Spider-Man 2002
They did this movie right. Even though it is an action movie at heart, it still manages to develop characters and have a story. It’s not all fighting and special effects. The previews show a lot of the big scenes where he goes dangling from web to web. I suppose they had to do this but a lot of that looks fake and there isn’t all that much of that in the movie anyway. All the primary actors are very good: Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, Kirsten Dunst as his love interest, and Willem Defoe as the Green Goblin. I figured the Green Goblin would be pretty cheesy but it was done very well: a villain who is torn between good and evil. The thing he rides around on is kind of silly, but they still give a somewhat legitimate story behind that. The only weak acting was by the guy who plays J. Johah Jameson. Unlike the others, he pretty much came straight out of the cartoon. But his part is pretty small.
The only other nit I have to pick is how Peter Parker is supposed to be so good at science, but he never does anything to show this. The man who turns into the Green Goblin is a scientist as well and you kind of hope that Peter Parker will find a way to outsmart him, but they settled for conventional fighting scenes instead. Maybe that was just too much to add to a movie that had to present a lot of background, develop the villain, and have a love story.
There are enough differences between the movie and the cartoon (I never really read the comic book, but used to watch the cartoon all the time as a kid) that you don’t quite know how everything will work. Plus Peter Parker himself is played much more vulnerable and realistically than in the cartoon. A lot of fun to watch.
I give it an A, not because this is great filmmaking but because this is about as good as action movies can get.
UPDATE: I bought the Blu-ray in 2017 and finally watched it in 2019, remembering it was one of my favorite superhero movies. It is still a good movie, but I don’t know that I would give it an A now. There is a lot of clunky dialogue and forced character choices that didn’t make much sense. And as I commented when I originally saw it, some of the CGI is pretty bad. Still, I do like Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man and it is great seeing him develop his superpowers then trying to live up to them. Willem Dafoe makes a great bad guy, fleshed out more than most. Kirsten Dunst looks great and is very sweet even though her role as a trophy is weak.
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital