Last year, ahead of the release of AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, I took the opportunity to say my peace on the Marvel Cinematic Universe series up until that point, and I don't have too much new to say about them just now, but I'm still looking forward to CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. The new movie will introduce Marvel Studios' brand-new iteration of Marvel Comics' most iconic character, Spider-Man, to now be portrayed by Tom Holland (THE IMPOSSIBLE, IN THE HEART OF THE SEA), the third actor to play the character in a major Hollywood movie in just 14 years. Ahead of CIVIL WAR's release on May 6, feel free to join me in a look back on the five previous movies to star everyone's favorite webhead, including the good, the bad and the ugly, beginning with Sam Raimi's trilogy starring Tobey Maguire...
SPIDER-MAN
Released 3 May 2002
Directed by Sam Raimi
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, J.K. Simmons, Cliff Robertson, Rosemary Harris, Joe Manganiello, Ron Perkins, Michael Papajohn
Rated PG-13 for stylized violence and action.
121 minutes
SPIDER-MAN was a long time coming. Superhero movies were not yet what they are today, and they'd been mostly dominated by DC character-based franchises, which had since burnt out. Superman rode the wave that brought along Star Wars and Indiana Jones in the late '70s and early '80s, a nostalgia for old-fashioned heroics and pulp entertainment, but due to incremental budget cuts and creative differences behind the scenes, the series ground to an ignominious halt in 1987 with the low-budget flop, SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE. Then Batman exploded on the scene in 1989, reinvigorating the summer blockbuster, but again, by the fourth installment of the series, the franchise sputtered to a halt with the infamous camp-fest BATMAN & ROBIN in 1998. 2000 brought an interesting twist to the stop-and-start blockbuster genre in the form of X-MEN, a major Marvel Comics property that had a somewhat weirder bent than the more familiar Batman and Superman, made on an upper mid-range budget and a solid hit at the box office, revealing a previously unfulfilled market for superheroes of a new sort. But Spider-Man was always popular, more popular than the X-Men or any other Marvel character for that matter, but his skill-set was prohibitively expensive and impractical in the pre-digital age. Even still, attempts to adapt the character for the big screen had been going on since the mid-'80s, and ironically, they first started at low-budget studios who had even less a chance of successfully depicting the character to fans' satisfaction, but hoped to make a quick buck with the benefit of a strong brand name. Legendary b movie auteur Roger Corman expressed interest, then Cannon Films, the infamous studio that produced SUPERMAN IV, bought the rights, but nothing came of it. Then in the early '90s, it finally gained some real momentum under James Cameron, the writer and director of TERMINATOR, ALIENS, and then most recently, the hugely expensive and hugely successful special effects extravaganza TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY. Cameron's Spider-Man is one of the great unmade movies, a weird and completely different beast from what we ultimately got, intended with an R rating, sexual allusions (after gaining his powers which include organic web-shooters in his wrists, as opposed to the mechanical ones he builds in the comics, Peter wakes up in bed covered in white, sticky stuff), and a sex scene atop the Brooklyn Bridge, in a story where the newly-created Spider-Man fights a megalomaniacal Electro and Sandman. Cameron developed his version at Carolco Pictures, the studio that produced TERMINATOR 2, but in 1996, due to financial excesses and a streak of box office bombs, Carolco declared bankruptcy. After a few years of litigation cleaning up the Carolco mess and claiming of its resources, the Spider-Man film rights found their way to Sony/Columbia Pictures
Sam Raimi was interesting choice as the director of SPIDER-MAN, a major, mainstream studio franchise film. A filmmaker with a cult-following, Raimi's body of work is objectively weird, beginning with the ultra-low budget, ultra-gory "video nasty" horror film, THE EVIL DEAD, followed by its increasingly more comedic sequels, EVIL DEAD 2 and ARMY OF DARKNESS. He had previously wrote and directed an original superhero movie, DARKMAN, as a response to being turned down to direct BATMAN or a movie based on The Shadow, and bears some noteworthy similarities to SPIDER-MAN. [Coincidentally at the time, a fellow filmmaker with origins in the ultra-gory horror schlock branch of independent filmmaking had been chosen by New Line Cinema to helm a huge franchise, Peter Jackson for Lord of the Rings.] Raimi's sensibilities are markedly zany and campy, but he had shown a mature restraint on the psychological thriller A SIMPLE PLAN, and his body of work was widely diversified between horror, fantasy, thrillers, a western (THE QUICK AND THE DEAD), and a sports drama (FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME), while maintaining a strong artistic voice.
