Why SPIDER-MAN 2 is Still the Best Superhero Film of the 21st Century

In the midst of my daily quarantine couch vegetation session, I was prompted by a text from a friend to watch an Amazon Original show called The Boys. Ostensibly a show made as a hate letter to the superhero genre, I found myself surprisingly enjoying it, in spite of a color grading scheme that would make an early 2000s nu metal music video seem bright and poppy (seriously, this show is enjoyable, but man is it ugly!).

At the same time, I frequently caught myself wondering WHY I enjoyed something this gleefully sadistic and mean-spirited, especially as someone who once devoured superhero comics and looked forward to the summer superhero movie rotation with the eagerness of a kid counting down the days to Christmas. It occurred to me that a large part of that had to do with how bland, both stylistically and narratively, most modern superhero movies are. Sure, you might get something idiosyncratic like a Doctor Strange here or there, but by and large they serve as a disposable cinematic IV drip to a now obese studio who has gorged itself on audience wallets for frankly far too long. Had I now become so bitter toward the genre as to enjoy something like The Boys, which 14-year-old me would probably have written off as edgy nonsense? To find the root of this feeling, I thought back on what I still hold as the best superhero movie of the last two decades, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, which still has yet to be bested in terms of pure fist-pumping superhero antics.

For all his faults as a filmmaker these days (ironically paralleling the trajectory of his contemporary Tim Burton), Sam Raimi at one time had a unique vision and style all his own. Sure, we can lampoon his obsessions with fast POV tracking shots or fondness for broad physical humor, but these were definite hallmarks. You could describe a film as “Raimi-esque” to someone and a rough idea of what you were describing could be immediately conjured up.

Here in Spider-Man 2, even ordinary dialogue scenes have his fingerprints all over them. For instance, a quick zoom on Peter Parker’s eyes widening as his Spider-sense activates, and then a quick pullback to show facial expression changes with a hurtling car coming right behind him. Do you know what that shot setup sounds similar to? That’s right, it’s a horror movie. This is the same format used for the (now cliché) mirror jump scare: show one shot, shift perspective, return to previous shot, but now something else is in frame. From this, you can connect the dots to show a through line of that 20-year-old gorehound wunderkind who made The Evil Dead with his buddies to the now bankable auteur who was directing major Hollywood tentpoles. Compare that to the indistinguishable slate of directors behind most MCU movies. Other than maybe Joe Johnston, can you even identify their distinct quirks or motifs? 

But Raimi doesn’t stop with the horror there. Throughout his trilogy, the villains all have elements of classic Universal Monster iconography, most notably the Green Goblin resembling Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde and Sandman evoking the Invisible Man. But it’s Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus that pushes the envelope into outright body horror. Re-watch the scene of Doctor Octopus “being born” and killing the doctors in the room. Raimi plays with flashing lights, violence represented in shadows off walls, and as much an emphasis on the victims as he does the “monster.” The scene ends with Doc Ock crying, gorgeously backlit as his tentacles scream out as well. The man and the machine are now one, and it’s pure anguish for him. This primal expression of horror over what he has become is reminiscent of Lon Chaney’ Jr.’s tortured fate in The Wolfman.

But enough about villains. Let’s talk about our hero. I’ll always go to bat for Tobey Maguire as the best cinematic Spider-Man, mainly because he’s the only version of the character that actually taps into the core of what the character is: awkward, sentimental, and always one bad day from a nervous breakdown. Compare that to GQ model material like Andrew Garfield or even Tom Holland, who just don’t jive with these underlying traits. Raimi dials in on these characteristics and turns a large majority of the film into a Golden Age Hollywood melodrama. As much time is given to Peter’s faltering relationship with Mary Jane, his tension with Harry over his father’s death, and inner turmoil over losing his powers as is given to the bionic tentacle man tearing up Manhattan. There’s a humanity to it that never feels saccharine or obligatory, but rather flows as an extension of what superhero movies are all about. It doesn’t deconstruct the superhero mythos, but simply posits that these very ordinary problems are natural extensions of a life fighting crime, imbuing a sense of tragic martyrdom to our hero.

Contextualizing this film and its predecessor within the post-9/11 cinematic climate, I won’t dispute that some of this approach can be chalked up to studio (or Raimi’s) desire to offer audiences something reassuring and unquestionably aspirational in the increasingly uncertain political climate of the early 2000s. However, I’d argue that much of the film’s thematic weight holds up more now so than it did back in the day, despite us becoming probably even more cynical than we were then.

Spider-Man’s appeal as an everyman, struggling with his own daily life but fighting for others, has always been why he’s remained popular as the “working man’s hero.” This is best underlined in the now iconic train scene, where he struggles to stop a speeding subway car from plummeting off a broken bridge. The passengers are scared, but so is Spider-Man, screaming at the top of his lungs as his costume tears from the tension put on his body. Upon saving them, he immediately passes out. Utilizing an overhead shot of the passengers carrying him into the car, Raimi emphasizes Spider-Man as a sort of Christlike figure, who must suffer for the sake of others. The line “just a kid,” as the stunned passengers look at the face of their savior, gets me every time.

Now compare those scene attributes to similar ones shown in the likes of Man of Steel or Spider-Man: Homecoming. Zack Snyder attempts to also frame Superman as a sort of Christ figure, but there’s no sense of tragedy. He doesn’t suffer for his decisions or failure to live up to other’s expectations in his civilian life, so the martyrdom doesn’t work. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, a similar action sequence involving a boat is set up, but the in-universe connection to Tony Stark completely undermines the loner hero angle we see in Raimi’s version. Imbuing the character with a bunch of gadgets, a high-tech suit, and a billionaire buddy who can bail him out completely misses the point of a character who is always down on his luck, without financial privilege, and ultimately alone.

It’s all of this and more that leads me to believe that this movie has as much to say now as it did back in 2004. “With great power comes great responsibility” may be a punchline now, but in a post-George Floyd-killing-America, these are words that really still mean something. Peter Parker frequently chooses to ignore the plight of those around him when he briefly loses his powers in the movie. When they ultimately return to him, it’s not through some scientific mumbo jumbo, but through the shock of seeing something he cares about in danger. We may all want to live in anxiety-free montages while “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” play around us, but that would be a rejection of what we can and should do to help those around us. We don’t have powers, but we do have platforms (the Internet, our communities, our workplaces) that we can try to improve every day. To not use this power would not be responsible.