Word: goblins
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...Metropolis," a resonant fact, considering the real-life supervillainy his hometown has suffered. Unlike WW II comics' patriotism, Spider-Man's nods to the current war era are more elliptical. The World Trade Center towers were excised from one scene; New Yorkers refusing to be terrorized by the Green Goblin sound a note of Let's-Roll-ism. (The American flag filling the screen in the final moments, on the other hand, is as subtle as a black-widow bite.) It might be off-putting, seeing a superhero saving New York, reminding us that there was no one to catch...
...original--faithful to a fault. Spidey, a.k.a. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), is still the teen dweeb from Queens with a crush on the girl next door (Kirsten Dunst), a dose of genetically altered spider DNA in his veins and a compulsion to save the world from the gaudy Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe). Sure, he can leap tall buildings with several sticky bounds, but he's also nearly grounded by a load of unresolved guilt. Plenty of classic heroes--Oedipus, Hamlet, Luke Skywalker--are obliged to kill a father figure; by the time this movie is over, Peter is responsible...
...makes this Spider-Man a nest of conflicting ambitions. Every Hollywood marketing impulse screams for the movie to be zippily cartoonish. Yet the story is also Rebel Without a Cause: an agitated boy, the girl he loves, his best friend (James Franco as the Goblin's son) and some adults who never quite get it. Will Spider-Man be Ghostbusters or Ghost World...
There's a new axis of evil threatening the world's security - Dr. Octopus, Magneto, the Kingpin of Crime, and the Green Goblin (among others). Fortunately, the forces of light are mobilizing too - Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, the X-Men. Battles between good and evil are poised to commence in cinemas around the world, starting soon...
There was plenty of room for humor in his work, and none for deadly seriousness or pretension. The little personages of Klee's imagination are now absurd and bathetic, now goblin-like, now intrusive, but never really menacing; they interact beautifully with their titles. (One of many possible favorites was Hero with a Wing, a deliciously self-deflating proposition, since no such hero could be expected to fly as heroes should.) Klee found authority absurd; he didn't viscerally hate it, like the Dadaists, but he poked fun at it, as in The Great Emperor Rides...