Shows : Spider-Man 2 - DVD (2-Disc)

In Detail...

The one sort-of cool aspect of the documentaries is that the brief snippets of interviews include sessions with people like Joe Queseda, Jeff Loeb, and Bruce Campbell (!). Stan Lee also gets some interview time, and as blustery as he can be, it's actually sort of comforting to see him in these documentaries. He may not say much that diehard fans don't already know, but it's nice to know he's still alive and kicking.

In general, the featurettes are more satisfying than the documentaries because the featurettes don't primarily concern themselves with things you couldn't care less about. Here we find interesting digressions on heroism, Doc Ock, and the Women of Spider-Man: again, not exactly entirely groundbreaking, but certainly insightful and enjoyable commentary.

The Women of Spider-Man featurette is curious in its selection of women: Mary Jane Watson and Betty Brant (correctly spelled, finally) are obvious choices for treatment, being significant characters who appear in both the comics and the movies. For all the short shrift Betty's character has been given thus far in the movies, it's only fair that viewers should get to see this little bit more of her and Elizabeth Banks (the actress who portrays her). Somewhat less obvious (though no less important) a choice for inclusion is Gwen Stacy, because she isn't in the movies...or isn't she? Joe Queseda contributes an interesting perspective on this. Aunt May and, for god's sake, Ursula (the skinny daughter of Peter's landlord in S2) are dropped in as padding, for lack of any other significant women in this movie. Aunt May I can see, but Ursula??? Stan Lee exhibits some unusually infectious enthusiasm for the Peter-MJ-Gwen love triangle.

The cast/crew commentary is also pretty standard and unremarkable. My biggest gripe about it is that the commentaries provided by the four cast and crew members are "phoned in"... patched together from two separate commentaries. Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire on one commentary, Grant Curtis and Avi Arad on the other. This is not uncommon practice, but I feel the viewer is always short-changed by these sorts of commentary tracks because a) it is implied that everyone heard during the commentary is watching the movie together, when in fact they are watching it in smaller groups at different times, and b) when one pair is commenting, the other pair's comments on the particular scene are necessarily blocked out. You can get some very odd commentary this way, such as Avi Arad's long digression on Doctor Octopus during the scene where we see Peter's apartment for the first time.

Disc One offers audio in English, French, and Spanish, while Disc Two offers subtitles for the bonus material in Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese. Apparently, only Spanish speakers get the full range of options! My last minor observation is that there's some pretty zany background music mixed into several spots for no real reason.

Summary...

By Ricardo Laskaris (E-Mail)