Spider-Man (2002 film)
| Spider-Man | |
|---|---|
| Spider-Man poster | |
| Directed by | Sam Raimi |
| Written by | Stan Lee (comic book), Steve Ditko (comic book) |
| Produced by | Stan Lee Joseph M. Caracciolo |
| Starring | Tobey Maguire Willem Dafoe Kirsten Dunst James Franco |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment |
Running time | 120 min. |
| Budget | $139,000,000 (estimated) |
Spider-Man is an extremely successful film directed by Sam Raimi, which stars Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and Willem Dafoe. It is an adaptation of the Marvel Comics comic book The Amazing Spider-Man, focusing on the title character's origins and his fight against his first major enemy, the Green Goblin, even while he struggles to show his feelings to his love, Mary Jane.
A sequel to the film, Spider-Man 2, was released on June 30 2004. The second sequel, Spider-Man 3, is set to be released in 2007.
Plot summary
The hero of the story is Peter Parker, who is a precocious teenager, but is also socially inept, too shy even to approach Mary Jane, a girl from next door with whom he is smitten. His only friend is Harry Osborn, and even their friendship is tainted with jealousy by the fact that Harry's successful father, Norman, favors the brilliant Peter over Harry himself. Parker lives in Queens, New York.
On a student tour of a genetics laboratory at Columbia University, Peter is bitten by an escaped experimental spider that has been created with various extraordinary traits from a variety of spiders. The spider's venom causes him to fall ill and he barely arrives home before collapsing into bed. After a difficult night's sleep while the venom alters his genetic makeup, he wakes up seemingly unharmed. However, he learns to his surprise that his body has changed dramatically and literally overnight. Over the course of that amazing first day, Peter learns that not only has he acquired perfect vision and muscle tone, but he has also gained greatly increased strength and agility, the ability to fire strands of strong webbing from his wrists, a "spider-sense" which gives him a psychic warning of any danger to himself and the ability to extend a mass of minute barbs from his skin which can allow him to adhere to any smooth surface. While he glories in these new abilities which allow him to fend off bullies like Eugene "Flash" Thompson and jump from rooftop to rooftop with ease, Aunt May and Uncle Ben, who care for him, become concerned for their nephew's new strange and secretive behaviour.
On a trip to the library, Uncle Ben confronts Peter about it and stresses to him that with maturity and power comes great responsibility. Peter impatiently snaps at him and secretly heads off to his true destination, a sports arena that promises a $3000 prize to any man who can last three minutes in the ring with the wrestler Bonesaw McGraw. With some difficulty, Peter defeats the wrestler and is cheered as the "amazing Spider-Man." However, Peter is cheated by the fight promoter and, in retaliation, does not stop a criminal who has stolen the gate money.
Walking to the library with some satisfaction, he finds that his Uncle has been shot by a carjacker in the street and Ben dies in front of him. Enraged, Peter dons his spider costume to pursue the murderer using his webs for transportation for the first time. He confronts the killer in an abandoned warehouse only to learn to his horror that the killer is the same criminal he could have stopped earlier when he had the chance. Peter kicks the murderer into a window, without knowing that he would fall out of the window to his death. Peter is wracked with guilt over the death of his uncle.
Months later after graduation from high school, Peter decides to live up to his uncle's words, "with great power, comes great responsibility," by becoming a superhero fighting crime all over the city. He eventually learns a way to make it pay by supplying photographs of his alter-ego to Daily Bugle publisher, J. Jonah Jameson, who has a continual need for Spider-Man photos even though he villifies the vigilante in his paper.
Norman Osborn experiences his own dramatic transformation. To save his company from losing a vital military contract, he subjects himself to a dangerous test of an experimental treatment which increases his strength and intelligence but also drives him insane, creating a new malevolent personality which comes forth to murder any one standing in his way. Using his company's prototype armor—a personal flight device called a glider and a green facemask from his collection—Norman lashes out as a figure that is later dubbed "the Green Goblin" (although the audience does not yet know that the Green Goblin and Norman are the same person).
