Spider-Man 2



Spider-Man 2 is a 2004 American superhero film directed by Sam Raimi.

Peter is struggling to find balance in his life, as the increasing burden of being Spider-Man gets in the way of his relationship with his friends, family, and the woman he loves. Once the stress begins to cause his powers to work inconsistently, he decides to give up being Spider-Man once and for all. This comes at a bad time, since the brilliant scientist Dr. Otto Octavius is caught in a Freak Lab Accident that not only kills his wife, but also attaches four mechanical tentacles to his body. Going insane, he becomes the evil "Doctor Octopus" and is determined to retry the failed experiment on a much bigger scale, For Science!, of course. With the city in danger and his relationship with Mary Jane in doubt, Peter is forced to "get back to work". The film is considered one of the best superhero films of all time.

"Peter: Hi. Mary Jane: (somewhat disbelieving) Hi. Peter: ...this is really heavy."
 * A.I. Is a Crapshoot/Psycho Prototype: The tentacles - they tend to do things that protect themselves and Octavius, but are extremely twisted in their ways, and are more keen to destroy to get what Otto wants rather than anything else.
 * Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese version uses a song called "Web of Night" by T.M. Revolution.
 * Antagonist in Mourning
 * Anti-Climactic Unmasking: Played straight and then averted. The first time Peter loses his mask, the crowd of people don't know who he is. The second and third time it's taken off, Harry, Dr. Octavius, and Mary Jane recognize him.
 * Anti-Villain: Dr. Octopus. Now, when he's bad, he's really bad. But his whole nature is still so tragic, and he does redeem himself in the end.
 * Artistic License Physics:
 * Nuclear fusion really is the process by which the sun generates energy. But a nuclear fusion reactor won't look like the sun unless it's as big as the sun (over a million kilometers across). The reason the sun has prominences and a photosphere and sunspots and all the rest is because there are thousands upon thousands of kilometers of hot gas that aren't undergoing nuclear fusion, sitting on top of the core and obscuring it from view.
 * And, worse, the reactor in the movies doesn't just look like the sun, it looks like the sun filmed in X-ray light and shown in false color so that we mere humans can see its surface structure.
 * On top of that, you'd think that dipping small piece of the sun into a large body of water to quench it down would provoke a devastating explosion of steam, if not outright plasma from all the ionized hydrogen and oxygen.
 * Peter stops a train by creating bungies either side of it with webbing, and then using his own body to hold it all together at the front of the engine, risking tearing himself apart. A completely unnecessary risk, as the webbing would still break if it wasn't strong enough to stop the train. The fact that it doesn't break shows that he could have just created a bung of safety nets out of webbing and let it stop the train on its own.
 * Badass Bystander: Everyone in the train when rise up against Octavius to protect Spider-Man... they don't succeed, but it takes some stones to stand up to a villain with 4 mechanical arms.
 * Peter does this earlier in the film, when sans powers, he runs into a burning building to rescue a trapped child. He gets her out safely, but unfortunately, then finds out that there were more people trapped on the fourth floor that didn't make it.
 * Badass Grandma: Aunt May! When she is captured by Doc Ock, she lets the Doc know that she's not going down without a fight...by jabbing the end of her umbrella toward his eye.
 * Big No: Octavius lets a particularly narmful out when he sees the murder and destruction his tentacles have wreaked while he was unconscious, and then lets another one out as he is dragged underwater with his overloading fusion machine. The second one manages to be fairly tragic, as he had just made his Heel Face Turn and his last comment was a pledge not to die a monster, only to immediately be dragged to his death.
 * Not quite as tragic as that. It wasn't that Octavius wasn't willing to die; he wasn't willing to die a MONSTER--that is, as a murderous bastard only concerned with his own desires. He died a hero.
 * Blade Below the Shoulder: The tentacles have a blade inside them.
 * Brilliant but Lazy: Trope Namer.
 * Casual Danger Dialog: In the final scene, where Peter is unmasked and rushes to save MJ from a falling object.

"That's crap."
 * Call Back: In the first film, Spider-Man attempts to save a woman from a burning building, but it turns out to be Green Goblin wrapped in a blanket. In this film, Peter (temporarily powerless) braves another burning building to save a child who is wrapped in a blanket, which happens to be Green. Get it?
 * Combat Tentacles: Doc Ock.
 * Comic Book Movies Don't Use Codenames: JJJ spends a scene trying to figure out what to name the new supervillain on the block. "Doctor Octopus" is almost immediately a suggestion, but it gets turned down just as quickly.


