This was the first DVD I ever owned. I remember it. I received a gift card for Christmas, and I went out to the store, and I bought the original Spider-Man movie on DVD. I watched it over and over again, and I loved it. And I still have that DVD! And I’m watching it on my PS2 right now. I’ll admit that I love late 90’s and early 00’s technology. I’m nostalgic for it. I enjoy it, you know? People are free to enjoy whatever era of technology or fashion or art or music or whatever that they want. Just don’t be an asshole about it, okay? I try not to be. I enjoy a lotta early 00’s stuff, and I let everyone enjoy early 2020’s stuff as they want. It’s all good.
Anyway, this movie, and the whole trilogy, in some ways, it kicked off what we have now which is superhero movies as the main movies in the world. And I know there were some Batman movies in the 90s, but they were a mixed bag; some were all right and others were complete shit. And there was Superman which was kinda good, but it’s such a different era and didn’t lead into the superhero genre as a whole as much. But the Spider-Man trilogy opened the door for the superhero era. It was amazing, and it passed the baton right to The Dark Knight and the MCU. Some decry the so-called “superhero era” of movies, asserting that superhero movies tend to lack depth [which is true for most, but not all], and that the genre’s dominance squeezes out other potentially great works. And others love superhero movies. And I’m a bit of both. I do see how this era can stifle other projects that don’t fit the formula, but I do enjoy Spider-Man movies. And just because a film is not extremely popular doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it and that it isn’t great.
ALSO, this movie and its trilogy came out right smack dab in the era dominated by franchises of various kinds. Spider-Man, the Star Wars prequels, Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, the Matrix, and Shrek all came out at around the same time. Incredible.
Who cares about all that, what do I think about the movie? I love it. I’m getting older, as people do, but I [like millions of people] related to Peter Parker, even though I was younger than him when I watched this movie initially. I actually looked fairly similar to him, though I didn’t wear glasses, I liked science [I’m not a genius, but I like it], I wasn’t rich, and I used to be not so smooth with girls. He’s just a very relatable character. Tobey Maguire plays the nerd well.
Willem Dafoe plays a truly terrifying Green Goblin/Norman Osborn. I was legitimately scared as a kid. “You know how much I SACRIFICED?!??!!” Fuckin’ scary. When he attacks Aunt May, also fuckin’ scary. And who could forget Norman’s hallucinations. Incredible performance by Dafoe.
One of the best casting decisions in the history of superhero movies was J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson. That character is so funny. He used to piss me off when I was a kid cause he was always giving Peter a hard time, but as I got older I realized how funny he was.
The rest of the cast is good too. Kirsten Dunst plays a good girl-next-door type. I don’t love her character, but she’s perfectly fine. A good Mary Jane Watson.
So Peter gets bitten by a spider and he develops super spider-like powers. Everyone knows that. And the scenes of him steadily finding out about his powers are fun. It kind of starts off slow and then builds from there. His powers are so cool too. Swinging around New York sounds so fun. Oh yeah, it’s hilarious when he’s trying to shoot the web on purpose for the first time. “Go web, go! Fly..” I used to imitate that scene so much as a kid. That was kind of the earlier form of humor that is so incredibly prevalent in blockbuster/superhero movies. Where you build up a scene with dramatic music and framing, and there’s an expectation that something cool is about to happen, only for something lame to happen. Hilarious. But it was actually funny in this movie.
It’s a coming-of-age movie in many ways. It’s that tough time, the end of high school. People have hopes and dreams and aspirations, and maybe no specific dreams, but there’s all this potential. And it’s hard to make choices, you know? I remember making a few choices around that time, thinking “Ehh, whatever, gotta do something,” but those choices had GIANT effects on my life. It’s insane, really. Uncle Ben even explains it. “These are the years when a man changes into the man he’s gonna become for the rest of his life. Be careful who you change into.” I think you can still change as you go on, but it’s true to some extent for some people. I don’t think you just become a certain way forever, but those years are still incredibly impactful.
Non-seriously though, Spider-Man’s first costume in the movie was hilarious. “The Human Spider? Ahh, that sucks!” They never showed how he eventually made the good costume, but whatever. Also it’s weird that Osborn’s assistant was murdered in Osborn’s lab and they just.. didn’t investigate him? Or interrogate him? His fingerprints are all over the place, including his neck! Oh well, I missed the part where that’s my problem.
Uncle Ben gives the main line of the movie: “With great power comes great responsibility.” I wish it were taken more seriously, but that’s a topic for another day. But throughout the trilogy it’s important to Peter’s growth as a person. I love how Peter goes from beating up a high schooler to fighting a professional fighter. The guts! Then he gets fucked over for the money by the business.. guy, who immediately gets robbed. Peter lets the robber steal the money, and in a cruel irony, the robber kills Uncle Ben. In his first real Spider-Man moment, he tracks down the robber and kills him. Or rather, he trips and dies, after Spider-Man disarms him.
