Michael Osadciw
Screenwriter
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- Michael Osadciw
SPIDER-MAN
DELUXE EDITION
Studio: Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment
Film Year: 2002
U.S. Rating: PG-13
Canadian Rating: PG
Rated for: Stylized Violence and Action
Film Length: 121 minutes
Genre: Action
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 anamorphic
Audio: English & French Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Subtitles: English, French & Spanish
Closed Captioned: Yes
SLP: US $24.95
SPIDER-MAN
SUPERBIT
Studio: Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment
Film Year: 2002
U.S. Rating: PG-13
Canadian Rating: PG
Rated for: Stylized Violence and Action
Film Length: 121 minutes
Genre: Action
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 anamorphic
Audio: English DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Thai
Closed Captioned: Yes
SLP: US $28.95
Release Date: June 01, 2004
Film Rating: :star: :star: :star: :star: / :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
Starring: Tobey Maguire (Peter Parker/Spider-Man), Willem Dafoe (Norman Osborn/Green Goblin), Kirsten Dunst (Mary Jane Watson), James Franco (Harry Osborn)
Directed by: Sam Raimi
Written by: David Koepp
With great powers comes great responsibility.
Since Director Sam Raimi brought our Marvel Comic book hero Spider-Man to the movies there has been Spider-Man hype all over again. Both adults and kids praised the film of being accurate to Peter Parker’s origin as well as providing some entertaining action sequences. Critics on the other hand panned the action sequences as being unrealistic and looking too much like a video game. Still, the success of the first Spider-Man film has kept momentum over the years for the highly anticipated sequel to be released July 2004 of our masked hero.
Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Once a nerd, a loner, and a kid raised by his relatives in a not-so-wealthy neighborhood, Peter’s life changed once he was bitten by a genetically engineered spider. This bite gave him super-human strength and characteristics of a spider such as spinning a web to catch enemies or crawling up or jumping high walls. After he masters all of his skills, he makes the decision not to lead a normal life and dedicate himself to take on the responsibility of helping people in need in New York City.
The casting in the film is excellent. There could be no better actor than Tobey Maguire to play the role of Spider-Man. His sheepishness and geeky looking performance is identifiable to many people as being the real Peter Parker. Kirsten Dunst does a fantastic job playing the girl insecure over love, especially Parker’s. Dafoe and Franco also have excellent performances, but it will be Spider-Man 2 where Franco will be in the spotlight.
The only poor performance in this film is that by those who made the CGI for Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. Its been said so many times that it looks too fake, and I have to agree. The argument is that its supposed to look like “comics”, something that is unreal and animated because no man can do what they do on screen. Unfortunately the characters look so fake that they don’t even seem real to us, nor for what we should believe our superhero and villain can do. This is distracting when watching the film, because it seems more of a videogame if anything rather than physical beings in action on screen.
The rest of the film is excellent and I recommend viewing it. Director Sam Raimi, a long time Spidey fan has done the comic book hero justice bringing him to the big screen. He’s a talented director whose passion for this series clearly shows with the successful film and fan base he’s created for the Spider-Man films.
DELUXE EDITION VIDEO QUALITY :star: :star: :star: :star: / :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
SUPERBIT EDITION VIDEO QUALITY :star: :star: :star: :star:
This is a comparative review of the two releases that feature different video presentations based on the nature of the releases. As we know, the Deluxe edition is the same as the release that was in 2002. The video quality on that disc was only O.K. and far from being reference material. I shook my head each time I saw Spider-Man being used to show off video displays, scalers, or home theater in dealer or trade show demos. It just didn’t looks so great. While Spider-Man doesn’t look seriously wrong, it does have its drawbacks. My first complaint with the Standard and Deluxe release is the digital grittiness of the image. It just didn’t look like film when playing it back as there were minute artifacts on screen plaguing the image. Edge enhancement is also an issue on this title giving the image more of a false appearance. I also found too many shots soft and blurry in the background scenery. All of this left me thinking it was a sub-par release for this level of film. On the plus side, all colours seemed neutral and fleshtones are a hair towards a brown tint. Black level is excellent and I never felt like I was missing any contrast.
