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HTF REVIEW: "Spider-Man" (with screenshots) (1 Viewer)

Ronald Epstein

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Spider-Man




Studio: Columbia Pictures
Year: 2002
Rated: PG-13
Film Length: 121 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 16X9 Enhanced Widescreen (1.85:1)
Subtitles:



With great power comes great responsibility.
One of the best things to happen to film over the
past decades is comic books. It took the studios
long enough to reach out to the thousands upon
thousands of comic book fans who wanted their super
heroes brought to the screen. With huge box-office
successes such as Superman, Batman and
X-Men, the playing field has opened wide
for new super immortals to be brought to the screen.

The next logical step, of course, was Spider-Man,
a character created for Marvel Comics by comic book
writer, Stan Lee and original artist Steve Ditko in
1962. Spider-Man has appeared in more than 500
newspapers worldwide, and has been seen as an
animated television series in 1967 and a live
action series 10 years later. Ever since comic
book characters spawned onto the silver screen,
fans have been pressing for a Spider-Man movie.
This year, Columbia Pictures brought the webbed
action hero to the screen and managed to shatter box
office records. To date, Spider-Man has
grossed over $403 million worldwide. It also sits
in the #5 spot as the all-time box office champ.
No doubt, it was a film whose success does not
depend on the awesome popularity of its source
material--as the comic book heyday was decades ago.
It seems like audiences actually liked what they saw.
Since comic book adaptations can be a difficult and
struggling process in finding a middle ground between
what's possible in a live action film standpoint and
keeping the comic’s established world intact, you
would expect some of the fans were not thrilled by
what they saw. There were many complaints about the
film's cheesy dialogue, one-sided characters and
overall slow pacing. There were many, like myself,
who felt the film was nothing more than empty,
patriotic escapism....and don't get me started on
that awful Goblin costume that looks like it came
out of Power Rangers. Still, there's no denying
from this reviewer that the film is an enjoyable
two hours of fun.


Peter Parker (Toby Maguire) is your seemingly average
high-school geek. He chases the bus to school every
morning, gets beat up in class, and is just a tad
too overly polite. He lives at home with his Uncle
Ben (Cliff Robertson) and Aunt May (Rosemary Harris),
who are two of the sweetest elderly people you could
ever meet. Sure, you kind of feel sorry for
this teenager until you look out the window in his
upstairs bedroom and see the view of hot redhead Mary
Jane (Kirsten Dunst). Peter has been in love with
Mary Jane ever since he was 4 years old, even though
she hardly knows he exists.


A school field trip to a science exhibit forever
changes Peter's life. The exhibit is about spiders,
and there are dozens of different live species on
display, including that of some genetically-charged
breeds. When Mary Jane notices one of these
high-breed spiders is missing, the incident is quickly
shrugged off. As Peter Parker finds an excuse to take
some cleavage-posed pictures of Mary Jane, Peter is
bitten on the hand by...you guessed it...the missing spider.
Life suddenly changes for Peter Parker. He finds that
he is much quicker, more agile, and his senses are
greatly enhanced. He can sniff out danger moments
before it happens. He doesn't quite understand what
is happening to him at first until a fight with the
school's bully. Peter Parker discovers he has new
powers. He can jump very high and climb walls with
little effort. The only thing he has to master is
how to effectively shoot a synthetic web from his
wrists.


Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Norman
Osborn (Willem Dafoe) is working on a human
enhancer product for the military. The product has
failed initial testing, but Osborn must get it
right or face his company being shut down. When
Osborn offers himself to become a guinea pig to
the experiment, he is strapped on a table and
inserted in a chamber filled with the enhancer
product. But things go terribly wrong in the lab.
Osborn suddenly becomes victim to the product's
horrible side-effects that make him violent and
insane.
Ultimately, Peter Parker and Norman Osborn choose
their own paths. Peter becomes Spider-Man,
using his super powers for goodness. Osborn, now
totally insane, becomes The Green Goblin.
How is the transfer?
I think I have been spoiled by the new breed of
transfers that are so ultra sharp, they almost look
3-dimensional. The transfer of Spider-Man
falls a little short of being just that, and perhaps
the reason may be that a lower bitrate was used in
order to accommodate all the extra material.
Don't get me wrong....the film looks pretty damn
good, and the folks at Columbia should be proud of
this because when we visited them over a month ago,
they admitted that the transfer from film concerned
them greatly.
The transfer is clean and detailed throughout. It
stops very short of being as sharp as I had hoped.
Fortunately, many of the film's night scenes (such
as the Queensboro Bridge Tram) remain nicely detailed.
While colors are as beautifully vivid as a comic
book (you must see the Times Square sequence), they
do tend to run a little too hot. This causes flesh
tones to look a little more red than they should.
While film grain really isn't a problem here, you
do notice it occasionally. There's a scene inside
the Oscorp lab during Norman Osborn's transformation
that shows a little too much grain for my taste.

