Yet I like to think that this film came out during the early stages of the contemporary era of the superhero genre. In the past ten years, this category of film making has expanded into a form of cinema which is colossal in its size. The genre would quickly explode into a multimillion dollar industrial monster which would clean out multiplex theaters on a yearly basis.
Spider-Man was the dawn of this monster superhero category.
By 2002, the film was already long overdue. A Spider-Man adaptation had been in talks for many years prior to it finally receiving the green light. Numerous directors, producers and writers attempted to bring their own version of the film to life before Raimi finally took helm of the director's chair.
The most notorious example of this was the hiring and firing of director James Cameron. Cameron was adamant on bringing the Spider-Man franchise to the big screen throughout a majority of the 1990s. Many rumors point back to an early 1990s release - supposedly around the 1991 mark - but then there were also numerous suggestions that a second attempt was made to create this film during his post-Titanic years.
In actual fact, a script treatment for Cameron's latter attempt to adapt Spidey actually managed to make its way into the public realm. This script was not that far off the version we finally received as a matter of fact. The origin of Peter Parker becoming Spider-Man was almost identical to Cameron's vision, and Rami even hijacked the biological web fluid concept straight from his script treatment.
The only hugely considerable differences in Cameron's scripts were the use of Electro as the main villain, the outlandishly bizarre sex scene and the explosive climax set at the top of the World Trade Center (a scene which would have been immensely iconic today, but more on that later).
Many rumors spread as to why Cameron was dropped from the production. Some say that producers were concerned that his screenplay was far too adult for the studio's liking, though I really can't see what adult themes they may have been referring too, as the treatment is quite tame. Another belief is that Cameron fell out with many of the producers over creative differences; creating an unworkable atmosphere (this one I can certainly believe).
Wondering why Cameron never made it to the director's chair of this film is pointless speculation however. His true vision of the film never transpired, and it never will. Cameron has stated in interviews that he would not even attempt to adapt this franchise if he was offered the chance to do so today, meaning that it will forever be a non-existent text which will keep the fan boys and girls wondering of all the what ifs until the day they die.
But enough about Cameron's non-existent Spider-Man. What was the actual 2002 feature like? Well, it was not exactly a masterpiece, but it was far from a bad film.
In fact, it's actually quite troublesome to look at the quality of this film from a 2013 perspective. As I have mentioned numerous times before, this is a genre which has grown into something completely Byzantium in its scale. There are now hundreds of superhero movies out there which are a thousand times worse than this one, whilst there are simultaneously hundreds of them that are light years ahead of it.
Looking back on this film in a world where the superhero genre is overly saturated makes the whole experience rather bland. It's an average film at best, and no matter how hard I attempt to look at it from a different angle, it really is difficult to perceive it as anything above average.
The film as a whole is a reasonably executed piece of work. It is impossible to look at this film without taking into account the fact that it is really just one big promotional strategy. Spider-Man is a franchise, and the film was brought into existence in order to pull this iconic series into contemporary mainstream culture. In a world where blockbuster movies are far more universally loved than literature, it was a wise decision for Marvel to recreate Peter Parker for the big screen.
To suggest that the film was made to sell more merchandises is quite a cynical way to look at this film, but regardless of this fact, the franchise still had to adapt itself into a cinematic format. So regardless of it being a 2 hour advert, it was a 2 hour advert that was molded into a fully functioning feature film.
And as feature films go, it works just fine. It has a solid three act structure, reasonably well developed characters, a screenplay which worked and a director who had a visual aesthetic that he seemed passionate about bringing to life.
There is nothing truly game changing here, however. The film may tick all the boxes which establish it as a working Hollywood blockbuster, but it does not push the envelope in anyway.
Unlike films such as Batman Begins, Spider-Man does not attempt to reinvent or do anything new with the genre as a whole. But then to make such a claim is hugely unfair. Batman Begins did not exist at this point in history. Heck, Christopher Nolan wasn't even a household name at this point. To compare it to a film that didn't yet exist is horribly unfair, which is why looking at this film from 2013 is a tough move.
Yet even if we do take Batman Begins out of the equation, I still do not see where this film manages to push any creative boundaries. I mean sure, the special effects were profoundly cutting edge for 2002, but then it was a huge multimillion dollar blockbuster. It's dazzling computer graphics and nicely choreographed fight scenes are surely the standard when it comes to a movie that had as much capital as this one did.
All of the above may sound as though I hold a dislike toward this film. This is not the case. Spider-Man is a reasonably enjoyable first part to Rami's interpretation of the web slinging hero.