How does the Superbit version’s image compare? As one might expect, the compression artifacts are down quite substantially. The video bitrate barely drops below 8Mbps and averages close to 9Mbps (compared to the 4.8 - 7.5Mbps on Deluxe). A lot of that digital noise is cleaned up, although some still remains, which could be inherent of the source. Most of the elements of the original release still exist such as the slight blur in the background and the slightly brown tint in some scenes. Without seeing it in 1080p, this is about as good as it’s going to get. I don’t doubt that when I’m comparing 1080p titles, I’ll still say Spider-Man looks softer than other 1080p releases.
AUDIO QUALITY :star: :star: :star: :star:
This is another one of those “odd” comparisons where I heard things I never expected to hear. I’ll continue my duty to report what I hear and let you make up your mind whether or not the differences are substantial enough for you. The sound of the Dolby Digital and DTS encodings are different in many respects. Don’t read into this into thinking these two soundtracks are from two different mixes, this is merely a comparison of the result of the two encodings decoded on my pre-amp and played back through my system. I used an additional piece of equipment for this review, an Audio Alchemy anti-jitter box placed between my DVD player and pre-amp using Transparent HDL coax cables in and out. While I still haven’t fully evaluated what sonic benefits this unit helped my system achieve, the theory is the timing errors (blurring) in the digital signal from my DVD player will be re-clocked in the box before heading to the DACs in the preamp, and thus resolve more detail. So it was with this piece in the chain I based my audio review on.
The overall soundtrack is very good and pumped up for an action film. All channels are very active throughout the mix providing a 360-degree ring of sound around the viewer. Bass is deep and tight and the soundtrack by Danny Elfman is superbly recorded. There is also an excellent group of rock songs from Alien Ant Farm and Default to charge up the soundtrack. This is one soundtrack you’ll love as Spider-Man swings through your living room, and will definitely be a reference for showing off your surround sound to your friends. There is a Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding on the Deluxe release, and both DD5.1 and DTS 5.1 on the Superbit edition.
Since the Superbit edition has a default to the Dolby Digital encoding I will review what I heard on this soundtrack first. The first thing noticed was how loud it sounded. The midrange frequencies were very prominent and each channel sounded very active adding the excitement to the experience. Dialogue continues to have a boomy characteristic I can now hear on almost every Dolby Digital soundtrack. This doesn’t surprise me anymore based on how much more midrange I noticed on this soundtrack as a whole. Switching over to DTS using the audio toggle switch on the remote will yield results different from most people tend to hear: the DTS soundtrack is quieter by quite a few decibels. Not only that, but it sounds less prominent in the midrange for a more “airy” sound, almost “sucked-in” by means of a direct comparison without volume compensation. When turning up the volume to match that of Dolby Digital’s output levels, the lack of boom around the dialogue and in the midrange still squeaked through. All channel levels sounded the same level all around with both soundtracks. When all channels were driven during various action sequences, the Dolby Digital decoding sounded more “in your face” and active than the DTS decoding, which sounded more laid back and less direct at each speaker location. Thus, the soundspace between channels is slightly better on the DTS decoding.
