Go, Spidey, Go!

I've been catching up with Spider-Man lately as the films come up on Netflix. Spider-Man was one of my favourite characters growing up. I wasn't hugely into comic culture, and ones featuring the web-slinger were some of the few I dipped into. A life-long animation fan, I devoured the cartoons in the 1990s, including retro re-runs of the 1960s show. As many others felt and feel, Peter Parker's encounters with school bullies, his social awkwardness, his outsider identity even when his alter-ego becomes a hero, his underprivileged socio-economic status, and his moral quandaries were all relatable. I remember in my later teens being so excited when I heard Sam Raimi was directing Spider-Man (2002). There had been attempts before in television movies in the 1970s, but special and visual effects technologies had to progress substantially before the web-slinging would be convincing. Even between the first and third Raimi films the development is palpable. 

In my later teens and early 20s I was also into horror and would have declared it my favourite genre. The anxiety problems I've developed since have rendered me too much of a fraidy-cat to say the same now! This love for the genre emerged due to my experience of insomnia combined with BBC2 and Channel 4 showing restricted rated films very late at night. Around that time Channel 4 did presentations of previously banned video nasties, and so came my introduction to Raimi's The Evil Dead films and understanding the significance of Bruce Campbell's star turn in a season 6 episode of The X-Files also shown for the first time in the UK around this time, I think, in 1999 or 2000. 

I had certainly seen The Evil Dead (1981) by the time Spider-Man 2 (2004) was released and enjoyed it all the more with its horror inflections (that whole surgery scene including a man grabbing the chainsaw as a defensive weapon and the woman scraping her nails as she's dragged on the floor...), in-jokes and Campbell cameo. It is also a rare sequel that is objectively better than its predecessor. For all its flaws - and it has many by 2022 re-watch standards - it's a cracking superhero action movie.

It's safe to say the third film isn't great. There are far too many villains, none of whom are terribly charismatic or pathetic enough in the dramatic sense to develop empathy for. But I have a soft spot for it because the atmosphere in the sold-out screening I first saw it in was electric. We were all there for a great night out and a laugh. That shot where Peter is mid-air and his engagement ring for MJ dislodges - a shot that was in the trailer that played on hard rotation on TV - I'm not joking, a woman in the audience called out: 'Not the ring!' We all erupted and for the rest of the film we were a rowdy bunch in the Dublin Road Movie House, which is sadly no longer with us. This one of many fond memories of that specific cinema gives me a sentimental reason to defend Spider-Man 3.

Given my fondness for the Sam Raimi/Tobey Maguire trilogy, it would be reasonable to assume that I hadn't bothered with the reboots out of loyalty. I did feel a spark of hurt upon hearing that instead of Spider-Man 4, Sony and Columbia decided to reboot. I remember talking it out with my most regular cinema-going companion at the time, who was the same friend I had seen 3 with, and feeling open-minded. I figured the reboot due for release in 2012 would have the best technology thrown at it, and the ball had been dropped in the storytelling in 3, to be fair.

The reason why it took me almost ten years to see The Amazing Spider-Man was because 2012 became a year of hell for me. I barely went to the cinema that year; I couldn't afford to in my post-PhD struggle to get any paid work and much of my personal life fell apart. When its sequel came out in 2014 I was wild busy, in loads of debt and still hadn't seen the first one. By the time the Tom Holland Spider-Man appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe I was well behind with those films too. What I did catch up with on my birthday in 2020 and absolutely adored every aspect of was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018).

Having now seen The Amazing Spider-Man recently on Netflix, my expectations on the visual and special effects were spot on and I was impressed with Marc Webb's direction and James Horner's score. We'd also recently heard, not Horner's first score, but the first that earned him renown when persisting with our Star Trek odyssey in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and recognised his distinct composition style early in the film. My partner Andrew teaches many of the films Horner scored, and I'm still scarred from my piano teacher's obsession with Titanic; I gave up lessons because I couldn't face playing 'Southampton' or 'My Heart Will Go On' one more bloody time. So in a way it was good to vaguely come full circle on his career as we'd also just a few months ago seen his last score in 2016's The Magnificent Seven.

Other than Captain Stacy (Denis Leary) not taking back-up into the Oscorp Tower there isn't too much to pick on. Sally Field is a great Aunt May. Rosemary Harris in the Raimi films is excellent, especially in 2, but it's about time characters in their early retirement years stopped being costumed in what we perceive as twentieth-century elderly person clothes. Plus Sally Field is just class.

I enjoyed Andrew Garfield's performance. I remember first seeing him in Doctor Who back in 2007, also playing a working-class New Yorker. I find it hard not to like Emma Stone in anything and her Gwen Stacy was served better in the writing than Bryce Dallas Howard's in Spider-Man 3, or even Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson. I thought the Lizard was a good choice as an early villain, and perhaps a more appropriate match for the newly powered teen bug, and Rhys Ifans works as Dr Curt Connors. I did feel a bit sorry for Dylan Baker who played Connors in the Raimi series as his arc was supposed to feature in Spider-Man 4. I'm not sure if the ableist attitude of the amputee character is problematic. The loss of his arm is not explained in The Amazing Spider-Man whereas in the comics he was former military and lost his arm in battle. I think it's important to see amputee actors playing amputee characters. However, Ifans played the Lizard in motion capture, including the regrown arm. I thought it was sensible to keep his head shape and not go for the elongated snout of the later comics and cartoons (his first appearance was that of a reptilian humanoid rather than the more familiar upright white-coated alligator). Motion capture definitely has more verisimilitude than straight-up CGI and it lent weight to the drama that Connors was recognisable in the face of the creature.

I found it humorous that the film glosses over Peter creating the mechanical web-shooters. This is an ongoing plot-hole in Spider-Man lore, one the Raimi films got round by making them organic (and leaning into suitably embarrassing puberty metaphors with the white sticky substance on Peter's wrists). The other incarnations beg the question: how is this economically deprived teenager meant to gain access to the supplies and knowledge needed to so quickly develop these gadgets and refill them? The film going 'yeah he just makes them, now enjoy the movie and don't think about it' in a brief scene was quite funny. The reliance on super technology is a mainstay of the other Marvel films, and one I find a bit tiresome, so on re-watching Spider-Man 2 again recently I appreciated the extreme wealth disparity between Harry Osborn (James Franco) and Peter Parker, whose stressful life and related ill-health affects his abilities.

When checking dates and spellings for these thoughts I read with a smile that there are fan campaigns calling for both a Raimi/Maguire Spider-Man 4 and a Garfield/Webb The Amazing Spider-Man 3. Now that the spider-verse and multi-verse have split wide open, it really is possible for anyone to be Spider-Man (or any other kind of being) and for Spider-Man to age and have a life beyond school and college. I can't wait to get caught up and see No Way Home and the possibilities it along with Spider-Verse might generate.

 

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