Review of Spider-Man (2002) by Mike P — 10 Apr 2014

This Spider-Man movie does everything right that The Amazing Spider-Man does wrong. This is the definitive Spider-Man origin story to me, no matter how badly The Amazing Spider-Man tried to expand on every single detail of Spider-Man's origin story as an attempt to seem more "in-depth", this movie covers all of the ground that needed to be covered without wasting our time like Amazing did.

It's debatable whether or not Tobey Maguire is a better Peter Parker/Spider-Man than Andrew Garfield, but I think I personally prefer Maguire. I think Garfield is the better actor overall, but Maguire IS Peter Parker to me, and it's not just because I grew up with his Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Maguire captured the awkward loser aspect of Peter Parker that Garfield failed to capture in my opinion.

This movie does suffer from a lot of early-2000s corniness, particularly the scene with all of the New Yorkers throwing stuff at the Goblin on the bridge (it was right after 9/11 happened though) and a lot of the CGI doesn't hold up as well, but this movie was the first comic book movie I ever saw and it's the reason why Spider-Man was, and still is, my favorite superhero, so there's a bit of nostalgia attached to this movie for me.