The New Gold Standard: Spider-Man the Movie
Peter Parker does "something wrong. Once." (To quote Burt Lancaster in The Killers.) And that one selfish act, committed by an otherwise open-hearted and generous person, results in a loss that will haunt him forever. That is the fear we all live with: that no matter how careful we are, we will make one mistake that will ruin everything. That is where we identify most with Peter. We've all made critical mistakes, usually -- but not always -- reparable. In most cases, no one dies because of them. But we all come close to that edge. Peter falls off of it.
For him, his newfound spider-powers are the key to redeeming himself in his own eyes for a "sin" no one else but he thinks he committed, but for which he can never forgive himself.
The most enduring heroic narratives, from the Bible to the Greek Myths to the archetypal comics heroes -- Superman, Batman, Spider-Man -- deal with loss of family, discovery of power, the journey from helplessness to mastery, and learning how to best use that mastery. "With great power comes great responsibility," is what Peter's Uncle Ben tells the young man shortly after he gets his spider-powers. That's a lesson Peter learns the hard way, as do we all. Learning it is what makes him a hero. The Green Goblin, played by Willem Dafoe, also has great power. But his sense of responsibility is only to himself. His supposed family loyalty is just an excuse to abuse power. In a role that echoes, both in dialogue and in gesture, Brando, Pacino and DeNiro in the Godfather films, with a little Darth Vader thrown in, Dafoe ably fills the role of Norman Osborn, madman industrialist. As Osborn's alter ego, the Green Goblin…well, to me, that's the movie's weakest point. The costume does all the acting -- or non-acting -- when Dafoe (or whatever stuntman) is in it.
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