Movie review: ‘Spider-Man’ rerelease celebrates heroic values

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 26 (UPI) — Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films capture how Marvel icon Stan Lee used the superhero stories to teach young readers valuable life lessons. The re-release of the films, in theaters Friday, allows a generation of children born after 2007’s Spider-Man 3 to discover the movies on the big screen.

Raimi understood the heart of Spider-Man. Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) was a shy, bullied teenager, and gaining super powers from a genetic spider bite did not really help him. It only gave him more pressure to live up to those powers.

Indeed, the lesson “with great power comes great responsibility” is so obviously at the forefront of the 2002 film, it is often mocked for repetition, sometimes lovingly, sometimes cynically.

‘Spider-Man’: With great power…

In 2002’s Spider-Man, Peter learned that lesson the hard way by neglecting his responsibility and inadvertently causing Uncle Ben’s (Cliff Robertson) death. Peter let a thief escape because they robbed a person who cheated Peter, but that thief later kills Ben in a carjacking.

That Peter might have prevented Ben’s death shows you still have to do the right thing, even for people who have wronged you.

The powers do seem to give Peter more confidence to pursue his classmate Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), and their upside down kiss is iconic. However, now that Peter is more desirable, he’s also wracked with guilt for putting loved ones in harm’s way as Spider-Man.

One controversy in this Spider-Man was Raimi showing webs shooting out of Peter’s wrists, apparently a development from James Cameron in the ’90s. Why not? If he was bitten by a genetic spider, why wouldn’t he generate web?

The franchise has since done both versions, and the Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland iterations of Spider-Man, who invented their own webshooters, joked about Maguire’s bodily fluid in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), aka the Green Goblin, is the sympathetic villain of Spider-Man. About to be the victim of a hostile takeover at his company, he recklessly tries his military formula and experiences maniacal side effects.

Confrontations between Spidey and the Goblin have Dafoe and Maguire perform dialogue in their masks. That’s fun as a sort of Kabuki theater in the English language, plus they have enough scenes out of costume that it hardly compromises their acting.

More ‘Spider-Man 2,’ more problems

Spider-Man 2 became the fan favorite following its release in 2004. It certainly perfected the visual effects, making battles between Spidey and Dr. Octopus (Alfred Molina) realistic, but the script has some issues that are often overlooked.

In the very first sequel, Peter already starts to lose his powers due to a combination of overextending himself and simply wanting to give them up. That’s suspect. If great power comes with great responsibility, where is the responsibility if the power just disappears?

The film shows Peter struggling to find work/life balance, which is especially hard considering he doesn’t get paid for being Spider-Man. Yet, it does reinforce that he is responsible for doing the right thing.

On that front, there is a scene where he confesses to Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) his role in Uncle Ben’s death. That is a big confession, but narratively he’s just recapping the plot the audience already knows.

Doc Ock’s alter ego, Otto Octavius, isn’t quite as sympathetic as Norman Osborn. Norman was following scientific protocol until his board tried to take the company away from him.

Otto proceeds with a volatile experiment long after it is clearly out of control and it kills people. Even before that, he mocks poetry, so he seems more megalomaniacal than the misguided Norman.

This re-release is the Spider-Man 2.1 version originally released on DVD, which includes additional scenes like Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson trying on Peter’s abandoned Spider-Man costume. It’ll be fun to see that version theatrically.

In defense of ‘Spider-Man 3’

Hopefully this re-release helps redeem Spider-Man 3 from some of its criticism, which began upon its 2007 release and continued with its meme-ification. It may be overstuffed but big studios often do that with sequels. Raimi still got a Raimi movie through the process.

In this sequel, Peter faces Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), Venom (Topher Grace) and Norman’s son Harry (James Franco), who has finally picked up his father’s mantle after believing Spider-Man responsible for Norman’s death for two films.

Maybe this isn’t the Venom of the comics, but Eddie Brock sees becoming Venom as a shortcut to glory. Brock already blames others for catching him cheating instead of himself for doing dishonest work.

That was a relevant cautionary tale in 2007 and remains relevant in a world where politicians and pundits equivocate and gaslight criminal acts.

Retconning the Uncle Ben story was controversial, too. This film says Sandman alter ego Flint Marko was an accomplice of the carjacker who killed Uncle Ben and accidentally pulled the trigger.

That may not be the Uncle Ben story of the comics, but it doesn’t violate the lesson Peter learned about doing the right thing. Had he stopped the thief in the first movie, he still could have prevented the carjacking.

It is important to consider there could always be more to the story than the official version, even when the official version represents decades of literary history.

The best part of Spider-Man 3 is that success is not good for Peter Parker. Spider-Man is beloved now but he takes Mary Jane for granted and only talks about himself/Spider-Man.

That makes him a bad romantic partner. Mary Jane has problems and she just wants to have a conversation about their human relationship, or her own life, not her boyfriend’s superhero job. It is a valuable lesson to be a good listener.

The symbiote goo from space may be a deus ex machina, but it is one from the comic books so it is part of the Spider-Man world.

And when Peter gets dark powers from a symbiote from space, he’s still a big dork. His emo dance through the streets is one of the memes, as is his tearful reaction in the film’s climax.

Peter goes too far, and it’s what ultimately makes him give up the symbiote, who finds a less moral host in Brock. But it is endearing to see Peter try to be bad and still screw up as a goofball.

None of the Raimi/Maguire Spider-Mans are bad and there have been far worse adaptations since. Hopefully, the re-release encourages reconsideration of some Spider-Man 2 shortcuts and forgiveness of 3‘s shortcomings, but it should be a celebration of all three.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.