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CNN Live Today
Interview With Owen Gleiberman
Aired May 03, 2002 - 14:20 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Given the movie's price tag, "Spider- Man's" financial mission may not be too easy to accomplish though. There's an article in this week's edition of "Entertainment Weekly" showing how Hollywood needs the superhero's web to capture big dollars.
Owen Gleiberman is a film critic for the magazine, and he joins us live from New York. How are you, Owen? Good afternoon.
OWEN GLEIBERMAN, FILM CRITIC: Good. Nice to be with you -- Bill.
HEMMER: Pretty cool previews. Tobey Maguire seems like a good guy. How'd you like the movie?
GLEIBERMAN: I liked it pretty well, with some qualifications.
HEMMER: You're holding back -- Owen.
GLEIBERMAN: Well, give me a second here.
There's no question, it can't miss at the box office. I mean, this is a beloved comic book character whose legacy goes back much further than "Star Wars" even. And the special effects are very exciting, very well-done, and let's face it, that is the hook of the movie. I mean, remember back when "Superman" came out, the ad-line was "you'll believe a man can fly."
Well, now you'll believe a man can shimmy up walls and swing through the canyons of New York City, and it's all very magically done. That's it. You take that stuff out of the movie, and what you have is an OK teen flick. That's about it.
HEMMER: How as the plot? How close to the original?
GLEIBERMAN: Well, I would say it follows the original fairly closely, but not so much in tone.
You know, it's funny, it's just a comic book movie, but the old comics actually took themselves pretty seriously. That's why kids liked them, back in the 60's and 70's. And even now, comics take themselves seriously.
This movie has the kind of lightweight, sort of campy tone, the detachment of a modern franchise blockbuster. It doesn't even take the comic as seriously as it once took itself. And I think that may be the limitation of it.
That said, Tobey Maguire is a very likable actor.
HEMMER: Does a pretty good job?
GLEIBERMAN: He does a good job. The casting is off beat. Not so much because he's not a macho type, but because he's so passive. I mean, of any actor of his generation, Tobey Maguire really seems like kind of a wallflower.
The best parts of the movie are the early parts, where you're really rooting for him to overcome his shyness. And then he's bitten by a genetically-enhanced spider...
HEMMER: Don't want to give too much away.
GLEIBERMAN: I'm just giving away the first 15 minutes, here.
HEMMER: All right, that's fair. Keep going.
GLEIBERMAN: He starts to discover his new powers, and you're really rooting for him. You know, it's fun when suddenly he has all these muscles and he can jump around and he can defeat bullies.
And then, finally, this web shoots out of his hand, which I thought was about as funny a metaphor for adolescent sexual trauma as I'd seen since anything since "I Was a Teenage Werewolf."
HEMMER: Wow.
Hey, listen, refresh my memory here. Did this movie have to alter some of the scenes because of the World Trade Center shots that were in it?
GLEIBERMAN: You know, I'm not 100 percent sure about that, but I think it might have.
HEMMER: Yes.
So listen, "USA Today" is saying earlier today that the summer could be a blockbuster at the box office. They're talking about at least 10 mega hits, this one being the first. "Star Wars" in two weeks being the second.
That would be one heck of a summer. Do you see it that way?
GLEIBERMAN: Well, sure. I think all these incredibly daring predictions about all these big blockbuster movies becoming bigger than ever are going to turn out to be true.
How could it not? These things are marketed. The special effects are done well. And increasingly, they open on more and more screens, we're just a couple of years away from them opening globally at the same time. So of course, once again, these movies will shatter records. But it doesn't mean that they're necessarily better than the movies that were made before.
You know, I felt...
HEMMER: Yes, I agree with that.
GLEIBERMAN: I thought "Spider-Man" was worth seeing. I liked the special effects. I enjoyed it. But it wasn't really a great piece of pop art to me. I thought it lacked something compared to, say, Tim Burton's "Batman," back in 1989, which created more of a whole world that it drew you into.
I don't think there's a single character in "Spider-Man," including Tobey Maguire, who I liked, who is as memorable a presence as Jack Nicholson's Joker.
HEMMER: Fair comment there. Owen, thanks.
Owen Gleiberman, "Entertainment Weekly." You went through the entire list for us. Many thanks, OK.
We'll talk to you soon, Owen, come on back, all right.
GLEIBERMAN: OK.
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