I finally saw the Spider-Man movie last Saturday. I did intend going to the cinema to see that, but never did. (Last movie seen at cinema: Harry Potter and the PHILOSOPHER’S Stone.) So I just bought the video—no DVD player in this house yet, alas.
Well, okay, Spidey was one of my childhood heroes, I guess, because it was pretty unusual compared to most comics. I haven’t read the actual comic books for about a decade now. I don’t think the series was all that wonderful after the late ’70s. The movie takes and mixes and condenses and messes with continuity from roughly the first twelve years of the title’s run—so at least its sources are mostly good.
I had tentative high hopes for director Sam Raimi. I haven’t seen much of his recent work, but my first viewing of the original (and best, no budget notwithstanding) Evil Dead movie in 1984 left quite an impression. The fact that he insisted on Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko getting equal screen credit with the glory-hogging Stan Lee, against Marvel Comics’ usual policy, raised my hopes quite a bit.
I wasn’t entirely disappointed. It’s an entertaining movie. The fight scenes are slickly choreographed, etc., although my overall impression was that the directing was really pretty generic, i.e. anyone could’ve done it. I’m not sure what kind of distinctive, ‘extra’ elements I expected, to be honest, so I have no actual criticism.
The most disappointing aspect of the movie, ironically, was the special effects. Okay, most of them were really terrific, impressive, and so on, and yet… some of them also looked really bogus and obviously computer generated. Particularly the scenes of the Green Goblin flying around.
On the whole, I enjoyed it a lot. It wasn’t quite as slick as X-Men, but it mostly tried hard and often succeeded. I thought it was a good movie, just not a great one.
About my creative delusions: I don’t know. It comes in little spurts. I recently did some useful work and revision on my Hard Luck City novel (or novella, perhaps). I leave it for months then pick it up again. I don’t carry any commercial expectations for it, but it would be real nice to actually finish it eventually. I’ve also written a couple of new fragments to add to my collection of ‘unfinished short stories’—me, I’m great at starting things and lousy at completing them.
Okay, I’ll shut up for a while. I was initially writing a lot more about the Spider-Man movie, then I realised this is a journal thingy not a reviews section! So I’ve tried to keep it fairly brief. ‘Nuff said, true believers…