Emerging starlet.

The reviews are in, and the Spider-Man flick is a smash! Everyone loves the iconic Marvel superhero,whether he's battling a green, monstrous adversary, seducing a blonde classmate, or just sewing his costume. Just look at what the critics have to say!

"The man is better company than the spider in Spider-Man. The long-awaited bigscreen incarnation of the 40-year-old Marvel Comics superhero emerges as a perfectly serviceable early-summer popcorn picture that will satisfy its core teen constituency and not displease general viewers looking for some disposable entertainment." --Todd McCarthy, Variety

"This conceit has grown tired over the years, and Marvel's cachet as the hipper of the two comic book giants has long since waned. But the filmmakers have succeeded in rejuvenating the character while staying faithful to his roots." --A. O. Scott, The New York Times

"The movie's limitations are mostly built-in: Here's one more big-screen comic book when comic books are what we now get at the movies every summer, regardless of their subject. But you know a movie has succeeded when you're looking toward the sequel that Spider-Man's wrap-up strongly portends." --Mike Clark, USA Today

"Poor, misunderstood Spider-Man, the most alienated teenage superhero of the 1960s, gets careful treatment in the summer's first aspiring blockbuster. Mildly cheesy but not overwrought, this long-awaited future franchise is a competent seat-warmer at the box-office table for the two weekends preceding George Lucas's Attack of the Clones." --J. Hoberman, Village Voice

Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002) is available on iTunes. Enjoy it at home today!

Ishioka's costume for the Green Goblin (Getty Images)

The costume designer Eiko Ishioka, most recently known for the costumes in Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, has died at 73. Ms. Ishioka won an Oscar for Bram Stoker's Dracula and designed the costumes for the 2008 Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing. The producers of Spider-Man have issued a statement reading in part: "Her work will continue to touch audiences for years to come, but she will be greatly missed," and are dedicating tonight's performance to her memory.

Julie Taymor and Bono, in better times. (Getty Images)

Though the production has been accident free since its official premiere at the Foxwood Theatre in June, there's still more blood to be spilled over Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. On November 8th, Julie Taymor, the ousted director of the play (along with her production company, LOH, Inc.) filed suit against the producers of the once-cursed production, saying that they had violated her creative rights and haven't compensated her for her work on the play.

The lead producers--who are listed in the Playbill item about the lawsuit--disagreed, and filed their own counter-suit in response to Ms. Taymor.

Ms. Taymor is requesting to be paid full royalties as a director and collaborator, according to the countersuit, "despite the fact that Taymor caused numerous delays, drove up costs, and failed to direct a musical about Spider-Man that could open on Broadway." The claim goes on to say:

“any similarities [between the final version and Taymor's original treatment]. . . exist by virtue of the fact that they are both based on the same pre-existing works in which Taymor cannot claim copyrights, including, but not limited to, the Spider-Man comic books and the 'Spider-Man' and 'Spider-Man' 2 films, which originated all of the main characters in the works at issue in this case, their settings, the Spider-Man origin story premise, and the plot elements that appear in the works.”

While this may or may not be true, it will be Ms. Taymor's name who is eligible for the Tony Awards this year, and not her successor, Philip Wm. McKinley, according to a recent ruling by the Tony Awards Administration Committee. Her name also appears in the credits for the show, under both "book by" and "original directing."

While Ms. Taymor might have an axe to grind against the show's producers, she's still on good enough terms with the cast to have turned up for their June premiere, where she was greeted by "wild applause" and embraced both Bono and the Edge.

"Spider-Man" makes it out of previews!

In honor of this momentous occasion, we put together a little timeline of the show's history. Enjoy! And try not to hurt yourself while reading this.

* $75 million+, and that's not even including the ongoing lawsuit with former director Julie Taymor and the worker's comp paid out to injured cast members.

Times Square (Photo Edit: Terabass)

Broadway box offices took a major blow due to Hurricane Irene last week, with total grosses dropping 39 percent from the $20-million figure that shows earned the previous week, according to statistics provided by the Broadway League.

The sizeable drop is the result of Broadway shows being shuttered on their two most profitable days, Saturday and Sunday, when most productions stage three shows.

