Spider-Man is a character who has had some cinematic ups and downs.
And by that, I mean roller coaster ups and downs.
Some of the best superhero movies ever and some of the worst.
However, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Today I’m going through the Spiderman movies and deciding whether they’re good, if they’re
bad, if they need more dance sequences, everything.
Let’s start.
So in 2002, superhero movies weren’t that huge.
There’d been four Superman movies, four Batman movies, and one X-Men movie.
And that was more or less it.
Spider-Man changed all that.
It easily became the highest grossing superhero movie and at the time of its release was the
7th highest grossing movie of all time.
And this movie is pretty great.
Now, I was too young to see this movie in theaters when it came out, but I can only
imagine that the web swinging for the first time was mind blowing.
When I watched it on my TV it was awesome, so seeing it on the big screen could only
have been amazing.
On top of that, all the other special effects are great and for the most part hold up pretty
well.
Tobey Maguire, while not as funny as I would have liked, is great as Peter Parker, and
Willem Dafoe plays one of the greatest villains in superhero movies.
Kirsten Dunst is good as Mary Jane and early days James Franco portrays Harry Osborn really
well, much better than Dane Dehaan a couple years down the line.
In fact, this was James Franco’s first big blockbuster as far as I know.
This movie was the first film that told the origin story of Peter Parker and so at that
point we weren’t all sick and tired of it, and it was actually an interesting premise.
Complaints?
Well, for one, not all of the special effects hold up.
Peter Parker at one point looks like he’s made of rubber.
But since it came out 15 years ago I think that can be forgiven.
Also, as mentioned, Peter Parker or at least Spider-Man isn’t funny or wise-cracking
like he is in the comics and later films, but the film does chose the right times to
add a bit of humor so that it doesn’t ruin a scene.
Something that later Spidey films failed at.
My last complaint is that the movie is kind of dated, like the whole drawing montage makes
you remember, yeah, this came out in 2002.
But you know what, those are almost nothing complaints.
This was overall an awesome start to the franchise.
So this is where things peaked.
Spider-Man 2 is easily one of the best superhero movies ever made.
Everything I mentioned for Spider-Man 1 is taken that much further in this one.
The villain, the characters, the action, the plot.
Everything is taken up a notch, and the notch was already pretty high.
Let’s start with the villain.
Doctor Octopus is amazing in this movie.
Willem Dafoe was great as Green Goblin (say that 3 times fast) but he was a bit over the
top.
Alfred Molina is perfect in this role.
And the great thing is, you actually sympathize with this character.
At the end of the movie, when *spoiler alert for Spider-Man 2* Doctor Octopus kills himself
to save the day.
Also, his costume aka the claws look so cool and are so much better than Willem Dafoe’s
motorcycle helmet.
The action in this movie is so exciting and engaging and just all around spectacular.
The fight on the clock tower and then on the train are the best fight scenes in any superhero
movie in my opinion.
The web swinging is top notch and in this one the action actually holds up really well.
I think this might be because a lot of the special effects are done not on computers
but in real life.
Of course, quite a bit of it is done with computers, they don’t literally have Tobey
Maguire swinging around New York, but some of the smaller scale stuff is done in real
life, as oppose to say The Amazing Spider-Man 2 where the entire fight between Green Goblin
and Spider-Man is completely CGI.
This movie won an Oscar for best visual effects and correct me if I’m wrong, but is this
the only Marvel movie to get an Oscar?
Anyway, it definitely deserved it.
My last point is the story.
The story in this one is really interesting.
That’s the word that comes to my mind.
Sure it has the Doc Ock story, but it also has Peter Parker’s internal conflict about
whether he wants to be Spider-Man or not, his problems with Mary Jane that come from
that, and best of all, his conflict with Harry Osborn, which is one of the best parts of
the movie.
James Franco really steps it up in this movie and I really cared about these two’s friendship,
and when Harry eventually turns into the Goblin, I actually cared.
It’s not like Peter just walked up to Harry and was like, “Hey, you’re my old friend.
Yeah, we’ve never seen you in this franchise but let’s throw some rocks for a while and
then have you become the Green Goblin for really no reason whatsoever.
Alright, see you around.”
Because that would be stupid.
No one would ever do that!
Also, like the first movie, this one finds the right time to add in humor to break it
up a bit without completely ruining a scene.
Alright, enough with the praises for Spider-Man 2.
It’s time for…
Spider-Man 3.
Alright.
I have some unpopular opinions here.
I actually don’t think Spider-Man 3 is that bad.
Now, just stay with me here.
If you take away Venom, Gwen Stacy, and maybe a bit of that emo Peter Parker dancing, you
have a pretty good film.
Let’s take a look at the good stuff.
Firstly, the Green Goblin.
Like I just mentioned, because the relationship between Harry and Peter was already established,
when Harry became the Green Goblin, it was actually interesting.
And speaking of which, the fight between Peter Parker and Harry around the buildings was
amazing.
Not quite up there with the train fight, but still pretty awesome.
Also, when Spider-Man and Sandman fight by the train, that was really cool.
Man, if you wanna avoid fighting Spider-Man, just stay away from trains.
When the Sandman becomes Sandy, at least before the finale, that looks good, and the scene
where Sandman is first becoming Sandman and he’s trying to reach for the picture of
his daughter, that scene is one of the best scenes in all of superhero movies.
And yeah, that’s the good.
Now, the bad.
First off, the small problem, Gwen Stacy.
