Alfred Molina talks about playing Doc Ock in SPIDER-MAN 2, read the
details
about the first footage from the film, and get a look at Alfred Molina
as
Doc Ock.
USA Today had the interview with Molina:
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.
For a closer look, check www.sony.com/Spider-Man. 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."