Reviewing - The Spider-Man Trilogy
Tobey Maguire will always be my Spider-Man.
Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy was one of the biggest contributing factors to the growth of the superhero franchise. Before Spider-Man, there was Burton’s Batman films, but they had fizzled out in much the same way that Pirates of the Caribbean did years later. The X Men franchise had just kicked off two years before Spider-Man, but it wasn’t nearly the success that the webbed wonder was. The first X Men film made just under $300 million – Spidey made over $800 million. Spider-Man made superheroes cool again...which is ironic considering how geeky Peter Parker is.
Spider-Man (****1/2)
In which a professional wrestler tries murdering what is essentially a volunteer from the audience with a crowbar
It’s cheesy, melodramatic, and feels like a comic book in every way. And I love it to death.
At the time of this review, there have been three cinematic live action Spider-Men. There’s Tobey Maguire, the original, Andrew Garfield, the well-meaning but ill-timed replacement, and then there’s the MCU’s Tom Holland. All three are likable in their own way, but there’s something about Tobey Maguire’s performance that I’ve always loved so much. Tobey’s Spider-Man is a huge dork. He’s insanely awkward in all three of his movies. He doesn’t know how to talk to people, and he always looks a little bit confused. It’s a lovable kind of dorkiness, for sure, but there are still moments that just make you want to pull your hair out. But that’s what I love about him. He’s just not cool by any stretch of imagination. It’s only when he becomes Spider-Man that he becomes the guy we all want to be.
Comparatively, Tom Holland and Andrew Garfield are much cooler than Tobey Maguire. Andrew in particular rides around on a skateboard breaking up fights and talking to cute girls. Tobey’s lucky if he can get a word out sometimes.
What’s great about Tobey’s Peter Parker is that his version of Peter is saved the most by Spider-Man. Andrew or Tom have pretty good lives. Of the three of them, Tobey’s Peter is probably destined to have the crummiest life. The only thing that makes his day-to-day worth living is putting on the mask, and I love that. Literally nothing else goes right for him, and that makes him such a fun character to root for.
There’s a lot of debate as to which Spider-Man is the best – and I definitely go back and forth sometimes. But I think there’s zero debate about which Aunt May and Uncle Ben are the best. May and Ben are never going to be topped by anyone else than the actors who portrayed them here. Aunt May is the grandma that everyone wants. She’s absolutely adorable, she’s encouraging, and she clearly loves Peter with everything in her. And Uncle Ben is everything you’d want him to be. He’s wise, friendly, and self-sacrificing. No one will ever say “With great power comes great responsibility” with as much gravitas as this Uncle Ben did. It cannot be done.
Speaking of irreplaceable characters, J. K. Simmons gives us an absolutely iconic performance as J. Jonah Jameson. Jameson is Mr. Krabs brought to life – a money-grubbing, unfashionable baby boomer who is as hilarious as he is frustrating. There will be other Spider-Men, but there will never be another Jameson like the one that J. K. Simmons gave us. He’s just the best. He steals every second of screen time that he’s been given.
I can’t even stop there because we haven’t even talked about Willem Defoe’s Green Goblin. Man, the casting in this film is perfect. Willem Defoe just nails the homicidal psychopath character. His scene where he’s talking into a mirror as both the Goblin and Norman Osborn is so much fun – and he does it so convincingly. He deserves more recognition for that masterful performance. Everything about him was great here – his voice, his expressions, and even his facial structure. They say a hero is only as great as his villain – if that’s true, it’s no wonder this film succeeded.
This movie is just fun from beginning to end. Sure, Peter is so awkward it hurts. Sure, some lines are so ludicrous it borders on the insane:
“I’m gonna rip all eight of your little legs off ONE BY ONE”
Sure, Bruce Campbell is a screen hog. But you cannot tell me that this film is boring. Sam Raimi knew what he was doing – and this film doesn’t try to be anything other than a comic book movie. It’s a bit over the top, and it’s a bit too dramatic at points – but it knows it.
And by the way, this costume is freaking incredible. Wow, what a suit. Awesome.
Spider-Man 2 (*****)
In which the protagonist has a slice of cake and some milk in the midst of significant emotional turmoil
This is one of the greatest superhero movies of all time.
