SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004)

SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004) (vt THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN; US working title; SPIDERMAN 2 [(alternative spelling]). Sam Raimi, dir. Stan Lee, comic book (and exec. prod.), Steve Ditko, comic book. Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, and Michael Chabon, screen story; Alvin Sargent, script. USA: Marvel Enterprises, Laura Ziskin Productions, Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures (prod). / Columbia Pictures (US dist.). See IMDb for complex international dist. and other filmographic details.[1]

Because of an accident while trying to produce usable fusion power, Dr. Otto Octavius becomes "Doc Ock": a cyborgized man with four, very long prosthetic arms, each with a low-grade AI brain (4 cybernetic "arms" + 2 organic arms + 2 organic legs = 8 limbs). Given their attachment to his spine, and the destruction through a power surge of the chip that protects Dr. Octavius's brain, the arms have some degree of control over Doc Ock. Visually, the arms resemble snakes («mouths» shut), Martian machines from the WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) (with the "head" in three parts—and snake-like, even as the Martian flying machines in WAR OF THE WORLDS look like cobras), and («mouths» open), various devouring entities, from "Bruce," the shark in JAWS, to the sandworms of DUNE and their cinematic descendants. Contributor Dan Prickett notes the parallel to the hydra image in George Pal's 1964 movie, 7 FACES OF DR. LAO and Ray Harry Harryhausen's more famous Hydra in JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963). Michael Conaway, Chad Dresbach, and Mark O'Hara found numerous possible visual parallels, but Conaway stresses the "single red viewing lens" in the center of the claw and its parallel to the electronic eyes of HAL 9000 in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (film). Conaway also calls attention to an on-line MSNBC review: "John Hartle compares Otto's loss to the machine mind to the gradual loss to the instinct of the fly in both versions of THE FLY […]". For further brief discussion: [2].

Note also (and note possibility of confusion with) THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (2014)