The shows that took the biggest hits were Wicked, Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark and The Lion King. Despite only having five performances, those shows still managed to be the highest earners in comparison to other Broadway shows. Spider-Man Turn of the Dark earned $933,424, while The Lion King and Wicked each earned more than $1 million.

Billy Elliot, another popular show, grossed only $358,485 last week, less than half the $731,895 figure it earned the previous week.

Off Broadway shows suffered as well. Cirque Du Soleil’s Zarkana, which closed for the weekend, lost out on the opportunity to sell 22,000 tickets. The group declined to release financial figures to The Observer.

Broadway has typically prided itself on staying open during even the worst weather conditions. This was its first emergency shutdown since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

What, besides the exorbitant length of the preview period, made this exceptional? Times-fueled crowd mentality, for one: "I felt that once the Times had reviewed it--and these 'rules' were invented by the Times to serve the Times--then it was up for grabs." (The Times review ran on February 7, the date a New Yorker double issue went to press. This is the first issue that could contain a reaction to Brantley's review, though neither Brantley nor the Times is mentioned.)

Lahr, who notes the tickets' astronomical price in his negative review, has little faith in critics' ability to dim Spider-Man's prospects: "[C]ritics are very low on the marketing research reports of what makes the paying customer go to a show. At this level of exposure--good or bad publicity--all works in favor of the house." That doesn't mean that people oughn't listen to critics, though, as Lahr writes us that "any theatre-savvy person who's seen the show will know that what's wrong with it can't really be fixed by a few more weeks of previews." Those flaws include, per Lahr's review, weak plotting and dour music, as well as "bearbaiting"-style risk that calls to mind the coverage of actors' frequent injuries in the show on a New Yorker cover.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

But reviews aside, the production is first and foremost a capital-letter Cultural Event. The New York Times informs us that the massive Spider-Man hype makes it the most talked-about show in Broadway history, relegating the show itself to the sidelines.

The turning point may have been the New Yorker cover that hit newsstands last month, in which hospitalized Spideys nurse their stunt-gone-bad wounds. It was the first Broadway production to be featured on the magazine in 10 years.

“For our cover we always ask ourselves, would our one million readers know what we were making reference to?” Francoise Mouly, art editor at the magazine, told The Times. “But in no time at all, ‘Spider-Man’ has gotten enough notoriety that we knew the cover would make people laugh. Even the show’s producers laughed; they’ve been hounding us to buy copies of the artwork.”

Not every producer though! Director Julie Taymor, the Ahab to the show's Pequod, "looked queasy" after Joan Rivers asked about the injuries, and then walked away dismissively. Someone needs a sense of humor.

nfreeman at observer.com |@nfreeman1234

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And if I told you those same things--which remain true--and that they're what I saw at the Foxwoods Theatre Saturday afternoon, when I watched a sold-out preview performance of Julie Taymor's hugely expensive, highly anticipated, occasionally injurious and often delayed musical about the quasi-arachnid comic-book hero, I'd be misbehaving.

Directed and conceived by the brilliant and demanding Ms. Taymor, with music by U2's Bono and the Edge, and in development for more than nine years, Spider-Man is the most talked-about, reported-upon and analyzed theatrical event in recent memory.

Those who've weighed in about it include the New York Times editorial page, which intoned its concerns on Dec. 23; the Times op-ed page, which on Jan. 1 published a reminiscence-as-warning about Via Galactica, a previous Broadway blockbuster gone bad; The Onion, dryly reporting on Jan. 5 that a nuclear bomb had detonated during a rehearsal but that producers remained optimistic; the braying theater fanatics of the Internet; the tippling theater professionals of Bar Centrale; the New York State Department of Labor; Conan O'Brien; 60 Minutes; and, as of last week, New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, who suggested that Spider-Man is violating consumer-protection laws by charging allegedly unsuspecting customers full ticket prices for what producers insist is right now still a work in progress.

Only one class of people--professional theater reviewers, who are paid to opine on such things--is expected to politely avert its gaze.

