Tara and I took this in, this starting sunny, but turning stormy Saturday, this Memorial Day weekend.
The Spiderman trilogy was blessed with an outstanding cast. MJ is the ideal girl next door, reminds me of 2D's dear Vicky, likewise a redhead. Peter plays his part to the hilt. Tara liked Harry's performance, plus we both admire his dad, the gas station attendant in eXistenZ.
These comics are ostensibly about outward events, but turn dreamlike very quickly. Like, the police chief and (Parker double) boyfriend photographer are so remarkably blasé about the fear and trembling going on in that skyscraper (wayward crane scene) just as Parker isn't tracking as MJ spirals.
The loneliness of life then comes crashing inward to the game-like solution of making it be about vengeance, and bringing out the cruel devil in us all. We become monsters, relishing the tortures we dish out to one another.
The Sandman was especially Ozymandias-like, perennial, eternal. All he has is his daughter. He reminds me of a spirit in Spirited Away. And yes, Marvel weaves in frankly Christian imagery, an integral theme in Industrial Gothic, likewise the backdrop for batman, another of the darker, more psychological profiles.
But Spidey is more shaded towards Superman, less dark. The vengefulness-producing creature, crash landing from outer space, reminds us of Smallville's newest denizen, while Peter's subsequent "putting on the Ritz" (becoming the debonair man about town, and going overboard doing so) likewise alludes to young Clark's "black kryptonite" induced erotic aggression, or blame "teen hormones" in some stories, in the background reality against which these comics were first drawn.
Peter abuses the police chief's daughter (once again the victim) just to get back at MJ, Harry having torqued up the love triangle exponentially, feeling taken advantage of in his paranoia (but the butler talks him out of it -- shades of Batman again).
Physics also plays an interesting role in this film, as a center of diagnosis and early warnings, with the zoom-ins to the physiological effects very bleep-like. But then physicist carelessness begets Sandman's genesis in the first place -- no wonder we're on such intimate terms with creation.
But let me zoom back and say again that I appreciate the whole cast in this series, including the small cameos. These are truly marvelous tellings, real Scheherazade numbers with plenty of mirrors.
