4. The Movie Monster Monologue (Spider-Man 2)
Another thing I love about
Spider-Man 2 is its refusal to be just a comic book movie. It wants to be a soap opera
and a monster movie just as much, and somehow, it manages to pull all three off with astounding flair. Case in point, Alfred Molina's Frankenstein moment in which he monologues about rebuilding his fusion machine to the four arms attached to his spine. Reread that sentence. That should never work. Monologues are some of the easiest things to come off as trite, corny, and superfluous, and the idea that a comic book villain monologues has been so stereotyped and overdone that it seems as if its an idea that's just begging to be put out of its misery. But, man, does Molina pull it off. It's almost like we're getting half the story the entire scene. Unlike Dafoe's monologue at the beginning of this list where he plays opposite himself, we never see the rebuttals of Molina's inner-opponents. It's just his reactions, his reasonings, and his expressions that drive us along. And he keeps going and going, getting larger and larger, until finally, he stands on his two mechanical legs and finishes the scene with a classic movie-villain promise:
"Nothing will stand in our way! Nothing!"
A perfect homage to the comic medium, spitting in the face of naysayers everywhere.