Again, I must take note of the treatment of high frequency detail between the two decoding systems. There is more high frequency detail present in the Dolby Digital version, at least what seems to be between 17Khz-20Khz. Well, that high frequency noise I tend to complain about a lot with film soundtracks is present at many locations in this film. For your reference, take the scene when Peter Parker wakes up in the morning and is staring in front of the mirror and feeling better the day after his bite. He’s speaking to his grandmother, who is in the other room, about how better his “changes” are when he woke up. Through this sequence there is high frequency noise that I can hear (and maybe only dogs, too) just randomly penetrating the soundtrack’s dialogue scene. I find this very distracting as its present on almost every film. Switching to DTS’s decoding gives me different results: the sound that was once high-frequency noise is now lower in pitch, but still audible. Oddly, on the Dolby Digital version, I can’t hear the lower pitch sound, just the high frequency pitch. Since the noise is present in the same spots its safe to assume the noise is on the source and not a result of the encoding process. But the question is “What are these two encoding formats doing to the audio in the higher frequencies that causes this to happen?” I spoke about it extensively in my Panic Room review under the audio quality section. Feel free to browse that for further discussion on it. Anyways, which soundtrack do I prefer? I prefer the less aggressive DTS soundtrack because its more relaxing to my ears at louder volume levels.
DELUXE EDITION SPECIAL FEATURES :star: :star: :star: :star:
SUPERBIT EDITION SPECIAL FEATURES :star: :star: / :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
The special features on the first two discs of the Deluxe edition are identical to the release in 2002. Chances are most of you reading this have already gone through them in detail – you’ve had two years to do it so I’m not going through them in detail here. For those of you who have just jumped on the Spidey Bandwagon I HIGHLEY RECOMMEND picking up the three-disc Deluxe edition over the two-disc standard edition, since they are relatively the same price. These are the features you can find on the discs one and two of the Deluxe (and standard) release:
Disc One
Aside from the film, disc one freatures an audio commentary by Director Sam Raimi, Kirsten Dunst, Producer Laura Ziskin and Co-Producer Grant Curtis. There is also a second track featuring an SFX Commentary by Special Effects Designer John Dykstra and Visual Effects Crew. Another feature is called Weaving the Web: Subtitled Factoids. These are pop-up production notes and historical facts appearing throughout the film if the feature is selected.
Also included in disc one are branching web-isodes, music videos "Hero" and Sum 41’s "What We're All About", TV Spots and Theatrical Trailers, and Filmographies and Character Files. DVD-ROM features include Comic/Feature Comparison, Record Your Own Commentary, a Countdown to Spider-Man 2, and Weblinks.
Disc Two
The second disc is loaded with features, and as mentioned earlier, I won’t go through these in detail because the disc has been available for two years now and most of you have probably gone through it already. If you are new to this Spider-Man release and you want me to explaing a particular feature I will be more than happy to explain it here. This is a list of features included on disc two:
o HBO "Making of Spider-Man"
o Spider-Mania: An E! Entertainment Special
o Director Profile: Sam Raimi
o Composer Profile - Danny Elfman
o Screen Tests - Tobey Maguire, J.K. Simmons and CGI Spider-Man
o Costume and Makeup Tests
o Gag / Outtake Reel
o Conceptual Art & Production Design Gallery
o Historical Documentary - Spider-Man: The Mythology of the 21st Century
o The Spider-Man Comic Archives
o Rogues Gallery
o "The Loves of Peter Parker"
o Comic Book Artist Gallery
o Activision Game: Hints & Tips
o DVD-ROM: Activision PC Game (2 Playable Levels);Three Exclusive Marvel dot.comics: Spider-Man™: Return of the Goblin; Blue #1, Black Cat #1 and Peter Parker; Spider-Man Visualizer
Housed in its own case in the cardboard slipcase, the third bonus disc in the Deluxe edition is what most of you fans are wondering about if you haven’t picked the set up already. The disc’s menu is structured like that of the first two and offers four selections. I’ll mention there is a subtitles menu containing languages of Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese for the special features.
The first feature on this disc is a Spider-Man 2 Sneak Peek (4.49, 4:3LBX, DD2.0) with an intro from producers Avi Arad and Laura Ziskin. It’s a small behind-the-scenes featurette featuring Kirsten Dunst, Director Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire and Alfred Molina. There isn’t any real informative material on this featurette and the image quality is very soft. Overall, a little disappointing since it’s a promotional piece.