Another disappointment is the lack of surround
support, or more precisely, the lack of sound
direction. The film is awfully noisy across the
front channels, and though my sound system is
properly calibrated, this caused the surrounds to be
washed out. In fact, it really didn't sound like
the surrounds were on for most of the film. The
only time I really noticed them was a scene on a
rooftop where groggy Spider-Man awakens to the
echo sounds of the Green Goblin.
Fortunately, there's a lot of LFE activity in
this film that produced floor-shaking response from
my subwoofer. Surprisingly, most of that response
didn't come from the film's action scenes, but rather
emphasized passages on Danny Elfman's score.
I want to stop here and clear up any sort of
misconceptions about what I have just said. I am
not saying that the Spider-Man transfer is
lackluster. On a whole, it looks and sounds pretty
darn good. What I am saying is that I have seen
better transfers and heard far better sound mixes.
Special Features
I have to say up front before taking you through
these two discs that I wasn't overly impressed
by what has been included here. Though there's
so much material to go through, the material seems
to be very generic in nature. It's as if very little
thought was put into the overall content -- especially
when you compare it to discs like Attack Of The
Clones
and Lord Of The Rings. Another
problem is that since Columbia has issued both
widescreen and full-frame editions, they saved
a wad of cash and included all the supplements in
full-frame only.

As you pop in Disc One you are treated
to a spectacular menu sequence that features a
hand, a spider bite, lots of DNA structuring and
finally a Main Menu that features a window of
flying Spider-Man film clips. Be aware that the
menu overlay contains tiny little buttons that
are hard to navigate through.

Let's take a look at Disc One...
You can opt to watch Spider-Man with
your choice of two full-length commentaries.
The first, Filmmakers and Cast, features
director Sam Raimi, co-producers Laura Ziskin and
Grant Curtis as well as actress Kirsten Dunst. The
second is Visual Effects Designer and Crew
which features John Dykstra and his effects team.
Before you set up this option, you may find an
Easter Egg (click on the left photo of James
Franco) to see a really cool segment featuring
CGI bloopers. Some of this stuff is quite funny.
Now, back to the commentary...
You know, I wasn't overly impressed by the
Filmmaker and Cast commentary, mostly
because it was sort of dull, low-key, and without
any sort of energy from its contributors. I must
say that Raimi must be one of the nicest guys you
would want to meet, but he sounds overly wishy-
washy here. I actually listened to this track
while putting together the screenshots, and was
able to pick up on a few interesting stories. There
is a slip-up where it is brought out that Tobi
had a suit double. An interesting story is told
about the time Raimi brought a handful of spiders
to the set much to the dismay of the cast members.
We learn what shots were actually filmed in New York,
Los Angeles or on the Sony sound stages. Next time
you look at Peter Parker in his bedroom, look
at designs of the background wallpaper. The commentary
will tell you exactly what those patterns are. It
was sort of sad to hear how there were paparazzi
problems in NYC during the filming -- but Maguire
had a cool way of dealing with them. I also had no
idea as to how many cameos were in this film, and
you'll find out most of them as you listen to this
group. Overall, this commentary was a little too
deadpan for me to enjoy, and perhaps some of you
may opt to listen to the SFX commentary. I wish I
had the time.

By enabling Spider Sense before watching
the film, you'll find the occasional addition of
a small Spider-Man icon. By clicking on that icon,
you are branched out to web-i-sodes that give more
insight into the filmmaking process. The segments
interview various people who worked in the production
of the film. Among the 5 or 6 icons I noticed
were segments on model making and production design.
The problem with these little 3-minute episodes is
that they generally have nothing to do with the
segments you are watching, and they are filmed in
full-frame, thus pulling you out of your anamorphic
environment.

Weaving the Web pop-up factoids is very cool.
During the film's playback a cool little transparent
Spider-Man appears in the corner of the screen with
a little cartoon box that gives you an encyclopedia
worth of facts from comic book background, film
locales, costumes, effects tricks as well as how
the actors auditioned for their parts.

