Spider-Man (2002)

This movie holds up really well. It's way better than I remembered it being. It's very simple, and it does hold your hand a little too much (even for an all-ages, super-hero movie), but everything in it happens for a reason and it's all driven by the characters' goals and motivations - which are all clearly communicated to the audience. If you haven't seen it, it's worth watching. It's a good movie.

Radiation is out; genetic engineering is in.

That's not to say it's a perfect movie though. There's always some room for improvement. The first thing is, Peter only becomes Spider-Man 45 minutes into the film (almost 40% of the runtime). They really didn't seem confident that the audience would be on-board with the premise, so they build it up for a fair while first.

The second is a little bit of padding around Peter learning the central lesson of the film (say it with me: "with great power comes great responsibility") and having it be the exact same guy Peter let get away who ends up killing Ben comes across as a little unnecessary. 

It lacks the poetry of Martha Wayne's pearls, if you ask me.

The third is a homophobic remark from Peter when he's fighting the Macho Man Randy Savage Bone Saw McGraw. It's pretty mild and not unexpected if you consider when the movie was made, but it's unfortunate.

And the fourth is really only a complaint from the perspective of wanting them to have included stuff from other versions of the story rather than being an actual problem with the film, and that's that "Flash" Thompson and "Robbie" Robertson were so underused that you could easily miss the fact that they're in the movie at all. Some of that 45 minutes before Peter suits up could have gone to better utilising those characters.

Bone Saw is ready!

One thing that could be regarded as a flaw, but which I'm more than willing to overlook, is that Peter is real dumb. Complete bonehead. It's always been a bit of an unexpected contradiction that supposed super-genius Peter Parker consistently does extremely stupid things for extremely stupid reasons, but I love it and I'm glad they kept that in the movie.

Peter gets a massive swollen spider bite on his wrist and starts feeling sick, so he tells no one and goes to bed. Peter finds out the girl he likes also likes him, and turns her down because of dumb reasons (that she instantly rejects as soon as she finds out about them in the next movie). Even stuff like accidentally using his powers in very public settings and just walking away like as though no one will notice. Peter, you're so dumb and I love it.

He actually didn't even make it to the bed.

The highlight of the movie, for me, was the part during the climactic fight where we see that Norman Osborn is no longer conflicted and has been completely won over to the Green Goblin's way of thinking. It's written and performed really well.

Other notes:

• Surprisingly not pro-cop. The police don't really feature much at all, either on Spider-Man's side or against him. 
• Tobey Maguire is a solid choice for Peter/Spider-Man. He could stand to be a little more animated, but he captures what I feel is the essence of the character pretty well.
• Kirsten Dunst is not a good MJ. Part of that is the writing, but I'm not sure I've ever seen her play the kind of absurdly confident and self-assured character that I see MJ as. I'll return to this point in later entries because she (or the character as-written) gets worse as the trilogy progresses.
• JK Simmons is absolutely perfect as J Jonah Jameson. I want more of this. Give me a JJJ movie where Peter Parker just shows up a couple of times as a minor character who stops by to sell him pictures. Pictures of Spider-Man!
• Also James Franco is in it. Unfortunate.
• MJ calls Peter "Tiger" at one point. It doesn't really make sense, but that is a thing she does in the comics.
• The old Spider-Man theme song playing at the end of the credits was a nice surprise.

Perfection.

Over all, I'm giving this movie a 6/7. Could have been better, but not by much.

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