SPIDER-MAN builds off of Cameron's version, changing the irradiated spider of the comics to an experimental hybrid, trading out the mechanical web-shooters for organic ones, and following an origin story, but the two villains were eventually traded out for a single villain, a different one. Although not as popularly known as Doctor Octopus, who appeared as a secondary villain in some earlier drafts, the Green Goblin is the most vicious and personal of his classic villains, famously killing Peter Parker's major love interest, Gwen Stacy. However, the movie, written by JURASSIC PARK screenwriter David Koepp, went with Peter Parker's/Spider-Man's better-known major love interest, Mary Jane Watson, the woman he dated after Gwen's death and eventually married in the comics.
Peter Parker, played by the fitting but unexpected Tobey Maguire, is the scientifically-inclined social outcast from Queens in his senior year of high school and living with his elderly Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) and Aunt May (Rosemary Harris), who is physically transformed when bitten by an experimental spider hybrid while on a school field trip. Not only does he no longer need to wear glasses, but he's also ripped, produces super durable webs from his wrists, can stick to walls and ceilings, and possesses supernatural physical prowess. After attempting to capitalize on his new abilities by entering a cash prize wrestling match (Peter makes a homophobic wisecrack that wouldn't slide today, and the woman at the sign-up desk is a pre-THE HELP Octavia Spencer), the promoter stiffs Peter, who in turn deliberately allows a robber to steal the promoter's money, only to regret it later after the same criminal kills Uncle Ben in a carjacking. The incident teaches Peter to take his uncle's words to heart, that
"With great power comes great responsibility", and he creates the crime-fighting alter ego of Spider-Man.
In parallel, scientist and industrialist Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), father of Peter's best friend Harry Osborn (James Franco), tests a performance-enhancing formula on himself with disastrous results, giving himself supernatural physical prowess, but driving him balls-out insane, setting the stage for super-powered battle between Norman as the Green Goblin and Peter as Spider-Man.
14 years old now, the visual effects mostly still hold up, largely
thanks the relatively minor (well, by today's standards) use of CGI
effects. It helps that the two major players in the major special
effects sequences have covered faces and wear colorful, smooth-surfaced
costumes that can be more convincingly rendered. Come to think of it,
the better part of the action scenes take place at night (the major
exception being Spidey and the Goblin's first fight) with lower lighting
that doesn't require quite as much of the visual effects team. Earlier
scenes of Peter testing his new abilities have aged more poorly than
most of the movie, particularly wide shots of him leaping across
rooftops and when he pursues Uncle Ben's killer in his wrestling
outfit. The CGI doubles didn't look great back then. They don't move
naturally. There is a moment in which the Goblin vaporizes the OsCorp
board members at the World Unity Fair using some variation of his
"pumpkin bombs", leaving their clearly digital skeletons to collapse to
the ground, and while physical skeletons would look better in the shot,
it's just a funny little Raimi bit.
The Goblin is the movie's most volatile element, but his very high presence mostly works thanks to Raimi's already campy sensibilities. Dafoe was the most well known member of the cast at the time (although Kirsten Dunst had been a noted child actress during the '90s) and was best known for unconventional roles in independent films, having just received acclaim for the meta-horror-comedy SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, and was sort of akin to the casting of Gene Hackman in SUPERMAN or Jack Nicholson in BATMAN, the high-profile villain. But if you thought Nicholson was over-the-top as the Joker, Dafoe delivers that times two. The controversial costume is striking for sure, and the mask design (a half-assed attempt from early drafts to provide a practical reasoning for the mask still exists in the tribal masks that decorate Norman's study) is initially really cool, but when combined with acting, I don't think the Power Rangers villain comparisons are too off. But again, it often plays into Raimi's style, pushed to its limits in the reaction shot of the Goblin taking a wad of webbing to the eyes during their first fight. The rest of his outfit is established as the flight suit designed to control a weaponized "glider" developed at OsCorp, and with its bent knees, it looks ridiculous. But Dafoe is up to the task, snarling all of his Goblin lines with exuberant comic book villainy, and his Norman is so smarmy. And recoiling with,
"Oh! That's cold," when strapping into the chemical chamber?
