Spider-Man will do what he can against evil Doc Ock
No one can say the latest Spider-Man arch nemesis isn’t well-armed. Something is definitely fishy in Spider-Man 2, the sequel to last year’s comic-inspired box office sensation now shooting in Los Angeles. And we don’t mean the leftovers in Aunt May’s fridge.
Dr. Otto Octavius, the sinister scientist known to Spidey buffs as Doc Ock or Doctor Octopus, was unveiled this weekend at San Diego’s Comic-Con bash.
Alfred Molina, who has done wrong in everything from Chocolat to Dudley Do-Right, is the man bearing those malevolent arms.
“Alfred happens to be a great actor who has some of the qualities of a loved character,” says director Sam Raimi, who returns for a second spin with the web-slinging superhero reprised by Tobey Maguire and due next July 2. “Doc Ock had to have a commanding presence and intelligence,” Raimi says. “He’s got the look of a bodybuilder from 1954.”
Molina fit the bill as well as the costume, which includes dark goggles and a swept-forward hairdo.
“I’m told he’s one of the more popular villains,” says Molina, 50, who occasionally flipped through the comics as a kid. “It would have been foolish to have said no.” Originally a humanitarian, the doctor conducts an experiment that goes horribly awry and accidentally fuses a quartet of huge squid limbs to his spine.
Raimi considers the doctor to be Spider-Man’s perfect foe, since both possess the nature of eight-legged creatures. “His many arms can really put an agile athlete like Spider-Man to the test.”
The Doc also has more human pathos than Spidey’s first movie opponent, Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin. “I never considered Doc Ock as a madman” √≥ unlike Goblin, Raimi says. “He just gets his priorities out of order. He’s ruthless, but I always thought of him as sane but misguided.”
In a story not borrowed from the comic books, Spidey’s alter ego, Peter Parker, runs into Dr. Octavius while attending college. “They meet in a laboratory,” says Raimi. “Dr. Octavius is working on a project, and both share an interest in physics. He becomes an unwilling teacher.”
Molina’s arsenal of appendages, whose performance is half animatronic and half digital effects, weighs 75 to 100 pounds. “The first thing I did was to get in a gym with a trainer,” he says. Sixteen puppeteers work the expandable 13-foot arms.
Dafoe recently made a visit to the set and appeared a bit green √≥ with envy, Molina says. “He reckons I’m lucky since, as the Goblin, he was hidden behind a big mask and I haven’t got one.”
Molina doesn’t sound as if he has been infected by any of the Doc’s bad habits. But, he adds, “Funnily enough, I have not eaten calamari since filming began. Some subconscious thing must be going on.”
Categories