In my review of the original Spider-Man film, I focused on the cast and the character of Peter Parker. There was so much more to write about, but I figured I could just as easily carry some of my thoughts forward to this film. For example, the music is just as great here as it was in the original. The Spider-Man theme that plays across all three films in the trilogy is powerful, heroic, and emotion-filled. I’m talking specifically about the theme they play in the opening minutes of each film – and on that note, I want to congratulate them for having the guts to stick with opening credits. Apart from the opening studio logos for a film, opening credits have largely become a thing of the past. What’s great about the opening credits for this film in particular is that it does several things at once besides just announcing the important names. We get artwork woven into the sequence that highlights the important moments from the original film, kind of serving as a ‘previously on’ for what we’re about to see. And in the style of musicals and epic films that predate this one, the music is essentially an overture – giving us reminders of the motifs and melodies that will be used later on in the film to create and enhance meaning. There’s music that only plays when Spider-Man is swinging through the city, and there’s music that only plays when Peter Parker is longing for Mary Jane. The MCU hasn’t really taken advantage of music for much of its history, but Raimi made sure that it was a key piece from the beginning. Danny Elfman composed the themes, just as he did for Tim Burton’s Batman back in 1989. Both themes are terrific, but there’s something so earnest about Spider-Man’s motifs. There’s a sense of childlike awe and wonder that we all get when listening to it – so this movie and its sibling films get major points for that.
I can’t talk about this film without highlighting just how perfect the first ten-or-so minutes are. Here’s a quick summary of what happens, in chronological order.
· Peter Parker thinks sadly about the fact that he can’t be with the woman he loves.
· He finds out he will lose his job if he can’t deliver some pizzas in seven minutes. He changes into his Spider-costume to get there faster, but sees some kids about to be hit by a truck, so he saves them and ends up late with the pizzas.
· Peter is fired from his pizza delivery job – and then is fired by J. Jonah Jameson. He tries selling photos of Spider-Man, but can’t get paid because of an advance he was already given.
· After missing his university class and inadvertently bumping into his professor, Peter gets scolded for always skipping class and showing up exhausted.
· Peter goes to visit Aunt May. It turns out that today is his birthday.
It’s his freaking BIRTHDAY.
Like, wow. What a great opener to a film. Even if you hadn’t seen the original, these opening minutes tell you everything you need to know in an entertaining and exciting way. Peter is down on his luck in literally every aspect of his life. He can’t hold a job, he’s failing in school, his love life is nonexistent, his best friend holds a grudge against him, and the closest thing he has to a mother is about to lose her house. Peter’s life SUCKS. And then to top it off, Aunt May gives him $20 as a birthday gift, which is promptly snatched right out of his hands by his landlord who tells him that he’s a month late. Nobody in superhero history has it as bad as Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker. And that’s why he’s so great.
Peter is all of us. You’ve been there. You’ve been in a position where it feels like you can’t catch a break. You’ve felt like nothing was going right. You might be in that position right now. You probably haven’t felt like Tony Stark in a while – few of us do. We’re rarely in a position where we feel like we’re on top of the world with an overabundance of everything and our only trouble is figuring out what to do with our time. Life isn’t like that. Life is often more like finding out you’re failing a class on your birthday. It’s frustrating. But what makes Peter great is his commitment to doing the right thing even when his life sucks. With great power comes great responsibility, and Peter won’t stop at trying to do the best he can.
Except, of course, when he decides to switch gears.
See, I love this movie. Peter decides that he’s going to give up the superhero life and instead live the life that he wants to. He catches up on his schoolwork. He eats a hot dog. He tries to rekindle his relationship with Mary Jane. The “Raindrops Are Falling On My Head” sequence is one of those things that makes this trilogy so distinct from any other superhero films we’ve seen before or since. But when Peter does this – when he leaves his responsibility behind – he finds himself having to deal with guilt. There’s a poignant scene where he watches a guy get mugged and does nothing about it even though he could. He may not be Spider-Man, but he’s still Peter Parker, and Peter just watched someone get hurt.
“Am I not supposed to have what I want?” Peter asks while staring out his window later on. “What I need? What am I supposed to do?”
He’s struggling to figure out what that balance is between self-care and self-sacrifice. As Spider-Man, every other facet of his life was slipping through the cracks. And as Peter Parker, he couldn’t come to terms with just letting bad things happen to good people. To top things off, even though he was letting Spider-Man become a thing of the past, he still couldn’t fully bring himself to pursue Mary Jane whole-heartedly. In the scene where they have coffee together, you can see his hesitation to accept her love. That part hurts to watch precisely because we know how badly he wants to be with her. He just hasn’t figured out who he’s supposed to be.
On that note, Aunt May’s speech is the stuff of legend.
“I believe there’s a hero in all of us. That keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble...even though sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams.”
