SPIDER-MAN 2 - PREVIEW 

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, et al.
Director: Sam Raimi
U.S. Opening Date: June 30, 2004
 

The sequel everybody wants to see!

With the original 2002 movie (has it already been two years?) making a whopping $114,844,116 in its U.S. opening weekend, practically recouping its $139,000,000 production costs in one sweep, we’re talking Big Business and Franchise here. (U.S. box office finally came in at a whopping $403,706,375! That’s excluding lucrative overseas markets, video & DVD sales and rentals, TV rights and so forth!)

So there’s no real doubt about the sequel also doing good business, especially since Spider-man 2 has a simply kick-ass trailer and because audiences responded amiably to the original flick. The much-vaunted special effects may have disappointed, but the movie made up for in characters audiences could truly care and root for. Unlike most summer blockbusters, Spider-man had heart. It may have been a “teenage soapy” as some have complained, but hey! That’s exactly like the original Marvel comics are! Let’s be honest here, folks. . .

No, Sony pictures may be not be too worried about the movie making a neat profit, but they probably are worried about digital piracy. Even despite obvious stringent security arrangements with the original film, a (not bad as far as these things go) copy of the film was available for download from the Internet – the day before before the film’s U.S. release!

An enterprising group of pirates managed to get someone at a cinema take to make a so-called “Telesync” copy of it – the film is shown in a deserted cinema on the screen with a tripod digital camera ideally placed to make the best recording of it. Recording devices are attached directly onto the cinema speakers for optimal results. In this case the movie download featured actual stereo!

Within a week’s time cheaply made pirated DVDs were to be found in South Africa and elsewhere. Consider this: a DVD cover was designed, along with a disc with the usual features (animated menus, chapter headings and even a trailer!), mass produced, smuggled in vast quantities past South African customs from Malaysia – all within the space of less than a week! The movie could be bought from street vendors at traffic stops a full week before its rather speedy S.A. release, which was within two weeks of the U.S. release, in cinemas. (Pirate DVDs of Attack of the Clones hit South African shelves on the morning of the U.S. release - alas, picture and sound quality was as bad as the movie itself . . .) Scary . . .

The Spider-man saga regarding piracy continued: a so-called “SuperVCD” version of excellent – almost DVD-like – quality could be downloaded from the Internet long before the movie’s DVD release. All it took was three CD-ROM discs and all you had a great copy that played on many DVD players (despite Hollywood propaganda the truth is that many pirated DVDs, especially copies of existing DVDs, aren’t actually of such bad quality).

No wonder Hollywood is worried.

Trivia about Spider-Man 2:

• Raimi, Sam (I) officially signed on to direct on 1 April 2002, more than a month before the first film opened.

• For a scene featuring fighting on the exterior of a subway train amidst a crowd of skyscrapers, portions of this film were filmed in Chicago, Illinois on the famous elevated "Loop" standing in for New York City's 9th St. El in Manhattan, torn down in 1940, with routes transferred to underground subway lines. Chicago 'el' trains were made up to appear as 'R'-train cars complete with MTA New York City Subway decals and 'Forest Hills' on their destination board.

• Filming began before an official script was completed.

• Sam Neill was considered to play Doc Ock, as was Robert De Niro.

• Tobey Maguire's participation was in doubt at one point because he was suffering severe back pains. Jake Gyllenhaal, was lined up to play Spider-Man and had already begun preparation, but Maguire decided to take part after all.

• Filming was originally scheduled in February 2003, but Tobey Maguire injured his arm causing filming to be delayed two months.

• Testing with focus groups was done to help determine the film's title, at one point the titles "Spider-Man: No More", "Spider-Man 2 Lives" and "Spider-Man: Unmasked".

• Opening sequence features artwork by artist Alex Ross, which recaps the events in Spider-Man (2002).
   

— Amazon.com

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