TheRetroCritic

Sam Raimi may not have seemed like the most obvious choice as director for this first proper Spider-Man movie at the time but he proved everyone wrong creating a popcorn movie with enough entertainment, humour and faithfulness to the comic books to feel like a worthy attempt. The film begins with tedious narration more suited to a Dr Seuss animation and closes with it as well so not the most promising of starts but from the moment we actually meet Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker things start making sense. Raimi goes for a lighthearted tone actually well suited to the character and the whole film feels very much like a comic book. The build-up to Parker becoming Spider-Man is perfectly handled with the film ticking all the right boxes in terms of superhero origin stories: teen romance, tragic family crisis, growing powers/puberty, bullies, clear villain... It's cliched but in a good way. There's a sense that it's all very self-aware and knows what it's doing. I sh