Releaste Date: June 30 2004
DVD Release Date: November 30 2004
Rating: PG13

 Tobey Maguire returns as the mild-mannered Peter Parker, who is juggling the delicate balance of his dual life as a college student and a superhuman crime fighter. The entertaining adventure escalates and Spider-Man’s life becomes even more complicated when he confronts a new nemesis, the brilliant Otto Octavius, (Alfred Molina) who has been reincarnated as the maniacal and multi-tentacled “Doc Ock.

Immediately after finishing Spider-man, director Sam Raimi segued into directing a sequel. In April 2002, Sony hired Alfred
Gough and Miles Miller to write a script with Doctor Octopus, the Lizard and Black Cat as villains. On May 8th, following Spider-man’s record breaking $115 million opening weekend, Sony Pitctures announced a sequel for 2004 entitled The Amazing Spider-man, after the character’s main comic book title. The film was given a budget of $200 million and aimed for a release date of May 7 2004. The following month, David Koepp was added to co-write with Gough and Millar.

 In September 2002, Michael Chabon was hired to rewrite. His draft had a younger Doc Ock, who becomes infatuated with Mary Jane. His mechanical limbs use endorphins to counteract the pain of being attached to his body, which he enjoys. When he injures two muggers on a date, this horrifies Mary Jane and in the resulting battle with Spider-Man his tentacles are fused together, and the fusion begins to kill him. In the script, Octavius is the creator of the genetically-altered spider from the first film, and gives Peter an antidote to remove his powers: this means when Octavius is dying with his tentacles, he wants to extract Spider-Man’s spine to save himself. This leads to the alliance with Harry in the final film. Beforehand, Harry and the Daily Bugle put a $10 million price on Spider-Man’s head, causing the city’s citizens to turn against him. Producer Avi Arad rejected the love triangle angle on Ock, and found Harry putting a price on Spider-Man’s head was unsubtle.

 Raimi sifted through the previous drafts by Gough, Millar, Koepp and Chabon, picking what he liked with screenwriter Alvin Sargent. He felt that thematically the film had to explore Peter’s conflict with his personal wants against his responsibility, exploring the positive and negatives of his chosen path, and how he ultimately decides that he can be happy as a heroic figure. Raimi stated the story was partly influenced by Superman 2, which also explored the titular hero giving up his responsibilities. The story is mainly taken from The Amazing Spider-man #50, “Spider-Man No More!” It was decided that Doc Ock would be kept as the villain, as he was both a visually interesting villain who was a physical match for Spider-Man, and a sympathetic figure with humanity. Raimi changed much of the character’s backstory however, adding the idea of Otto Octavius being a hero of Peter, and how their conflict was about trying to rescue him from his demons rather than kill him.

 Spider-Man 2 opened in the United States on June 30 2004, and grossed $40.4 million in its first day; this was the second highest opening day, after The Matrix Reloaded. The film was generally well received by fans and critics. In it’s first six days, the film had grossed over $180 million and eventually went on to gross $373.5 million, becoming the second-highest grossing film of 2004, behind Shrek 2. Worldwide, the film grossed $783.8 million, ranking behind Shrek 2 and the third Harry Potter film. Spider-Man 2’s gross is currently among the all-time top ten grossing films domestically (#10) and is among the top twenty-five worldwide (#21}. Spider-Man 2 won an Academy Award for Visual Effects and was nominated for Sound and Sound Editing. The film won Saturn Awards for Best Actor, Best Director, Best Fanasty Film, Best Visual Effects, and Best Writer. It was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Best Sound and for two BAFTA awards for Special Visual Effects and Sound. AFI listed the movie as one of the 10 Best Films of 2004. Spider-Man 2 topped Rottenes’s list of the best-reviewed comic book movies of all time, beating out X2: X-men United, Batman Begins, and Superman The Movie.

An extended cut of the film, with eight minutes of new footage, was released as Spider-Man 2.1 on DVD on April 17 2007. In addition to the new cut, the DVD also included new special features not on the original release, as well as a sneak preview of Spider-man 3.

Spider-man 2 Bloopers and Mistakes

Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen, both are invisible gasses, so the glass spheres Octavius uses to contain it should appear empty, not filled with gold-colored metal.
Peter has a small horseshoe-shaped scar on his right cheek. In Dr. Octopus’s lab, as Octopus is destroying the fusion reactor, they share a meaningful look and the scar has switched cheeks.

At the end of the “I’ve changed” conversation with Mary Jane, the taxi is right next to her (you can see its roof next to her face), yet in the very next shot the only nearby taxi is across the street.

 Harry tells Doc Ock that in order to find Spider-Man he must find Peter first. Doc Ock finds Peter with Mary Jane in the cafe and throws a car through the window straight at them. Any normal man would’ve been killed instantly, and Doc Ock doesn’t know that Peter is Spiderman. Given that Peter is his only lead on Spiderman, it makes no sense that Doc Ock would effectively try to kill him.
In the bank scene, when Doc Ock throws the vault door at Peter and Aunt May and they slide to either side of it, you can see the cables under Peter’s chair used to pull it.

During the train scene, Spiderman’s mask had gone partially black. We also see it when Spidey puts his mask back on. Yet when Doc brings him to Harry, we don’t even see a patch of darkness on his mask.

In the scene immediately after Peter decides he’s not going to be Spider-man anymore, he stops to buy a hot dog from a street vendor. As he walks away from the vendor’s stand, he lowers the hot dog out of the frame while he watches the cop cars go wailing by. When he raises his hand back into the frame and takes a bite of the hot dog, you can see that there is no longer a hot dog in the bun. Nothing to do with Tobey Maguire being a vegetarian, as the sausage was tofu anyway.

In the scene with Peter and Mary Jane in the cafe before Doc Ock arrives, the street scene outside is a video loop. Some of the same events happen twice or more, spread over a few minutes

Considering the brightness of the fusion process, Dr. Octavius has to wear special goggles to be able to see it. Yet no one else in the room is wearing such goggles or seem hurt by watching the whole process, just as at the end of the movie. When welding something, no one can look at the arc that’s created, as it would hurt his eyes and burn his retina; presumably, the fusion process would be brighter and more powerful than that, and so should have some kind of damaging effect on everyone’s eyesight (except Spider Man’s, maybe).

Teaser Trailer

 

Trailer

 

TV Spot