DVD review
Directed by Sam Raimi
Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Alfred Molina
Release date 23 April 2007

Peter Parker loses his powers while the tentacled menace of Dr Octopus fixes his protuberances onto the city in a typically evil scheme…

Spider-Man 2.1 is an all-new presentation of Sam Raimi’s sequel, handily released as the hype for the third installment steps up a gear.

The movie itself is good, but never reaches the greatness attributed to it upon original release. It's an uneasy mix of melodrama and gravity-defying fights, and the subplot in which Spidey loses his powers is baffling. The sequence where Peter experiences a normal life to the tune of Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head is particularly misjudged.

So what’s new in version 2.1? A weird scene in which J Jonah Jameson dresses up as Spider-Man and leaps up on his desk is fairly amusing, but most of the new scenes are dull and add nothing to the plot. Some fight scenes are expanded (a documentary on the second disc shows that these were originally cut for financial reasons, and are completed here thanks to CGI wizardry), but contribute no more than a tangle of limbs.

An extended sequence where an over-enthusiastic marketing exec approaches the powerless Spidey in a lift is a prime example of why we should be grateful for editors. In the original it’s a brief, deadpan sequence that gets a laugh before moving on. Here, it drags on forever, and quickly loses its amusement value.

With just eight minutes of extra footage, there’s very little to justify a purchase if you already own the original. The extras range from the obvious (a Spider-Man 3 puff-piece), to a rather self-congratulatory featurette on the technical awards the film has won.

If Daredevil’s extended cut was an example of how to improve a movie, this one shows that some superhero tales don't need any further spinning out. Jonathan Wilkins

VERDICT: 5/10
If you own the original cut on DVD then Spider-Man 2.1 isn’t worth crawling a wall for.