You see, Peter can’t stop being Spider-Man any more than you can stop being yourself. You can run from yourself like Peter did, but you can’t escape your own story. There was a hero in Peter that refused to give up, which is why we got that scene where Peter ran into a burning building to save a kid. His drive to fulfill his responsibility hadn’t been extinguished.
I could go on, but I want to touch on a few more aspects of this film that make it so amazing. The moment where Mary Jane and Peter make eye contact for the first time once his secret is out is just awesome. It’s such a release of tension, because we’ve been waiting for this moment since the first film. Doc Ock is one of the best villains we’ve ever seen in the sense that his battles with Spider-Man are non-stop fun. The way those mechanical arms heighten the action is just breathtaking, and the big fight on the train is one of the greatest sequences in superhero history. I mean, Spider-Man stopping the train by holding webs on either side of him is iconic all on its own, even if the rest of the fight wasn’t there. It’s just terrific. And in spite of everything that’s going on in this movie, there’s still time for little laughs like Spider-Man in the elevator. I cannot find a thing wrong with this movie.
I’ll end this review by talking about Harry Osborn, because the end of this movie sets up the third film in a really exciting way. At the end of the first film, Harry sees Spider-Man drop off his dead father at the house. Not understanding that his father was the Green Goblin, Harry vows to make Spider-Man pay. Here in the sequel, he finds out that Spider-Man is his best friend Peter. Peter could’ve taken a few quick seconds to say “Your dad was the Green Goblin and he killed himself,” but instead he said “There are bigger things happening here than me and you”, which is the exact same number of words but must’ve been immeasurably more frustrating for Harry to hear. The relationship between Harry and Peter has developed and shifted over the course of these first two movies, and at the end of this one, it seems that this relationship is finally going to come to a head in the third film. I was so excited for that as a kid. It would’ve been an amazing arc to close, and it would’ve made the final villain so crucial to Peter’s own story. Spider-Man 3 was going to knock everything out of the water.
But in the words of Peter, it seems that we are not supposed to have what we want...what we need.
Spider-Man 3 (*)
In which the flaws of America’s healthcare system are examined by comparing the level of care available to two supervillains of opposite economic class
In the words of Spider-Man from the climactic scene of Spider-Man 2... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Raimi’s Spider-Man could have been the definitive superhero trilogy, but instead it fell to the ‘third-film-flop’ curse that so many films have succumbed to. Micro-managed by studio executives that didn’t trust Raimi’s creative vision, Spider-Man 3 became a painful mess. Some movies are so bad, they’re good. Spider-Man 3 is worse.
We watch Mary Jane sing an entire song onstage. Venom literally falls right out of the sky for no reason whatsoever. Aunt May tells a story that is absolutely irrelevant. Just when Harry and Peter’s relationship is about to get insane, Harry develops amnesia. Peter is weirdly cocky and doesn’t know how to listen to Mary Jane. He knowingly kisses another woman IN FRONT of Mary Jane in the same way they kissed in the first movie – and has no idea why she’s upset about that. A police chief tells Peter and May about a killer on the loose when there’s no discernible reason that they need to know. Peter brushes hair over his eyes. Harry and Mary Jane dance, make eggs, and kiss. Harry suddenly remembers he hates Peter, so his master plan for revenge really seems to be just telling Peter about the kiss that he didn’t even do maliciously. Peter goes emo and it’s unclear whether he’s meant to be smoking hot or unbelievably creepy. Eddie Brock goes to church to ask God to kill someone for him. Peter plays piano and dances in a bar. And he hits Mary Jane. Eddie as Venom looks really weird.
And that’s just the big things that are wrong with this film.
To this film’s credit, there are nuggets of goodness. Sandman’s scene where he learns to rebuild himself out of the love for his daughter is both emotionally and visually stunning. The way he crumbles and re-assembles is really cool. J. Jonah Jameson is just as funny as ever, and his scenes are refreshing because they feel like the first two films. And Spider-Man in a black suit is definitely cool to look at, even if the narrative execution is all off. But the thing is – there are just far too many missteps for this movie to achieve anything resembling greatness. It’s a convoluted, senseless mess. It’s heartbreaking. This was supposed to be Spider-Man’s finest hour.
And what about that last shot?! It’s just Mary Jane and Peter holding each other in a bar silently. Does she forgive him for punching her in the face? Does he forgive her for kissing Harry? What is going on? It’s almost as if the characters are so exhausted by the ludicrosity – ludicrousness? Ludicrousicity? – of this movie that they just can’t speak another word.
Spider-Man 3 is the great cataclysm of my generation. It is the unspeakable tragedy – the horrific error – that will live in infamy. Tobey will always be my Spider-Man...and because of that I must carry this film always with me as a burden.