This follows from a well-established and well-intentioned practice. Because making a play work requires performing it in front of an audience, shows run several weeks of previews prior to an opening night. Reviewers are invited to final previews, just before opening, once the show has been "frozen"; by accepting our free tickets, we're implicitly agreeing that we won't publish our reviews until after opening night.

But that bit of artifice can sometimes seem ridiculous, as when a production delays its opening three times after starting previews, for a total of 10 weeks, while charging prices as high as $275 for a single seat and selling out. (Last week, Spider-Man defied gravity, or at least recent history, to supplant Wicked as Broadway's highest-grossing show.)

"Leaving the Marquis Theatre after Nick and Nora," Frank Rich wrote in a 1991 Times review, "I kept hearing the same jaded comment from other members of the audience beside me on the escalator: 'Well, it's not nearly as bad as they said it would be.'" Next month, unless Spider-Man skips a performance, Nick and Nora will lose its status as the play with the most previews. "True," Mr. Rich went on, "this comment is hard to evaluate if you have no way of knowing which 'they' these people are referring to. After all, nearly 100,000 customers paid full price to see Nick and Nora during its nine weeks of previews."

By last night, which was once scheduled to be opening night, about 73,000 had paid to see Spider-Man.

The previewing process is of course necessary. But there is something perverse in allowing the subjects of critical coverage to decide how and when it should be published. There comes a point--it might be after six weeks of previews, three delays, four injuries and general cultural omnipresence--when it seems strange that professional theatergoers are the only interested people not to have seen a show.

So just before 2 p.m. on Saturday, I paid $142 and settled into the rear of the orchestra.

(Mr. Rich, incidentally, was not always so accommodating. In Hot Seat, the annotated compendium of his reviews, he recalls colluding with the critics from the Daily News and the AP in 1982 to review Merlin, which held the record for most previews until Nick and Nora came along, two weeks prior to its twice-delayed opening night.)

I couldn't help being excited. While I can't say I'd been terribly eager for the show during its long gestation, Jesse Green's New York cover story in November had enticed me: He argued that Ms. Taymor is a visionary and all the problems and delays have been the necessary byproducts of creating truly great work. The subsequent wave of news had only heightened the intrigue. Would the show be watchable? Would it run interrupted? Would anyone get hurt?

Others seemed to share my anticipation; I've rarely felt a Broadway audience--especially a matinee audience--so bustling with energy. This was caused by the many excited and excitable kids in attendance and, no doubt, by a mild, rubbernecky blood lust, both physical and theatrical. It occurred to me that all the bad news from the production, horrific for the actors, was, financially speaking, fantastic for the producers.

One could even argue they're milking it. Just after curtain time, Glenn Orsher, an executive producer, took the stage, microphone in hand. "Thank you for coming to this preview of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," he said, to generous applause. He explained that because this was a preview, the action might stop for technical problems or the actors' safety. "I'm pleased to tell you that the Department of Labor has approved all our aerial sequences," he added. That time, the applause was thunderous.

Linda Winer of Newsday and Jeremy Gerard of Bloomberg News, who also bought their own tickets and wrote about the show over Christmas weekend, found a similar morbid curiosity. For this, they were both castigated by the expected parties for breaking with convention and seeing the show early, and by one unexpected one.

John Simon, never known for his critical kindness in his 30 years throwing knives from New York magazine, called the early reviews "unfair to the show" and "discourteous to other critics." Reviewing before invited to, he said, is "like grabbing a dish from a restaurant kitchen before it is fully cooked." (In fact, it is like visiting a new restaurant after a decent interval, as restaurant critics do, rather than at the restaurateur's convenience.)

Finally, the show started.

And here's what I can discourteously report: The key aerial sequence--the Act I climax, a high-altitude fight between Spidey and the Green Goblin, conducted at high speeds while zooming over the audience--is pulse-quickening and spectacular, in every sense of the word. (Daniel Ezralow did both the athletic choreography and the innovative aerial choreography.)

The visual design is amazing. George Tsypin's lush, skewed-perspective sets; Don Holder's moody and expressive lighting; and Eiko Ishioka's wittily outrageous costumes allow Ms. Taymor to create strikingly beautiful stage pictures.

