Sam Raimi Spider Man 2 Interview

RAIMI: I don't want to create any false mystery or confound the fans. But it's similar to telling a joke. I don't want someone telling the first half of the joke, someone else saying the joke takes place in a bar, and someone else giving away the punch line. I want the audience to have the best firsthand experience of living the story as told to them by the actors.

Can you say anything about the story or themes of the second film?

"With great power comes great responsibility" has been enough over the years. We're just playing with variations on that theme.

You developed a Spider-Man camera in the first film to really give fans the feeling of swinging between the skyscrapers of New York. Will you use it again?

The camera system was developed by Earl Wiggins, a great engineer, who recently passed away. It's been nicknamed the "Spydercam." We only got to use the device on one shot in the first film when Spider-Man swings through the city. It was so expensive to program and time-consuming to use that we had to limit it to that one shot. We've tried to reallocate our resources on this one to really enhance the Spider-Man sequences when he's soaring through the city. This is a great tool to provide really dizzying and beautifully elegant plates to put Spider-Man into.

You had an extended shooting schedule in New York. Was it enough time to shoot?

Shooting in New York was wonderful. We really got access to a tremendous amount of very unusual locations. The police were wonderful too at protecting the crew and making sure we didn't interfere with the daily lives of New Yorkers too much by blocking the roads and sidewalks. Under Production Designer Neil Spisak's watchful eye, we were able to choose great locations that allowed us to bring a much bigger and more diverse image of New York for Spider-Man 2. I would have loved to have more time in New York. There was so much more we could have done there. We did get a lot of street scenes, a lot of scenes that displayed the location prominently and of equal importance was getting all of the New York plates for the optical effects that we’ll put Spider-Man and Doc Ock into.

How did you choose Alfred Molina as Doc Ock?

He was simply the best actor for the job. Age was a factor. I wanted to be true to the idea that Doc Ock was an older gentleman, not Peter's age, not a young fellow. And he's got a certain amount of heft to him. He's a larger man. And I think that the great Marvel writers and artists, when creating him, realized he needed to be a big guy to believably bear the weight of these arms. But despite all the guidelines from the comic books, this is really a character Alfred is creating. Of course, he's had help from all the great writers we've had: from Alvin Sargent to Michael Chabon to [Alfred] Gough and [Miles] Millar and David Koepp. He's really performing a character that those gentlemen have been creating.

The last film ended with Harry Osborn believing that Spider-Man murdered his father, the Green Goblin. Will Harry have a bigger role in this film?

Harry will play as large a role in this film as he did in the first one, but one more critical to the story. And James Franco is turning in an excellent performance and I'm very impressed with him so far.

We hear the script for Spider-Man 2 is a long one. How long will the film be?

It is a long script and it'll have to be cut down to make a two-hour film. When finished it should run around two hours.

The original Spider-Man was an effects-heavy extravaganza; does Spider-Man 2 have more of the same?

I think we have just about the same number of effects that we did in the first film. There’s not more action and it’s not on a grander scale either. We’re trying to improve the quality of everything that we do in every way, though. There are time constraints on us that are more restrictive than the last film. I just hope we’re successful.