Great honor to meet you, sir.
Harry tells me you're quite the science whiz.
You know, I'm something of a scientist myself.
The difference between a good movie and a great movie
sometimes is just casting.
The right actor paired with the right role
can generate lightning in a bottle for a film production.
It can reframe the entire context of a script.
In terms of most superhero movies,
the whole film relies on the casting of the hero.
However, sometimes, well rarely, it
might prove to be the opposite.
40,000 years of evolution and we've
barely even tapped the vastness of human potential.
2002's Spider-Man, Willem Dafoe delivers
one of the most important performances
of any superhero film in the last 20 years.
But it's in the how that things get more interesting.
Green Goblin first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man 14.
Stanley originally intended the character
to be a literal goblin unleashed by an archeological dig
in Egypt.
However, Steve Ditko, not liking that idea,
made him simply a man with gadgets and a flying glider,
who used the persona of a goblin to strike fear into people.
As his appearances went on, it was
revealed that he was actually Norman Osborn, the father
of Peter's best friend Harry and that he
had taken a goblin formula in order to give himself
super strength.
Ultimately, Norman Osborn would prove
to be a perennially popular character, that
would be almost as iconic as Spidey, himself, in some ways.
When it came time for Sam Raimi and Sony
to produce a Spider-Man feature film,
it wasn't difficult for them to find their antagonist
and their actor, Willem Dafoe.
I'm here.
If you can mentally travel back to the days of yesteryear
when the superhero was right down there with the video game
movie or the film adapted from a toy line.
You had Dolph Lundgren as the Punisher, that
kept an American movie with the son of the guy who
wrote Catcher in the Rye, and Lou Ferrigno's Hulk.
It was pretty slim pickings.
What Raimi and company would create,
would not only launch the superhero boom that we still
are in the midst of today, but create
one of the most enduringly impressive adaptations
of a comic book ever.
Raimi's Spider-Man film is a near-perfect distillation
of what works about the character
and why he's so important.
It's about choosing your destiny,
about how the content of your character
is the most important attribute anyone can have,
about the weight of responsibility,
and the burden of power.
It's the character piece created by someone
who's obviously a die-hard fan and that somehow made
its way to the studio system.
But a lot of it ticks to the variables that aren't red
and in spandex.
Raimi's Spider-Man brilliantly executed the themes
of what makes Spider-Man an ongoing title level
character, the struggle to balance
personal life and a heroic one, the tensions of his role.
While the film balance these overlapping ideas beautifully,
it really lives or dies on the shoulders of that antagonist.
The phrase, they always say a hero is only
as good as his villain, comes into play here.
When they first started discussing the role,
Raimi gave Dafoe a copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
He wanted to emphasize the duality of Norman Osborn,
to really lean into the fact that while Spider-Man
was attempting to make the right decisions,
Norman had made one mistake.
And it would define the rest of his life.
After taking the experimental compound
Norman's goblin persona would forever
be the one in charge of the show.
And it would be up to Dafoe to make this tightrope act work.
Like here with Dafoe elegantly convincing the audience
that there are two distinct personalities
warring for control within his body.
You killed them.
We killed them.
We?
Remember?
Your little accident in the laboratory.
The technical dance of camera angles and mirror tricks
could prove frustrating to another actor.
But for Dafoe, it's obvious that he's in his element.
He makes such minor decisions as an actor,
that when you call them out, they seem a little campy.
He arches his eyebrows and lowers his voice whenever
the Goblin is in control.
Godspeed, Spider-Man.
If you pay attention, whenever he's
being possessed by the Goblin, Dafoe extends his neck just
slightly and tilts his head down,
almost talking through his arched eyebrows.
It sounds like something that you'd instantly notice,
but it comes off as relatively subtle.
His Norman voice is also spoken a register higher
than it normally would.
It's all relatively impressive.
Performance enhancers.
Bingo.
Maybe your greatest creation.
