Ode to a Superhero: Spider-Man 2
17 years later, Spider-Man 2 is still the best superhero film ever made (or that will ever be made)
I decided to do a back-to-back marathon of Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man films following the release of Miles Morales several months ago. For whatever reason I didn't think my thoughts were worth expressing at the time. But as we exit the era of the movie theater, and the decade of Marvel, it's increasingly evident that Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man is still worth discussing.
A Marvelous Eleven Years
I wish I liked the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But as I've written previously, superhero fiction does not appeal to me. The conventions of the genre are goofy at their best, and the constant threat of world-destruction eschews intimacy and character motivation in favor of boring, dumb action.
I haven't seen an MCU film since the first Tom Holland Spider-Man. Like with all preceding Marvel films, I thought it was fine. I admire the attempt to reduce the scale of the threat--although they could have gone much, much further--and I left the theater more or less satisfied.
But these enormous corporate films lack two elements which are vital in transcending my inertial apathy in storytelling: intense personal vision, and emotion.
Even the best Marvel movies--the original Favreu Ironman being my favorite--lack emotion. They're action filled, and sometimes compelling, and the characters are pretty well done, but they're orgiastic celebrations of special effects with only shallow real-world value.
Now, I have nothing against an orgy every now and then, much as how I have nothing against dumb action films.
...so long as there's some point, some idea, some kernel of truth, to it all.
These Marvel movies teach us nothing. I know Endgame supposedly does a good job of rectifying the lack of real, meaningful emotion, and from what I've seen it seems to do a pretty decent job at this, but overall the entire exercise is so vapid and commercial and corporate.
So while the movies themselves aren't actively bad, they don't interest me at all. I find them boring--particularly their action, which puts me to sleep.
Back to Raimi
I love Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. Yes, I even like Spider-Man 3, although I don't intend on discussing it here.
Say what you will about the creative decisions in the Raimi trilogy, but they have immense vision. The films are colorful and oozing with personality. They are the antithesis of the boring, sanitized, corporate, uninteresting, dull, safe, lame, commercial, and practically uniform MCU.
In other words, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies are movies--not exercises in lining some hack executive's pockets.
Here I must confess that I was raised on these three movies. I do think they hold up splendidly, as I'll get to later on, but it should be mentioned that part of the reason why I like what Raimi was going for so much is simply because what Raimi was going for seems like what superhero fiction should be to me.
This is what I like so much about these movies, from an abstract, thematic point of view:
Peter Parker is smart, but he's not a literal tech genius
This is heresy to comicbook readers everywhere. Spider-Man doesn't shoot webs out of his wrists! He uses custom-built webslingers!
I hate the tech genius aspect to Peter Parker. Stop trying to make Spider-Man into Ironman. It just seems so pointless. Who cares about gadgets in Spider-Man? That's not what's interesting! Peter is a nerd and he should be smart, but turning him into Tony Stark spreads the high concept thin and muddles everything.
This feeds into the below point:
Superheroes are most interesting in mundane worlds
This is one of the things the MCU gets so horribly, categorically wrong (from my perspective). The Spider-Man that I want to watch is, effectively, a soap opera for teen boys. It isn't about saving the world, it's about how a young guy balances his superpowers with his family, his friends, and his career.
So it doesn't matter if the world is going to be destroyed. It doesn't matter if aliens are invading. These villains might be more interesting to fight in a big dumb action sequence, but that isn't what's interesting about Spider-Man. What's interesting about Spider-Man are the relationships and Peter's own psychology. All else is high concept.
All Spider-Man needs for villains are generic bad guys. They can be anyone. To be honest, I don't care at all about Doc Oc or the Vulture or Willem Dafoe. What's interesting to me is how Peter balances dealing with these villains with his love for Mary Jane or how he manages to pay for his rent.
Readers around my age might be thinking of Danny Phantom right about now, and it's true that Danny Phantom does a lot of what I want from superhero fiction. It's about nerd who's also a superhero, and who has to deal with living a double life. It's about people first, action second--ironic, considering it's a cartoon for children.
But Danny Phantom isn't for an adult audience in the way that Spider-Man 2 is, which means its ability to discuss real issues is constrained. I also haven't seen it in 13 years. It's also a cartoon and I'm a grown man.
Anyway, were it my choice, stories about a superhero would not take place in cinematic universes. Spider-Man would be the only superhero. Period. That's it. That's what makes him interesting.
This, incidentally, is why I like the first Ironman film. Tony Stark doesn't fight spacemen, he fights Al-Qaeda. That's awesome!
If the world of a superhero story is amazing, then the heroes are not. It's as Buddy says: "If everyone's super, no one will be." This ruins the power fantasy aspect of the genre and turns the fantastic into the mundane.
Peter Parker is a weird and awkward asshole
It's baffling that Raimi and his screenwriting team opted to go in this direction in retrospect, but I love it. Peter Parker is so uncharismatic in these movies. As someone who is, in real life, a weird and awkward asshole, I find him highly relatable.
Moreover, he's just way more interesting to watch than some generic Hollywood pretty boy who says all of the right things. He's rife with inner turmoil. Tom Holland is nice to look at, and he's fun to be around, but he's not very interesting psychologically. Raimi's Peter is.
The Mask
Finally, I love the "secret identity" aspect to Spider-Man, which is something the MCU movies have completely lost. It is the most important aspect to superhero fiction, in my opinion.
In real life, Peter Parker is an inhibited guy who no one really likes. He doesn't know how to break free of who he is.
But when he puts on a mask, everything changes. He's completely liberated from his inhibition. He becomes capable of realizing his maximum potential, which is that of a selfless hero. It's like an actor on stage playing a part completely unlike himself, yet holding the audience enraptured.
