Spider-Man 2

Maybe it has something to do with Sam Raimi's skills as a director, or with Tobey Maguire's very human central performance, but the Spider-Man films are by far the best of the superhero genre.

A sequel that not only outstrips its predecessor but has a perversity and quick-wittedness that hardly seem to belong in a comic-book movie.

Spider-Man 2 is better than just dark, it's touched by authentic teenage paranoia and neurosis.

This is a better picture than the first because it makes its characters human, doesn't camp it up and refuses to believe that Kerpow! Kerching! is more than a constituent part of the proceedings.

Alfred Molina makes a more baroque supervillain than Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, but the other stars seem happy to be giving us more of the same. Sam Raimi's direction, on the other hand, is even more fluent and well paced.

The web-slinging sequences are bigger-better-brighter-faster than the already spectacular ones in 2002's Spider-Man, and at the same time, the film's smaller emotional moments are denser, richer and more resonant than those in the first.

This is the ultimate Spider-Man movie, and it’s one of the best-ever superhero films we’ve ever gotten.




Narratively lumpy as it sometimes is, "Spider-Man 2" marks Raimi’s return to the pure cinema of fun.

Still one of the best superhero films of all-time.

Despite a total of four writers and filming beginning before an official script was completed, Spidey 2 contains more coherent drama, action and character development than a dozen of the usual Hollywood blockbusters.