Review of Spider-Man (2002) by Kyle L — 17 Jul 2018

Before Spider-Man Homecoming and The Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2, we go back fifteen years ago when Spider-Man was at the hands of Sony before he joined the long running Marvel Cinematic Universe and I welcome you to the world of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy.

The 2002 Spider-Man film tells the origin story of Peter Parker, a dorky High School nerd who has a strong passion for photography. But when he was bitten by a radioactive spider during a school trip and his Uncle Ben was killed by a car thief, Peter Parker becomes the titular hero in fighting crime as he gains attention to the public while also making enemies and balancing his responsibilities as a student and a superhero saving the lives of the innocent.

Back when this showed in 2002, it was great to watch one of the early Spider-Man films. But with the recently new adaptations like the aforementioned Amazing Spider-Man films and Spider-Man Homecoming.

You can already see the big faults of the first Spider-Man trilogy that started from 2002 until 2007. Its clear enough that this movie was popular way back when Marvel sold the rights to Sony before starting their own shared universe when Disney bought the rights to Marvel and they slowly started acquiring all the heroes they sold to other studios especially our beloved web swinging hero who has captured the hearts and souls of teenagers that led us into reading comic books.

The early Spider-Man and X-Men films were the pinnacle of comic book studio films as they showed their early strategies that were once popular before going back to where they first started out. Its interesting from a stand-point of view that the very first Spider-Man film was a blockbuster hit that has its sheer moments of fun and action while focusing on good storytelling and this movie shows all of that.

The good part about the original Spider-Man movie and the first sequel is that these films have well focused narratives in the structural development of our web swinging and wall crawling hero while also focusing heavily on memorable action scenes as director Sam Raimi has infused some of the first key elements of a good origin Superhero story from beginning to end while balancing emotion at its core with humor being placed on the sides.

The major changes from comic to film makes sense (Spider-Man relying on gadgets in the comic books but in the first films he squirts web out of his body and older age for the characters whereas they were youngsters in their early twenties in the comics).

Seeing Spider-Man in action is one of the most mind blowing moments that made these first Spider-Man films worth watching and Sam Raimi does it with meticulous care as it shows how passionate he is when making either comic book films or Horror movies like his Evil Dead trilogy.

There are so many well shot action scenes that are entertaining and intense plus thrilling to watch (The school fight where Peter is pitted against Flash Thompson the bully, the wrestling fight, the sad death of Uncle Ben, Spider-Man adapting his powers, first encounter with the Green Goblin and how he became a villain, the parade attack, Norman Osborne discovering Spider-Man's true identity, Spider-Man saving Mary Jane in an alley full of crooks and the final showdown between Spider-Man and Green Goblin that ends with the Goblin's demise) combined with good special effects while the highlight of this film are the scenes with J.

Jonah Jameson at the Daily Bugle and his quirky personality that are humorous throughout the entire trilogy. My biggest issue in this film are the characterization of these characters. While Ii have no problems with either Aunt May, Harry Osborn or the other characters, the biggest flaw lies in the characters of Mary Jane and Peter Parker plus they were completely miscast for this film.

Personally, I do not like both of them and MJ became one of the most unlikable love interests of these films as Sam Raimi ruins the character by turning her into the worst damsel in distress ever as she does nothing but shout and scream in terror just for Spider-Man to save her and they have the worst chemistry in the history of early Superhero films.

The acting is good for the most part, Tobey Maguire is fine in these films but my complain against him is that he does not capture the spirit of Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland who both did a better job with being true to how the character was depicted in the comics, here Maguire lacks some of the fun humor which is the heart and soul of the character from the comics as he is nothing more but a bland hero who lacks personality from start to finish while Kirsten Dunst is the worst of the cast who delivers an incredibly awful performance in her spanning career as her annoying shouts will do nothing but make your ears bleed really bad.

The only actors who are good in this film and have more personality than our two main stars are James Franco in one of his early careers as Harry Osborn and he has more charm than Tobey Maguire for real, Willem Dafoe was an incredible villain who delivers intimidating lines despite having an extremely ridiculous costume that is more campy than terrifying and he portrays a perfect Norman Osborn while having good chemistry with his aforementioned co star James Franco, the actress portraying Aunt May is good but the one who steals the spotlight is J.

K. Simmons in one of his most comedic roles to date as the hilarious and loud mouth boss of Peter Parker in the Daily Bugle J. Jonah Jameson who becomes funnier from one film to the next and I enjoy how Spider-Man shuts him up in one scene by shooting a web in his mouth while the Green Goblin terrorizes him plus I enjoy seeing Sam Raimi's buddy and collaborator from the Evil Dead movies, Bruce Campbell in a small cameo as the man who mispronounced Spider-Man in the wrestling arena.

Director Sam Raimi has done a decent job with his work on the Spider-Man trilogy, although he handled the sequel slightly better than in this film or the abysmal third entry. I felt as if the man does not know what he was doing when handling the faulty characters of MJ and Peter Parker which made me feel irked after seeing all three films because Raimi misguided the two lead stars in the worst way and he could have somewhat done something better but at least now his career is on the right track after these films.

Overall the 2002 Spider-Man movie is an ok film that has lots of good moments but loses its magic at the heart of its characters. This film gets a 4/10.