The ways in which Spider-Man 2 explores this particular point is beyond fascinating. That's really what I'm looking to explore here.
Peter Parker Earns His Powers
One of the things that bothered me about Miles Morales (the game) is that Miles did nothing to earn his powers. He gets bit by a spider, despite the fact that Mary Jane did all of the heavy lifting in getting that spider from its secret lab.
The same can be said of most superhero fiction, though. No one earns their powers. They all come about accidentally, or through natural genius.
Spider-Man 2 brilliantly rectifies this deficiency in the genre. It's startlingly intelligent and a triumph of screenwriting.
So in the first film, Peter gets bit by a random spider and becomes a hero. He makes a mistake, which gets his uncle killed, and atones for it. In the end he saves the day. It's a good story and it works primarily because of its emotional, character and relationship-focused screenplay. We care about Peter's love for MJ and that makes us care about the fight at the end.
(Similarly, we don't give a fuck about Spider-Pig and Spider-Girl and their relationship with Miles at the end of Into the Spiderverse, which is why that film's conclusion is SO AMAZINGLY BORING--even though the rest of the screenplay is good.)
In any case, Spider-Man 1's story is fairly conventional. Peter does not earn his powers.
Enter Spider-Man 2
Doc Oc is hardly in this film. Most of his appearances are just as Otto Octavius. We get to know him, like him, and then we see his tragic descent into insanity--all because he thought he was above God (or nature or whatever).
But the real story of Spider-Man 2 is Peter losing his powers--and he loses his powers because he doesn't deserve them anymore. He's lost track of being a hero. And it's become too easy. Sure, Spider-Man fights bad guys. But why wouldn't he? He's practically invulnerable.
This is exactly my criticism of Miles Morales, realized in this film.
So how does Peter get his powers back? He has to become a hero, for real.
In the first movie, Spider-Man rushes into a burning building to save a baby. It's a good scene--there are high stakes, it's dramatic, the effects are good. But that's all it is. Why wouldn't Spider-Man rush into a burning building to save a baby? He'd be more selfish not to do it.
In the second movie, Peter Parker rushes into a burning building. And this time, he does it as normal, mortal human. He risks his life to save others. He is a genuine hero. He actually puts himself at risk. He EARNS his powers.
My favorite scene in the film is near the end, where Spider-Man has to stop a train...using his own body as a brake. It's visceral. He almost dies in the process. He really suffers doing it. And through that suffering he saves the day--just barely.
But more than just being prepared to sacrifice himself for others, this scene illustrates this heroism through the crowd. I absolutely love the reactions from the people on the train once they've recovered his body: "He's so young!" "He looks just like my son!"
This resolution, although cut brief by the villain, is truthful. It's human. It's emotional. It puts everything I've seen in any of the Marvel movies to shame. It reminds us that heroism is more than being granted supernatural powers of immortality. It's about helping, no matter the cost.
Relationship Focus
Beyond Peter's psychological journey of recovering his powers, this movie is entirely about human relationships. Peter and MJ, Peter and his aunt, Peter and Doc Oc, Peter and Harry. These are the things that bind the narrative together. Most of the film is talking; there are only a handful of action scenes, most of which are at the end.
The success of Spider-Man 2, commercially and critically, proves to me that this is how superhero films should be done. Relationships are key. We tell stories about human beings. The humans are more important than the set pieces.
SET PIECES ARE NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN HUMANS.
Sorry, I just thought I'd repeat myself just in case JJ Abrams is reading this.
Peter Parker Saves the Day--Without Using Superpowers
It sounds trite when you put it like that, doesn't it? But it's true.
At the end of Spider-Man 2, the Spider-Man beats Doc Oc not in some big, dumb, stupid, boring fight sequence--as is the conclusion for every MCU film--but rather because he convinces Otto that he can overcome the machines controlling his mind. He defeats the bad guy by not using his superpowers at all.
In fact, Spider-Man doesn't defeat Doc Oc. Peter Parker does. He talks Doc Off off of the ledge. Not only does this not require superpowers, it doesn't even require genius: all Peter needed to defeat the villain was strength of character.
The thematic purpose of the film, then, is clear: one does not need to be a superhero to be a hero. This has real value. This teaches us something. This is the antithesis of a Marvel film. It's truthful and realistic AND intelligent.
I want to reiterate that the dramatic conclusion of Spider-Man 2 is a conversation between a young man and his mentor. That's it. There is no fight. The climax is a conversation. And that simple conversation is ten million times more dramatically compelling than any Avengers or Into the Spiderverse or Ironman 3 big fight scene can ever hope to be.
I was shocked upon rewatching this scene after living through the 2010s. It's so sedated, so restrained, so self-aware. Yet here it is.
This film's conclusion is why I say that Spider-Man 2 is as good as superhero movies can get. I cannot think of any way for it to be possibly any better, from a story structure standpoint.
Conclusion
Spider-Man 2 came out in the final years of film as a real storytelling art. Despite being an immensely commercial (and successful at the box office!) movies, it was created in a time where movies were still movies first, product second.
Again, I'm not claiming that all Marvel movies are bad. Some are pretty good. I even like a few. But they're still sanitized, commercial, and lacking in vision. They don't feel like movies to me. They feel like products.
Raimi brought real personality and vision to Spider-Man. I haven't touched at all here on his signature style, which I'm a huge fan of, because it doesn't require particular examination beyond identification. Although I'm not devotee to the school of Auteur Theory, it is refreshing to watch a film that feels like it was made by a single person and his team, and not a boardroom.
So go watch Spider-Man 2 again if you haven't recently. It deserves your attention.