For a start, it was an introduction into the world of Spider-Man. This was a franchise which I had always had a love of, despite never having viewed any of its preceding content. Spider-Man was an iconic character within the culture which I grew up in. He had always existed in the back of my mind - along with Mary Jane Watson, Venom, The Green Goblin, Doctor Octavious, Uncle Ben and Aunt May - but it was an awareness that I possessed without actually consuming any of the content which initially stemmed from this franchise. To finally be able to witness a story from this universe was something which I was immensely grateful for. It immersed me into a world which I should have been immersed into many years before this release.
So seeing as this was my debut story of Spidey's universe, how did the film help me to understand the characters of this world? Well, not in a way that I had expected if one is perfectly honest.
Peter Parker/Spidey was portrayed as the overly emotional outsider. He was a high school reject who was shunned from more or less every immediate social circle. The only other character in the story who allowed him access to some sort of social communication was his friend Harry Osborne. He was Peter's only doorway into the space that occupied his life. Harry was his only form of communication with the environment which surrounded his world. If it wasn't for him, he would be completely alienated from the surrounding space of this text.
Despite being isolated from his surrounding world, however, Peter manages to form a voyeuristic connection within this space. He manages this through his lust for Mary Jane Watson. Peter's voyeuristic attraction and admiration of this woman does help to push him to the next level of interaction however. Minutes into the opening moments of the film, he speaks to her, asking if he can take a photograph of her for the school paper. His plans fail when another student knocks him during the take. The intervention of other members of his surrounding environment act as obstacles that prevent him from communing with her.
So when it comes to public interaction, it is just him and Harry for the early stages of this narrative. He is a true outsider, and it is this side of Peter's existence which pushes him through the story. Peter's transformation into Spider-Man will be his only way into breaking away from his social isolation from the public. As he grows from the nobody to the hero, he will finally force his way into Mary Jane's world. His transgression will allow him to smash down the barriers that are segregating him from the social spaces of the narrative.
Yet this isolation will never truly leave the character. He will remain a clumsy, socially inept representation of Parker throughout the majority of this film. His character is hopelessly disconnected from the outside world. He exists on a totally different plane from everyone around him. He desperately wants to connect with the woman he loves, but he just can't. The only people he does seem to be able to connect to are his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, but even Peter keeps many secrets and feelings hidden away from them too.
I can see why they took this approach with Parker. The isolated hero is a hugely popular figurehead in contemporary popular culture. The idea of the invisible man or woman rising up to fight evil is one which chimes with many hearts amongst this world. Many members of the public feel isolated from those around them, meaning that such a protagonist becomes a likable figure amongst the public consensus.
Regardless of this understandable approach to the character, it was one that did not chime with my own interpretation of Peter Parker. I never understood him as a social extraterrestrial. In my mind he was the cocky, overly intelligent geek who won the hearts of his audience in a different way. He was the nerd who used his brains in order to take control of the narratives which he occupied.
Though this approach to Peter might not have been wise for this multimillion dollar adaptation. After all, the glorified nerd-hero is a portrayal which would work just fine amongst Spider-Man's original audience. Comic book readers are often members of 'nerd culture', meaning that such a version of Parker would have suited its audience perfectly.
For the big screen, however, the writers had to invent a version of Parker that would branch to a far wider audience. The nerd glorification wouldn't work for a mass demographic. Naturally, a social outsider was a more sensible direction for Rami's Parker to go in
Or maybe Parker always was a social outsider. As I said, I had never consumed any previous Spider-Man texts prior to this film, so my ignorance is vast in its scale.
Peter's motivations toward becoming Spider-Man were just how I had envisioned them, however. Uncle Ben's death was the catalyst which was an ingrained part of the mythology of Spider-Man. To remove this arc from the story would be like removing the death of Bruce Wayne's parents from the Batman films; and there was no way that anyone would be allowed to pull a stunt like that in 2002. Even in today's world, the superhero genre is still not even at a stage in its life cycle to allow a writer or director to get away with such a drastic alteration.
Mary Jane was nothing like what I had expected her to be either. In the movie, she came across as an incredibly passive character. She was the girl next door who's smile seemed to ignite Peter's imagination. She does have personality to her character and she is likable enough to connect to an audience, but by the end of this film she is reduced to a damsel in distress who's only there to push Peter into finally beating the bad guy.
It's all bog standard stuff with Mary Jane here. Peter fancies her, she barely notices him, but as he proves himself to her (regardless of being in disguise at all times) she will decide that she does in fact love him too.
I always perceived Mary Jane as a character of great strength. She was Spider-Man's equal. The woman who keeps him going. In my mind, she was the true protector of Spidey. She gave him a reason to live an a purpose to fight. She was the one who kept his goals in check.
Those themes are sort of here, but they are too faint for my liking. She may very well be the woman that Peter loves in this film, but at the same time, she's just another set piece to keep the plot moving. I expected a much stronger Mary Jane Watson; not just another passive damsel in need of rescuing.
I did not really have a previously established idea of what Norman Osborne/Green Goblin would be like prior to this film. To me he was just a face of evil. He was a nemesis of Spidey's who would do anything to stop him in his tracks. But with Norman/Goblin in this movie, there is an underlying problem that has an impact on the narrative. This problem, however, is not a fault of the film's doing. It is in fact a fault of the Superhero-to-movie adaptation model in general.
When it comes to cinema, one rule of storytelling is to never establish more than one magical event. When I use the term 'magical' I mean it as anything that is larger than life in its nature. If you throw one supernatural/magical/unrealistic element into a film, audiences are happy enough to suspend their disbelief without question. If you throw a secondary supernatural/magical/unrealistic event into that film, however, then audiences begin to critique.
Put simply, if the main characters of Independence Day suddenly revealed that they had the ability to fly at the end of act one, then the whole story would collapse there and then. The story is able to sustain the concept of an alien invasion, but to throw in a secondary out-of-this-world rule would simply fail to work in the context of the story.
Seeing as superhero franchises are full of supernatural heroes and villains - each one stemming from different fantastical origins within their own respected universe - it can prove highly difficult to adapt into a movie format. Both the protagonist and antagonist of that film will have to have a superpower of some sort. Seeing as both superpowers will most likely stem from differing origins, it means that we have two 'magical' elements coexisting in one story.
This does not kill Spider-Man's narrative, however it does serve to weaken it somewhat. It is just too much of a coincidence that Norman Osbourne becomes the Green Goblin during the same time period that Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man.
The multiple 'magic' plot problem is one that I think is avoided most effectively in Brian Singer's 1999 X-Men adaptation. The reason for this is because the magical concept in that film is the idea that a set of humans have mutated into a new level of mankind. This means that all characters have stemmed from the exact same phenomenon; meaning that the heroes and the villains all belong to the same 'magical' rule.
Like I say, this is not the fault of Spider-Man, but it is still a problem which I feel throws this film off its narrative rails for a short period of time.
In conclusion, Spider-Man is not a terrible film. As a Hollywood blockbuster, it functions just fine. It is quite unfair to attempt to review it in today's cinematic climate. The genre which it belongs to has grown immensely since its release. Today's vast library of films from this genre force it into a rating spectrum which places it on the average scale.
I also had a few expectation quarrels with the characters of is film, as they were not what I expected them to be. But seeing as I had never consumed any previously established Spider-Man texts prior to this one, this too is something of an unfair statement. It would be like getting annoyed that Winston Churchill was not the man you assumed he was because a biography portrayed him otherwise. Before I am able to state a confident enough opinion on how these characters were executed, I will have to go back and understand the origins of this franchise in greater detail.
The primary text of Spider-Man is not the only interesting discussion point for this film however. There is also a piece of extra-textual content in existence which warrants a brief mention because of the historical context in which it was released within.
In the summer of 2001, cinemas around the world released the first teaser trailer for this movie. The teaser consisted of a robbery taking place in a Manhattan bank. As the robbers flee from the crime scene via helicopter, the vehicle spontaneously loses control during mid flight.
As the camera pans out, the chopper is revealed to be trapped within a gigantic web like contraption. As it pans further, this gargantuan web is shown to have been woven between the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
The initial intention of this scene was to be iconic in a very particular way. At the time, the world Trade Center Stood for a symbol of American glory. The huge steel structures represented the power and sheer workmanship of the American nation. The message behind this iconic image? It intended to show that Spider-Man is a protector of the American people. He's a superhero who will fight the forces of evil with the assistance of US symbolism. The World Trade Center acted as a tool for fighting crime in this teaser trailer. It reveals the twin towers in all their glory; an unashamed image of power and goodwill.
Weeks after the release of this teaser, the twin towers were destroyed in the most notorious attack in modern western history. The teaser was immediately pulled from cinemas worldwide and the studios begun to digitally erase the towers from the main text before the film's release date.
With the uprising of the internet, this trailer obtained a new life amongst online streaming sites. 9/11 resulted in the teaser being removed from the mainstream medium of cinema, only to find itself a new home within the realms of the internet. The symbolic meaning of that extra-textual piece was transformed from a symbol of American power and into a symbol of historical significance. It was one of the last mainstream cinematic representations of the twin towers prior to their destruction. This historical event reshaped and reinvented the meaning of this trailer. It's original intentions were lost in time.
It was an extra-textual piece of cinema that gained extreme significance due to being released in the shadow of September 11th 2001.
This is a faultless example of how textual meanings are changed and reshaped due to historical events. As times change, so do peoples' understanding of the world. This is a core illustration of such a shift in perception. It is also why the James Cameron script would have been viewed in a hugely different way today if it had managed to see the light of day during the 1990s. The understanding of that climactic battle from Cameron's script would have changed dramatically after the events of 2001.
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