Character Files is a very nicely layed
out cast filmography. Essentially, the faces of
the actors appear on the front page of the Daily
Bugle
newspaper, and by clicking on each
actor, you access their film resumes.

Marketing Campaign is an entire section
devoted to the marketing of the film.....
First there's the film's original theatrical
trailer followed by trailers for Mr. Deeds,
XXX, Men in Black 2
and Stuart Little 2.
There are two Music Videos to be found here.
The first is Hero by Chad Kroeger. The
second is What we're all about by Sum 41.
Finally, there are no less than eleven TV Spots
to browse through.
DVD-ROM content on this disc

Disc Two begins with an interesting menu
overlay that breaks down the supplements into two
main sections: Web of Spider-Man: The comic
and Goblin's Lair: The movie. The menu design
may be unique, but it doesn't mean it's good. I was
a bit put off by the controls which are extremely
tiny.

Let's begin with The Web of Spider-Man which
is devoted to the origins of our friendly neighborhood
super hero.

The Evolution of Spider-Man is an entire area
unto itself. Let's take a look at what is offered
here...

Spider-Man: The mythology of the 21st century
is a brand new featurette that begins with the
talent behind the character. Co-creator Stan Lee
describes getting into comics by accident. He was
only looking for a temporary job at a publishing
company that specialized in comics. He never
predicted that he would be doing writing and
editing nor that his creation of Spider-Man would
become a modern-day phenomenon. Nobody was more
surprised about the success of super heroes than
artist John Romita, who thought that the era of
such immortals were dead long ago. Artists Todd
McFarlane and John Byrne give much credit to
Romita's artwork and the fact that the popularity
of the cartoon rested on the beauty of what he drew.
It was so good in fact, that the artwork really
never needed to be updated decades later. It's
sort of neat to see how old school meets new
standards as the themes and characters of the
modern-day Spider-Man comic have somewhat changed.
For example, the character of Peter Parker has
been greatly updated from his 60s persona into a
more brooding persona. It was that changed that
totally revitalized the comic character. This
is a fascinating look at not just an evolution of
a comic strip, but the evolution of a flawed
character that readers were able to easily connect
with.
(length: approx. 25 minutes)

Spider-Man archives is a real gem for anyone
that has collected the Spider-Man comic books over
the past decades. It actually breaks down Spider-Man
comics through the decades starting with the 1960s
on through to the 21st century.

As you click on each decade, a new menu breaks
appears, breaking down that decade by individual
years. Click on a year and it further breaks down
to magazine covers from individual months. Each
comic cover is accompanied by a complete description
of writer, editor, artist and featured story line.

An Artist's Gallery breaks down further
into Peter Parker's darkroom where we find
what appears to be hundreds of still artist
renderings of Environments, Spider-Man and
Green Goblin. There's also an entire
section dedicated to the comic book artists,
called Comic Book artist gallery. It is
here we see some nice renderings from Kevin Maguire,
Mike Allred, J.G. Jones and Terry Dodson (to name
a few).

Rogue's Gallery takes on a more serious
and evil tone as we meet the villains of the
Spider-Man comics including Dr. Octopus,
Chameleon, Hobgoblin, Mysterio
and yes, The
Green Goblin
. There seems to be dozens of
villains to choose from here.

As you select each villain, you get a little
piece of history pertaining to that character as
well as their source of power and the weapons
that they use. There's even some nice 3D
computer renderings you can look at here.

The Loves of Peter Parker gives us a
nice history of Parker's love interests. There's
Betty Brandt, Gwen Stacey, The Black Cat and
Mary Jane Watson.

As you click on each selection you get a beautiful
artist's rendering and short description of her
character. Included are some comic book moments
that define the character relationships.
DVD-ROM content on both discs 1 & 2 includes
a visit to Marvel dot.comics where you can
do some in-depth browsing through classic comic book
material. A Spider-Man visualizer contains
screen savers as well as skins for your RealAudio
and WinAmp players. There's also an Activision
Game Demo
that I didn't look at, mainly because
of the amount of software installation required and
the fact that I would only have to uninstall it
after this review. Still, it looks to be a great
little game based in its content size. There
are also weblinks to Spider-Man internet
material as well as an option where you can Record
your own commentary
.
It is also in this area that I sort of accidently
found a Spider-Man Easter Egg that features
artist Todd Mcfarlane describing how complex it
became to design Spider-Man's web.
To activate the egg, just click the UP
arrow on your remote while in disc two's DVD-ROM
description area.
Activision Game: Hints and Tips has three
hints for the Spider-Man game. Of course, this is
probably only useful to those of you that actually
own the game.

