Peter is not only gifted as spiderman, he's also a gifted scientist in his own right, and he meets another gifted scientist, who at their first meeting becomes a self-appointed mentor to Peter. He tells him intelligence is "not a privilege, it's gift to be used for the good of mankind." Dr. Otto Octavius. Octavius is amazingly similar to Osborne in the first movie. He respects Peter's scientific mind, and like Osborne, he wants to take him under his wing, like a father-figure. He's a brilliant scientist who wants to create something risky but useful, something that is the first of its kind - a self-sustaining fusion reaction, a little sun for the use of mankind. He even has a sense of humor, like Peter.
But he differs from Osborne. We like Octavius at the beginning. He portrays a sincere desire to use his intelligence for others, and he loves. Octavius' wife shows the humanity and goodness of Octavius. We never saw Osborne love anything but his work and ambition. They met in college, and she tried to explain to him T.S. Eliot, the poet of modern, technological man and the conflict between those two modern stumbling blocks for man - scientific progress and reliance upon intellect versus the mysterious divine and faith. There's a hint of the future when Octavius says he never did understand Eliot, and later when he has started the fusion reaction and with an unaccustomed self-aggrandizement in his voice and the Goblin's (the devil's) gleam in his eye, he says, "The power of the sun in the palm of my hand." Even after discovering what the arms have made him, Octavius wants to do the right thing, but the arms convince him otherwise, and they use his "dream" to convince him that the ends justify the means. Like Osborne, we suspect he has the power to control what the arms do, but he succumbs for the sake of his "dream." Like Satan, the arms use what is good to cause evil, unlike God, who uses even evil to accomplish his good, kingdom purposes.
After his loss of his dream of unlimited fusion power, his wife, and even his normal humanity ( he becomes physically and neurologically fused to his own creation, superhuman, indestructible arms, each of which has its own artificial intelligence), he begins to listen to the arms who can speak to his mind by way of the neurological connection caused by the electrical shock he received during the fusion demonstration. Unlike Osborne, Octavius battles a real enemy, not just himself. So the villain has evolved in the sequel. Octavius becomes like Osborne in every way, except that at the end, Octavius is able to redeem himself. Another electrical shock brings to his remembrance who he really is - not Peter's enemy but his friend, not a diabolical nemesis of the world using science destructively but a responsible scientist with ethics.
In the same way he uses the words of his Uncle in the first movie, Peter uses his Aunt May's words. The words represent a brilliant understanding of the writers of this sequel of the difficulty and power of doing good. All through the movie, Octavius, like Osborne, has justified murder, theft, and wreaking havoc for the sake of something else - what they thought they deserved. Octavius' cause is a "higher" one than just personal ambition - the dream of a new scientific discovery - but it has become a selfish, destructive one nonetheless. The words Peter uses to call Dr. Oc back are amazing in context. Peter repeats Aunt May's words, altering them a little, and says that in order to do the right thing, like be honest, be noble, to persevere: "Sometimes to do what's right, we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most, even our dreams."
Octavius comes to himself and hears Peter's repetition of his Aunt's words. He realizes the wrong he has done and like Samson, he gives his life to undo it. As he dies, he proclaims: "I will not die a monster." No one hears, no one will know what he did to right his wrong, no one except God the all-seeing. He doesn't die a monster before God, not before man. That is what God tells us to do, to remember the Lord and His ways, to return to the right was, even if no one recognizes it, even if we are killed because of it. And Christ teaches us that there is something much more important than life itself - the kingdom of God.
While we want to relate to Peter Parker, and we do because he's like us in many ways, Octavius and Osborne, I'm afraid, is the more typical pattern for the mass of sinful humanity. See the great potential of Octavius, what he could have done, what he could have been, but he became a monster because of his desire to "do good." We, in spite of, or because of, our best intentions, claiming to be good, expose our sinfulness. That's the problem with "do-gooders;" it's not that they are just annoying, it's that they become monsters when separated from Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment