Back before there were cameos, multiverses, and age-appropriate casting, there was Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. The horror director, perhaps best known for Evil Dead and Army of Darkness, shocked the world when he decided to adapt the first-ever feature-length live-action Spider-Man movie. Even more shocking: he, along with screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, made a perfect sequel, one that blows the original film out of the water – something that is no easy feat. Twenty-one years later, Spider-Man 2 remains one of the greatest, if not the greatest superhero movie of all time. It’s got wit, heart, and horror elements, not to mention some of the finest choreographed action sequences and the internal struggle of wanting to live a full life while simultaneously saving the world.
Hope dangles on a string
The year is 2002: Spider-Man (a movie that, at the time, felt like a massive risk for both Sony Pictures and Sam Raimi) hits theaters and becomes a worldwide phenomenon. The film, starring a 25-year-old Tobey Maguire as 17-year-old Peter Parker, secures an $825 million box office return and is immediately greenlit for a sequel. Filming would begin the following spring, with the new movie fast-forwarding to Peter’s double life as a college student and superhero. His longtime love, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) has agreed to marry the successful son of his hated boss J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons), and his best friend Harry Osborn (James Franco), still mourning the death of his father Norman, resents him for refusing to reveal Spider-Man’s true identity. After killing the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) two years prior, a new supervillain, Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), is born right before Peter’s eyes during a scientific presentation gone wrong. TLDR; things aren’t looking up for our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.
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And that’s a big factor in what makes this movie great: Peter’s guilt and anguish is something we can all relate to (despite being bitten by a radioactive spider), so much so that his plight of wanting to live a normal life rather than that of a superhero feels believable. Where superhero films are so fantastical that they provide an escape from our day-to-day, Spider-Man 2 is grounded in reality. In the present-day Marvel Cinematic Universe, superheroes are aplenty. They have other heroes to lean on, to reach out to for support, and if they don’t feel like saving the day…someone else can do it. In Raimi’s Spider-Man universe (Earth-96283, to be exact), it’s just Peter against the world. No Avengers, no X-Men – in fact, this iteration of Spider-Man doesn’t even have a Madame Web (the elderly comic book kind, not the Dakota Johnson kind) to give him guidance. Raimi built a world of isolation: there are no other superheroes, only supervillains.
The importance of being earnest
There’s a strange and meta allegory at the center of Spider-Man 2: an 1885 Oscar Wilde play. Aspiring actor Mary Jane finally gets her big break, playing Gwendolen Fairfax in a Broadway revival of The Importance of Being Earnest. The play concerns two men named Jack and Algernon, both of whom live double lives under the name Ernest in order to get out of certain social obligations while simultaneously wooing two young women. The first time Peter tries to see the play, he’s late due to Spider-Man-ly duties, and the usher (none other than longtime Raimi collaborator Bruce Campbell) won’t let him in.
As Mary Jane notices his empty seat, her scene partner asks, “Do you think we should forgive them?” Later, after Peter decides he’ll “be Spider-Man no more,” he surprises Mary Jane by showing up unannounced – and the second she notices him in the crowd, she stumbles on the word “hypocrisy.”
Of course, as an eight-year-old child watching this in a theater, I didn’t get it. In fact, I didn’t get it until I saw the play myself. While it seems to be a widely overlooked feature when praising Spider-Man 2, it’s one of my favorite things about the entire movie. It’s so subtle, and so silly, but it ties everything together. Harry Osborn, Peter’s former bestie, is also living a double life – while he sends congratulatory roses to Mary Jane and parades around as the new CEO of OsCorp, he spends his nights lying awake plotting to kill Spider-Man. There’s also a revelation in the play that Jack’s father, who he never knew in life, was in the military – much like Richard Parker. Coincidence, I’m sure, but it’s just too good. There’s also something rather Shakespearean about Harry using a dagger as his weapon of choice to kill Spider-Man – but I digress.
Brilliant but lazy
I won’t spoil the entire movie (even though it’s been out for 21 years), as some of you are heading to the theater to watch it for the very first time. I do want to note, however, that this movie is approximately 2 hours and 7 minutes long – and somehow gives us a villain’s entire beginning and ending in a way that feels satisfying and succinct, all while having two small subplots, and still giving Peter Parker a day job. In 127 minutes, we see Spider-Man deliver pizza, get those pictures of Spider-Man to Jameson, and save the world. I don’t know if this could be done today, especially not in a Marvel movie. The theatrical re-release, which opens on September 27, adds about 8 minutes of extra footage – including a different version of that elevator scene with comedian Hal Sparks, an extension of Peter’s painfully awkward surprise party, and a scene where Jameson puts on the Spidey costume after it’s delivered to The Daily Bugle.
Don’t get me wrong: I love the MCU and thoroughly enjoy Tom Holland’s version of Peter Parker – but Marvel movies are so jam-packed with absolutely everything all at once that sometimes the story either feels unconvincing or gets buried overall. Dr. Otto Octavius doesn’t become Doc Ock until around 40 minutes into the film, and man, do we get one of the best – and dare I say the scariest – villain origin scenes in Marvel history. In the first Spider-Man, every scene with the Green Goblin felt like its own mini horror movie. In Spider-Man 2, we have just one, terrifyingly bloody scene, and it’s truly enough.
I don’t know how else to say that Spider-Man 2 is the greatest superhero movie of all time without giving you an in-depth, beat-by-beat plot analysis that repeats the phrase “so cool” over and over again… but you’ll just have to take my word for it. Raimi created a world that was cut too short (as Spider-Man 3 was the critical failure to end all critical failures), and I’m so glad we got to visit it once again in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Dashboard Confessional sums it all up in the song ‘Vindicated,’ which was written for Spider-Man 2 and plays over the end credits: “Hope dangles on a string / like slow-spinning redemption.” All Peter can do is hope for the best, in spite of everything.
An extended cut of Spider-Man 2, titled Spider-Man 2.1, hits theaters on September 27. For more, check out our list of upcoming Marvel movies.
