10 Best Movies About Unrealised Dreams

4. Spider-Man 2

Apollo 13 Feat 2
Sony Pictures

Like The Incredibles, Spider-Man 2 is another film involving a supervillain who is determined to pursue a dream of theirs, and their subsequent downfall when that dream becomes compromised.

While attempting to pull off a risky fusion power experiment, things go badly wrong, leaving brilliant scientist Otto Octavius tethered to four robotic arms, his wife dead, and the experiment's machinery destroyed. He then spends the rest of the film attempting to gather the funds and materials needed to perform it again, robbing banks, attacking Aunt May, and generally going to any lengths necessary to see his experiment through to completion.

The big difference between Octavius and Syndrome is that the former actually realises that his dream isn't worth all the collateral damage it will cause, and his story ends with his sacrifice. When he successfully manages to perform the experiment again - on a bigger scale - it spirals out of control, and he ultimately decides to give his life to shut it down.

In the end, he gave up his dream in order to serve the greater good, a noble decision that proved he was still the wise, kind man we met at the start of the film, despite the villainous persona he had took on since.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.