[Ed. note: Fair warning: this entry is a long one, and it involves a fair amount of rambling. I’ll eventually get to Spidey 2, but it’s going to take a while, so please bear with me. Or don’t. After all, it’s your surfing time. Who am I to tell you how to spend your time?]

There are four things you should know about me before I voice my opinions on the summer’s biggest film so far, Spider-Man 2:

1. I like comic books about superheroes.
2. I like movies based on comic books about superheroes.
3. I’ve seen most of the major films based on comics about superheroes.
4. And for my money, the best comic-book superhero movie ever made is the 1978 version of Superman.

That’s not to say the film is without flaws. For example, there is a little too much slapstick humor in the film’s second half, and it’s pretty far-fetched that Lex Luthor could so easily tamper with a pair of nuclear missiles or acquire a chunk of kryptonite. (Not to mention Lex knowing that kryptonite will kill Superman. How did he surmise that little factoid based on what little information Supes revealed in his newspaper interview with Lois Lane? And what’s the deal with kryptonite anyway? I’ve never quite understood why a piece of the homeworld would be deadly to ol’ Kal-El. You’d think it would be nothing more to him than a nice souvenir, no different to him than a flake of coal would be to us Earthlings. But that’s how it was in the comics, so I guess it had to be that way in the movie, too…) And of course there’s the whole “turn back time by flying around the Earth really, really fast” thing. I guess you can rationalize that one by saying that Supes exceeded the speed of light, causing time to flow subjectively in reverse for him, but that’s an explanation I came up with on my own years after the fact. The film doesn’t actually explain what’s happening or how Supes is doing it, and the sequence always confused the hell out of me as a kid.

These problems aside, however, Superman — a.k.a. Superman: The Movie — is a milestone in the history of superhero movies because it was the first that took its subject matter at all seriously. Prior to 1978, every other comic-derived film or television show was either self-consciously silly in the style of Adam West’s old Batman TV show, or it was unconsciously silly due to a deadly combination of poor writing and a low budget. The philosophy behind these efforts seemed to be that it really didn’t matter if the filmed version of a comic was dumb because comics were dumb. It’s all too easy to imagine a Hollywood producer-type in the Louis B. Mayer mold, chawing on a stogie the size of a car muffler as he reads the riot act to some poor screenwriter on the other end of an old-fashioned candlestick telephone. “Whatdya mean you want to explore themes of power and responsibility? The guy walks around in a friggin’ union suit and a cape!”

Superman challenged that kind of thinking by treating its source material with respect. Director Richard Donner and screenwriters Mario Puzo and Tom Mankiewicz approached the movie with a determination not to make fun of this very old chestnut of a story. The humor that exists in the film, slapstick and otherwise, is never at the expense of Superman himself, who is always a dignified and genuinely heroic figure (part of the credit here must go to Christopher Reeve’s sensitive and underrated performance as The Man of Steel). Rather, it is the goofballs who surround Superman that are at the center of the joke. In addition, this movie did something that no earlier superhero film ever had by considering the existential questions that a real flesh-and-blood superhero would ask: Why me? What is my purpose here on Earth? Must I be lonely to fulfill my purpose? Why can’t I save everyone I love? This was a child-friendly movie, but it definitely was not made for kids.

This new-found maturity in the superhero genre could have tipped into self-importance or unpleasantly grim brooding, traps that have plagued many of Superman‘s cinematic descendants. However, Donner and his screenwriters never forgot that, grown-up themes aside, a comic-book movie should always be entertaining. They were aided in this goal by the very best post-Star Wars special effects technology, which managed to convince us that a man actually could fly. The best scenes in the movie are undoubtedly the ones in which Superman is flying: his rescue of Lois from the wrecked helicopter followed by his first patrol around the city, his pursuit of the Hackensack-bound missile, and the big-finish farewell into the sunrise/sunset at the end. For the first time on film, Superman rolled and stretched and played in mid-air, just as he did in the comics. He no longer looked as if he was just laying out flat on an invisible board (which, in fact, was exactly what earlier Superman actors had been doing). Most importantly, Superman, as played by Reeve, really seemed to like being Superman. He enjoyed the ability to fly, and he admired the beauty of his adopted world as seen from above. He wasn’t simply trying to get across town faster than a taxi could carry him, as earlier film versions of the character always seemed to be; he was truly a creature of the air, fully at home there. This new attitude, this sense of the joy that comes with having abilities “far beyond those of mortal men,” balanced against the heavy burden of responsibility also produced by those same abilities, was what made Superman a great movie. (It’s also something that will be important when I get to talking about Spider-Man 2).

Superman, like many of the seminal genre films of the late ’70s and early ’80s, kicked off a boom of similar pictures. There have been a lot of superhero films in the years since 1978, especially in the last decade. Some have been good (the ’89 version of Batman, The Rocketeer). Some have been mind-numbingly bad (Spawn, the last two Batman movies). None have been able to combine all the ingredients that made Superman the best.

Some came close. X-Men and its sequel, X2, for instance. I enjoyed both films very much. Ultimately, however, I think they took themselves a little too seriously, and both failed to convince me that they were happening in the real world (they’re a little too shiny around the edges). The first Spider-Man film inched a little closer in 2002, but again it suffered in the verisimilitude department. The action sequences looked like a damn Playstation game, a problem that is all-too-common in these days of computer-generated everything (sometimes I almost think we were better off with cardboard sets and visible wires). In addition, it suffered from a sense of familiarity that the screenplay wasn’t quite able to overcome. Like Superman, it was an origin story, one that even non-comic fans are probably familiar with, but while Superman had the advantage of being the first movie to do the origins of its title character, Spider-Man came along after we’d seen a dozen other “chapter ones.” (And let’s be honest, there really isn’t a lot of difference between most superhero origin stories. They always have some sort of accident which bestows freakish abilities, coupled with the death of a beloved parent figure, the rise of a lunatic arch-villain, the training and early exploits leading to a final confrontation — you get the idea.)

