I am going to start this review by mentioning Sam Raimi who was the man behind the camera for such gems as directing Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Evil Dead 3, Darkman, The Gift and Drag Me to Hell. Producer of Timecop and TV shows Hercules and Xena. Well when he was intrusted with the reins of the Marvel Hero Spiderman he could of easily of messed this up and left the Marvel growth withering and then not having a Marvel franchise. There is an argument that if this movie failed then the other movies would not of followed. Well it was released in 2002 and was made with a budget $139m this went onto make a $821.7m return from the box-office. With that under the belt you now have these mega movies coming out from the marvel universe, so you could blame Sam for those in a way, I guess. I am here to review this movie so I will stop all of this Sam Raimi is the greatest director ever as I don’t think that is the case but he is up there with the best. This was also liked by the critics not enough for the scoreboard of you know what but still IMDb gave this a 7.3 from 10 and Rotten Tomatoes gave it a whopping 90%. Starring Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Cliff Robertson & Rosemary Harris. The musical score was from Danny Elfman and was back in the days when a superhero movie only needed one villain to make a movie. With that in mind should we move onto the plot.
This is story about how Peter Parker became Spiderman as the first movie should. It tells how Peter was bitten by a red and blue laboratory spider and then undergoes a transformation from ordinary human student into the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman. His uncle drops him into town and tells him that with great power comes great responsibility which Peter acknowledges and then decided to use his new powers to fight the Macho Man Randy Savage to make money. After winning Parker gets stiffed for the prize money by the promoter and as Peter is leaving the ‘stiffer’ owner gets robbed at gun point and just as he reaches the lift the robber runs past him. The victim of the robbery shouts to stop the criminal but Peter steps aside as why would he help someone who has just stiffed him for cash. With a smile on his face he gets the next lift to leave. Going outside he sees a crowd and discovers that his Uncle was a victim of a carjacking and had been shot. He then uses his power to follow the car and discovers the carjacker was the guy he let go, well I’ll be damned! Meanwhile he has a ‘thing’ for Mary Jane and also a good friend in Harry Osborn who’s father is Norman and the owner of Oscorp. Norman is steadily going insane and having the power and finances to do a Bruce Wayne to build some toys. Like a goblin suit, a jet powered flier and pumpkin bombs to terrorise the city. Finally Spiderman and the Green Goblin meet and Greenie offers Spidey a place by his side and Spidey turns it down angering the Green Goblin now the brown stuff is going to go down. That enough for you. Good because I haven’t got anymore plot for you here.
As mentioned in other reviews Spiderman is my favourite superhero for my younger days and has remained there for a long time. He may have been very temporary replaced by Batman and Judge Dredd for a brief time but he has always been up there. So when two of my favourite things come together in director and character there is only good things coming. I was pleasantly surprised as the natural pessimist in me came out and I watched through a gap in my fingers to see a great superhero movie appear. It had all the usual things to expect from a Sam Raimi movie i.e. the appearance of Bruce Campbell and a 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88. Yep every one of his movies will have at least one or both of those. He is a bit more subtle with that now but still, you get the point. Looking at this movie I am reminded of how far this boy has come along and for me he doesn’t get the credit he deserves. I would be one to argue that without the success of this there wouldn’t the Endgames of the world which are royally lorded about. So would I recommend this movie well of course and I am going to stop asking that question as we are now into the top 150 of my movies and without some hideous cock up these should all be great movies in my eyes. I should also reveal now that I have made a couple of flamingo’s with my list potentially three as there is one movie that I thought I owned but isn’t on here, I have discovered the same movie listed twice and I have a remake and an original in the wrong places so yep its possible but we will have to wait and see on those. (Yes the next two on the list are both of those being reviewed (#132 was the original and I’ve just swapped it and #133 was not even on this list but another “similar” movie was duplicated so I have replaced that double with the movie that is now in the 133rd spot). So, without further ado here is the next review…
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