Mania Grade: A-
Disc Grade: A-
Reviewed Format: DVD
Rated: PG-13
Stars: Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Cliff Robertson, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons
Writer: David Koepp, based on the comic created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
Director: Sam Raimi
Distributor: Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment
Original Year of Release: 2002
Retail Price: $28.96
Extras: two-disc set; widescreen anamorphic; 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound; 2 commentary tracks; branching features; music videos; trailers; TV spots; filmographies; character files; DVD-ROM features; documentary featurettes; screen tests; outtakes; image galleries; French 5.1 Dolby Digital; English, French & Spanish subtitles
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SPIDER-MAN

In case you haven't heard, the hit movie SPIDER-MAN has been released on home video and DVD, shipping a record 40 million copies in its first week. Columbia TriStar gets extra points right off the bat by putting their widescreen and fullscreen editions (both from excellent transfers) in completely different package art to avoid confusion, and releasing a super-deluxe limited edition at the same time as this regular deluxe edition.

The plot cleverly condenses events from the first several years of the Spider-Man comics into his origin story. Just about everyone knows how high school nerd Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is bitten by a radiated spider and acquires some of the arachnid's abilities, then pays the price for ignoring his ethics, leading to his becoming a hero. Interwoven with these events are several subplots about Peter's relationships with his aunt and uncle, the object of his affection Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), best friend Harry Osborn (James Franco), and Harry's billionaire scientist father Norman (Willem Dafoe). The main gnawing problem with the picture is the necessity of including so much of the latter subplot throughout the story of how Norman Osborn becomes Spider-Man's arch-enemy the Green Goblin has to be there, and compressing it into the second half of the picture would take us away from Peter for too long, so the only other option is to shoehorn in chunks of it throughout. This splits the narrative, leading the uninitiated to wonder why we're spending so much time following Peter's pal's dad, at least until they're brought together.

The Green Goblin costume is another minor irritation. The plot demands that it be high tech armor, but one can't help wishing that it had been designed to be less clunky and more pliable. Perhaps when Harry becomes the Goblin in a sequel, he'll come up with a better design (oops spoiler!).

Aside from those quibbles, the film initially left me feeling... just okay with it. This isn't as bad as it sounds it's just that, like thousands of other Spider-Man readers, I've been creating this movie in my head for decades, and the final product satisfies all those hopes and expectations exactly. It's nearly dead on what it should be, and a very satisfying film. CGI effects, beginning with an amazing title sequence, are brought together seamlessly with practical effects and stunt work to create super-action sequences that would have been impossible at any previous time in the 20 years this project has been in development. And director Sam Raimi manages to juggle all these elements together with performances to give the story emotional weight without seeming corny.

One of two commentraks is with director Sam Raimi and co-producer Grant Curtis, edited together with comments from producer Laura Ziskin and star Kirsten Dunst. Even with all four of these interesting folks, there are still gaps where nobody has anything to say. When they do, they give a lot of insights and tell some secrets, but if this was the lone extra on the disc it would feel kind of incomplete. Fortunately, it's far from the final extra provided, starting with the other commentrak with special effects designer John Dykstra and various members of his crew. You can activate a "spider sense" feature that puts an icon on the screen that leads to featurettes related to the scene at hand. There's also a Pop-up Video type feature that gives you text factoids throughout, though I wouldn't trust every bit of info - an early one refers to Marvel's Disco Dazzler character as "Disco Queen." They're also a few seconds early, and contain some typos, but offer a lot of ancillary information, especially comparisons to the Spidey comics for the uninitiated.

The menu designs make it difficult at times to tell which feature is highlighted, a problem compounded by the menu videos, which sometimes interferes with your selection and forces you to pound away at your remote buttons trying to get the program to respond. The subtitles can only be chosen through the menus. DVD-ROM features include an unusual "record your own commentary" feature, weblinks (in an appropriate Spidey web browser), and the comics adaptation of the film, which can be viewed alongside the film itself. Disc one is rounded out with music videos, TV spots (including Spider-Man hawking Cingular Wireless), and trailers (but not the withdrawn first trailer).

Disc two splits its features into two categories. One chronicles the character's comic-book history via documentary and galleries. The section on Spider-Man's super-enemies even has 3-D models of each character! One disappointment is that the comics archive only covers highlights from each year in Spider-Man history and not every issue. More DVD-ROM material includes a playable demo of the PC game that my PCs are too weak to handle.

The other section gives more in-depth coverage of the movie, mainly via documentaries originally broadcast on HBO and E! Entertainment. There are profiles of Raimi and composer Danny Elfman, but the fun comes in the screen test (including one of the digital stuntman that fooled Sony execs) and outtakes reels. All told, there's at least ten hours of stuff to browse through sheesh!