiment goes horribly wrong, killing Octavius' adored wife (Donna Murphy) and causing intelligent machinery to fuse with the scientist's body, taking over his behavior and ambitions. So much for Peter's resolution to have a personal life but he can't rid himself of his feelings for Mary Jane ...

The screenplay by Alvin Sargent, from a story by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Michael Chabon, juggles a multitude of moods very adroitly. Peter takes himself seriously yet never loses a certain quizzical sense of humor, Mary Jane's character and her dilemmas are dimensional rather than simply standard damsel in distress and Doc Ock, with his awareness of the fact that he is possessed warring with the megalomania caused by his four steel snakelike appendages, qualifies as an authentically tragic figure.

Raimi's style as usual bristles with energy the film seems to move along as breakneck speed even when we're not literally flying along the skyscraper canyons in Spidey's wake. The CGI is excellent. Repeat viewings may reveal which elements are live, model and computer-generated, respectively, but a first look on the big screen makes everything look smooth and cohesive.

Maguire seems even more vulnerable, wise and troubled than he did the first time around, while Dunst is radiantly centered. Molina plays the pre-transformation Octavius with expansive warmth and Doc Ock with an impressively modulated ebb and flow of madness we actually get to watch him process and make sense of each contradictory impulse as it occurs to him.

One of the catchphrases of the SPIDER-MAN universe is "With great power comes great responsibility." The financial success of the first film gave Raimi and Co. great power here they use it to fulfill their responsibilities to both their material and their audience wonderfully well.