Now we have Spider-Man 2, the latest would-be contender for the superhero crown. So how is it, you’re asking? Get to the damn point, you’re screaming? Well, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer: I loved it.

Spider-Man 2 is far and away the best superhero film since Superman: The Movie. In fact, it is more than a good superhero film – it’s a damn good film period.

Everything about Spider-Man 2 is a class act, from an opening montage of wonderful Alex Ross paintings that recap the events of the first film to the outstanding performances of leads Tobey Maguire and Alfred Molina to digital effects that finally — finally! — convinced me that what I was seeing had weight and mass and physical limitations. The script is intelligent and unusually complex for this sort of film, skillfully interweaving multiple narrative threads without any of them feeling slighted.

The villain this time around is perhaps the best known of Spidey’s comic-book foes, the genius Dr. Otto Octavious who, in one of those unlikely accidents that only happen in the comics, has a set of cybernetic tentacles fused to his body and becomes Doctor Octopus, a.k.a. Doc Ock. Alfred Molina is brilliant as Doc, making him sympathetic and incredibly scary all at the same time, but he gets a lot of help from the special-effects crews that created the tentacles. I assume they are a combination of CG and live-action effects, and they are flawless, utterly convincing and magnificent to behold.

The whole movie is magnificent to behold, actually. Directed by Sam Raimi, who is in my humble opinion the best, most visually creative filmmaker currently working, the film is filled with striking images, beautiful moments, and — best of all! — coherently-edited action sequences. Unlike younger directors who think that you have to cut action FAST FAST FAST!, Raimi understands when to hold a shot for a second or two to let important facts sink in, and when to use a long shot instead of a close-up. I’ve admired Raimi’s work for years now, ever since 1990’s Darkman (I have an amusing story about that one that I might reveal someday), and here in Spidey 2 he is at the height of his powers. He’s confident enough to throw in obvious visual references to King Kong and his own Evil Dead films and not have them seem like cheesy pastiche, or the self-conscious games of a smart-aleck film-fan that wants to show people how many videos he’s rented (Tarantino, I’m talking to you!). Rather, they come across as a good friend nudging us in the ribs and saying, “hey, did you catch that one?”

For those who love the visual language of film and understand what it takes to put one together, watching a Raimi flick is an exercise in pure joy. And yes, for those in the know who may be wondering, Raimi’s brother Ted and their mutual pal Bruce Campbell both put in their customary cameos. Why aren’t these two starring in mainstream films, dammit? And why can’t Sam direct all of my movies?

Spider-Man 2, like Superman before it, addresses some fairly heavy themes without ever becoming dreary or too heavy-handed about it. Peter Parker, Spider-Man’s alter-ego, struggles to balance the demands of being a superhero with his own desire to have a normal life. Because of his powers and the duties that he believes come with them, he can’t hold a job or keep his grades up. He can’t tell his childhood sweetheart Mary Jane he loves her and he aches with guilt over the death of his Uncle Ben in the first film. And yet… being Spider-Man has its good points, too. The scenes in which he takes to the skies, swinging through the concrete canyons of Manhattan, are exhilarating adrenaline rushes for Peter as well as for the audience. When he’s up there, flexing and twisting on a silvery thread, safely anonymous beneath his mask, he’s truly free, and the audience shares in the sense of what that must be like.

Spider-Man 2 has its flaws. Again, like Superman, there are some scenes where logic fails, notably the one in which Doc Ock throws a car through the front of the deli where Peter and Mary Jane are meeting. It’s an amazing scene, the sort of thing that makes the twelve-year-old boy inside me say, “Cooooooooooolllll,” but it doesn’t make much sense. Doc doesn’t know that Peter is Spider-Man, you see, and so had no way of knowing that he would survive that little attention-getter. And since Doc’s purpose in assaulting Peter is to find the whereabouts of the Webcrawler, killing Peter would kind of tend to louse up the mission. There’s another big howler towards the end of the film, which I won’t reveal here. Let’s just say that the screenplay writer’s grasp of nuclear physics is a bit dodgy…

But the scene in which Spidey saves a runaway el-train makes up for the dodgy bits. It’s an exciting sequence, but what really makes it work is Maguire’s performance. Not normally known for his emotive abilities, Maguire has made a breakthrough in this film, and he shows a great deal of passion and intensity in this scene. We know that Spidey could escape death at the last second, and we also know from Maguire’s face that he won’t. He’s committed to the job at hand and he will die with the innocent passengers if it comes to that. No less remarkable is the quiet aftermath of this sequence. I won’t spoil it, just in case there’s still anyone left who hasn’t seen this film yet, but I will say that it brought tears to my eyes. This is the kind of film we need in difficult times, one that gives us a hero but also reminds us that even the heroes sometimes need help, and that true heroics come from community. It’s a very old-fashioned sentiment, the sort of thing that some would find easy to mock. Not me, though. I wish more people felt comfortable expressing these old-fashioned sentiments.

One final thing that makes Spidey 2 remarkable is the way it builds on events from the first film without dwelling on them as well as laying the ground work for films to come. There is a sense of continuity here. Peter Parker’s life is not a series of disconnected episodes like other superheroes appear to lead. It is like our lives, a long tapestry that goes on, day after day, sunrise after sunset. We know that in the morning, Peter will rise again to face whatever monsters the day brings, just like every other working joe in the audience. When the sun rises on the events of his third film, I’ll be in line…