Love it. Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man is a smart and unconventional choice that seems like it would be very difficult to get away with today. He's sufficiently dorky, but he's not exactly handsome, something that even a nerd like Peter Parker has to be able to pull off today. Nah, he's the real geek deal, even when he's in the Spider-Man costume. There's not that much of a transformation. Peter Parker still feels awkward as Spider-Man, even if he enjoys the power of playing superhero. In comparison to the only major Marvel movie predecessor X-MEN, which traded in its super team's colorful blue and yellow spandex for tactical black leather, Spider-Man's costume, designed by James Acheson, holds relatively true to the comics. To be fair, Spidey's look was already far better known beyond the comics-reading base than that of the X-Men, but this movie also looks to Tim Burton's BATMAN by taking the established look and texturizing it and darkening a bit. The Batman movies eventually got carried away with the costume details (nipples!), but most other comics characters translated to the screen had stuck with a somewhat bland standard of spandex. The most striking alteration to the traditional look is Spidey's sunglasses-style reflective eye pieces, which look really cool, but also turned out to be a real boon to the marketing department, which prominently placed the reflection of the World Trade Center Twin Towers in Spidey's eye for the teaser poster that was unveiled in summer of 2001 and promptly recalled in September (while a number of Hollywood productions such as LILO & STITCH and MEN IN BLACK II were altered as a direct response to 9/11, the specter of the attacks looms large over the New York-set SPIDER-MAN in particular, including an unlikely teaser trailer with special footage of Spidey webbing up a helicopter full of bank robbers between the Twin Towers, which was also pulled from theaters in September 2001).
Kirsten Dunst is a popular point of consternation in this series, but in fairness, Mary Jane Watson isn't an especially strong character, at least in this incarnation. The character is there entirely to be a love interest, the girl next door (Peter stares out of his bedroom window right across into her bedroom window, and everyone seems okay with how creepy this is) who Peter is head-over-heels for from the opening narration. She's a kind person with a perky personality, but otherwise, there's not much to her. Perhaps it would be enough to get by for some actresses, but Dunst doesn't go anywhere with it. She's not 'bad' in the role, she's just kind of perfunctory. To get superficial for a moment though, she's at her most attractive in this first movie. Maybe it's the bolder shade of red for her hair, but she looks good here.
While Koepp's script replaces Gwen Stacy from the comics with "M.J.", he maintains and teases a famous event from the comics when the climactic action revolves around the Green Goblin's kidnapping of M.J. In the 1973 comics arc
"The Night Gwen Stacy Died", the Goblin abducted Gwen and took her to the tower of a bridge (referred to in the comic as the George Washington Bridge, but with illustrations resembling the Brooklyn Bridge) to bait Spider-Man, but when Spider-Man realizes she's dead, it's unclear whether she was killed by the Goblin beforehand or by accident in Spidey's attempt to rescue her. In the movie, the Goblin takes M.J. to the Queensboro Bridge, where he presents Spider-Man with a moral dilemma, whether to save her or to save a tram car full of children. While I can appreciate the more heroic direction of Spider-Man being able to rescue both by force of will, it seems like the more interesting direction would be to prove his inability to save everyone by truly forcing him to make a choice. Instead, it turns out to be a tease, with a little bit of post-9/11 corniness (to be fair, by now, we're separated enough to not have that connection so apparent, but when the movie came out in summer 2002, the New Yorker's helping Spider-Man fight back against the Goblin was almost definitely a nod to the post-9/11 New York pride, with the final shot of Spider-Man and the American flag used to similar effect) as Spider-Man manages to save everyone.
The climax continues to play out similarly to the way it did in the comics afterward though, with the fight carrying on into an abandoned building and ending with the Goblin's accidental death by his glider. The climactic fight is an odd turn in the movie, becoming significantly more vicious than before, while still maintaining the comic book flavor of bodies crashing through brick walls. In a trend that continues through his other Spider-Man movies, Raimi finds a way to bring out his actor's face by having an explosion blast away fragments of Spider-Man's mask, enough to get a decent range of expression. Just as Spider-Man gets the upper hand, the Goblin reveals himself to be Norman Osborn and makes the plea that he's been like a father to Peter, an idea that pops up here and there in the movie, but is never as prominent as I think it may have been intended to be in the script stage. It's a cool idea, to have Peter lose his main father figure in Uncle Ben, and then be fighting another man he looks upon as a father and have to make that decision when he learns the Goblin's true identity, but it doesn't ever congeal. The decision to turn the Goblin's death into a bit of a comic beat, with a brief shot of a surprised Norman uttering a weak,
"Oh," just before being impaled against a wall is very Raimi.
