By the time production began last spring, everyone was grateful to have the mess behind them. They even managed to have a sense of humor about it. In one scene in "Spider-Man 2," Maguire plummets from a building and crashes into parked cars. He hobbles away, moaning, "Oh, my back! My back!" Mention it, and Raimi laughs. "My brother wrote that," he says. "Tobey was really game for it. He's not afraid of poking fun at himself."
"Spider-Man 2" retains the angst that plagued Peter Parker in the first movie. "Sam's smart," says Dunst."He knows that you might spend five hours on one special-effects shot, but at the end of the day, if it's not emotional, nobody cares." That might have worried some studios, but Columbia Pictures was onboard. "In the past, these kinds of movies tended to focus just on who the next villain was going to be," says Pascal. "But the heart of 'Spider-Man' is Peter Parker. It's about making sure his story is as complicated and angst- ridden as it was before, if not more so."
And it seems to work, Newsweek reports. In a review of the film, Senior Editor Jeff Giles writes that "Sam Raimi has made a terrific film" that is smart and deeply felt. Maguire and Dunst, he writes, "are the real attraction. They look gorgeous, and their chemistry is deeper, quirkier and utterly convincing." Maguire and Dunst are already signed on for "Spider-Man 3", and Raimi's already at work on the script for the film, which is slated for 2007. "As a child, I dreamed of being Spider-Man, and I always wanted to be a motion-picture director," says Raimi. "So in writing, I get to be both. I really relate to Peter Parker. I really worry about him." Is there life for the franchise beyond part three? Not for Dunst, sadly. "Three's enough," she says. "I'm retiring. If they want to hire another girl, that's fine. I don't want to be known only as Mary Jane. I'm sure Sam will have a heart attack if he hears I don't want to do it. He'll have a nervous breakdown."
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