Alternate Best Supporting Actor 2004: Alfred Molina in Spider-Man 2

Alfred Molina did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Doctor Otto Octavius aka Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2.

Spider-Man 2 follows the continued adventures of Spider-Man aka Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) this time against Doc Ock.

Molina plays the villain this time around working within similar contexts to Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin/Norman Osborne from the first film though to do different ends. Similar in the sense that both films, very much fitting the style of Sam Raimi, involve a transformation towards evil. With Otto we meet him also attempting a risky experiment that will create an amazing breakthrough at Oscorp, although a difference being he’s technically an employee as a researcher being funded by now head of the company, Harry Osborne (James Franco). Molina’s first scene actually does a lot as we initially meet him as the somewhat reluctant host for Peter who is writing a paper on Otto’s work. Molina I think key, and really what is the backbone to where the character goes, is the initial coldness and kind of disregard for taking the time as he speaks of his work as far beyond any other requirement, only relenting when Harry reminds him of his financial support. There’s something there that Molina eventually expands on, though we first get an important reprieve where we see Otto lighten up when he finds out that Peter is the “Smart but lazy” student his friend has told him about and has lunch with his wife Rosie (Donna Murphy). Molina and Murphy for that matter I think importantly give no sense of where the film is going to go, instead convincingly playing with genuine chemistry a long loving married couple who still have fun chatting up about their old days and their differences as science and poetry focused people. They really are lovely together and exude such a strong sense of the relationship in just one scene to show it very much as the humanity of Otto. An element he even shares with Peter as he encourages him to take a forward approach romantically with such a sincere little grin of someone who is so in love he’d only want someone else to share that as well. It’s great work because Molina and Murphy work would be convincing in a feel good or even drama about the different yet connected couple, and don’t play the relationship as thin given it will be wiped away by the plot. 

Speaking of, we get Otto demonstrating his self-sustaining fusion reaction, which naturally requires the use of four giant mechanical arms grafted to his body, and we get the introduction from Otto. Molina opens as the slightly corny scientist with a bad joke and his general presentation, before starting the experiment with the arms where Molina fashions a direct intensity in his eyes and we see essentially the strength of his ego in the moment. A pivotal moment actually to play the seed of the character before we take the next step, less so as a Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde as we saw with Norman Osborne and more so the man letting his worst element be taken to an extreme. An extreme that comes as the experiment goes terribly wrong, needing to be shut down by Spider-Man, Rosie dies, and Otto loses his protection from the influence of the arms leading to the arms to massacre the hospital staff that attempt to remove them. Where we make the shift very much more so to the Raimi style villain where there is a degree of arch to it, as we honestly begin Molina’s work as Doc Ock with a dramatic “Nooooo” at seeing what has happened and an announcement of anger that infuses both the losses he’s endured and the monster he seemingly has become. This might sound like a criticism but trust me it is not. Rather what Molina does is find ownership in the more operatic qualities that really aren’t all that out of sorts for a man finding himself both grafted to metal arms but also influenced by them that reinforce his worst impulses. Where we see the moment of the arms "building him” up and Molina’s terrific in playing into this frenzy as he goes with every suggestion to continue with the experiment but to only make it bigger without any thought to the consequences. 

Molina finding a pathway into then creating the villain as essentially showing that intensity but now as the man who has come to believe anything he does is perfectly fine as long as it is in service to his vision. In turn we do get quite a lot of fun of Molina then playing basically as the ego without any bounds and someone who comes to even enjoy his villainy as he goes about robbing banks, threats and kidnapping to meet his demands. Molina finds a juicy material in more ways than one honestly, as even some of his head movements are so specifically of this comic book effect that it is utilized in the ideal way where he presents the comic book heel in such a dynamic fashion. While also making him quite entertaining in playing up those egotistical moments of the villain playing around essentially such as when he purposefully sets up a train for destruction to exhaust Spider-Man with such aplomb, or coming to threaten Harry with the biggest smiles of someone just totally living in being the monster beyond himself by giving into those impulses. Molina getting to have fun with the fiend and thriving within the style of the film, yet never becoming too much that you lose the core of the character at any point. Molina successfully connects the “arch” elements with that sense of expanding ego leading to the finale where Doc Ock tries the experiment again only leading to greater destruction. When Doc Ock sees Peter, not Spider-Man, trying to talk sense into him, Molina’s moment of clarity is fantastic where we see the push and pull essentially between going with arms and his ego, to that humanity of his scene with his wife and Molina finds genuine pathos in the man realizing he’s gone off the deep end. Leading to a genuinely moving moment where he insists on stopping the experiment insisting he won’t be remembered as a monster, where Molina’s reaction embodies a loss of the ego, genuine sorrow in where it has taken him, but also a different new type of determination as he goes about righting his wrong. Molina delivering a strong performance that succeeds in managing to take ownership of the more overt comic book tone to make an entertaining villain, however without going so far that we lose the thread that provide the necessary grounding to make his strange journey believable within the tone of the film.