She just shouldn’t have been in the movie.
She just added another relatively pointless plotline.
Now, the big problems.
Too many villains.
This movie basically has four villains.
New Goblin, Sandman, Venom, and Spider-Man’s internal problems with the symbiote.
This could have worked but it just didn’t.
It wasn’t executed well.
Which leads me to my next problem which is this thing.
Yes, Venom.
Venom is one of my favorite supervillains and I’m not alone in thinking that.
But he’s a villain worthy of being the one and only villain in a movie.
He was literally in the film for about 10 minutes.
That’s like if in the Dark Knight, the Joker just shows up for the last couple of minutes,
punches Batman, and gets killed.
I’ll give the movie this, Venom looked really cool.
But that’s it.
If Venom had been cut from this movie entirely along with the symbiote thing, this would
have been on par with the first Spider-Man.
Also, speaking of Venom, the last fight scene isn’t all that great and Sandman looks….well,
he looks like that.
Just a little bit weird.
And finally, of course there is the emo Peter Parker thing and the dancing scene which I
myself have made fun of in this very video, but I’m just gonna be honest.
I laughed my head off in that scene.
When I saw that for the first time it was hilarious.
Just in the middle of this serious movie, this guy starts doing just the lamest dance
moves ever.
If it wasn’t the movie’s intention to make me laugh, then I guess that’s points
off.
But I think it was supposed to be funny.
And while it was a little bit abrupt and kind of detracted a bit from the overall tone of
the movie, I thought it was funny.
I’m not saying Spider-Man 3 is a great movie, I’m just saying I think it gets way more
hate than it deserves.
Maybe I’m crazy.
Now there’s the original trilogy.
Great, Awesome, You Know What Alright All Things Considered.
But while I might have enjoyed Spider-Man 3, most everyone else didn’t, which is completely
understandable.
So Sony did what movie studios do best and rebooted it.
I was genuinely surprised that the Amazing Spider-Man was not a complete train wreck.
The film was not made because the director and studio had a great story to tell and wanted
to make a great Spider-Man movie.
They did it so they could keep the rights to the character.
And so I was surprised to find out that it was actually pretty good.
It isn’t as good as Spider-Man 1 and 2, but it’s a bit better than Spider-Man 3.
I know opinions are mixed on this movie.
Sure, there are varying tones and because it’s going for the realistic feel, a giant
lizard man seems out of place.
But that’s pretty much all the stuff I didn’t like.
Oh, except for the crane scene.
Never do that again.
But besides that, this is a pretty great time.
Andrew Garfield, as I’ve said time and time again, is the best Spider-Man.
The Lizard, while out of place, looks pretty cool.
Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield have great chemistry.
And it has some of the best web swinging to date.
I didn’t see this movie in cinemas and yet I was still impressed with the web swinging
when watching it on a little TV screen.
That’s worth something.
So is this movie perfect, not at all.
But is it a pretty cool movie, with great action, and really good and likeable lead
characters?
Yeah.
So this movie really was the tipping point of the Spider-Man movies.
Was it going to become a great franchise again or would it descend into darkness?
*sigh* The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
I know that talking about this movie isn’t that new.
Hundreds of people have already ranted about it, including myself.
But let me address it for hopefully the last time.
Firstly, what was good with this movie.
Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone still have pretty great chemistry.
The web swinging again is great.
Spider-Man looks more comic accurate than he ever has.
And *spoiler alert for the Amazing Spider-Man 2* the scene where Gwen Stacy died, and I’ll
go on record saying this, was one of the best Spider-Man scenes.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that the rest of this movie is frankly pretty terrible.
Without going over every point I’ve gone over before, the basic jist of it is that
they took everything that was bad about Spider-Man 1, 2, 3, and the reboot and tripled it.
More cheesy dialogue, more villains, more tonal problems.
More Peter’s parents, which no one cares about.
I will give it this: there’s no dancing.
Good job.
But everything else is just bad.
Electro didn’t even look that great.
He looked like if Doctor Manhattan was a PlayStation 3 character.
I actually kind of liked the Rhino suit, but Paul Giamatti, who I’ve loved in other things,
literally played a cartoon.
Dane Dehaan, who otherwise is a pretty good actor, was completely wasted.
And speaking of Dehaan and his character, the Green Goblin has no build up.
Considering what a good job the previous movies did with Harry Osborn, this one just seems
lazy.
Fight scenes literally go down to dubstep.
Peter Parker discovers a secret train by throwing a calculator at the wall and finding, like,
what, coins or something?
God, and Jamie Foxx as Electro played Jim Carrey’s Riddler only more cartoony.
Jamie Foxx played a character more cartoony than Jim Carrey.
Have those words ever been spoken in the English language before?
No.
I should hope not.
Why I am even talking about this movie?
What am I doing with my life?
*bleep* In all seriousness, despite what I just said,
this movie isn’t that terrible.
Would I recommend you see it?
Now that it’s out of cinemas, no way.
But it isn’t the worst film I’ve ever seen.
I wouldn’t even say it’s one of the worst superhero movies I’ve ever seen.
However, after watching it again, I’d probably lower the score from a 6/10 which I gave it
in my review, to a 5 or 5.5.
If you loved this movie, that’s great.
I think it’s great that you can get enjoyment out of something that I myself can’t.
So that was the best and worst of Spider-Man in film.
What is your favorite and least favorite of the Spidey movies?
Leave your picks in the comments.
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Thanks for watching and I’ll see ya next time.