Even though they don't kill M.J., the movie ends on a pretty great beat, sort of down but also affirming when, at the funeral of Norman Osborn (presumably murdered by Spider-Man, still unknown as the secret identity of the Green Goblin to everyone but Peter), M.J. professes her love to Peter. It's absolutely his greatest dream come true, and he should be euphoric, but Raimi's hero is all about making the right choices, no matter how tough, however great the sacrifice, and Peter shuts her down cold. Real cold. It's a baller move, and it wraps up the movie with Peter turning to walk away alone, forced to be the hero even when that means giving up what he wants the most because it's what's right. Not to leave us sitting on that downer-ish note however, we get one last great swing through the skyscrapers of New York filmed via the cable-suspended "Spydercam".
Bryan Singer's X-MEN deserves a lot of credit for setting fire to the modern wave of superhero movies, proving that even a slightly lower-tier comic book property had the sufficient fan-base to be a box office hit, but I don't think it could have had the sustained impact without SPIDER-MAN. It was the one-two punch, and frankly, while it might have wound up differently, SPIDER-MAN would have had that impact with or without X-MEN. It opened to a then unheard of $114.8 million weekend (the current opening weekend record is now STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS's $247.9 million), making it the first movie to ever have a $100+ million weekend and breaking the previous and recently set record of HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE with $90.2 million. After SPIDER-MAN came Ang Lee's HULK, Tim Story's FANTASTIC FOUR, and Mark Steven Johnson's GHOST RIDER, and they all sucked (some of them sucked in interesting ways, but c'mon, they're not very good), but then came Christopher Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS, a movie that reboots Batman in a clearly post-Raimi's Spider-Man landscape before branching out into something else, and a few years after that, Marvel starts producing their movies independently, starting with IRON MAN. In that, SPIDER-MAN is identifiable as one of the seismic events in the course of blockbuster movies.
Top 3 of SPIDER-MAN
- Peter Stiffs M.J.- It's not what you'd expect from this big summer blockbuster, but Peter's denial of M.J. after the funeral is an awesome act of personal sacrifice to close the movie up on, and you get the great moment while Peter walks away and M.J. suddenly makes the connection between the kiss they shared and her iconic "upside-down" makeout with Spider-Man.
- Final Fight- Things get really rough at the end when the Goblin and Spider-Man duke it out in the abandoned building (I seem to remember the junior novelization calling it an abandoned hospital), and maybe the brutality is a little over the top, but the bodies flying through brick walls is fun, and I like the set with sections of floorboards sitting on stilts. Tobey Maguire gets a pretty good yelp in there too, when the Goblin lands a hard blow.
- Cliff Robertson as Uncle Ben- I guess I didn't find a good spot to mention before, but Cliff Robertson is really good as Peter's Uncle Ben Parker. It's a small but critical role, and he's very likable in that blue collar paragon of moral virtue uncle way. No, really.
Bottom 3 of SPIDER-MAN
- "You Mess With One of Us, You Mess With All of Us!"- I get that it was a tribute to the solidarity of New Yorkers in the wake of 9/11, but, well, it's stupid. "Leave Spidey alone! You're gonna pick on a guy trying to save a bunch of kids?" Well, duh, New Yorker man! Did he notice the Goblin was the one trying to kill a bunch of kids? Raimi gets the New Yorkers supporting Spider-Man bit much better in the sequel.
- Spidey's First Swing- I'm talking about the scene when he pursues Uncle Ben's carjacker while wearing the wrestling outfit. The effects feel very rough and unfinished.
- Interview Montage- After Peter graduates and begins his career as a professional Spider-Man, there's a montage of various New Yorkers giving their opinions as if responding to an unseen questioner with a microphone. It's not a bad idea as a way to set up his quickly spreading notoriety, but most of the subjects, who seem to be improvising, aren't great. "I think it's a man. It could be a woman." Yeah, lady I'm sure that spandex is keeping Spidey's gender a real mystery.
