With Great Power

When I last blogged nine days ago, I denoted that I had much to “talk about”. “Complain about” would be the better wordage, for I had just come from seeing the 25 films that won the Phoenix 48-Hour Film Challenge. Yes, Alex, Kevin, Gabe and his wife, and myself had gone to the screening of the top 25 films in order to see what beat us. As it turned out, it wasn’t much.
That’s not to take away the vision and finesse beheld by the sole “greatest film” of the night, Klac, but it is to say that aside from a few films, very little stood out as being great, or even better then our film. My reasoning behind that is this: One of the top ten films was nothing more then a taping of a bunch of guys sitting around and “discussing” what they should do for their project. Once you realize the laziness that must go into creating a project like that, you can’t help but feel the very fiber of your integrity being eaten away.
Yes, some of these films were bad.

In fact, they were bad enough that I couldn’t help but question “if these could make it then why couldn’t ours?” As I sat there and had to endure film after film, I remembered one of the sole criticisms that I heard time and again from people who viewed our film: You can see me laughing.
In more then one scene I can’t help but crack up from everything that’s going on around me. If you think it’s funny to watch Kevin Ross, the guy in the sports gear, prance around our washed out office screaming “superbowl”, then just imagine what it was like to physically be there and have him scream it into your face. I couldn’t help but smile every now and then. And wouldn’t you know it, the takes in which I’m smiling are the ones in which Kevin and Gabe give their starkest, most poignant representations of their caricatures. Still, the point hit home within me. I felt that I had costed us the screening. Deep down I believed, and still do believe that because of my numerous crack-ups, the judges decided to pass on us.
Yet that irks me to no end, because the rest of the film came together quite nicely. I have to say that even though my performance was bad, Gabe’s and Kevin’s were quite good. Moreover, the cinematography (I feel) was quite good for a short film that cost virtually nothing. And that’s not me tooting my own horn there; we all had our say in the visual look and feel of the film. Many of those angles are mine, yet I’d wager that Kevin and Alex have just as many. Gabe happened one of my favorite shots, the placid fish-eye shot that represented a security camera.
I guess what I’m getting at is that just because I screwed up my performance doesn’t mean that the other guys and the film itself deserve to be penalized. And that’s probably not what happened, but it’s certainly the theory that’s been running through my head.

After the screening I felt quite despondent. I couldn’t help but consider “if we got beat by stuff like that, what does that have to say about our dream of being filmmakers as a whole?” I was crestfallen. Thankfully, a midnight screening of Spider-Man 2 was the perfect remedy.
Yes, everything you’ve heard about Spider-Man 2 is true: It’s a great comic book film, a fun summer flick, and a touching character drama. But what impressed upon me, especially that night, was that no matter how hard Spider-Man tries, no matter how hard Peter Parker works to set his life aright, Sam Rami has no qualms about keeping things adrift. The first 20 minutes of the film are particularly harsh on the protagonist. We see him drift from job to job with nothing more then a few bucks and some invisible sense of purpose to keep him going. That unseen sense of purpose just might be drawn up from the charismatic Mary Jane, Peter Parker’s love interest from the first film. Yet, Rami and the story is particularly harsh here, using every disadvantage that could be taken from the Spider-Man persona, and directing it towards the dissolution of Peter’s relationship with Mary Jane. And it works. As the film goes on the characters’ ties to one another wilt. Equally as striking is the rift Spider-Man creates between Peter and his friend Harry Osborne. Osborne still remembers the death of his father, and he hasn’t forgotten his promise to get revenge upon Spider-Man. Naturally, he spends most of the film drilling Peter (Spider-Man’s “personal” photographer) on his own secret identity.
With all of these characters intertwining one another and being driven apart by Spider-Man, I felt that Rami had succeeded in recreating the very essence of the comics. That sole essence is this: Peter Parker doesn’t win. Even though he keeps Spider-Man a secret he still ends up paying merely because of his secret persona’s existence. It’s a catch 22; his friends and loved ones aren’t close to him because he keeps himself deliberately at a distance. Yet by revealing his identity, his friends would surely destroy him.
Also noteworthy about the film is Alfred Monilia’s performance as Doctor Otto Octavius, or as he’s later referred to as Doc Ock. The charisma and interplay between him and Peter Parker was nicely done. He’s certainly established as one of the better performances in this series.