The Amyrlin gave an exasperated sigh. “You remind me of my uncle Huan. No one could ever pin him down. He liked to gamble, too, and he’d much rather have fun than work. He died pulling children out of a burning house. He wouldn’t stop going back as long as there was one left inside. Are you like him, Mat? Will you be there when the flames are high?”

He could not meet her eyes. He studied his fingers as they plucked irritably at his blanket. “I’m no hero. I do what I have to do, but I am no hero.”

“Most of those we call heroes only did what they had to do. I suppose it will have to be enough.”

— from Robert Jordan’s The Dragon Reborn, p. 183

“Go get ‘em, tiger!”

— Mary Jane Watson to Peter Parker

I was reminded of that passage by one scene in Spider-Man 2. Peter Parker, at the nadir of his life — his powers have left him, he’s lost his job, he can’t pay the rent, the girl he loves is going to marry the astronaut son of the publisher he abhors, he’s failing his science class, even his eyes have gone all blurry again and he has to wear glasses — walks past a burning building and hears people crying out that there’s a child still inside, on the second floor. Does he hesitate? Well, yes … but not for long. He dodges around the firemen, races into the building, runs up burning stairs, has to break through a locked door — not all that easy for someone without spider-strength — finds the child, then gets out over a floor that’s on fire and collapsing under him, carrying the little girl. And then feels like a failure because he later hears that there was someone else, up on the fourth floor, who didn’t get out.

It is, I think, a pity that you can’t always give a movie its correct name. But what right-minded person would line up to see a film called Peter and Mary Jane? Because, believe it or not, the real hero of this film isn’t Spider-Man. Spider-Man is nothing but a funny costume that a frightened young man uses to keep people from finding out who he is — and, in this film, isn’t even very successful at that. The hero is Peter Parker, nerd and failure — Peter Parker, who for some reason and in some way, when given a horrible decision to make, always manages to make the right one. Spider-strength, spider-sense, spider-powers are all just frosting on the cake.

The film starts showing Peter (Tobey Maguire) after his loft days are over with — Harry Osborn (James Franco) has moved into his father’s town house, and Peter now occupies a sleazy third-floor walk-up. He has a job delivering pizzas, but he’s not very good at it — he keeps getting sidetracked by children running in front of a truck and that sort of thing. Professor Curt Connors (Dylan Baker) warns him that he will be failed if he doesn’t turn in the paper he’s promised and start paying attention to his homework. And everywhere he’s surrounded by pictures of the girl he loves — Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), after an inauspicious start to her career (in the first movie she was rejected by a soap opera for being unable to act, and was forced to hire out as a waitress in a fourth-rate coffee-house), has become a supermodel and actress, staring in an off-Broadway presentation of The Importance of Being Earnest, which her good friend Peter has yet to see. To add insult to injury, Peter finds himself losing his powers, and ends up consulting a doctor about these dreams he’s been having — I mean, a friend of his has been having — about being Spider-Man. Oh, and Aunt May is about to be evicted. And, of course, Harry has become alienated by Peter’s putative relationship with Spider-Man, who, Harry believes, killed his father.

Enter Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), a far more likeable character than his comic-book prototype. The kindly Octavius, the subject of the paper Peter is supposed to write, tells him during an interview that Peter’s gift (his scientific knowledge) should not be wasted — Octavius is a friend of Connors, and knows all about Peter’s scholastic problems — but used for the good of mankind. Octavius intends to use his own gift in this way, but in a major accident (at which Peter, and so Spider-Man, is present) the super-waldoes he is using are welded to his spine and their inborn artificial intelligence takes over his brain and turns him into Doctor Octopus, ⁽¹⁾ the sort of super-criminal who can rip bank-vault doors out of the wall and scuttle up the side of buildings with a panache that Spider-Man could envy. Ultimately, to get more tritium to finish his experiment (and potentially annihilate New York), he makes a deal with Harry — Spider-Man for the tritium.

And meanwhile, as suggested, Peter has his own problems.

The strange thing is that there are really no villains in this film. Obviously Doc Ock is the putative villain, and Harry has some of the characteristics; but when the chips are down, Harry gives up his revenge on Spider-Man to let the city be saved, and even Otto Octavius comes through over Doctor Octopus in the end. Even ordinary citizens are allowed to demonstrate heroism here (subway passengers to Doc Ock: “You’ll have to go through us to get him (Spider-Man)” — must be the same people who were throwing bottles and bricks at the Green Goblin in the first movie ^[2]).

I would like to make a couple of negative comments about this film, for the sake of objectivity, but you know what? I can’t think of any offhand.

Oh, and everybody is back for this film; there are even cameo appearances by the dead (Cliff Robertson as Uncle Ben, Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn).

⁽¹⁾ Nickname courtesy of J. Jonah Jameson’s minion Hoffman (Ted Raimi).

⁽²⁾ I read the Peter David novelization of the movie after writing this, and you know what? David agreed with me!