After Peter’s and Harry’s and Mary Jane’s graduation, there is a fun montage of the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man helping people, stopping robbers and whatnot. And they show a bunch of New Yorkers talking about him, and it’s exactly as I’d imagine it. That one guy: “He stinks! And I don’t like him!” And of course those women who want to fuck him, of course that would happen.
Anyway, there’s some double jealousy happening in the already convoluted love triangle. Harry is jealous of Peter because Harry’s dad loves Peter for his science brain. Of course Peter is jealous of Harry because Harry is going out with Mary Jane. Now that’s some serious tension.
Osborn gets kicked out of his own company by “the board.” Now that I think about it, he really is a fuckin’ villain. He’s a dangerous capitalist and war-profiteering, making his fortune from the imperialist U.S. military, though the film doesn’t paint that aspect of his character as villainous. They have the MACY’s Thanksgiving Day parade with MACY Gray singing. And that song, Nutmeg Phantasy is a BANGER. Such a good song. Go and listen to it right now.
Hahahaha, oh my gosh. It’s so funny, I forgot. Harry and MJ are hanging out on some fancy balcony for rich people, and Harry tries to kiss her but she rejects it. Then Harry looks down and sees Peter down on the ground just STARING up at them. There’s this huge crowd of people mingling and whatnot, and Peter is just staring up at them, and he doesn’t even try to hide it or move away or anything. It’s such a non-subtle, hilarious image. I love it.
And then.. the Goblin shows up. It reminds me of another green villain, the wicked witch of the west. They both fly across the sky ominously, spewing dark smoke behind them. She spells out “Surrender Dorothy,” and now I’m imagining Goblin spelling out, “I’m gonna fucking kill those board members for selling my company.” Too bad he doesn’t say that, he just throws pumpkin bombs, which are cool, and one of them turns his enemies into skeletons, thereby killing them. Then Spider-Man shows up and this girl points and says, “It’s Spider-Man!” in the goofiest tone imaginable. And I thought it was cheesy even when I was a little kid. The line “It’s Spider-Man!” could be decent, but it was so cheesy. That was seriously the best take? I’d hate to see what the outtakes were like.
Anyway, Spidey meets the Goblin and they have a pretty cool fight scene, and then Spider-Man saves Mary Jane. And hey, Goblin chokes Jameson and asks him who Spider-Man’s photographer is, and Jameson says he doesn’t know. That’s pretty cool. He’s kinda an asshole, but he sticks up for Peter. That’s kinda heroic in its own way.
Whaddayaknow it, Spider-Man saves Mary Jane again, this time in the rain, and they share a cool upside-down kiss. It’s very iconic, and it was spoofed in Shrek 2, another incredible film. Probably the coolest action scene is the fight between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin in the burning building. First of all, horrifying, when the Goblin turns around and screams. I love that line “It’s you who’s out, Gobby.” Spider-Man jumping around, dodging Goblin’s flying knife.. things, that’s the shit we all like about Spider-Man. We love the acrobatics and the powers. It’s just fun. I don’t mind if they make fifty more Spider-Man movies, I’ll be in there having a good time.
Also Willem Dafoe’s voice is so good! When he’s sorta talking to the Goblin, so to speak. It’s very creepy. “The cunning warrior attacks neither body nor mind. The heart, Osborn! First, we attack his heart!” Such a great line. You know, it’s funny, with all these superhero movies, there are so many actors who play comic book characters and then act with each other in other movies. Like, in American Psycho, the Green Goblin interviews Batman about the disappearance of the Joker. And in Zodiac, Iron Man, the Hulk and Mysterio are hunting a serial killer.
Anyway, Goblin figures out who Spider-Man is, so he kidnaps Mary Jane Watson and presents Spider-Man with a trolley problem. Save the girl you love, or the many innocent children. And philosophy students will continue to debate the question for.. ever, probably. Of course, in the original trolley problem, Spider-Man is never considered as a possible solution. A bit clumsy of those philosophy people, innit?
The fight at the end is pretty good too, and Spider-Man kinda gets his ass kicked for much of it. But once Goblin threatens to kill MJ, that’s when Spider-Man starts kicking ass. In the end, Osborn is killed by his own blade on his own glider. His last wishes were that Peter not tell Harry about what a monster he had become. Guilt, his final emotion.
Okay, so a great movie with exciting action and a pretty good narrative, lots of tension between the main characters. Good main characters and good side characters. The PERFECT side character in J. Jonah Jameson. There was a Weird Al song about this movie that I used to listen to when I was a kid. It was a spoof of the song “Piano Man,” by Billy Joel. It was hilarious. Describing Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin, he sings, “He’s wearing that dumb Power Rangers mask, but he’s scarier without it on.”
Lefty Forrester 