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Early Addition
Peter Parker, please. Gothamist can understand artistic license. We can understands leaps of faith necessary to forward a movie plot. But we cannot sit and not comment on the subway problem in Spider-Man 2. Spider-Man 2 is clearly set in New York City: Peter Parker goes to Columbia University, Aunt May lives in Queens... which is why it killed us to see Spider-Man and Doc Ock fight on top of a subway (an R train it seems, from the Bay Ridge sign) that was running amidst city skyscrapers. As anyone, native New Yorker or first-time visitor knows, there are no subways that run aboveground in midtown Manhattan amongst tall buildings. Therefore, this subway could only be the El in Chicago. But not content to keep the subway in Chicago, the train suddenly is in Queens or Brooklyn, with taxi cabs and traffic underneath the elevated tracks, and then is back in Chicago as the action moves back to the roof of the subway car. It was so confusing to Gothamist that it hurt our head. And now, this idea that there are elevated trains running through midtown is being perpetuated with the movie's monster box office! We would expect this of some hack job from Roland Emmerich, but not "classy" production like Spider-Man 2. What kind of fools do you think we are? Oh, wait...
Other than that, Gothamist was pretty entertained by the film, aside from the whole "where is Gwen Stacy" scandal and little kids, bored by Peter Parker getting in touch with his feelings, who talked loudly, only to have others yell at them, "Go see Shrek!" And who knew there was a D'Agostino at Lafayette and Astor Place?
Other movies involving the NYC subway: The French Connection, Money Train, Ghost, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3.
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You've got a point about the subway scene. Everytime Spidey and Doc Ock were fighting below the El, I kept thinking Jake and Elwood were going to cruise by in the Bluesmobile.
Can I also point out, what kind of pizza place delivers in a 42 block radius with a 29 minute guarantee? I bet I couldn't get Joe's Pizza on Bleeker to deliver to me in Alphabet City.
Furthermore, since when does a cab sit idily by in Chinatown waiting for a fare?
Yeah my friends and I were pretty annoyed with the subway scene. The train didn't look like any NYC subway train, the elevated tracks in midtown were unrealistic, although I think the most interesting feature had to be how the elevated tracks then proceeded to simply END at the middle of a busy midtown intersection. That wouldn't make sense no matter where the movie was set.
Ha, MB is dead on about those things too, I definitely noticed the pizza thing.
other NYC subway movies and no mention of "The Warriors"!?!?!? HORROR!!
The subway schtick almost made me forget how men can't climb like spiders in real life.
God, yes! First thing I said when the lights came up... "There's no el in NY!" What's more, it appears that it's running down Wall Street to the East River (you can see the Brooklyn docks as Spidey's trying to stop the train), so a train going that fast would have traversed the length of Wall Street in about 10 seconds.
This easily trumps the Mad About You episode where Paul walks from Lincoln Center to lower Fifth Ave by going through Union Square and Soho(!).
It also seemed like there were shots during the el scene that were direct lifts (excuse me, homage) from French Connection. Why not copy from the best?
Don't even get me started with all the location stuff. It was headache-inducing! Even Money Train had more realistic subway scenes. Granted, it's a popcorn movie and most of the world doesn't live in NYC so they don't realize how rediculous it was. For more of the 30+ mistakes in the movie, check out Spiderman's Movie Mistakes page.
There was only one section of the subway scene that I actually recognized as being in Manhattan. There was a brief shot that was facing east and viewing the "1 train" from the air. I recognized some of the buildings to the east of the train north of the 125th street stop.
I'm not even from New York and even I thought the El Train fight scene was out of place, exciting as it was. I just let me geek brain take over and justify it by saying no, in NYC, there is no El Train but in the *Marvel Comics* NYC, there is. In fact, it's brand new as part of the track wasn't even finished. Comic book versions of real life things are always slightly off-kilter.
Speaking of which, do New York tabloid editors still do their front page mock-ups by hand like J. Jonah Jameson does? I thought all that stuff was done on computers by now.
seriously people, get a life. a masked spider dude with red and blue tights riding up his crotch fighting a guy with 4 mechanical arms, and you feel it necessary to point out the implausibility of the mass transit system depicted in the movie. its a comic book movie, and a bloody good one at that.
and there ARE elevated subways in manhattan btw.
>
Yeah, in Harlem.
That scene didn't look like it took place in Harlem.
it took place in chicago.