Now let's venture over to Goblin's Lair: The
Movie

First up is the HBO Making of Spider-Man
which is the usual promotional fare we are all
used to seeing on these discs. Still, it provides
some nice interviews with cast members Toby
Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and Willem Dafoe as well
as Director Sam Raimi who talk about the strengths
of Spider-Man. The featurette briefly looks at
the origins of the comic book via an interview
with co-creator Stan Lee, and then goes on to
examine each of the individual film characters
with commentary from the actors who portray them.
We also get to know a little about director Sam
Raimi, his love for the comic, and his skill in
bringing that comic character to the screen.
There's even a terrific look at the set designs
and optical effects work that went into the film.
Intertwined with all these elements are some cool
behind-the-scenes footage. Overall, a much better
fluff piece than I imagined it would be.
(length: approx. 25 minutes)

Next up is the E! Entertainment special,
Spider-Mania which a more souped-up
promotional vehicle for the film. Right off
the bat, stars Maguire and Dunst admit to never
having read the comic book -- but director Sam
Raimi did! His love for the comics greatly
helped him bring all its elements over to the
big screen. It was surprising to hear Stan Lee
talk about his original pitch for the comic
book character -- nobody wanted a super hero who
was not only a teenager, but a teenager with
problems. But in 1962, the public caught eye
of the web wonder in a Final Fantasy issue and
the rest...well...is history! So what's there
to say about this film? How about the struggles
of bringing Spider-Man to the screen.
Producer Avi Arad tells us that such a film could
not have been made with 90s technology. Director
Sam Raimi was most worried about turning the
animated legend into a live-breathing character.
What I found most fascinating here was that the
part of The Green Goblin was being considered for
heavyweights Nicholas Cage and John Malkovich.
It was Willem Dafoe who lobbied for the part,
getting his hands on the script as early as he
could, and sending an audition tape to the director.
(length: approx. 40 minutes)

Director Profile: Sam Raimi is a glossy
piece that features cast and fellow filmmakers
paying homage to the director. Raimi admits that
comics greatly influenced his directing career
as those books laid out the proper format of
telling a story. Stan Lee talks about almost
working with the director on a comic book to
screen adaption of Thor, and is just
thrilled that they finally got to work together
on this film.
(length: approx. 7 minutes)

Composer Profile: Danny Elfman examines
the man who put soul into the Peter Parker character
via the film's musical score. Elfman talks about
creating a soundtrack as if it were a big puzzle --
having to put the big pieces (his themes) in place
before he can concentrate on the smaller ones.
(length: approx. 7 minutes)

Moving right along, we come to a group of Screen
Tests. The first two tests are for actors
Tobey Maguire and J.K. Simmone. I
was surprised to see that the screen test for Toby
was complete with added sound effects (and the
omission of some rough language). A CGI
Spiderman
gives us less than 20 seconds of
animated footage to look at. Finally, Makeup
and Costumes
takes us through the various
stages of progression from a nerdy Peter Parker
to a fully costumed Spider-Man. There are also
tests here for Kirsten Dunst as well as Willem
Dafoe, Cliff Robertson and Rosemary Harris.
I remained pretty straight-faced through the
Gag/Outtake Reel which is mostly highlighted
with Willem Dafoe's grimaces.
(length: approx. 3 minutes)
Final Thoughts

I have been way too spoiled by far better Special
Editions that contain more in-depth supplements
and better overall design to really appreciate this
Spider-Man Special Edition. The mere fact
the studio chose to release a full-frame edition
only shows that it was trying to dumb this set down
for a generic audience.
Still, there's little doubt that anyone is going
to pass up on this set. Columbia could have
released this bare-boned and sales would still
go through the roof. Fortunately, a more bare-boned
release would have given us a slightly better
transfer than what is here.
What are you waiting for? Close your browser
and go out and buy this!
Release Date: November 1, 2002
 

Gavin_L

Second Unit
Joined
Aug 24, 2001
Messages
266
Thanks Ron for your wonderful review. I've been looking forward to the dvd release since I first saw this movie in the movie theaters. Kind of dissappointed about reading about the sound and picture through. I already ordered the movie, and can't wait to get it and watch it, one of my all time movie faves.
 

Thomas H G

Screenwriter
Joined
Aug 10, 2002
Messages
1,034
Sad to hear about the a/v transfer for this. I thought it would be top notch.

