Spider-Man: Hero Within

G1's fanedit of Spiderman Hero Within has all of the promisings of a great endeavor, and all of the faults that come with lackluster source material.

Speaking first to technical side, G1's Hero Within is exceptionally well done. With rare exception, all cuts, fades and transitions are done seemlessly with the original. Unless one is already familiar with the Spiderman movies, I doubt more than two or three cuts would be discovered. Considering the dozens and dozens of edits and splicing between the three movies, this is quite an accomplishment.

Unfortunately, as a stand alone movie, Hero Within carries with it some heavy problems. The primary being that, throughout the three movies made for Spidey, none have a really compelling villian. G1 chooses to focus the story's second act against Doc Oct. While he is the most interesting of the lot, it isn't saying much. Doc Oct is a character that stretches credulity beyond reproach. This is easier to swallow in the original as Doc Oct is featured in a movie outside of the already near-proposterous origins narrative.

Specifically what G1 has done here is taken the Spidey origins story from the first movie and used the second and third act of the second film to finish it up. However, while the story takes off at a pretty good pace leading up to the donning of the costume, when the film then starts heavily using footage from the second movie, a lot of jarring predicaments occur. For example, Spiderman goes from being a typical highschool student to a peerless collegiate-level physicist after a short span of fighting crime.

Although I could be misrembering, I thought that the primary reason Parker doesn't act on MJ's advances is that he's worried that, as Spiderman, those closest to him could be endangered. However, since that isn't established here, his denying of her flirtatious behavior makes him look weak and pathetic, not noble.

Also, G1 makes the decision here to follow Spiderman's arc in which he gives up being Spiderman. This is much more effective in the second movie as there's more time to establish for Parker that living a normal life and being Spiderman are incompatible. Here, though, after a long succesful string of fighting crime, Peter gives up the costume almost inexplicably. It's not very convincing.

There was one moment of this edit that really got my attention. After the first act is complete, G1 then has a series of "Spiderman helps NYC" scenes. He first cuts to the amazing sequence in the third Spiderman movie where an uncontrollable crane demolishes a section of a skyscraper. This is the first time G1 uses footage from the third and I was anxiously excited in the hopes that he would introduce Gwen Stacy into the mix. There was a moment in which I thought this edit would really develop the relationship foils between MJ/Spidey/Parker/Gwen/Harry. However, this is never idealized as Gwen is only used here as a set peice.

I'm not sure what would make this approach to retooling Spiderman better. Adding more scenes could make the film more "epic" specifically in following Spiderman's character arc. However, more scenes means needing more conflict, which means adding Goblin, Venom and/or Sandman which is sure to hurt more than it would help.

I think G1 did a marvelous job towards his main objective. However, I'm left feeling that this edit doesn't necessarily improve upon the lackluster source material from which it derives.

An interesting take on the films, seamlessly blended together. Unfortunately, the whole does not equal the sum of the parts – Hero Within is a weaker film than both 1 and 2 (although better than 3!).

It’s an action heavy film, with some great set pieces. Pacing is generally quite good. Editing is technically very well done, as is the sound. Visually and aurally it was excellent.
The structure of the film, the narrative, was quite clear, but the characters didn’t have room to breathe and grow. It was a bit action-movie-ish where the characters are secondary to the plot/set-pieces.

The ultimate problem is too much being packed into one film. Peter’s emotional journey is up and down and up and down. The love story gets abruptly forgotten along the way, and when we finally see MJ again after about 30minutes (in the café) there’s two seconds of dialogue before the action starts again. The love story ended up, therefore, having very little resonance.
The lack of love story also breaks Peter’s arc by removing the primary motivation for him losing his powers. There was very little time for us to see his pain in being apart from MJ.
Further, by losing the voiceover at the end of 1 we don’t ever really understand why Peter can’t be with MJ, which makes the separation aspect artificial.
There was also none of the pain of “Spiderman as menace” which is an additional motivation – and has a payoff in the train rescue.

Hero Within also lacked humour entirely, which I think was a mistake. It made the film overly serious, which doesn’t really fit the tone of Spidey.

On the whole, this was a nice idea, fairly well executed, but ultimately ended up being a decent film, rather than a great one. Spidey 2 is still the go-to film for Spidey fans, but this one is worth a spin just to see the films from a different angle.