 * Conspicuous Trenchcoat: Doc Ock uses one to hide his tentacles when he robs a bank.
 * Continuity Cameo: Doctor Curt Conners appears as Peter's professor (the one who threatens to fail him for being Brilliant but Lazy).
 * Crucified Hero Shot
 * Cut the Juice
 * Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Octavius' tentacles.
 * Disposable Fiance: John Jameson.
 * Disproportionate Retribution: JJJ is finally convinced that Spider-Man is a hero and was really fighting for the good guys this entire time...up until Spidey takes back his superhero suit from JJJ's office, causing him to accuse Spider-Man of being a thief which is funny, given that Jonah pretty much scammed the suit off the guy who found it.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: Peter's emotional crisis causes him to lose his web-shooting ability. It happens to a lot of guys.
 * Also "You can't get off if you don't get on." When MJ is telling Peter they can't just pick up where they left off.
 * Drowning My Sorrows
 * Evil Hand: The tentacles have an advanced AI.
 * Foreshadowing: "My Rosie's dead... my dream is dead... and these monstrous things should be at the bottom of the river... along with me."
 * Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Doc Ock during most of the film.
 * Genre Savvy: Robbie Robertson, who pointedly gives Peter a look that he's noticed that Spider-Man just happened to be at the same place as he was.
 * Glad I Thought of It: JJ "christening" Octopus.
 * Go Through Me: Civilians try to protect the injured Spiderman from Doc Ock. They fail.
 * Hand Wave: A major one. In reality, it would take Dr. Octavius thousands of years and a solar system's worth of space to create a protostar, not a few moments. Secondly, the heat generated from the protostar would kill everyone within a short radius instantly, but since this is Fiction Land, all the writers need is a scoop of Unobtainium to avoid accusations of Critical Research Failure.
 * Held Gaze: Peter and Mary Jane continually throughout the movie. In one notable instance that Doc Ock destroys their mutual Held Gaze presages an Almost Kiss.
 * He's Back: Subverted once, although it was easy to see coming, and then played straight.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Dr. Temperance Brennan will not pay for late pizza.
 * Holding Out for a Hero
 * How Do I Shot Web?: Appropriately enough.
 * I Have This Friend: Peter recounting his loss of powers about his...sorry, his friend's dream of being Spider-Man and losing his powers to his doctor.
 * Ironic Birthday
 * Lampshade Hanging: Courtesy your friendly, neighborhood J. Jonah Jameson.
 * "Guy named Otto Octavius winds up with eight limbs. What are the odds?"
 * Although to be fair a guy with the name Octavius would be far more likely to build something based on the number eight.
 * Last Second Chance
 * Morality Chip: On the robotic arms. Predictably, it gets destroyed.
 * Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Dr. Octopus.
 * Morally-Bankrupt Banker
 * Multi-Armed Multitasking: Dr. Octopus does this when he builds the new sun-generator machine, with his long metallic tentacles.
 * Mythology Gag: Possibly, with Dr. Octopus holding Aunt May hostage. In the earlier comics, May (true to form at the time) was blissfully unaware that Dr. Octopus was a bad man, in this movie however, it's pretty clear.
 * Never Mess with Granny: Aunt May, especially when she has an umbrella.
 * New Era Speech
 * No Sympathy: MJ continually drags poor Peter through the mud for missing her play, being too self-absorbed to realize that an impoverished student already has too many balls in the air without also moonlighting as a crimefighter. True, he did promise her that he'd come, but sometimes in life people have no control over whether or not they can keep their promises. Grown-ups get that.
 * Especially since he still presumably had the ticket as proof that he didn't blow her off if he chose to show it to her.
 * Octavius' reputation is totally destroyed and Harry even acts like he's a crackpot later on in the film, despite the fact that his experiment for the most part actually worked and for a few minutes he actually created a fricking Sun.
 * Oh Crap: A nice group example, seconds before "...it's a web!!"
 * Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Octavius is brilliant nuclear physicist who has nearly perfected a viable source of infinite power from nuclear fusion. On the way, he has also made revolutionary breakthroughs in robotics and software engineering to create his intelligent arms. Not only that, but he must have developed an extremely effective power source even before the fusion reactor just to power the extremely strong arms.
 * Panty Shot: Near the end as that wall's about to fall on Mary Jane and just before Peter catches it. Mary Jane falls backards, the wind blows her skirt up, giving the audience a quick view of her white panties.
 * The Paragon: Aunt May points out to Peter that Spider-Man is a symbol of hope to people who are in the face of despair and that you trust him when he'll tells you to hold on for a minute longer, and that even the boy across the street wants to be Spider-Man when he grows up.
 * This saves Peter at the end when the people on the train rally against Octavius to protect an unconscious Peter, seeing him unmasked and realising that the hero putting himself in harms way to save them is "just a kid, no older than my son".
 * Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: Peter loses his powers due to being unconsciously conflicted about whether or not to keep being Spider-Man.
 * Recut The film has a 2.1 edition where the fight scenes are extended.
 * Rooftop Confrontation: Subverted. A fight between Spider-Man and Octavius begins on the roof of a building, but they end up chasing each other all over the city.
 * Runaway Bride: MJ leaves a note to let the groom know he's been abandoned at the altar.
 * Shallow Love Interest: MJ seems like this in this movie more than the others. While the first film and especially the third showcased her own life and problem, here all of her scenes exist solely to provide romantic angst for Peter.
 * To be fair, she did pour her heart and soul out and tell Peter she loved him at the end of the last movie... and he still wanted to just be friends. Given that her father was abusive, her last two boyfriends (Flash, and Harry) treated her poorly actually gives her serious cause to have trust issues when it comes to men, particularly as to why the only good man she's ever known and who clearly loves her keeps bailing on her.
 * Shaky POV Cam: It's a Sam Raimi movie, what did you expect?!
 * Sinister Shades: the ones Otto wears when he abducts Mary Jane
 * Thirty Minutes or It's Free: played straight with the opening sequence
 * This Is Your Brain on Evil
 * Trainstopping - Peter uses webs as a stretch net to brake the train to a stop
 * Traintop Battle - including runaway train; quite ironically, the entire train fight is a case of Chicago doubling, as the scene was filmed on Chicago's 'L' system (there are no subways in New York City that have trains fitted out with fold-in doors)
 * Unobtainium: Osborn's tritium.
 * Although it is an unusual example, since tritium is a real substance and is used in some fusion experiments. However, real tritium is nothing like the substance portrayed in the movie, and it effectively functions as Unobtainium that just happens to have a semi-accurate name.
 * Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: Provides the page image. One of the funniest examples too.
 * Under the Truck: Spidey is chasing two crooks in a car and naturally, a truck pulls out in the way. Rather than slide under, Spidey swings through the gap between the cab and trailer.
 * What Could Possibly Go Wrong? with that nuclear experiment.
 * When Things Spin, Science Happens