You guys are right! One should really expect higher standards of accuracy from a movie about a guy in a homemade rubber spider suit who fights crime, pines after a friend with a mushily-defined acting/modeling career and has a best friend who runs around writing checks for his company that seems to get endlessly involved in scientific egomania run amok. Like the board of directors would ever be down with that. I mean, really: science? shareholders? Pish posh.
Now can we kvetch over the fact that at no point in the movie did Peter Parker get even with 1,000 yards of a tanning bed, and yet: golden bronze!?!?!? Surely nocturnal crimefighting arachnomen would be more sallow! Get me wardrobe!
Well, if it makes you feel any better the audiences in Chicago loved seeing their trains up on the big screen. Chicagoans don't get that many moments to shine on film so they lapped it up (try this game at home to see my point: name the last really awesome chicago movie that didn't include a Cusack? keeping in mind that despite it's oscar Chicago the musical still sucked). But people, why not just let the second city enjoy it's two-bit part in the Spider-Man sequel. There is no reason to fret, the tourist bucks are still going to go directly to New York, el or no, and that's the really important part of a movie like Spider-Man.
Oh and by the by: Peter Parker doesn't go to Columbia. It just looks like it. He goes to Empire State University.
Let's not forget The Warriors. Great old-school NYC subway movie.
Wait, he doesn't go to Columbia? What is this giant refracting column of errata which we have forged for ourselves? Good god man is there no escape???????
What the el is going on here? (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
Bahamut, I agree, it's silly, but you know, there's not better object lesson on how the mind of the New Yorker works. Guy in tights with spider-like power? Hmmm... could be... Mad scientist with four mechanical arms and a laboratory off the Hudson River? Not impossible... But an el over Wall Street? No way!!!! And Garth, you're right, it was the best use of the el since the last episode of ER and the Sandra Bullock flick While You Were Sleeping. So what the hell.
Oh, and PS, it is Columbia. It's mentioned early in the film, PP's first conversation with his professor. :>)
if you want to be completely technical about it, the subway cars were made to be R trains headed for forest hills, so they were actually headed north (and east)...
"... best use of the el since the last episode of ER and the Sandra Bullock flick While You Were Sleeping."
Excuse me, do the words "Risky Business" ring a bell?
Good point, Tim N....
"Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable." - Oscar Wilde
If you want to get technical, those scenes didn't take place in New York or Chicago, but in front of a blue screen in a warehouse someplace in Los Angeles. That's my guess, anyway.
If you want to get technical, those scenes didn't take place in New York or Chicago, but in front of a blue screen in a warehouse someplace in Los Angeles. That's my guess, anyway.
Yeah, the el thing was a little annoying, but I did chalk it up to the movie being a fantasy. After all, there's no newspaper based in the Flatiron Building, either.
How about Mary Jane apparently running from Riverside Church to Washington Square?
As for the cab in Chinatown, if you looked closely, there was someone getting out the other side. That actually was a fairly realistic New York touch, the immediate fare-to-fare handoff on a busy street.
Is the film set in the present day? There used to be lots of els in midtown. (I haven't seen it yet.)
Hey, we all realize its a silly movie based on a comic book. What's sad is just how a little bit of effort on the part of the writers and/or director could have made it that much better, at least for people with some common sense.
yea, because a highly acrobatic fight atop a subway train barreling at break-neck speed along an elevated line thru the high-rises of a fictional nyc is too pedestrian.
Rance... sarcasm, dude, sarcasm. RB was an amazing scene; it also predates WYWS by about ten years.
I'd argue that in a comic/movie franchise that has always prided itself on its NYC cred, it was a boneheaded move to set a major action sequence in such an obviously bogus location. I mean, it's not shorthanding travel routes or fudging the actual coordinates of real locations for dramatic purposes--almost every NYC-based movie does this stuff. But it's the only location in the movie that is clearly, obviously fake. Everything else has the appearance of reality, from the Daily Bugle sign on the Flatiron building to the fictional-but-plausible ruin out in NY Harbor where Doc Ock makes his lair.
Personally, I think a runaway subway sequence that took place in a tunnel could have been even more exciting. If they really wanted an el, they could have bothered to set the scene in Queens or Brooklyn--even better, they could have done something on a bridge.
I want to know why Donna Murphy's earrings didn't get sucked into the machine when it went all magnetic in the beginning. She was wearing dangly numbers that didn't even budge while the rest of the world's metal was getting sucked into the vortex.
Andrea: Donna Murphy's personal magnetism cancelled out the harmonically resonating magnetic waves emanating from the totally unshielded mini-sun. (Evidence I'm getting older? I was far more taken with Murphy than Dunst.)
