SUPER VILLAINS

Joker: Batman’s greatest enemy — in more senses than one. Jack Nicholson, in what many consider his finest act, made mincemeat of Michael Keaton in Batman (1989) Penguin: Playing a revolting raw fish-eater, Danny De Vito hammed his way through Batman Returns (1992) Green Goblin: One rather hoped Willem Defoe would beat the stuffing out of baby-faced Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man (2002) Lex Luthor: It helped that Gene Hackman was his stupendously ugly self in Superman (1978).

The child — if you remember your Wordsworth — is the father of the man. Samuel M. Raimi — having majored in English — has rightly figured out that the father, then, is the son of the child. And that, the director of Spider-Man and an old lover of Marvel comics now knows, is a money-spinning formula that you just can’t go wrong with.

Yet, when Sam Raimi blurts out his unfathomable love as a kid for Spider-Man at every one of his new film’s premieres, you can’t really accuse him of paying mere lip service to booming business.

For, in successfully transferring his admiration for a childhood superhero to the big screen, Raimi seems to have pulled off the greatest revert-to-thrill act in cyber age. Clearly, the web rules.

That the return of Peter Parker to the silver screen would be celebrated with much fanfare wasn’t really a guess worth making. And when Spider-Man 2 — released in India this Friday — raked in $40.5 million on its opening day in the US on July 2, it had only bettered the mark of $39.4 million set two years earlier by its predecessor. Released in May 2002, Spider-Man rewrote box office records, going on to become the fifth highest grossing film in US history.

When it comes to taking the credit for such widespread success, however, the man in the wings is modesty personified. The films are grossers, he says, because Stan Lee’s great creation, Spider-Man, is loved by the people.

One of whom happens to be the director himself. An avid fan of Spider-Man during his childhood, Raimi parted ways with the world of Marvel comics and grew up to carve a niche in Hollywood with his cult horror classic, The Evil Dead, in 1981. His tryst with the ‘fantasy-thriller’ had begun, and Raimi soon mastered the genre, churning out other popular titles such as Darkman, Army of Darkness and The Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn.

Raimi thought he’d found his calling. So, not surprisingly, superheroes in flashy underwear were stashed away in the things-not-used-anymore locker as Raimi pursued his obsession for the fantastic.

In the first 20 years of his career, the only remote effort Raimi made to revert to his childhood interests was in planning a film on The Mighty Thor — another Marvel character — in association with creator Stan Lee. The film never saw the light of day, and Raimi had to be content with the fact that he had found a good friend in Stan — who has even appeared in cameos in the Spider-Man flicks.

The opportunity finally came when Raimi was singled out to direct the first of the Spider-Man films. The director was clearly overwhelmed, and loudly proclaimed to the media his fondness for the comic character. “I think what I really pitched was just my love for what Stan Lee created,” Raimi said soon after landing the job.

Cut to more practical issues. While Raimi’s tale of love lost and found itself provides ample dope for a heart-warming Hollywood flick, would it go to explain the $820 million plus that Spider-Man grossed worldwide? Raimi, on his part, would only say: “Well, that’s logical because people love that comic book so much.” It was evident that he wasn’t going to give it away.

Or maybe, he wasn’t in a position to. Perhaps because the film had become popular by sheer chance — owing to the fact that it was the first Hollywood blockbuster with a superhero theme to be released after the 9/11 attacks. It was a period when the US was looking for a new hero to rise from the ashes. And Spider-Man stepped in where even the firemen couldn’t.

Two years and two Oscar nominations later, Raimi is back to the fore with the sequel. Over the years, the director has given himself the aura of a minor eccentric — a junior Hitchcock, so to say. In fact, as a tribute to Old Alfred, he wears a jacket and tie on the sets of his films. And if the thriller director made an unobtrusive appearance in his films, Raimi makes sure that his car — a yellow 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 — features in his cinema.

But, on the flipside, legend has it that the 44-year-old graduate of the Michigan State University is so humble that Hollywood cringes every time he speaks. It is said, in hushed whispers, that he thanks every interviewer after an up-close session for having spoken to him.

Perhaps it is this trait in Raimi that makes him give a new dimension to Parker this time. In the new film, he robs Peter Parker of much of his abilities to leave him miserably human — his powers elude him like Iraqi arsenal gives Pentagon the slip — even as the steel-tentacled Doctor Octavius gets more powerful by the minute.

Spider-Man 2 comes at a time when introspection is the order of the day. And if the $256 million the flick raked in over the first 12 days since its release is any indication, angst in the post-WMD era pays. Ask Sam.