I was five years old when I read my first comic book. My brother handed me a stack of back issues as he grew out of reading them. I remember looking at this holy gift in awe, studying the artwork on each cover. The stack was mostly Marvel, though the first issue of Dan Jurgens’ run of The Death of Superman snuck its way into the pile. There was a Wolverine #50, with an amazing cover that looked like it’d been slashed with claws, and X-Men #18 (1991 series), where the team had to battle Omega Red. The one that stuck out to me was on top.
I was both creeped out and excited, as the cover was jammed full of webs and spiders, with Spider-Man in his iconic crouched position. Of course, at this point, I didn’t know Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man #1 was a darker, grittier take on the web-head, but regardless, it’s what ignited my love for what would become my favorite superhero.
As elementary and middle school emerged, I became much more obsessed with the wall-crawler. I’ve always had a slight phobia of spiders, but they freaked me out as a kid. Spider-Man was slowly undoing the damage that Arachnophobia had already done. Along with that, I just saw myself in Peter Parker’s character.
I didn’t have a lot of friends at an early age. I was bullied quite a bit and was (and still am) a massive science nerd. I was taking advanced science classes that only a few of the nerdiest kids were enrolled in. Mostly, I occupied myself with toys, comics, and movies. My favorite video game was Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage for Super Nintendo. I went as Spider-Man for Halloween three years in a row.
By the early 2000s, my experience with superhero movies was limited. I had seen the handful of Batman films that came out (Batman Returns is still my favorite superhero movie ever), and of course, the X-Men film that dropped in 2000. I could hardly contain myself when the trailer dropped for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. I was finally going to see my favorite hero on the big screen.
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I still remember the night. Normally, my parents would just drop me and my best friend off at the theater and pick us up later. Spider-Man was one of the few movies that they stuck around to watch with us. The film opened with Danny Elfman’s powerful score, with incredible (for the time) CG webs and credits flying all over the place. Then, Tobey Maguire’s voiceover started, and the story began.
I don’t think a better Peter Parker could have been chosen at the time. Sure, Maguire was 27 and playing as a high schooler, but to a 15-year-old, that didn’t matter. He was a nerdy, uncomfortable teen, the same as me, and he was about to save New York City. It’s funny to look back at this film now and see how different Maguire as Peter Parker was then compared to Andrew Garfield’s or Tom Holland’s versions.
By today’s standards, Maguire’s Peter was sometimes colder, more distracted, and somewhat creepy. The character evolved a bit through the Raimi trilogy, but what’s even more impressive is how Jon Watts showed us 14 years of character growth in the small role that Maguire had in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
I had a smile on my face throughout the entire movie. Spider-Man was also my first experience seeing Willem Dafoe, who was absolutely ghoulish, in the role of Norman Osbourne. When revisiting this film recently, many things don’t hold up. Willem Dafoe’s performance is not one of them. He is still one of the most maniacal villains in any superhero film, and his reprisal in No Way Home just solidified that. The moment when Goblin bursts into the hospital and screams, “Finish It!” in response to Aunt May’s prayer is purely diabolical. Even today, that scene gives me goosebumps.
One of my only grievances at the time was the look of Goblin’s helmet. The child in me wanted the comic book/animated series mask on the big screen, and the teen in me didn’t really understand how impossible that was. Though, I did chuckle when Osbourne smashed the mask in No Way Home, almost like a “Yes, we know…” moment.
If there is one thing Spider-Man did better than any of the other films in the franchise, it was showing the best representation of the internal battle within Peter Parker. Peter was conflicted from the start.
In this film, his actions directly caused the death of Uncle Ben (we won’t talk about the Spider-Man 3 retconning), and from there, he then does the furthest thing the Spider-Man we know could do. He lets a man die, regardless of that man’s intent. This moment was rock-bottom for Peter. The beauty of the stories in all three films in this trilogy is that he spent every moment after that trying to make up for it. His first step was to stop Osbourne at any cost before others had to die.
After the film ended, I remember feeling heroic, and I don’t think it was because of the Chad Kroeger song that followed in the credits. I learned that with great power came great responsibility. I needed to grow, learn, and help myself and others. There is a lot of growing that we all do from when we’re teenagers to when we’re adults. Looking back two decades, I think maybe Spider-Man helped me find the hero that the city inside me needed.
