Spider-Man DVD Columbia TriStar   Reviewed by Tony Buchsbaum	I've always been a big Spider-Man fan. Not the kind who obsesses over the comic book or dreams of donning the tights, but a fan nonetheless. I guess I just always thought the idea of a kid with super powers -- an otherwise ordinary kid -- was cool. Many were the day, back in grade school, when I imagined I was the Six Million Dollar Man, complete with bionic accessories. And there are days, even now, when I am James Bond, zooming along New Jersey's Route 1 in my ejector seat-equipped Honda CR-V. In 2002, when Spider-Man finally made it to the big screen, I was there the first weekend with my six-year-old son. I couldn't wait to see how cool the movie was, or how convincing the web slinging through the corridors of New York City skyscrapers was. Would they go camp, like TV's Batman with Adam West? Or would they go dark, like Tim Burton's Batman movie? Turns out they went for neither. They went for heightened reality -- the right choice for this vehicle. Tobey Maguire is a perfect Peter Parker. Of course, that's the part you must cast well, just as you must cast Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent, not Batman and Superman. After all, for every superhero, the tights are a big deal. Behave right, and the tights can make you. But as a regular, mild-mannered guy, you need an actor. That's why Michael Keaton was so great in Batman: You believed he was a rich playboy first, and then his transformation into Batman meant something. Same with Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent and his revelatory performance as Superman in the 1978 film. Maguire is terrific as the nerdy high schooler with a crush on his next-door neighbor (played by Kirsten Dunst). He's just so… plain. So unassuming. So geeky. He's the kind of guy who'd imagine he was the Six Million Dollar Man, complete with bionic accessories. He wears eyeglasses with clunky black frames. He lives with his elderly aunt and uncle. He's not in great shape. Best of all is the way Parker comes to realize he's got some special powers brewing. At first, he can't believe it. He's willing to go along with the suddenly perfect vision and the suddenly cut muscles. But it's not the physical manifestations that are so right; it's the feelings. When Parker senses he can climb walls, then jump from building to building, the exuberance he displays is laugh-out-loud infectious. It's exactly the reaction a teenaged boy would have. To see that up on the screen is an amazing thing. I mean, imagine waking up one morning and actually having all those bionic accessories, as it were, that you daydreamed about -- it's truly an awe-inspiring thing. Parker doesn't know what to make of it all. And when he starts to spurt webbing from a gland in his wrist, it's almost too wonderful, too poetic. Forget the fact that the webbing comes out a thick, gooey mess. And forget the easy symbolism that this calls to mind. And forget that he has to extend his arm a certain way before he can shoot, in some sort of manual erection. Hell, forget that the guy's name is Peter. When Parker shoots those first webs, it's tantamount to Alexander Graham Bell discovering transmitted sound. It's life-altering. It sets Parker free like nothing else -- not even his other powers. Suddenly, Parker is able to reach out and grab life in an entirely new way. Suddenly, he has the ability to make his ideas stick. Literally. Kirsten Dunst provides the perfect inspiration for all this shooting and slinging and wall crawling. In her pink tank-top and jiggling high school girliness, she's the fantasy every one of my schoolmates had. She's the girl we all wanted to mess around with in the back seat. And when she smiles, she's the girl we want to grow old with. We totally get Parker's love-sickness. She's indelible. Her polar opposite is the villain of the piece, Norman Osborn, played with evil perfection by Willem Dafoe. Osborn's a nice enough scientist, but when his experiments who awry -- and don't they always just? -- he becomes the Green Goblin, a mechanized, flying menace who wears a green metal mask frozen in a terrifying death-smile. (An aside: as terrifying as that mask is, Dafoe's own smile is even worse. Is there an actor who looks more evil, just sitting there?) The only place the film disappoints is in the score. Danny Elfman's A-list reputation as a film composer was built on his work with Tim Burton on films like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns. He's also scored the recent, rancid remake of Planet of the Apes and dozens of other films. His Spider-Man score is a combination of motifs clearly inspired by his dark yet bombastic Batman period (and I mean that as a compliment) and the kind of over-noisy, non-melodic, much-too-percussive sound of, for example, Planet of the Apes. Largely, his work for Spider-Man is uninspired, which is a shame, since the film offered such endless room for musical inspiration. I mean, you've got two double characters, a love interest, web slinging sequences, what's not to score? You can hear Elfman talk about the score on the spectacular new DVD that preserves the film for all time. Elfman's self-serving comments asside, the two-disc set is an excellent presentation, with the film on one disc, along with optional pop-on production notes, a commentary by director Sam Raimi and Dunst, another commentary with special effects guru John Dykstra, two music videos, TV spots, trailers and more. On disc two are two making-of documentaries (one from HBO one from E!), screen tests, bloopers (the set's only serious misstep) and an exhaustive history of Spider-Man in print and more. The DVD certainly ranks up there with some of the best. Way back when, a young comic artist named Stan Lee -- a nice Jewish boy trying to make his way in New York -- thought up Spider-Man. Though no one thought the idea was worthwhile, Lee stuck to his guns. And when fans demanded more Spider-Man, he was ready. In the decades since, Lee's hero has become a legend, as has Lee himself, eventually running Marvel Comics and creating other superheroes. I've always thought it more than a little interesting that Batman, Superman and Spider-Man were all created by nice Jewish boys in the period during and after World War II. I need not get into long-winded explanations of how the war must have left these kids feeling helpless, without role models, etc., etc. The heroes they invented were perfect for the mindsets of their time. Their current status as classics is a bonus. Now and then, I wonder about a time perhaps 20 years from now, when we find that today's world, rife as it is with terrorism, has inspired some urban, minority kid somewhere to invent a new hero, one with powers and charisma that are perfect for a new world, a new age, a new us. It will be illuminating, I think, to see not just how the new hero is drawn, but what aspects of our homogenous, violent world he draws from. | January 2003   Tony Buchsbaum is the author of Total Eclipse. At night he works on another novel and a screenplay. Days, he writes advertising copy in Lawrenceville, NJ, where he lives with his wife and sons.