Isn't there a super duper gift set for this and does it also have the same transfer/sound options that the regular set you just reviewed?

Thanks for your hard work Ron.
 

DonRoeber

Screenwriter
Joined
Feb 11, 2001
Messages
1,849
Great review Ron. This is the last dvd I'm buying before my November-December blackout goes into effect (family members complain that I buy everything that I want myself), and I'm really looking forward to it. I've decided to spring for the bigger boxed set.
 

Lou Sytsma

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Nov 1, 1998
Messages
6,103
Real Name
Lou Sytsma
Like you said Ron - the bar has been raised by releases like AOTC and LOTR. When something a little more pedestrian comes along it leaves one wanting more.

Hopefully, Columbia will notice the products being released by other studios and take appropriate action with the next release.

As for Spidey - it is indeed a fun movie and one of the few superhero movies where one ends up liking the hero much more than the villian. A nice change of pace.

Great review - again, this is becoming redundant - Ron.

Excelsior!
 

Larry Sutliff

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2000
Messages
2,861
An excellent and thorough review, Ron!
Despite the flaws I'm getting this one the day it is released(and maybe even earlier if I can!;)).
 

jeff lam

Screenwriter
Joined
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Messages
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Location
San Jose, CA
Real Name
Jeff Lam
Anyone know if we can expect a superbit for this title, maybe that would clean up the Audio and Video to what we would expect from a film like this.
 

Kenneth Cummings

Supporting Actor
Joined
Aug 7, 2001
Messages
852
Good review Ron, even so it seems everyone doesn't like the dvd for some reason (DVD File and Digital Bits were both negative). By the way, sometimes you got to watch the images load, as it took thirty minutes to read this review, as the images kept breaking on me.
 

Gregory E

Second Unit
Joined
Feb 19, 2002
Messages
266
Nice review Ron. Although I would have liked to see a screen cap of that "special" Kirsten Dunst shot. ;) I'm also a little concerned about buying this version and having a better special, limited, superbit, deluxe version coming out later...possibly with better audio and video.
 

Patrick Sun

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 30, 1999
Messages
39,660
I have to wonder if the source material is what made the video transfer look not so awesome. IIRC, the theatrical video presentation didn't really have a super-crispness to it, like many current films, so that could have contributed to the video on the DVD after it got compressed from its Hi-def master tape. Also, remember, the CGI of Spidey in motion didn't quite look real smooth either, too much vibra-blurring to denote the swinging speeds of Spidey via CGI, which did stand out in some scenes.
 

Dave Scarpa

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David Scarpa
I'm kind of surprised myself that Panic Room Warranted a Superbit release and a film that grossed so much gets overlooked in the bit rate department to cram as much stuff onto it as possible. This should have been a 3 Disk release right from the Start. Disk One a Superbit release, Disk 2-3 the extras. Now that might mean sacrificing the Commentary, but from Ron's review that does'nt sound like much of a sacrifice to get better video and Audio performance.
 

Ray H

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jun 13, 2002
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NJ
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Ray
Great review, Ron.

I'm one of those Spidey freaks that have been following every bit of news on this film since the late nineties. I was happy with the results, but I'm still pondering this purchase. The audio and video don't sound as good as expected and the features (save for maybe the comic stuff) sound pretty disappointing, especially since the guys at Sony have been promising us a ground-breaking DVD for about a year now.

I'll get this if I can find it cheap. If I can't then I'll wait and see if they come out with a better edition. It seems highly likely as before this, Sony's highest grossing film was MIB, and just look at how many versions have been released of that!
 

Joshua Moran

Supporting Actor
Joined
Apr 11, 2000
Messages
502
Looks like I will be buying the Superbit version as well oh well. It's not always bad to have 2 copies of the same movie in your collection is it? November is looking to be a bad month for me.:D
 
Joined
Oct 21, 2002
Messages
26
Great review! I was worried about this dvd after reading the DVD File review but you've gotten me really excited about it. I can't wait! :)
 

Dan Brecher

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 8, 1999
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Daniel
As I expected really... I was never overwhelmed by the plans for the DVDs content and was upset by the fact Columbia didn't decide to put out a Superbit release (which they are blatantly going to do) on the same day as this versions release.
Chump that I am, I will be getting this version, but for the cheapest I can get it, as it is something I would like to buy as a superbit eventually. Those outside of the US importing the Region 1 disc should be aware that the Spider-Man DVD is RCE encoded. Just FYI on that....
Dan
 

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