On December 26th, 2010 I reviewed the Julie Taymor version of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Darkness This is what I wrote at the time: "Yes, folks, a disaster, but a Titanic disaster. And like the Titanic you watch in awe as it sinks and a must see for any pop culture fiend and absolutely."
So Bono and the Edge, who are largely responsible for the disaster, fired director and all other things Spidey and retooled it into the boring crap that opened last month. No, Spider-man isn't a disaster, it isn't good enough. Such SJT sucked, sure you thought she must have lost her mind, but the last twenty minutes in Act One were worth a lotta hastle.
S Mach 2 isn't worth the concentration. Peter Parker gets beaten by a radioactive spider in Norman Osborne's lab, becomes Spiderman, Norman transform into the Green Goblin, Spidey kills Norman and gets the girl of hs dreams, next door neighbor Mary Jane
Act one is a tedious retelling of the Spidey myth (the first half hour is unconscionable) leading to the exact same 3/4 way climax as the first time: "Bouncing Off Walls" -which Reeve Carney as an annoying Peter Parker (he gets some of the angst and none repeat NONE of the sass) discovers his powers, followed by "Rise Above" -a terrifyingly lousy U2 by numbers,
Around about here there is a serious divergence, SJT ends the act with a brilliant battle between the Green Goblin and Spidey, and SM2 with an exposition for the brain dead linking GG and Spidey.
Act Two of SJT was an unmitigated disaster. Act Two of SM2 isn't. But it is a drag and a bore, contrived bullshit, with lots of Mary Jane and Spidey love interest, another crappy ballad "I Just Can't Walk Away" and the big U2 "Boy Falls From The Sky" (half the songs in U2's repertoire has "sky" or "rise" in em), where Peter embraces his Spideyness. Incidentally, isn't that break a rip of "Live And Let Die"?
The first act, which opens with Green Goblin's "A Freak Like Me Needs Company" continues its pas de deux for another hour and I am here to tell you, less of the Green Goblin (Patrick Page) was much more. Until the last 20 minutes where they finally take to the skies (ah yes, that's why Bono is involved) and it is quite exciting if not as exciting as the end of the first Act on SJT.
Blah, blah, blah, GG dies, Spidey gets MJ, and on your bike. Bono and the Edge have took out the eccentric, weird, intensely flawed Julie Taymor vision and replaced it with Bambi via Cirque de Soleil. How can you have a superhero story with nobody to root for? It really is a terrible, terrible book. As for the score? Only in pocket idiots like Rolling Stone could find a redeeming quality.
It is all bad. Every song is terrible. You leave the show humming the harness that hold up the aerialists.
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