The endearing Jennifer Damiano is both forceful and winsome as Mary Jane; T.V. Carpio, who recently replaced Natalie Mendoza as Arachne, Ms. Taymor's ur-spider, sings nicely but is less charismatic than you'd expect from a mystical temptress; Matthew James Thomas, who played Peter/Spidey at the performance I saw in place of star Reeve Carney, is handsome, charming, and sings passionately; Patrick Page makes the Green Goblin bug-eyed and possessed.

But Bono and the Edge's songs are surprisingly bland, a largely undifferentiated pop-rock collection with some propulsive guitar riffs but generally uninteresting, repetitive lyrics. Last week, having returned from a U2 tour, the musicians finally saw the show and may
be working on new songs.

And the book, by Ms. Taymor and Glen Berger, is, as you've no doubt heard, overwrought, muddled and often incoherent. They are reportedly working on that, too.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is, right now, a pleasant evening of entertainment. But this epic story of Peter Parker's transformation is not yet a similarly transporting experience. Everyone--even Bill de Blasio!--keeps reminding us that it's a work still in progress. Perhaps it will yet come to terms with its own destiny.

I'm looking forward to seeing whether it does. If they'll still have me.

Here's this week's cover in all its glory, courtesy The New Yorker's Tumblr:

It should also be pointed out that the cartoonist, Barry Blitt, has had some experience drawing Spidey before. We knew this looked familiar.

nfreeman at observer.com |@nfreeman1234

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I’ve never earned a dime off my efforts as a volunteer civic catastrophe-averter. Defeating supervillains comes with no stock options, no 401(k) plan. I still make my living as a photojournalist, and since the newspaper I worked for folded, I’ve been strictly freelance, mostly surviving on Web royalties. The Web, what a cruel joke for a man condemned by teenage radiation exposure to a spider’s fate. It’s a life not fit for an insect, much less a man with arachnid superpowers.

A lot of people ask me where I was on 9/11. “Spidey,” they ask, “why couldn’t you keep us safe?” At the time, I was hard up for cash. I was trolling the Hamptons for the dregs of the A-list lingering in Labor Day’s wake, snapping photos on assignment for a grocery-checkout-line tabloid. That’s right, I was paparazzi. When the planes hit the towers, I was sitting in a web I’d spun between trees in Jon Bon Jovi’s backyard. If I’d still been on my beat downtown, everything would be different. You want somebody to blame for those attacks? Blame Us Weekly.

I’m so lonely. I want to move out of my aunt’s crummy apartment in Queens, but I can’t afford it. I want to meet people. I want to meet creative people. I want to meet people who can appreciate someone a little bit creepy who wears primary colors. I want to move to Williamsburg, and I want to meet girls. Girls with bangs and tattoos. Girls who don’t mind being with someone who’s a little bit intense. Every girl I’ve ever known has left me for a “normal life.” Even Mary Jane. I love her, but now she’s gone. She was tired of the lies that come with a secret identity. She was tired of being tied to the front of speeding subway cars, dropped from tall buildings, handcuffed to ticking nuclear bombs. She was tired of crying all the time. She said it was time to “live for herself.” She told me I was “too profound.” She said she’d be happier with a guy who was “just a bro.” Maybe somebody who was a kind of “weird and interesting” but mostly someone “sweet.” Not a brooding mutant possessed of talents heretofore unknown on the planet.

I’m trying to write my memoir, but one superpower radiation exposure never provided me was the ability to overcome writer’s block. Perhaps that’s why I became a photographer. Every time I sit down to write, I get nervous, and proteinaceous spider silk squirts out of my wrists, gumming up the keyboard of my laptop or making the pages of my notebook illegible. Do you think a photojournalist can afford to pay someone to take dictation? Have you ever priced transcription services? Until I find some way to tell my story myself, it will be left to the hacks of Hollywood and Broadway. And the saddest thing of all is that there is no band I hate more than those self-righteous prigs U2. You don’t hire the Fly to score Spider-Man. If they had to get a washed-up act from the early ’80s to write the score, couldn’t they have called Paul Westerberg? I guess I’ll always be unsatisfied.