This is one of three featurettes on the Special Edition DVD of Spider-Man 2, and you get one guess as to what film it deals with. It consists of interviews, behind the scenes footage, clips of the movie, panels and frames from the comics, tests and early designs, etc. They go into the depth and motivation of the character of Doctor Octopus. Everyone here has genuinely interesting things to say, and this gives good insight into the well-known, developed villain. You get to see crew doing a cast of Molina's face and consider various looks for the extra four arms of Octavius, as well as talk about the effects that put them up there on the silver screen, in the rather believable way that they managed to. This is well-edited and has good pacing, and fits a good amount of information into 22 minutes. It isn't a (m)ockumentary, as the silly pun title on the cover the discs come in might have you thinking. That's fine, I'm only putting that in here to avoid anyone watching it expecting that, and possibly then leaving a negative review on here afterwards. I recommend this to anyone who wants to know more about the subject. 7/10
2 Reviews
The geek gone good vs the geek gone bad
Chip_douglas6 June 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Everybody loves a good villain and if said evil-doer originated in the Marvel Universe, doubly so. We splash right into the 'Ock-umentary' with Stan 'the Man' Lee explaining the difficulty of having to come up with a new villain for each of his heroes to fight practically every month. Jump to another Spidey-scribe, Joe Quisada, explaining how Doc Ock is one of Spider-Man's most enduring opponents - a man for all seasons as it were. Next up is producer and Marvel C.O. Avi Arad, who says that it was too early to introduce Harry Osborn as the second Green Goblin in Spidey 2. Which brings us to a bearded Alfred Molina, one of those actors you've seen a thousand times on screen before without managing to memorize his name - the perfect Otto Octavius for Sam Raimi's second Spider-movie.
From the moment fellow producer Larua Ziskin introduced Molina to an ecstatic audience at the San Diego Comic Con in 2003, expectations were high for the second Spider-Man. Alfred claims to always have been more of a Marvel fan than DC, yet does admit to not being very familiar with Doctor Octopus before obtaining the part. One thing he did latch onto was the doctor's sense of humor. One thing they don't go into here but which was mentioned in the exhaustive 'Making the Amazing' documentary (located on the same disc), was the fact that the screenwriters toyed with the idea of introducing a younger, more handsome version of Otto who would be a rival to Peter Parker for Mary Jane's affections. Avi Arad, along with the rest of the world, was glad they didn't go that route.
A great deal of the 22 minute running time is alloted to the creation of Doc Ock's most prominent feature: his mechanical tentacles (Larry, Harry, Flo, and Moe). After all, a lot of different departments had to work together to bring them to life, from costume design to puppeteers alternating with CG effects. Doc Ock even had his own personal art director on the film. We see Sam Raimi inspecting and toying with some prototype arms, foam rubber arms with wooden claws being tested by black clad puppeteers and more sophisticated claws playing pool and a piano. After that they had to do everything all over again to see how it worked on Alfred M. For all the scenes where they couldn't possibly use practical effects, John Dykstraflex provided computer generated tentacles while having to take into account the sense of weight they had to portray as they were carrying Octopus (and in some shots his hostages such as Aunt May) instead of merely floating on air.
To conclude, this Doc Ock doc return to Stan Lee who mentions how superhero movies tend to kill off each villain on his first appearance. In the comics, they usually escape or their deaths are at least left ambiguous. This is accompanied by the last shot of Otto Octavious from the film, floating in the Hudson river. Thanks to the aforementioned 'Making the Amazing' I now know this shot does not feature Molina at all, but a CG double instead. I've heard people complaining about that shot being fake on the internet in recent years, but I bet that if they hadn't watched the DVD features on this double disc set, they wouldn't even have realized it was computer generated in the first place.
8 out of 10
From the moment fellow producer Larua Ziskin introduced Molina to an ecstatic audience at the San Diego Comic Con in 2003, expectations were high for the second Spider-Man. Alfred claims to always have been more of a Marvel fan than DC, yet does admit to not being very familiar with Doctor Octopus before obtaining the part. One thing he did latch onto was the doctor's sense of humor. One thing they don't go into here but which was mentioned in the exhaustive 'Making the Amazing' documentary (located on the same disc), was the fact that the screenwriters toyed with the idea of introducing a younger, more handsome version of Otto who would be a rival to Peter Parker for Mary Jane's affections. Avi Arad, along with the rest of the world, was glad they didn't go that route.
A great deal of the 22 minute running time is alloted to the creation of Doc Ock's most prominent feature: his mechanical tentacles (Larry, Harry, Flo, and Moe). After all, a lot of different departments had to work together to bring them to life, from costume design to puppeteers alternating with CG effects. Doc Ock even had his own personal art director on the film. We see Sam Raimi inspecting and toying with some prototype arms, foam rubber arms with wooden claws being tested by black clad puppeteers and more sophisticated claws playing pool and a piano. After that they had to do everything all over again to see how it worked on Alfred M. For all the scenes where they couldn't possibly use practical effects, John Dykstraflex provided computer generated tentacles while having to take into account the sense of weight they had to portray as they were carrying Octopus (and in some shots his hostages such as Aunt May) instead of merely floating on air.
To conclude, this Doc Ock doc return to Stan Lee who mentions how superhero movies tend to kill off each villain on his first appearance. In the comics, they usually escape or their deaths are at least left ambiguous. This is accompanied by the last shot of Otto Octavious from the film, floating in the Hudson river. Thanks to the aforementioned 'Making the Amazing' I now know this shot does not feature Molina at all, but a CG double instead. I've heard people complaining about that shot being fake on the internet in recent years, but I bet that if they hadn't watched the DVD features on this double disc set, they wouldn't even have realized it was computer generated in the first place.
8 out of 10
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