A bigger question: at a proximity of just a few yards, wouldn't X-rays emanating from the mini-sun have poisoned/cooked everybody there? And then there's the part about how only Octavius was wearing protective eyewear, while everyone else was looking at the mini-sun with their unshielded eyes.
I was also annoyed by Octavius using "science" and "advanced science" instead of "physics", "particle physics", "quantum physics", etc. I think 1985's _Real Genius_ did a much better job handling geek humor/worldview/terminology than did SM2 - and I'm not just saying that to flatter Rance.
Ex. 1: "I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, when he said, 'I drank what?'"
Ex. 2: Professor Hathaway: When you first started at Pacific Tech you were well on your way to becoming another Einstein and then you know what happened?
Chris Knight: I got a haircut?
i agree with zster and scotty... if you're going to set a story in a real city, no matter how unrealistic the story, you should try to keep the setting true. if you want to fictionalize, why not use a thinly-veiled NYC substitue like metropolis or gotham city?
oscar wilde was exactly right.
Is that the same Donna Murphy of Bway fame? I was also quite taken with her (though Kirsten is no slouch)... I thought it was Mia Sara (Ferris Bueller) just a little older when I first saw her.
It's the very same Donna Murphy. She adds a flavor of refinement and depth to the Octavius character - Murphy herself is so well-put-together and classy that she's a sort of a proxy for Octavius' refined personal life prior to the tragedy.
Anybody else notice that the director was a little more free with his screamer fetish this time around? Must be pretty noisy around the Raimi property - hopefully he's soundproofed the bedroom.
I'm pretty sure the D'Ag's was at Broadway and Astor, not Lafayette and Astor. Which would have made the D'Agostinos really a GAP and the cafe where PP and MJ were eating Cozy Soup 'n Burger. Or perhaps Warehouse Liquors.
John,
I have to go look this up in one of those movie mistake boards, but I have to say that I thought she ended up in the square in front of City Hall actually not Wash Sq (thought I saw the Tweed Court House in the background). Also- which church was that? Thought it was Riverside, but the people I was with disagreed, and they are "Empire University" students.
Agree that the "El" was a bit silly, but the audience laughed at the carrying scene more- too corn-ball by half.
Me and Silent Bob are coming to kick the crap out of all you lame Internet ninnies. Snoogans.
Jay - Shouldn't you be passed out in the middle of Route 35 or something?
Here's the thing - I don't know where they filmed the Peter/Mary Jane cafe scene - but it wasn't anywhere near Cooper Sq. That D'Ag isn't anywhere near there, if it exists at all. BUT at the end of the scene, after MJ has been kidnapped, Tobey is standing next to Cooper Union, and the camera pans up to show the Astor & Lafayette street sign. So most of the scene was filmed on a backlot or Los Angeles or something, but there were just a few seconds of it at the end filmed at Astor & Lafayette.
No geography in either of the Spider-Man films is accurate in any way. The Daily Bugle is the Flatiron Buidling? It's about as accurate as the comics with snipets of the real city pasted and collaged togther into a new "Metropolis" that exists on in the Spider-Man world.
But the thing that is great is that many different aspects of NYC life are shown by doing this. And it was a great little touch when Spider-Man was flung into a neighboring building in his first battle with Doc Ock and it was a sweatshop! This is one of the few times I've seen a Hollywood film acknowledge that office buildings often neighbor blue collar/questionable businesses in NYC. Excellent choice whoever made it.
As far as the Subway scene goes, rumor has it that MTA and related unions wanted to gauge Raimi and company for all they're worth. So they packed up and headed off to Chicago for those scenes. If they wanted to there is nothing that could have stopped that whole battle from being on the number 7 line. It would have worked the same and would have been more accurate. Thank you greedy unions for eliminating yourself from the picture by overpricing yourselves.
it's a comic book. let me slow things down for some folks here. it's something called fic-tion.
Main Entry: fic·tion
Pronunciation: 'fik-sh&n
Function: noun
1 a : something invented by the imagination or feigned; specifically : an invented story
that's right kids. not real. now go cry to your mommy and get the f' over it. geez.
Whatever about the subway,the geography, etc. The most annoying Spiderman 2-perpetuated falsehood about Manhattan: that you can be totally broke and still live in a room with a terrace and a lovely view.
Why couldn't they have just been on the 7 in Queens? Sigh.
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Whoever has the simulator for the NYC subway system, e-mail it to:
imdanumber1@hotmail.com
Thanks.