Spider-Man (2002)

This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:

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Rating: PG-13
Director: Sam Raimi
Writers: Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, David Koepp
Stars: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Defoe, James Franco
Release Date: May 3, 2002
Run time: 2 hours, 1 minute

THE PLOT:

(via wiki)

On a high school field trip, Peter Parker visits a Columbia University genetics laboratory with his best friend, Harry Osborn, and his love interest, Mary Jane Watson. There, he is bitten by a genetically engineered spider, and falls ill upon returning home. Meanwhile, Harry’s father Norman tests a performance-enhancing chemical on himself in an attempt to secure a military contract for Oscorp, the company he founded. The chemical gives him superhuman strength but causes him to go insane and kill one of his scientists.

The next day, Peter develops spider-like abilities, including enhanced strength, senses, agility, and speed, organic webbing in his wrists, and the ability to cling to walls. Hoping to buy a car to impress Mary Jane, Peter enters an underground fighting event and wins his first match, but is swindled out of his earnings. Soon after, Peter’s Uncle Ben is killed by a thief who robbed the event, and whom Peter let escape. Peter pursues the thief, who eventually falls to his death. Meanwhile, a crazed Norman sabotages a product test by an Oscorp rival and kills several people.

Upon graduating, Peter begins using his abilities to fight crime, donning a costume and adopting the alias “Spider-Man“. J. Jonah Jameson, the publisher of the Daily Bugle newspaper, hires Peter as a freelance photographer, since he can provide high-quality images of Spider-Man. When Oscorp’s board of directors decides to oust Norman and sell the company, Norman uses a disguise to assassinate them during the Unity Day festival. As Spider-Man, Peter fends off Norman and rescues Mary Jane. Afterwards, Jameson bestows the name “the Green Goblin” upon the mysterious masked killer.

Norman offers Peter a place at his side, but Peter refuses. They fight, and Peter flees after being wounded. Peter’s Aunt May invites Mary Jane, Harry, and Norman for Thanksgiving dinner. Norman notices Peter’s injury and deduces that he is Spider-Man. Later, Norman attacks and injures May, who is hospitalized. Peter is still unaware of the Goblin’s identity, but realizes that the Goblin is targeting his loved ones. While visiting the hospital, Mary Jane confesses to Peter her infatuation with Spider-Man, who has rescued her twice. Harry, who is dating Mary Jane, sees her holding Peter’s hand and assumes she has feelings for him. A distraught Harry tells his father about Peter’s relationship with Mary Jane.

That night, Norman captures Mary Jane and a Roosevelt Island Tramway car full of children. He tells Peter to choose whom to rescue, then drops them both from the Queensboro Bridge. Peter saves everyone, then lowers them onto a nearby barge for safety. An enraged Norman throws Peter into an abandoned building, then brutally beats him. After Norman reveals his intentions to kill Mary Jane, Peter finds the strength to fight back. Norman reveals his identity and begs forgiveness, discreetly preparing to impale Peter with his glider. Warned by his spider-sense, Peter dodges the attack, and the glider fatally skewers Norman instead. Before dying, Norman begs Peter not to reveal his identity to Harry. Peter takes Norman’s body to the Osborn house, where Harry confronts him, but Peter escapes.

At Norman’s funeral, Harry vows revenge on Spider-Man, whom he falsely holds responsible for his father’s death. Mary Jane then confesses to Peter that she loves him. However, Peter feels he must protect her from his enemies, so he hides his true feelings and tells her they can only be friends. As Peter leaves, he recalls his uncle’s words: “With great power comes great responsibility“.

My Review:

With apologies to the Blade and X-Men franchises, which came shortly before this one, I am a pretty firm believer that it was Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies that launched the 21st century superhero film boom that DC’s Batman franchise had left in a pile of rubble in the 1990s. These movies had so much of an enduring impact that present-day Marvel has seen fit to put spandex back onto the now 40-something year old Tobey Maguire to reprise the role. Scenes from these movies are not lost to history or faded memory, but rather remain part of present-day meme culture.

If you’re a little bit too online, you’ve likely seen these purposed and repurposed to various comedic uses.