I’ve always liked Sam Raimi’s Spiderman Trilogy. Refreshingly light hearted, well directed and generally very entertaining, they serve as a reminder to film makers making superhero movies today, that not everything needs to be as dark as Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. Spidey 2 is undoubtedly the most impressive in my eyes, but the other two (yes, even the messy third chapter) have their moments too. So, the idea of an edit combining the beginnings of the Spiderman legend from the first movie, with the excellent Spiderman 2 was an exciting one.

Generally, it’s an edit which works very successfully. It breezes along, never outstaying its welcome and at just over 2 hours is a perfect length for this kind of combo edit. The key here for me is how natural the “hand-over” part of the edit feels; by that I simply mean the section when Spiderman 1 ends and Spiderman 2 takes over. I’m pleased to say, that g1orkatos executes it about as well as one could hope for. By having the Spidey 2 footage start after a montage of Parker using his new-found skills for the first time, it appears natural that some time has passed and that some of the characters look slightly different – it’s particularly noticeable for example that MJ has had a change in shade of red hair colour.

Also, the use of the thrilling crane-disaster scene from Spidey 3 works wonderfully well. It took me a moment to realise it didn’t actually come from Spidey 2, so seamlessly was it included into the edit. Excellent work there. Indeed, from a narrative point of view, Hero Within comes off as a huge success. Particularly impressive is the heartfelt material with Peter’s Uncle Ben, which because of the nature of Doc Octopus being a more intimidating and interesting villain that the Green Goblin, has more impact with acting as inspiration and courage for Peter to continue his plight as the webbed crusader. Okay, the romance between him and MJ still comes off a little too “school playground” for my liking, but overall the choices made in the edit to show the blossoming feelings between the two are nicely judged.

Technically g1orkatos also pulls out all the stops. The dual layered DVD version I saw looked great, with some nice subtle colour correction to match Spiderman 1 with the palette from the second film. However, the small amount of footage from Spiderman 3 did stand out a little bit, but I think that’s more to do with Spidey’s suit seeming a little darker. Nothing too distracting however. Audio too is very solid throughout.

So, a perfect edit then? Well, unfortunately not quite. A couple of audio transitions are not as smooth as they could be, which go hand in hand with some visual crossfades which bring a little bit too much attention to themselves. Of particular note is the abrupt fade/cut just as Peter is discovering his powers for the first time on the rooftop. Also worthy of note, is the final shot which hints at the forthcoming sequel. As others have said, it’s too short a scene to serve as the last shot of the actual movie… it would have worked much better as a “Marvel teaser ” at the end of the credits.

Overall however, this is an excellent edit and in truth is a perfect way to see Spiderman 2 as if it had been the first in the series. Bring on the sequel!

I definitely saw the overall narrative and enjoyed the way parallel moments from Spider-man 1 and 2 (like Peter's wall crawl) being in one film brought a certain fusion to the series. A keen sense of storyline was apparent while I was watching. I clearly saw focus on a few key storylines.

As others have said, certain fades were weird. I felt some scenes were cut short for sake of excising so-called "goofy moments" that I rather missed.

Though the intention of the edit is known to the viewer going in, I still feel a shortened version of Peter's other nemesis' could've served as "warm up" villains before focusing on Ock and could've beefed things up a bit.

In all, this feels like Spider-man 2 with one scene from 3 and 15 minutes from 1, and doesn't feel as daring as a 3-in-1 edit sounds. But for intentions sake, I enjoyed it.

This was a brilliant, brilliant fanedit. I loved it! The choices made by the editor and the way the whole thing flowed was superb, IMHO.

If I am to offer some constructive criticism, the colour timing from SM & SM2 are very different to SM3. Personally, I would have tried to re-time the SM & SM2 footage to match the more muted, blueish colour palette of SM3. I also would have moved more of the 'montage' stuff to a bit earlier when Peter first decides to be Spider-Man. Having only the SM3 footage after Spidey makes his choice feels a little short, and yet you do include a montage a bit later that I feel would have worked it a bit better moving it further up. Just personal taste there. I'm sure it's fine as is.

One of the other things I think could be improved (and I'm clutching at straws here) are some of the transistions. If you're going to use a 'fade' then it needs to be rendered a little better or put in a different place or take longer as I noticed it didn't match the fades that Sam Raimi's editors used. The music was sometimes a little off in those transitions too. Perhaps a change of score would help or a audio substitution of some kind.

I really, really liked this edit. And the DVD menu was superb. Excellent edit!