Greetinx!
Ok.
I am the first to admit that I simply cannot be objective about this film: I've been a huge Spider-man fan since I saw re-runs of the old 60's cartoon back in the early 80s.
I saw the original Nicholas Hammond Spider-man movie at the cinema when I was five (give or take a few years).
I grew up reading UK reprints of the original Black Costume saga (this has now been re-told MANY times both in comic and in cartoon and I guarantee that Spider-man 3 or 4, if we are graced with more films, focusses on this too), amongst other things.
During the early nineties, I collected ALL the Spider-man comics and every cross-over issue that appeared during that era.
To say I am biased is an understatement.
The first film brought to life the character of Spider-man in a way that only cinema can. It made the hero fans have loved since 1962 become almost real for a time and that, to a Spider-man fan, is bigger than all the CGI the WOPR can muster.
The film is basically yet
another re-working of the Spider-man origin and is not too disimilar to the Ultimate Spider-man (though without the more complex involvement of Oscorp).
I, personally, thought Tobey Maguire was an excellent Peter Parker. He was shy and retiring but believable as a hero when he had to be.
That is Peter Parker: he's this kid who no friends and no real family who, by hook or by crook, gains fantastic powers. He starts off doing what every human being would do but tragedy strikes and he realises that with great power, comes great responsibility.
That's what the whole point of Spider-man. He's a kid, just like everyone is or was at school and he's just struggling to get by. But, due to his nature, he also has to deal with saving everyone because if not him, who else?
There
is no one else. He
has to do it. And although, when the going gets tough, he's been known to bottle it and give in (after all, its not like he gets any reward: everytime he does some good, J Jonah Jameson twists it and slams him just to sell more papers). But eventually he has to take back to the costume (and believe that this is shown in SM-2).
Regardless of whether the CGI looked fake or there was too much of it etc, I felt that the movie did a great job of delivering the Spider-man we wanted to see. I can forgive bad effects (come on, look how dated the Terminator is now and I
dare you to tell me it sucked). I can forgive bad costumes.
Its all irrelevant to the story and the story was good.
MJ, Peter, Harry, Norman, Aunt May, Uncle Ben, ......they were all well portrayed.
And the love story to Spider-man? Well, it was ok. The main problem I have with SM is there is no sense of time elapse in the film.
Now, one minute Peter is at school, living next door to MJ with his Aunt and Uncle, then he's graduated and gone to study at NYU (which I don't even remember it mentioning!) having moved in with his only real friend, Harry Obsborne. Presumably, Peter has been hard at work saving peoples lives while studying hard at the university, having lost touch with MJ. Meanwhile, Harry
has kept in touch with MJ and those two are dating (without Peter knowing).
Peter then bumps in to MJ and we're assuming that they've not seen each other for months...
That's a lot to take without being told in a movie and if you don't know much about Spider-man, I can imagine you'd be hard pressed to actually really make much sense of what is going on.
I know its not actually pertinent to the story but, come on, if we're to drag comic book movies out of the summer blockbuster category and in to something more meatier, we need to actually pace these things out.
That's my only criticism of Spider-man.
As I said, I simply can't be objective about it, I just hope I got across why I think its a good movie without also portraying the ravings of a spidey fanboy
Best Regards
Dorian
P.S. I liked the Hulk and Daredevil. Jennifer Garner might not have been a good choice for Elektra but she sure is hot!