Throughout the movie, he executes these operatic ideas
in such a natural and grounded way
that you instantly believe it.
You never questioned for a moment
these are choices being made by an actor.
They just feel organic.
And when asked about why he wanted
to take on the challenge of Green Goblin, Dafoe,
himself said, "I wanted to do it very badly.
It was competitive.
I remember I was making a movie in Spain,
and they flew a casting director out and do a screen test
in my hotel room.
That's how I got the role.
I had to fight for the role.
My friends were like, really?
You're going to do a cartoon movie?
Some of them snubbed it.
But I thought, no, it'll be cool.
This is interesting.
Movies from comics were not a normal thing.
It felt like something new.
And when you had Sam Raimi, he knew this material
and loved this material, it was a double role."
He understood what he was getting himself into, better
than most actors at that time.
And it comes across in his performance.
You can feel his enthusiasm in every second of this film.
Similar to how Tobey Maguire put on muscle for his role,
Willem's wiry physique is as iconic today
as it was in the 2000s.
In many ways, the role is a dark reflection
of Spider-Man's truth in the film.
They both express themselves through their masks.
Peter, who is a nerdy sheltered kid,
gets to be who he wishes he was when he donned the Spider mask.
He makes jokes.
He's charming.
Oh!
Cheese.
And knows exactly what to say in every moment,
in every conversation.
Goblin, on the other hand, uses his mask
to shield himself from admonishment
for his psychotic desires.
He embraces the worst parts of himself,
because he's now free from judgment.
And both Maguire and Dafoe play these roles excellently,
which is no easy task considering
Dafoe is acting through four inches of plastic
for the majority of the time he's in the Goblin suit.
And all of these things kind of dovetail into a moment
like this.
[CLINK]
[BLAST]
[SCREAMING]
[CRASH]
The climactic third-act battle between Goblin and Spider-Man
sees Norman completely overpower Peter until in the last push,
Peter gains the upper-hand.
But just as he's about to deliver the final blow,
the Goblin leaves Norman's mind, causing
him to plead with Spider-Man for his life, which works on Peter.
And then there's this.
The Goblin killed.
I had nothing to do with it.
Don't, don't let him take me, again.
I beg you.
"Don't let him take me, again."
This might be the best acting in any superhero movie,
due to its nuances.
It's so apparent that for a split second,
it is Norman Osborn, pleading for his life.
And then mid-sentence, the Goblin takes him.
Dafoe's voice shifts.
But then the Goblin tries to pretend to be Norman.
And that's where the Goblin attempts
to offer Peter what he's always wanted, a father.
I've been like a father to you.
Be a son to me, now.
So this was the perfect ending for a Spider-Man movie,
better than, really, any other Spider-Man movie has even
come close to accomplishing.
I have a father.
His name was Ben Parker.
Perfect character work.
And none of this would land half as well without Dafoe acting
as the backbone for it all.
Spider-Man functions much like the ancient myths
of Greece and Rome.
He acts as a way for contemporary audiences
to grapple with ideas of self-determination and moral
quagmires.
Every ancient hero is judged against their foes.
Where would Beowulf be without Grendel, Thor
without Loki, Perseus without Medusa?
The villains act as the impediment for our characters
growth.
By overcoming them, our protagonist
shows his strength and cunning.
In Spider-Man's case, in some ways,
that becomes less important, because it's
Dafoe's menacing multi-tier performance that
takes Sam Raimi's initial Spider-Man outing
and transforms it into something much more interesting.
And the point here is pretty black and white.
It's not just casting is important,
but every single bit of casting is important,
not just your hero, and not even just your villain.
Everyone that opens their mouth, everyone that
moves on your screen matters.
And it's worth remembering that.
A superhero movie in the early 2000s, late 90s,
could have lived and died by its hero.
But Raimi and Sony understood something
a little bit different.
That it lives and dies by everyone.
And in turn, it's not just Spider-Man
that becomes so special.
Well guys, that's it for today's episode of Nerdstalgic.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]