lThis box set consists of the standard 2-disc widescreen Special Edition plus a third "Deluxe Edition" disc. The third disc is the only new part of this set, and contains:
Spider-Man 2 Sneak Peek
Special Features
- Spider-Man 2 Sneak Peek
- Behind the Scenes of Spider-Man
- Spider-Man 2 Teaser Trailer
- Activision Spider-Man 2 Playstation 2 Game Teaser Trailer
Subtitles
The worst thing about this new disc is that...well, there's nothing on it.
The short featurettes (Behind the Scenes of Spider-Man) are watchable, if you have nothing else to do and can't wait to hear the final irrelevant production details they scraped from the bottom of a barrel found on the cutting-room floor. Actually, the costume design featurette is almost interesting.
The "Sneak Peek" is so sneaky that one can pretty much skip over it without missing anything. Of course, the same can almost be said of the featurettes, too.
The teaser trailer is worthless, since both it and the full-length theatrical trailer are on Sony's official site (http://www.sony.com/spider-man). In fact, there is more, better content available for free on the official site than there is on this disc.
The game demo is fun for a few minutes, especially the web-swinging, which comes across feeling a lot like the first web-swinging scene in the movie. Unfortunately, the fun wears off pretty quickly-the average human thug takes around a dozen punches to knock out!-and this DVD-ROM feature will probably not be tried by most people, anyway.
The subtitles seem out of place, here, because they are for the Sneak Peek and the featurettes. And they're in Japanese, Spanish, and Portugese(!). This is astonishingly senseless, since a) the featurettes are hardly worth subtitling, and b) the movie itself (on Disc 1) is subtitled in English, French, and Spanish! How thoughtful. Now, Japanese and Portugese speakers can watch the Sneak Peek and the featurettes, but not the movie, and French speakers and hearing-impaired English speakers can watch the movie, but not the Sneak Peek or the featurettes.
The Sneak Peek and featurettes are basically the only things on this disc-a fact lamely obscured by the padded menu, which (as you can see in the map above) lists the Sneak Peek and the Teaser Trailer on the Special Features page, and repeats them on the main menu to disguise the fact that there's nothing else on this disc.
Lest this be a completely negative review, I'll concede that the menu interface itself is greatly improved from the interfaces on the first two discs. No more of those tiny red dots, here-now we have a silhouetted Spider-Man shooting a web towards the various menu options. A definite plus, but a minor one.
I looked for easter eggs, but couldn't find any. Perhaps some will surface in the near future. Given the lack of content on this disc, I wouldn't bet on it.
Overall, the rumors are true-the Deluxe Edition is a waste of money! It comes with a free ticket for the next movie, which makes up for the money you spend if you live near a multiplex and don't already have this one on DVD. If you do, however, own one of the previous DVD releases and absolutely must pick up one of the new editions, I'd recommend shelling out for the Superbit one. That release includes the feature commentary by Tobey Maguire, which, as a "new" commentary, is worth more than everything on this third disc combined.
I'm not exaggerating when I say the high point here is probably Kirsten Dunst tucking in her tank top at the end of the Costume Design featurette. Yes, this is a bad sign. No, it's not worth it.
So does anyone want to buy a used 2-disc widescreen Special Edition? I'll part with it for a mere CDN$15..
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