Spider Man Month - Mini review: Spider-man

It’s Spider-man month!

Sit back and watch as we go through the 5 movies and 2 of the latest animated series for our favourite wall-crawler.

I’ll get this out of the way now, I’m not an avid reader of Spider-man comics, in fact I don’t read any ongoing Spider-man series. I am however familiar with the character from the comics through research and the trades I’ve read (mostly Ultimate Universe stuff, but from what I here it’s pretty similar, at least pre Miles Morales taking the suit) and Linkara reviews

So, with that disclaimer out of the way, Spider-man is the first Sony Produced Spider-man movie, featuring Toby McGuire as Spider-man and Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane. Directed by Sam Raimi, the movie did pretty well at the box office, earning $827m on a $140m budget. But that was 13 years ago, has it aged well? Let’s take a look

My first observation, and this is nothing to do with the movie, but the DVD menu is terrible. I can barely tell what I’ve got selected and why is the play movie button in the bottom right corner?

OK, I’m at the school lunch scene and I hate Mary Jane already. She and Peter lived next door to each other, since Peter was 6. And not once has she tried to talk to him? I know Peter hasn’t talked to her either but I get the feeling he at least tried.

but I’d like to address the webs coming out of his hands thing. I really really really don’t like this. 1) Spiders do produce their own organic webbing but if I’m not mistaken, it comes out of their rectum. That’s obviously disgusting on television, so why have organic at all. 2) Where does the webbing come from, he doesn’t have holes in his arms for it to come out of and 3) where in his body is he producing this? Did the spider-bite grow a new web-producing organ in his body? Because that could be inconvenient if he had to go to the Doctor for anything. And yes, I know they did this in the comics too (because if there’s one thing Marvel comics love doing, is replicating the look of their movies) until One More Day changed that (must’ve been a sub-clause in the deal with Mephisto that said “you will go back to having mechanical web-shooters”)

“You’re taller than you look” wow, the dumb lines have started early. My head might need time to recover from that one.

“Aunt May, Aunt May, is that an angel?” OK, you know that wasn’t cute from a young Anakin Skywalker, it’s even less cute from a young Peter Parker.

OK, my first issue with this film is that there’s hardly any Spider-man in it.  I mean, sure, I’ll make allowances because it’s his origin but even once he becomes Spider-man, there’s hardly any Spider-man in it.

This film might’ve been considered good 12 or 13 years ago but by today’s judgement, it’s not very good. But there is good in the movie as well

Oddly enough my first compliment is to Toby McGuire as Peter Parker. He did a very good job showing the transformation from adorable dufus to sacrificing superhero. I also compliment Willem Defoe as the Green Goblin/Norman Osborn and James Franco as Harry Osborn. In fact most of the actors do a decent job in the film; it’s the material they have to work with that forms the basis of most of my issues with the film

Before I get to that though, some of the CGI in this has aged really badly. By today’s standards some of it looks terrible.

So, to the plot. So, they give us the spider-bite within the first few minutes of the film, which is impressive but it seems to drag its feet a bit to give us the rest of the origin. But eventually Uncle Ben dies and Peter decides to become Spider-man. Mary Jane is rescued 3 times in this movie. 3 times! And the first time, despite the threat being over, he drags her away to a local park.

Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin origin has the same teething issues. The thing that determines his origin (the gas injection) happens pretty early on but then it drags its heels because we can’t have the first Goblin Encounter before Spider-man’s on the scene. Wait, doesn’t Norman own stock in the company… That would mean he’d own a chunk of the business, regardless of whether they sell.

Mary Jane, she goes through boyfriends like Winnie the Pooh through honey pots… And she’s about as charming as a snake. Seriously, why does Peter chase after her, she only shows any interest in him after he defeated her then boyfriend, despite the fact they live next door! She has an abusive

father… Because we needed a reason not to hate her, didn’t work.

So yeah, the serum has given Norman schizophrenia and apparently ventriloquism, seeing as how he can talk as his other self without moving his lips. Works symbolically, not so much practically.

Thanksgiving dinner, not at the parents’ house for some reason. And everyone calls Aunt May Aunt May, that’s actually creepy, disturbing, wrong! Seriously, did no-one pick up on this. Her name is just May unless you’re her niece or nephew, then it’s Aunt May.

So, Mary Jane or bus load of children? Mary Jane comes first, our hero. Then Peter gets his ass kicked by the Goblin, then Peter kicks the Goblin’s ass (because consistency, what’s that?) and then he kills himself. And Spider-man decides to honour Norman’s wish that Harry not know (because that works out so f*cking well) and takes him back to the house, and is seen by Harry. (Act of great kindness, or dumbest thing in the world, you decide)

Yeah. I don’t like this movie that much; it’s goofy and I don’t mind that. But it’s littered with issues and not just the ones I’ve mentioned here, these are mostly ones that spring to mind having watched it.

Rating 25/100

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Images used in this review are from Spider-man and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use.