The question I had though, thinking back about the first Spider-Man movie, was whether it was actually good? I vividly remember being impressed by Spider-Man 2, but I struggled to pull up my thoughts on the first film. My take-away now is that the movie is a pretty mixed bag. There is a lot about this movie that I liked, but just as much that could have been a lot better.

What I Liked:

• The action scenes were really well done and they hold up well today.

It would have been easy to make the web-slinging look goofy, gross, or downright bad, but the movie instead set a high standard for what a human-spider can look like. Green Goblin’s glider and fight sequences also could have been hokey, too, but instead Raimi delivered something that looked visually menacing.

• The musical score was phenomenal.

If your superhero movie has a good score, the audience will forgive a lot of flaws. Danny Elfman’s music in this film is iconic. The high strings the main title starts out with connect you mentally with the fine strings a spider might spin when making a web. And then from there it builds into something powerful and uplifting.

• Tobey Maguire and Willem Defoe were excellent casting choices.

If you’re going to make a comic book movie, it’s important to land the main characters. I think Raimi did that here. Maguire is charming and he conveys intelligence and a beneath-the-surface toughness and confidence that emerges when the costume comes on. Defoe dominates the screen when he’s on it – even behind a giant green mask – and he was born to play an unhinged villain.

• The late, great, Macho Man Randy Savage makes a guest appearance.

The brief presence of one of my favorite professional wrestlers of all time made everything better.

What I Didn’t Like:

• Considering that she’s such an important character, with respect to the motivations of multiple characters, I felt like the film didn’t do enough to give me a reason to actually like Mary Jane Watson.

She bounces a bit from guy to guy, leads Peter on a bit, dates his friend Harry, and then makes a move on Peter… at a cemetery? In the immediate aftermath of the death of Harry’s father? Prior to that, she makes out with Spider-Man while she’s dating Harry without breaking up with him or telling him. Kirsten Dunst is a very attractive woman… but is she so attractive that the audience is supposed to completely overlook stuff like that? I don’t know. As an audience member, I ended up thinking Peter could do a lot better than this very damaged girl who needed to spend some time working on herself. I can’t really see what she provides to Peter. For that matter, other than the fact that she’s there and that Peter liked her first, I don’t know why Harry was into her, either.

• Peter’s friendship with Harry also makes no sense.

Harry is a recent transfer to Peter’s high school. Despite having NOTHING in common with Peter, they become good friends. Then Peter just completely forgives Harry for making a move on Mary Jane, in front of him, using words Peter had said to Harry. Then Peter again forgives Harry for dating Mary Jane and keeping it secret. To some extent I think this is all so that the audience doesn’t hold it against Peter when he ends up kissing Mary Jane… but the whole dynamic feels like it lacks a reason for the audience to celebrate any of this on Peter’s behalf.

• I don’t understand why Peter’s aunt and uncle are so much older than he is.

Instead of Aunt May and Uncle Ben being in the ballpark of how old Peter’s parents would have been, they seem more of an age with Peter’s grandparents. It’s not a big deal, but it’s odd. I understand that huge age gaps happen between siblings, but they come across like his great aunt and great uncle, instead of his aunt and uncle.

• The plot in general felt very formulaic.

This critique is a bit unfair. This movie preceded dozens of Marvel films that followed starting in earnest a decade later. And those films borrowed ideas from this one. That said… everything in the plot and with character development just felt very inorganic. Girl next door. The superhero learns to accept that his fate is one of self-sacrifice. The superhero and the supervillain are both created separately and in tandem. Everyone seems to know each other privately in a way that defies plausibility. (Norman Osborne – billionaire scientist – has dinner with Aunt May and Peter?)

• The Green Goblin captured Spider-Man and didn’t look under his mask while he was unconscious? And he just let him go after?

I think this was supposed to just be plausible because Goblin was clearly crazy… but it was annoying nonetheless. It’s a testament to the talent of Mr. Defoe that this wasn’t more glaring.

One thing really jumped out at me in this rewatch that I thought I’d share here. In the aforementioned scene, Goblin’s conversation with Spider-Man is remarkably similar to one that happened in a DC film just a few years later.

On the whole, this wasn’t a great film, but you can see the raw materials here to make a really great film (which if memory serves happens in the sequel.) I definitely recommend giving it a rewatch, een with the aforementioned critiques.

Have you seen Spier-Man? If so, what did you think?