The main menu also has the Spider-Man 2 teaser trailer, which at this point in time is barely a teaser anymore since we’ve seen it as a forced trailer on almost every Columbia TriStar DVD release over the past six months as well as in the theatres. Both of the above features are also duplicated in the last selection of the menu: the Special Features selection.
The only feature in here is a behind the scenes of Spider-Man piece that runs just over 32 minutes. You can watch it in parts or use the play-all function. All parts are in 4:3 and DD2.0. Included first is a part on costume design where we are told how while staying faithful to the original designs of Spider-Man and the Goblin, they were still able to spice it up a bit for the motion picture. Short, but very sweet.
Designing the World of Spider-Man gives us a roof-top view of how the film was staged in the city and where many of the scenes took place. Also, without spiders, there would be no Spider-Man, right? The Spider-Wrangler is a very short piece on the man who was in charge of the spiders on the film set. Unfortunately this piece was way too short for something I found much more interested than say, the next part - The Wrestling Match featuring Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage in the wrestling cage with Maguire or the World Unity Special. Both, I am sure, are of some interest, but c’mon, spiders are just so cool and deserve far more attention than a one-minute spot.
The last two parts of this feature are about the Goblin. These are lengthier and are more interesting. The first is about Oscorp Labs regarding Norman Osborn and his transformation to the Goblin. The second part is about the Goblin’s Arsenal. This part goes into better depth about the “toys” the Goblin uses for his destruction and the challenges the design teams face in both the mechanical and computer departments.
The last two features are game related. There is an Activision Spider-Man 2 videogame teaser trailer playable on all DVD players and two playable levels of Activision’s game via DVD-ROM.
You may be asking my why, with all of these special features, did the Deluxe edition not receive five stars on my rating? My answer is because the additional disc of bonus material is pretty skimpy and really is a promotional piece to get the hype on for Spider-man 2. The standard release two years back would have received a five star rating from me, but this is a new box set in the market, and I can’t justify buying this set if you already own the well-done Spider-Man standard edition a few years back.
What about the Superbit edition? What special features are on here? Before you tell me there aren’t any because that’s just the nature of the Superbit release, I’m going to stop you and tell you are wrong. It’s no surprise that the Superbit edition doesn’t really have any special features, but there is one and its EXCLUSIVE to the Superbit edition. A newly recorded commentary by Tobey Maguire is on this disc. Unfortunately he was absent from the first release, but having him participate on the Superbit release is a real treat. I really don’t understand the logic of the decisions above other than to make a few more dollars off of us consumers. I don’t see the point of wrapping up the third bonus disc with the already released Spider-Man special edition and then having the commentary by Maguire on the Superbit release. That makes die-hard fans purchase both sets and having a duplicate first and second disc of the original release. What makes more sense to me is to release a single edition only: a Superbit Deluxe edition. Since a newly recorded commentary can’t be put on an old release, putting it on the Superbit does make sense. What should have been done was to put the third disc of the Deluxe set and make it disc two of the Superbit release and had more effort put into its quality of content. So now fans would have their original standard release with excellent features that was purchased previously and a new audio/video reference of the film on Superbit with more extensive features. If the customer doesn’t have the original release, have both copies side-by-side or maybe priced as a two pack. At least we’d have the choice rather than having to purchase a second copy of the original release for disc three in the Deluxe set.
THOUGHTS…
If you own the original release of Spider-Man from 2002 I don’t recommend purchasing the Deluxe set for disc number three. To me there just isn’t enough value-added content to justify purchasing it. You may believe otherwise. The Superbit on the other hand is reference material for this film. If you’d like to see the film presented the best it can in the 480i format this is the disc to get, plus you get a cool commentary by Tobey Maguire. With these discs now on the shelves at retail outlets and the Spider-Man: The New Animated Series available as well, enough excitement should be generated for Spider-Man 2 to have you get caught up in your own web of DVD purchases.
Michael Osadciw
04.06.14