Spider-Man and the Goblin eventually meet at the World Unity Festival held at Times Square, where the Goblin murders the company board of directors that were planning to fire him. Spider-Man drives the Goblin off and saves Mary Jane as well.
While Peter mourns the fact that he seems to have lost M.J. to Harry, the Goblin tempts him, after abducting him as Spider-Man, to join with him against an ungrateful world that hates him. Spider-Man refuses and the insulted Goblin vows revenge. Norman deduces that Peter is Spider-Man and begins to strike at his loved ones, first attacking Aunt May who ends up hospitalized and M.J. Harry later discovers that Mary Jane has fallen for Peter Parker, and gets angry.
This leads to a climax on the Queensboro Bridge where the Goblin tells Spider-Man to choose whether to save the kidnapped M.J. or a tram car of children. Spider-Man, with some help from New York City by-standers, manages to save both. The Goblin, enraged at being thwarted, brings Spider-Man to an abandoned building on Roosevelt Island below the bridge.
The Green Goblin promises to torture and kill Mary Jane before dueling with Spider-Man in brutal hand to hand combat. Spider-Man defeats him, only to be begged to stop his attack when the Norman personality regains control (and only then does the Green Goblin reveal himself to be Norman Osborn). Tearfully, Norman begs Peter to help him control his mental problem, unaware that the Goblin personality is manipulating his body subconsciously for a sneak attack on Spider-Man using his glider's remote controls. Peter rejects the overture and barely avoids the charging glider that is hurtling in to spear him in the back, only to fatally impale Norman in the chest instead.
Honoring Norman's request not to tell Harry the truth, Spider-Man brings Norman's body home and Harry becomes convinced that Spider-Man murdered his father. At the funeral, Harry swears revenge on Spider-Man while reaffirming his friendship with Peter. Dismayed at the tragedy he seems to cause to all those close to him, he rejects Mary Jane's words of love to keep her from becoming a potential target of his enemies yet again. The film ends with Peter walking away from M.J., who seems to now suspect that Peter is Spider-Man, while trying to make the best of the situation with a victory lap as he swings around the city with ease.
Critical reaction
The general critical reaction was enthusiastic, with Tobey Maguire and Willem Dafoe being singled for particular praise for their performances as the hero and the villain respectively. There were complaints about the second half of the film being rather derivative and the CGI being overused towards the end. The relatively flat acting from most of the other lead actors, especially Kirsten Dunst and James Franco, also created some criticisms.
In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, some of the CGI shots of New York were redone to remove the World Trade Center from the shots. It is rumored that the last image of Spider-Man sticking to a flagpole with a large American flag was added as a patriotic gesture.
Some vocal comic book fans aired complaints about the change made in Spider-Man's webs. In the comic books, Peter Parker invented a mechanical web-shooting device, while in the movie he produced his webbing naturally. These complaints were largely dismissed by fans of the movie as fanboy griping. (Similar complaints had been made about the film adaptation of X-Men.)
The film was a smash hit grossing $403,706,375 in its theatrical run in the United States alone, becoming the highest grossing film of the year. It grossed $114,844,116 in its opening weekend, setting a still-standing record, and became the first film is history to earn over $100 million in a single weekend. It had an equally successful home video release which made Tobey Maguire, previously known as a baby-faced character actor into a major star. Spider-Man was the highest-grossing film of the year and, as of February 2004, one of the biggest box office smashes of all time.
Trivia
- In Spider-Man, Peter's Uncle Ben drives a 1978 beige Oldsmobile Delta. This model of car has appeared in all but one of director Sam Raimi's films.
- Spider-Man creator, Stan Lee, makes a cameo appearance for three seconds during the parade sequence of the film, appearing shocked by Spider-Man and the Green Goblin fighting.
- Oddly enough, actor Cliff Robertson, who plays Uncle Ben, has the middle name "Parker," the last name of the main character in the movie, Peter Parker.
External links
| Characters | |
|---|---|
| Features and locations | |
| Comic books | |
| Other media | |
| Toys | |
| See also | |
